 So I follow up, order the full comment, or I started to call the order of the meeting of the Montpey-Roxbury Board of School Directors. Hey, Jim. I'd like to make a motion. I'm gonna take care of that. We have a few things to add to the agenda. We're gonna add on a discussion of the school curricular and teacher contracts, and as part of the enrichment coordinator position discussion, we are going to add a discussion of, it's been updated on where we are with the actual school programming for next year. Generally, as part of most of you know, the committee appointed to that wrapped up its work and made a recommendation to Libby so we got some support there, and those two items are related. So any other comments on the agenda? Libby, did you wanna add us to that first? Yeah, the FT for the middle school conversation. Oh, okay. We talked about it earlier. Sorry, thanks, Pam. Is that the one at 640, or am I wrong? The MHS and 640? Yes, add MS-MS to that. Okay, and we're gonna switch it around a little too. We've got a discussion of the Roxbury kindergarten age cut-off date. John is gonna be on five months later. We're gonna try to start that at 645, and then we're gonna give Hope the first slot because she has a busy week. And wants to go and study and do disease. Busy week. Busy week, thanks. Okay, so the first item is public comment. Any, I don't know, great. Next, moving to the consent agenda. Motion to approve the consent agenda. I move to approve the consent agenda. Second. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The consent agenda is approved. Hope, or yours? So Emma can't make it, and she wanted me to let you know that she wishes she could be here. It's Abenaki for the recognition day at the State House, and she's Abenaki, and so she wanted to support her heritage, and I'm sorry that I do have to leave early tonight. I know that spring is a busy time for most juniors, and with AP exams and standardized tests, I just have a lot of my play right now, so. And Emma did work on the list that I have, so she does have some input and confusion on what I say tonight. So we're just gonna follow the usual format with student celebrations at the top. And so today, a lot of popular students were really instrumental in planning this, but we just had our routing for the planet, and it was the fourth annual one, and so students got permission slips and were able to leave for second and third block, and it's an event organized by Youth Lobby, which Emma and I are both part of, and it's a youth advocacy group in terms of legislative activism, as well as just organizing events and like the rally for the planet, and so Emma and I did a lot of work lobbying and talking about policy, and we both testified on legislation together a few weeks ago, and it's usually climate change centric, and so we were just able to go out today and enjoy some time outside and hear amazing speakers and listen to music and just have a good time in general. And next week, I'm going to be participating in the Allstate Parade, which is our first one in some odd decade that's happening through downtown Montpelier, and I play the violin, and so I'm also going to be participating in the Allstate Orchestra for that first violin, but I'm playing the shaker in our marching band, in our, you know, like, yeah, our little impromptu marching band that we've put together, even though we don't really have a marching band at MHS, so there'll be like hundreds of kids through downtown Montpelier, so it'll surely be a sight. At six o'clock? Yes, it's at six on Wednesday, and then Thursday and Friday is the festival, which is taking place at E32, and I know some people here are hosting, so, with that. Did you say there's going to be a marching band parade in Montpelier on Wednesday? Yes, and it's a class, it's a class group. Yeah, it starts at the middle school, I will be in it, Sol and Samba. How many of you think that would be? My daughter will be in it, too. How many of you? Also, she's like playing with this huge drum so it's like half the size of her. It'll be interesting to see, so, six Wednesday? Getting a baton, twirlers, or anything? There's a number of students expected. What's that? Oh, really? Just from Montpelier. Just kidding. How many of ours? Yeah. How many of ours? Yeah. I don't know why they were having a lot of this. You got them all? They're not all in? No, 20. You got 20 maybe? How many kids here in Sol and Samba? I'd say like 20, 25. To add to that, there's going to be buses parking at multiple schools, so they'll be at Main Street as well. So just if you're trying to get through town, now you're not coming to the parade, which hopefully you all are. But there will be some traffic congestion with all the buses coming in. Yeah, I'm trying to get the timing to float. And this past week was prom, and I just wanted to give a huge shout out to the prom committee because I know they want to really part of the plan this, and I had a great time, and I'm also one if I know she had a great time. And Girls Ultimate played their first game a few days ago, and this weekend, Ultimate is hosting the Capital City Classic, which is this huge MHS tournament. And Club Action and Interact are banding together to organize the Empower Vermont Festival, and it was something that Emma actually started last year, and it was the livelihood music festival, and we renamed it Empower Vermont this year. And it's in the works, but a lot of different club members, underclassmen and upperclassmen, are working to plan essentially a music festival that will also serve as a fundraiser and benefit a Washington County-based organization to help survivors of sexual assault, and that's partially why we decided to rename it, just because we really liked the idea of empowering others and that being our new name. And yesterday, Mike News came to the Montpelier High School campus, and they're online, so they're like a national news organization, and so they came for the second time, which is kind of phenomenal. And last time they had come because we raised a Black Lives Matter flag, and this time they were coming to interview youth lobby members and members of Montpelier High School Earth Group. And I was one of the students interviewed, and so was Mr. Tom Sabo's son, Matt Sabo, and he goes to U of E too, and it was great to talk about the sense of community that I feel at Montpelier and also how I've been able to grow as an activist and advocate and find support for my school community in doing so and the work that we've done as students in the state house. And it was also just hilarious being on camera and having to walk around the building with Max Sabo, pretending that he goes here. When it comes out, it'll definitely be funny to the people who actually go here and work here. And AP exams, SBACs, and science assessments, I know that even though I technically have a late start, since I'm taking AP courses, all the freshmen are going to be doing their standardized tests, and some students have a late start. I know that AP students in AP Bio and AP Push on Thursday and Friday will be coming in at regular time and doing some practice sessions. And I took science assessments last week, and I am taking some AP exams. And so I know that, essentially, all through the grades, we're kind of experiencing standardized tests. And so we can answer questions if you do have any about what that is like. And as for student concerns and student needs, it's essentially just remain the same in terms of students' educational support systems and how best we can promote equity. And I know that you all were just meeting in regards to that. So I'd love to hear about any updates you might have and just how we can support diversity and inclusion in the MRPS education. And I think also, in light of some recent events and just a culture that I've noticed in some social groups at my school, just how we can go about changing that. And I think it ties into the work that we've done with restorative practices and what we're trying to implement in the MHS community. And it's a multi-year process, because with restorative practices, you want to implement them right and make a good first impression so that students and community members don't really become resistant to it. And so we're really thinking this out well. And it's a student and faculty-staff coalition that's working on restorative practices at MHS. And I've heard it. We met yesterday with Lou Sissiri and he works in the planning room and Lisa and Amanda Payne in guidance and talked a little bit about small changes we can make right now and how that'll fit into the bigger picture of what we can do to foster community. And restorative practices is not just a restorative justice piece. It's not about what happens when something goes wrong. It's also just about how we can foster community and a sense of trust between teachers and students, even though teachers are authority figures and how we can know about that. That's it. I'd be happy to take some questions if you have any about the meeting you guys just had. I'd be pleased to know if I'm right. Questions for? No, we spent you. Yeah, I think you, especially on a facility, I appreciate it. Do you feel optimistic about the restorative justice process helping with the current situation? I think so. I think that it's kind of the only solution that'll, I think that the, I think that the problems that I and other students have noticed are a product of just a negative culture amongst peers. And I think that restorative practices and restorative justice is perhaps the only or at least the most effective way to sufficiently solve the problem of that negative culture and change it so that it's less toxic I guess. And that's, that is kind of the only solution I see there right now for the best. Let's get, how is the overall culture in the high school change during the standardized testing periods? Oh. Does it get intense? Does it get grumpy? Does it, is it none of the above? I wouldn't say overall it's anything. I, you might hear some cynical comments about standardized tests from students, but I think that's essentially as bad as it gets and overall the school culture doesn't change in response to standardized tests. And I know that for juniors perhaps it's a little bit different just because we pay a lot of money to take AP exams and then we have to deal with the stress of taking them and they're like money's weak depending on how many AP exams you're taking. But we're all in this together kind of things. Oh, so you've got to pay AP exams? Oh, yeah. In college course? It's like, yeah, I guess it's 94. You pay, yeah, 94 per AP exam you take. Ataturious, but you're pretty good for it too, so it's like 94 per exam you take. And you couldn't take the AP course in that paper test. It's not necessary, so it depends. I know, my daughter is one where she has to take the test as part of the course. Like her grade is dependent on that kind of thing? On the test result? Yeah. The course should be incomplete, I guess. Yeah, I wonder if the- That's the teacher who said- Is there a subsidy stream somehow if the folks need it for the AP test? Any idea? Am I talking nice? Maybe. You're talking right now. Yeah. Well, you're talking else. Yeah, no, somebody said put it on that pretty list. I put it on that pretty list. I think when need has been expressed, we've problem solved it at Huck, but I think we just were talking about this recently, the guidance counselors and myself around, how can we take this financial hurdle and burden out of the situation? There are, College Board provides free testing for students based on income levels for the SAT and the PSAT, but they don't for AP, and so it's a problem. In my old district at MVU, which had a much higher percentage of kids of previous lunch, we used Title IV dollars when that came out and we wrote an investment to cover AP exams and SAT, PSAT, and we made PSAT a whole school expectation that we did during school so that kids could see that there's a possibility. You know, just not choose not to take it. So we made some very intentional moves in that manner that are possible to do here as well. So PSAT is not something that's done in our schools right now. Yeah. It's done, but it's a student choice. It's a student choice. It's not. It's not. It's not, but if the student elects to take the PSAT, does the student have to pay the fee for the PSAT? And let's think qualified for a voucher based on income. Here would be any of what percentage of the PSAT is. I don't know the exact percentage off the top of my head, but it's high. What's their fault? What's the fee? They probably remember because I haven't been a guidance counselor in six years. It used to be like $30. I think it's $25, but I think you take the fee when you're a, I don't know if you pay it both sophomore and junior year. Maybe it's just when you take it as a sophomore. If you take it as a 10th grader, you can't qualify for the college board's waiver. Because that's early. If you take it as a junior, at the beginning of your junior year, then you can qualify for the waiver and not pay for it. And this, I think for the last two years, we just paid for them all. Oh, okay. This is a Google will answer. Yes. So the PSAT registration fee for 2018-19 is $16. And what's the APP as it's all? It's like $100. No, it's not APP. $194 per AP. And that's, it's also unfortunate that that's the one that isn't like the most expensive ones aren't the ones that are covered. I think you can get a fee waiver for AP exams, but I think that it's definitely, there's like a stricter, I don't know, vetting process in determining that and your income level has to be like substantially low. And they can't, yeah, it's, there is a really flexibility in the exam fee waiver process. I mean, there's all sorts of equity issues there. Yeah. And also, yeah, if that's a, yeah, if that's a money issue, it's kind of like money, money issues, but that's a money issue. If it's mandatory, then I guess it's gonna be nothing, but we can't cover it. If it's not mandatory, I can see someone skipping the test because they don't have the night for dollars, which means that they don't get the AP credit. They lose the benefit. They lose the benefit of not having to make that valid. Of course, it's gonna be expensive, so. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah. It's a good thing to put on the list of this class. Yes. Thanks, Hope. We appreciate it. We didn't really answer Hope's question. Hope wanted to, Hope asked about our discussion about equity. You want to sum it up? We can just begin with the answer to that question. We talked about really like we're getting to true equity when we redistribute resources into groups that have sort of been marginalized. And that can be very hard. And how do we uncover where we do that? I would say even beyond resources. I mean, also things like narratives and power and perspective and decision-making. And because I think in some ways you can perpetuate inequity by just distributing resources but keeping all the power structures and putting some stuff over there. It's a very good discussion. We really want to continue it. And the point that we came out of is that we want to be more intentional about thinking about equity and everything we do rather than having to be like an occasional side of the discussion. In any courses, do you agree? Yes. That's great. That is great. Anything else for Hope? Thank you. Go, Steve. Good luck on your test. Thank you. Thank you. From what I was saying, too, don't forget to have fun. So a couple of things. We have one particular coast from Joggery Craig who's on the agenda. Sarah came in after public comment. She did reach out to Libby and I earlier and say that she had some things she wanted to say. So I'm going to make a little rare move in public comment again, because Sarah didn't say that she had some things she wanted to say. Thank you. Maybe we came up sick from daycare. So the whole afternoon got changed. Yes, yes. And you can sit her down. So that's great. Awesome. Because I'm way too short. So thank you again for letting me submit public comment and for listening to my emails. I wanted to have a discussion or just really my thoughts around the facilities, primarily, at Main Street Middle School. The impact that that has on culture and learning. And at least express my hope and desire for the board to really think about that building and how that presents learning as a whole to our community, but also what services providing for the middle school. So my son is in fifth grade. He's moved from UES, which I think is a historic but beautiful school. I've come now to Montpelier High School several times to sit before you guys. And I think this too is a beautiful school. And that's not the feeling that I get when I walk into Main Street Middle School. There's a lot of concrete. There's not a lot of light. There's a lot of disrepair. If you go down into the cafeteria, it certainly isn't a place for mingling or socialization. It's very cramped and tight. And I see that there's a lot of work that needs to be done to that building. And I think that that work isn't being done. I understand that you guys have capital funds and you make repairs. But to me, that's more of a repair and is in need of a complete overhaul. In so much as you're really gonna have to start planning and how you wanna either revitalize that building or are you going to relocate that school. And I recognize that that is not something that will happen in my fifth graders lifetime, but I also have a nearly two year old and hope it's something that by the time he's transitioning to Main Street Middle School, it's something that is being talked about or hopefully has been achieved. I would recognize that in addition to that environment as a parent walking in, the impact of that on the learning environment, I've read a lot of research around how the learning environment is affected in the sense of where kids behaviorally fall, the way that behavior is perceived. I don't know how many of you have been to Main Street Middle School, I'm assuming all of you. If you walk on that playground, there's like a basketball court where all the concrete is cracked, so the kids can't actually play basketball because they think everyone's cheating because the basketball literally pops in the wrong direction. There's a couple four squares places. There's what Owen calls like a tent-like structure in the middle where there's a table with there's no chairs. The gazebo. The gazebo, thank you. And then there's some swings and that's it. And we have kids who move from union in fifth grade who still very much need to run around. And I know for myself, my son has had some definite behavioral issues this year and a lot of those have taken place in snack recess and lunch recess. And when I talked to him about it, I'm going and then I went out to the playground to try and understand what he was talking about. And I'm like, well, no wonder this is going on. Like what is there for you to do? What is there that's positive here? It's no wonder that there's so much social behavioral interaction going on where he's so consumed with what everyone else is doing because really what they do at lunch recess is talk. They're not interacting playing soccer. So he said, you know, at Union, his favorite thing to do is play soccer with the goals and they don't have that opportunity there. He did mention that there's the field in the back that largely is covered in snow and these different type things. So I think overall, I just wanted to say, I feel like this is something that the board really needs to address. It's a long-term planning issue, but it's something that I hadn't heard previously in my meetings that I've been here and the engagement that I've had with the school. I also think there are things that we could do in the meantime to mitigate some of those issues. Even, I mean, you can add fresh coats of pastel paint and they show that that has a positive impact on behavior. Whether or not you choose to do that is up to you, but I think that there are things we can do to have that impact and I know in my discussions with Pam and Matt around behavior and this culture at Union, there's definitely, my understanding is that I'm not alone as a parent in struggling with some of the behavioral aspects, but also just some of the frustrations at Union and I don't speak for them. You mean Main Street, sir? Yeah, at Main Street. So I think it's important to recognize that that building has a huge effect on how we present ourselves, how the learning environment is perceived and what kind of environment they're leaving coming from Union and then having that impact at Main Street. So hoping it's something you're gonna approach. My second topic would be the use of detention at Main Street Middle School and the national move towards restorative practice, the recognition of cognitive behavioral therapy or like processing. So doing, if you have a behavioral incident, going through that with a student and then going through like, what could you have done differently? How can we repair the harm? My son hasn't had a detention, but he comes home every day with a list of kids who have had detentions, even though I don't think that they're new kids every day. It seems to constantly come his mind and it's almost idolized in his mind of like, oh, this is something that's weird and maybe I should try and get this or, oh, these are all the kids who did this today and this is what they do to get detention and it's like this rumor now that goes on and I'm constantly surprised, one, by the fact that this is what consumes is social interactions, but two, by the fact that we're still using this practice in such a progressive community. I recognize that the board has very little say over that practice, but for whatever influence you do have, I would encourage you to look at the national standards and the policy movements towards that and move towards more restorative practices. And the last thing I want to address, which I've talked to Libby about is my interaction in Main Street, where I feel like there's a lot of just culturally, there's been a ginormous shift between union and Main Street and I haven't been able to completely put my finger on it, but the kids are quite frankly just mean and the things that my son comes home with and he doesn't want to go to school and he doesn't find school to be a positive environment and we just spent nearly two weeks in England and he was a different kid when we were gone and I just checked in with his special educator today and she's like, he's right back at it, he doesn't want to be here, he doesn't want to interact and when I ask him about it, it's all about the social and behavioral interactions and the lack of support that he's feeling in this environment and I've talked a lot with Matt about this and I really value all the things that he's doing and all the work that he's trying to achieve and I think that there are steps that are being made but when I talk about it with Owen and I talk about it with other parents, I'm not looking at it as a singular, as a parent who's seeing a singular issue with my son but I'm seeing it as a systemic issue and there's just, you know, we're recognizing a society we're moving on and we're going through this great evolution of change and there's a lot of meanness going on and a lot of bullying and a lot of kids are just not nice there and I think that's something that really needs to be addressed and I think some of that could be addressed by things like changing attention to restorative practices, incorporating things like, you know, circles of support and accountability. So that's what I came to say, I really welcome all of the hopeful insight that you might have in that issue and I hope you guys take some of those things into consideration in your next policy moves and capital funding. Yeah, no, thank you. And we do have facilities is a subject of the plan to discuss as part of our retreat and clearly MSMS is a huge need on that and I definitely want to echo your sentiments about restorative practice and detention and their nods and it's presently still after practice in the district, so it's okay. I think you can do a lot with really small changes too. Thank you all. Thank you so much. We do need to go back to my seat for a minute. Yeah, good luck, sorry. Thanks Sarah. So next on the agenda is John Gruffray who has a request to the board. Do you want to come up and kind of speak for a couple of minutes or you can do it any way you want to, but I'm happy to give you a report. You can do it the easy way or the hard way, yeah. And everyone did get your letter. Okay, I won't fault any of you if you didn't go through the exhaustive length. Can't usually be faulted for not being thorough. It was thorough. So any, I guess what I'd like to do is ask the board and I appreciate you having me here to consider my request for you to reevaluate the policy mentioned there. I don't know, I did put some speculation as my guess was that that was one of the easy merger policies because they were the same date and it was probably just, let's move on to more important things. However, I think that it might have, at least in our situation, it seems like it's raised a potential question, certainly a question in our mind about is this policy good as it is or should, or is there a better way perhaps to do that? So I don't want to go through all five pages of it. I'm happy to answer any questions, but I guess I want to make sure that the board understands where I'm coming from in my request and I certainly have thought through it and on a variety of different levels and would like to provide my feedback as well as some other insight, I guess, into it. I did try to find out from the Department of Education if they track how many school systems use September 1st. For those of you that don't know the state mandates that can be five by December, before January 1st, so December 31st and that you're in between, basically the dates are September 1st to December 31st and then it's up to the districts to figure out what they want to do. So I've gotten an answer from the Department of Education they do not track that information. So unfortunately I don't have that, however, in searching for that I was trying to find it online. It did come across an article, I think it was on Vermont Grow Kids or I should have brought the website with me, but there were several, it was back in 2015, so a few years ago I was written and it mentions basically it was an article about when to start kindergarten and talks about the goods, the bads, the research saying holding kids back is good, the research saying advancing kids early is good. There seem to be at least in this article three districts that were mentioned that have different ways of dealing with this, so what I'm asking for you guys to consider isn't abnormal and it's not certainly an aberration. Burlington does have particularly large district has an appeal process. It appears that Richmond has one because they're mentioned in here with a parent who appealed to have their child enter kindergarten early and Winooski apparently at least at this time was using the December 31st date and mentions a kid that's birthday was at that point and it worked out great and then they'd also mentioned lots of kids that whose parents held them back and entered kindergarten at age six and I guess what I gleaned from this is that there is no correct answer, there's no definitive data on it. And that it's really on a case by case basis. Now, as I mentioned in my letter to you, I've been on in your seat denying one of these requests before when I was the board chair at Roxbury, we had to do this and the general consensus at the time was we got a lot on our plate. We don't want to open up this can of worms and the answer is no. And I think on further reflection now on the other side of that equation that probably wasn't the best way to handle that. And not particularly proud of that moment on the board but it is what it is and I think that's certainly a reasonable answer to my request as that we just don't want to get down this road. I guess I would encourage you to do that and I think that my mention about making good policy is good policies in my opinion are based on objective data but also have room to evaluate special circumstances not on subjective means but by objective means. So while we have objective data which the state says January one, we're choosing September one. We have that as general guidelines amongst the education community being able to evaluate on special circumstances and requests using objective means which would be employing testimonies say from the parents which is probably the least objective but then employing the teacher, the current teacher, the future teacher, the principal, the superintendent, all the educational professionals who will do this screening anyways but decide whether or not that that child is ready or not ready. That's something that certainly some districts have chosen to do but it's different than what we've got now. It's pretty cut and dry to say it's September one and we don't have to have any of these discussions and I understand that and I understand the board and a supervisory superintendent not wanting to go down that road. I don't think it will translate into a lot of requests. If we're, I do mention the structural differences between Roxbury and Montpelier which I think is significant in this case not just from the size of the school but the way the classes are structured there. It's a multi-grade classroom building. It's very different than what Montpelier has. We discussed some of these potential like growing pains as we merged and figuring out how to manage the bigger picture within different school buildings that operate differently. And we've had three and four-year-old pre-K available five days a week for five years now at Roxbury and that's not what Montpelier has or is used to and I think that that's certainly worth considering and evaluating simply because in the case of our son he's missing the date of September 1st but he has in his case been in structured daycare since he's been three months old and he's been in a pre-K program. I would like to see him evaluated by the educational professionals in his life to see if he is ready to move and I think that that would be an appropriate way to evaluate the request as opposed to just saying, well, John's making a good case, let's do it. That's not a good way to make policy. If I'm persuasive, it shouldn't be what I'm saying. It should be about the teachers who are saying, he's ready or he's not. So yeah, happy to do it. I'll keep dragging on so we can just shine in. So I think the shot I had for him, Steve. I just want to say that when I first turned on the board, maybe or early on, I thought that that was a very reasonable approach. Why don't we just have, we got a request and I said, why don't we just have the kindergarten teachers do the evaluation because they do that. The preschool kids come in in the spring and they do a little assessment of some sort and I said, they can tell us whether this child is ready for kindergarten. And the teachers, the kindergarten teachers said, A, don't ever do that again. And B, if you ever do that again, we're going to do the same thing, which is say no, they're not ready because we think it should be September 1st. I guess I asked why. It's not an appropriate response by an educational professional saying, I don't want to do that. No, it wasn't that they don't want to do it. They didn't think that it was a good practice. John, I read your letter. I couldn't read it as deeply as a short letter probably. So I kind of went quick. A little vertical. Yeah, I went fast. And I understood most of it. There was the piece about the cohort thing, though. Where in the multi-h classroom and how the rest would move on without him, can you rephrase that again? Can you go over that fact pattern for me because I have to say I don't remember the details? So one of our concerns, and this just has to do with the nature of being in a small building with 10 kids in a two-page classroom, is your cohorts can be very small. And we've had grades where there have been one kid and zero kids in that school in the past. And in the case of his current pre-K class, all of his friends are a month or two or three or four or older than him and aren't moving on to kindergarten. Oh, his friends are the entire. No, not the entire group, but the kids that he is interacting with on a daily like linking up with socially and developmentally. And I've heard that there are some fairly young three-year-olds coming into that class. And so I guess given my son's particular situation, I'm advocating for the fact that his mother and I both feel that he'd just be kind of spinning his tires, hanging out with a bunch of young kids when the kids that he's basically developmentally at that level at are moving on to kindergarten. So is it gonna hurt him one way or another? Probably not. We just feel that this is the best thing for him and within the context of not asking for a special exception, that's why I was approaching it from, can we look at this policy? And does this policy suit our needs or could it be done a little bit better? So my concern is that he's gonna be emotionally and developmentally ahead of the rest of his pre-K class if he stays there because he's already done it and that class will have to really sort of retreat into picking up for these young three-year-olds. And the other component of that is managing, and this is where Ben and the teachers at that school could chime in on this, is managing those classrooms can sometimes be difficult and we've had over the last few years there which I have to really think about which age groups are going together based on the kids that are in the classroom, not necessarily just cut and dry on paper. We want a K1, a 1, 2, or whatever. Sometimes it just changes because, and I think in fact they had some, you guys could correct me and Lisa on this. I think in the last year, or we were with WSSU, they had some of the kids out of like the kindergarten or the first grade doing part of the day with the class above because they were. They split the first grade class into 1, 2, or K1 and they did it based on situations they won't do again. It wasn't based on us practice. So it's not my specialty. I guess what I'm asking for is the evaluation of based on that we have this situation now with a small building with small classes and multigrades and the situation where it might be appropriate to allow for this type of evaluation. And I mean I get it and I understand why they might not want to be put in that position but that might be best for them but it might not be best for the kids and ultimately what we all do here is to create the best situation for the kids and you guys may all disagree with me and that's fine, I'm just making my case that I think that this is a reasonable thing and other districts aren't doing it and allowing kids to join in who are born in the end of December at that age and the state has said that that's okay. So I guess that I'm asking for you guys to consider that. Jim, what's that? Policy, right? So the superintendent doesn't have any authority under our policy to make exception like that. Yes. That's where we are, right? And really the board doesn't have authority to make exception either. Only the rewrite policy. We have a policy that speaks to the transfer of policy. So thinking about our conversation about equity and how the policy that we currently have versus a policy with more flexibility which would be more equitable to all students at first I was thinking a more flexible policy because that's what I was thinking at first but then I was thinking that the access to the process itself of a flexible policy has barriers for folks from marginalized groups. So I'm interested in exploring that work. Good job applying our learning. I mean I'm a good teacher. I actually like our policy and I have to admit I have a bias towards not pushing younger kids into older cohorts especially at their grads because it's not just a question of is this child ready right now at four to go to kindergarten? It's a question of, and we just heard about the Tuftsons when we were in middle school. Is it that a nine-year-old is ready to go to middle school? Is it a 17-year-old is ready to go to college? These kind of have ripple effects through the whole education and there's a lot of research out there that people on the younger end and the more you push it towards the younger end of the social spectrum, they might be ready academically, they might be precocious at four or five but socially there's usually challenges and they usually catch up at some point. And I also think there's a fairness question. I mean, my daughter, even though I wasn't through pre-K, the way that Children's Houses group at least at that time, my daughter, it was a September birthday, was grouped with kids who all went to kindergarten before her, so she kind of had that year where her peer group had moved on, there was the younger group that came in. It was a slightly awkward year, but now that she's in third grade, I'm definitely glad she's on the older side. I've seen the clear advantages of her being there and I think it would be hard to create a flexible policy without just pushing it back to January first because where does that flexibility come in the way? Maybe maybe we'll be able to speak to what that objective guideline for tests would look like. Michelle, just sharing her own story over the kindergarten teacher and saying, no, we don't want to do anything because really like any flexibility would have to come back like John had outlined, the subjective test that all four year olds will take this test as they pass it, they're granted it, they don't pass it, well, so they're reasonable. We could do that easily for academics, we couldn't do that socially. Social emotional, there's nothing out there for that and plus you can't predict the longer term as Jim mentioned, social repercussion. So I want to be careful that the board doesn't act like child development experts. I think we all have our biases but we don't necessarily know what's in the best interests of children. I know with my own child, I had the same issue where I wanted to advance or fast and I was persuaded by a teacher to stop doing that but and I think that teacher was right from my kid but that doesn't make that child right for John's kid and if our teachers are really good at being able to assess objectively the academic piece of it, that's great but I think parents can assess the social emotional piece very well. They may not be experts on that and they may need some guidance on it but I don't know that we want to put ourselves in the position to replace that and I don't, obviously we should not be trying to make an exception to anything and that this is a policy decision in terms of we would need to open up the policy, we would need to start the process of a rewrite based on research. You have to do all that stuff, right? And we need to be compelled, we'd have to have some evidence that that was something that we thought was worth doing. I think one thing I asked John was about the fact pattern around the cohorts and what I was trying to get at and I don't know that I got there John is that if there is a, if there's something unique about the multi-age classroom that leaves the children coming out of that environment in a shock kind of a system or in an abandonment of their peer group somehow, some unique situation, then I think we might have a really compelling reason to open it up and say, you know what? The experience of Roxbury Elementary School kids is different than the experience of the Montpelier kids that we're used to. I'm not sure we got there. I don't know if we have that evidence. I think that there's kind of a circumstantial thing that occurred in your family situation that may not be universal or even close to universal there. There's an adjustment that- There's an already a Montpelier to private preschools where they're in preschool for three years old and four years old in small groups. And have the same sort of, have the same exact experience. Yeah, I get that, that makes sense. So yeah, I think that I guess I'm saying, John, I'm not hearing personally a reason to reopen the policy and I think we're bound by the policy. And yeah, I'm sorry to say that. I also want to say in reference to the policy committee, I don't think we've represented any policy. I think we've discussed every single policy in our new merged district for quite a long time. So I just wanted to state that up front. I thank the policy committee. And I also think that if we open up the policy, there's going to be a temptation for certain families, for financial and childcare reasons to want to push their kids to fold a kindergarten because I think there's better ways to address that problem that we need to address that problem. But I can see families that are struggling to afford to take care of pre-kate schools a half day with a kid with an October birthday. So boy, if we could push them to kindergarten, that would be a lot easier for a family situation. Yeah, I mean, the pre-kate situation is a huge issue. Yeah. And they would, these are two very different issues. Yeah, and if they, what they need to say is their kid is socially emotionally ready, they'll convince themselves that that's the case. Sorry, John. But thank you, John. No, it's an important issue and we haven't had that discussion. We've had a policy that looks for a while, so. And Tina, I would never suggest that you offend your duties. Thank you. Just figuring that that was probably fairly low on the priority list and the policy review because it was going to be an easy one. All right, thank you. Thank you. Thanks, John. Super good. Okay. So, Sam, are you very well up on the F1? Sure. And Matt. And Matt. Matt, you come to the house, too. Before I start to come ask there, Matt, would you be willing to just to have these school discussions that would be, you don't have to, but it might be helpful to have another board member just to send us a lot of these questions we want to input from George. We follow that up. Can I ask a process question on this before we get into it? Why is it just part of the budget? I mean, you know our second agenda earlier today? The budget season is one that I think I've learned a lot from being my first run through this year. I went with the process that was already in place. It was a good process. So, again, I don't know if I can do this. One thing I'm learning as the school year goes on is we learn as the school year goes on. And it's particularly when you're new to a place, right, I'm learning needs. And principals are seeing needs. So they're going to know new classes of kids more and better. So we want this for this fall. I'll leave that to you. I was just trying to understand why we have a budget request to be separate. Yeah, that's one. That's one. And we are going to address that a little bit too. So could we have the people sitting at the table introduce themselves for the people at home? Yes. So I'm Pam Arnold. I was called the middle school. My name's Matthew Roy. I'm the assistant principal at the elementary school. So the first thing we wanted to do was apologize for not being on the agenda. And thank you for letting us share our proposal with you. And as we said, we've had this conversation around budget time. And Matt and I will both acknowledge that this is something we feel is critical. But we also thought, well, maybe in a year, trying to be as physically responsible as we could at budget season, we really felt like, OK, so maybe in another year, we'll put the proposal forward. And I don't know if you've had a chance to read it. If it would be helpful for you to take a couple of minutes to read it before we start talking, we've got it ready for the meeting. I think it might be helpful. Yeah, it takes a couple of minutes. Give me a couple of minutes. Maybe you can play music for the proposal. Thank you. So thanks. So again, our apologies. But there was a reason why we asked Libby if it would be OK for us to come tonight. There were a couple in this item that you're on right now. There are some conversations you're going to have with Mike McRaeve. And it felt more appropriate for us to come and share our proposal at the same time rather than have another meeting where you're getting a request for something potentially as an increase. So it just seemed to align well. So that's where our apology is, is that you didn't get a chance to read this ahead of time. When Sarah left, I said to her, so Sarah, we did not know Sarah was coming. And Sarah did not know we were coming. However, a lot of what she shared with her concerns aligns directly with what our proposal is for you tonight. We are in our second year of restorative practices. And it's a multi-year process to implement those particular practices. You can't flip a light switch and have them all in place. And so we are doing a lot of work around that area. And a lot of the language that you see in this proposal, the fact that we are calling our support team, our resiliency team, those are the kinds of skills we're trying to build with kids. And what we're hoping to, what we're recognizing is that there are a lot of kids, every kid, every child has unique needs and diverse learning styles. There are some students who need, some kiddos who need more support than others and they need different types of supports. And you saw in there a little bit how that looks right now. We, I would say, are more in reactive mode in dealing with student behavior rather than proactive, which fits with the mantra of restorative practices and the beliefs and the philosophy behind that. We're limited right now in spaces. Not that we need any additions, although I didn't know what Sarah was gonna share about the facilities. And she's identified some areas that we all know already and there are some plans with the facilities for that. We have done a lot, we've had a lot of conversations about shifting things around in our building and we are able to maximize space more efficiently than is currently happening right now. So we have identified a space where we would like to create a center for kids to be able to have any student who has a need. And Matt would talk a little more specifically about what some of those focus areas should be and that we want to be, but it's really a space for all kids. And the other part that we're really focusing on is building the systems within our school at the different tiers. Tier one is for all kids, tier two is for a smaller percentage, maybe 10% of our kids, and then tier three are those who have maybe more significant needs that we need to meet. We absolutely need to build more supports for kids. And we want them to be able to access what they need in the moments that they need it so they can then learn in the classroom. And right now it's a little bit of shifting around it's who's available to help in an immediate situation. And we're excited about being able to develop some core standards around social and emotional learning with the new coordinator of that particular position for the district. So there's a lot of systematic, and I think Sarah used the word systems, conversation happening at the middle school. The teachers are asking for our help and we want to give them our help. However, we are being pulled to address the immediate needs for students and not having the time to get into the classroom to help teachers develop strategies to reach those kids in the learning environment. So there are a lot of pieces to this. We tried to condense it for you, but overall we will be creating the resiliency center regardless of what comes out of this conversation. And then we'll be proposing in a year from now. We're hopeful that we'll be able to articulate that it is a big need at the middle school. Years past there was a planning room, the planning room is not the concept that we're looking for. We're looking for a place where kids can take the break that they may need to get the support that they may need in a for shorter periods of time so they can return to the classroom. And also that teachers have been doing a great job at trying to monitor and address some of the emotional regulation challenges that are happening in the classroom by the time that that has extended in the room, all students are impacted. And so we're trying to support them all in different ways based on what their needs are. So that's kind of the broad picture. Matt's going to share a little bit about what some of the specifics are and then I'm quite sure you'll have questions because I saw Tina already raising her hand over there. So we'll let him just make a face. You know, he went like that or that finger went up, I saw it. So Matt's going to share some specific examples. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you about this. You know, one of the things that's really impacted my sort of my push and my desire to have this position added. As Pam mentioned, we've talked about, you know, a fiscal year 21. So school year in between where this would come up. There's a few success stories that I'd like to share about things that have come up in situations with students that our ability, it's sort of maxed out right now and I would say we're probably overextending ourselves as a resiliency team and, you know, with our administrative assistance included with what we're able to do for students. And those have resulted in some success stories. And I think that we have a number of students with the opportunity to take sensory breaks, movement breaks and sometimes behavior plans incentive based reward time or breaks that are earned. Those things have led to some success with students. I think we have a lot of students that have been from similar types of plans and opportunities. However, right now within our systems, within our staffing level, within what we have right now, it's not really possible to offer those opportunities to our kids. As Pam mentioned, a lot of what happens right now is a reactive response to misbehavior. Or in some cases, I think a lot is not misbehavior. Kids are coming into the building with any number of needs. Some kids are entering the classroom with needs that revolve around their attention and ability to focus. Some kids are coming in with anxiety that impacts their ability to remain calm or to sit quietly in a classroom. And we want those opportunities for students so that a teacher knows there's a place for a student to go proactively where if they start to see those signs of student behavior coming up, they can say, hey, this would be a great opportunity for a break, a movement break, a sensory break. The student can access that space, kind of hit the reset button and be able to go back to class and really access their learning without also disrupting other students. I think our teachers are doing a great job of understanding that there's not really a space for kids to go. Really trying to keep kids in the classroom, which is obviously our number one goal as well, is we want kids in the classroom, that's where the learning happens. So in some cases, students are finding themselves sort of progressing through a warning or a redirect and then move your seat and a student may be spoken to several times before finally it's reached a level where the teacher's like, there's no real other option right now besides sending you to the office. At times that student may end up waiting because myself or Pam might be in a meeting, we might be with other students already processing through some things, phone calls with parents and various types of things where a student could end up missing significant time. At times that puts a real burden on the office staff. It never feels good to have a student in the office having, for lack of a better term, having some kind of breakdown where they're emotional, they're upset and they're kind of in a public setting. It disrupts, it doesn't feel good at a confidential level for that student. I think it kind of disrupts the business of the office and visitors coming in and seeing some of the students waiting to get support or waiting to come in and in most cases waiting to come into my office so that they can either process through behavior or in some cases they just need a place to be where they can kind of reset, they can talk through maybe things that are making them anxious, things that are stressing them out, some of the things that they're bringing with them from home. We're just talking about what do we need to do when we go back to class so that we can be successful and not disrupt other students' learning, sure. And so I'm, I asked for a good chime in for a second. So when we're looking at the whole restorative practices philosophy, a lot of times these students who are being sent out because it's gotten to that level, they're coming in with a feeling that they're in trouble but they're really not in trouble. Restorative practices about giving them that opportunity to have that conversation, to work through whatever it is that they need and then return to their learning environment. So right now that's, it's a bit disruptive for the students who are getting sent out as well as the places they end up which is the main office and not the best location which is why the separate space will make a difference with that as well. But I think it's also that movement towards is we want kids to recognize that they have a need. What's the best way for them to address it or to work through it and having that support, the support folks there to do that. I lost my train of thought but it'll come back to me. There's something about, it'll come back to me. So I brought something that I just wanna show and I brought it. We talked about this very strategically and it's not for, I brought this for the purpose of being able to have the opportunity to talk about what this pile represents. And so what you're looking at. Let's share what it doesn't represent. Yeah, so these are office referrals and detention lists. And what? That's a big pile, Matt. Yes, but let's talk through it though. Over what time period? This is this entire school year. And so to me what this represents is not, or to us, this is not a pile of, oh my gosh, there's an immense amount of inappropriate behavior or there's horrible behavior of bad kids. If you were to read through a lot of these or most of them, a large percentage would have the words distracting, disrupting. A lot of these are connected with kids. They're having a tough time in the class. And it's not necessarily, these don't represent consequences. They represent, this is information for the office to have to talk with students about what's been going on. To me it represents an immense amount of time for students out of class where for some of these students may have had to wait a half hour to just talk about really what are, I would say like some quick fixes or where a student may have just, for whatever reason, been disruptive, needs to get something off their chest, needs to move around, needs to burn some energy, needs to kind of go through some grounding techniques, some sensory techniques or anxiety reducing type of strategies. And in a large case what I would say this power represents is missed opportunities for students. And I think that we didn't have- And missing system to help support them. Yeah. That's the piece that we were trying to relate. That's the most important piece and kind of tying it in with restorative practices. 80% of what we do within the restorative practices we want to be proactive. And so we want teachers to be able to identify students that, they're looking at antsy, they're struggling, they're starting to get a little disruptive and be able to take that break and access that sensory space, the resiliency center, so that they can be more successful. It would also give us the ability to schedule breaks in. Sometimes students, particularly fifth, sixth grade, have a difficult time identifying themselves. I need a break right now. Some have that skill. But having a space and a person for that would allow us to schedule those in so students would have to request those breaks or figure out on their own if they need them but just have that ability to, when we know there's a student that needs them. And a lot of what we see in that file is developmentally appropriate in learning. However they need specific strategies and techniques that they can access themselves to help them grow through some of these challenges and situations that get them into a place where they're not in the classroom. So it's not an atypical type of, it's not atypical behaviors, but for some kids the length of time and their inability to find those strategies is a piece that we feel like that we're not providing for them at the moment. And things like bullying or like physical violence substance type stuff that would be presented to me on a different form. This is really classroom teachers communicating that a student's having a difficult time in class. The last thing that I'll mention that I'll talk about as far as what this file represents is a lot of time that students could be in class that are not a lot of time where students may be able to do a quick break or some scheduled breaks and time at the resiliency center would prevent a lot of these things from happening. And it's also, it's a ton of time spent by myself, Ms. Arnold, at times our school counselor, our social worker, where in particularly, I think that the time would be better spent with working teachers on teaching practices that also help prevent some of these types of things from happening where kids are more engaged, where the students are, where there's more access to learning is built into the teaching practice. So those are the... Great. So that's our insight. Steve. First, I really have a few really little questions for you, but I was hoping to be, Libby, do you want to add any context to this before we jump into questions, just because... My only context that I would add is that I think it's an obvious need of more behavioral help at the middle school. There's a significant amount at the, well, I think there's a little need at the elementary school too, but there's a significant reverend team at the elementary schools. And there's even more of a reverend team here at the high school. And there's these two, and a social worker at the middle school. And so I want Pam to be doing something else. I want Matt to be leading that process as terms of this is the system he's building, and not the main person all the time. So yes, I see a definitive need. I want to kind of ask you some questions that are critical of all of us as we do this, but I wanted that pile, what else it might represent. We just finished a really great little training presentation on equity issues. And you guys have probably already gone through that as a team and really started, you guys are probably all on the same team as we're just getting on to the team. They're getting in the arena. Yeah, we're gonna get bloody too, right? So I'm wondering if that also represents our district's failure to really do this well in tier one or really meet the needs of all of our kids in that classroom before this ever happens. I wonder if this pile represents the scale of our leaving kids on the margins when we don't want to be or, and I see in your preamble here, there's a piece about that these are for, are scheduled into student plans. And I'm wondering how much of that, I'm gonna ask you to, I'll ask you three in a row and then just look, I'll be quiet. How much of that represents kids who are on plans versus kids who are not on plans? That would be the first thing. The second thing is how much of that represents boys? And then I would, and then I would ask you like, I really liked what you said at the end. They're mad about that it gives you time to get in there and prevent this. But I guess my concern is like, I mean, that's really where it's all at, right? Is where we really want to be doing is best first practice, best first instruction and to not have, to not structure our schools in a way that starts dividing kids into ones that can sit in that chair well for six hours and those who cannot sit in that chair. And so I just want you to kind of like wrap all that up a little bit for me and I won't ask any more questions. I'm going to speak to the tier one question and then Matt can speak to the specifics. So that's exactly what we are trying to identify as well in our proposal. Is that tier one, our teachers, they've been working some with universal design for learning strategies and practices, which is providing information in different mediums and different ways to try and hit the diverse learning styles of all kids. They need a lot more practice and a lot more time with that. We need more time in helping to model that and to provide feedback to them in the classroom. So our focus right now has been tier one, which is all kids and all teachers. So what that power represents, I don't know that Matt will be able to answer some of those specifically, but he can take a shot at it. I'm hesitant to give a definitive answer about the two questions. I don't know that we analyzed it that way. I'd be happy to get back to the board. I'd be happy to get back to the board with those specifics. I think that, I would agree, I think that in a large part, I think tier one practices can go a long way to preventing a lot of kids from being sent out of the classroom and getting them more engaged. I also think that there are always going to be kids, whether they're on an ESG 504 IB, I think there's always going to be kids that on one day or another are just gonna need a space to go, whether that's somewhere safe to go to work quietly to get away from the classroom environment because for whatever reason, that day they're really easily agitated, or if they're coming in, it was a really awful night at home and they're anxious about things and unable to focus and that's presenting itself and disruptive or distracting behavior. I think those situations are always gonna exist, but I think what we'd love to do is have more time to work with teachers on those tier one practices that aren't just academic, but also what are we doing as a school in tier one for social and emotional learning? And there are different strategies for different genders that work. And I would by no means be suggesting that I'm not included, like I really... We could wait for guesses, but we're not going to do that. I agree with Libby, this is by no means a proposal to be like, I'm no longer working with kids on their behavior. I think that this is more... There are large parts of my day at times, spent with students talking about behaviors that I think could be prevented. And at times that seems like an inefficient use of my time. Real quickly, I know that there's a couple of questions. I know that there's a lot of time here too. With a few students that I've been able to provide some brings for, it both scheduled as well as earned. Mainly taking place in the second half of the school year. I think one that has probably recently had the best streak of school that students had for their entire time that they've been with us. I think other students are... We're seeing academic and behavioral success. They're interacting and they're just, I think really in some cases they're the first time experiencing success at school. And I wish we had that opportunity to offer to other students. I see it. Oh, sorry. Thank you. I can't see me down here. I see it. Thank you. So I have a couple of questions that maybe just need a quick answer. But of course, what is... Is this person going to be a social worker? Or is this person going to be a psychologist? Who are you looking for? So we've talked about it being under the umbrella of an instructional assistant position. But it definitely... It is a true facilitator. You don't see this person doing counseling or anything. No, because by having this particular... We would certainly be looking for a person with those skills to be able to build them before with kids and to be able to have that consistency. But with this, it allows our social worker and our school counselor to be freed up to be able to be accessible to more kids. Because currently they along with Matt are doing the scheduled breaks for kids throughout the day every day. So this person, we would be a team. So those kids who are in that space who need additional services, that's where we would wrap in our counselors and the other people with the expertise that that student might need. So we have it, we did not talk about it as being a licensed individual. Well, then I'm wondering at the urgency of it and second, the data is incontrovertible that the exact same exact same behavior of a white girl will throw a black boy into detention. And I'm worried about the subjectivity of what is identified as disruptive behavior and what is identified as behavior that needs to be removed from the classroom because as much as we couch it in terms of we're doing the student a big favor by doing this by putting them aside and letting them get their hands out of their pants, it is still and will be recognized as this kid is disruptive. This kid no longer belongs in the classroom. We are removing this kid because the rest of you need to be protected from a student who has had a bad night at home and maybe needs to be with his classmates. And so I would actually feel a lot better about this if you were bringing in a social worker, a licensed clinician of some kind, if you were bringing in someone that could actually move that child into a better place rather than babysit them. I don't think we need any, and I know you're dying to interrupt me, just dying to, but I think if we bring people into the school system to address the problems of students that are not otherwise fitting into the classroom by somebody's cloud-based definition of not fitting into the classroom, we need to demonstrate how it is returning that around in a professional manner. And I don't even know about that data in there, how many of those kids are on free lunch program? That's another issue that has to be addressed with behavioral issues and how it's perceived by the teacher. So I appreciate you pointing that out. So what we've shared mostly today is tier one. We do have tier two and tier three where we know those students who need that specialized, that therapeutic, those conversations, those scheduled opportunities with our school counselor and our social worker. We have those individuals. I think what we're also trying to articulate is that any student, and it's not a removal from the classroom, like you're not welcome there. It's, we're hoping that the kids are going to recognize, that's our goal, that I think I need a little space for a few minutes. This in our vision is very short-term, like it's three minutes, it's five minutes and they're back in the room. Kids are doing that now, all kids will ask, but for the kids who need that very intensive support, that is at a different level and they're identified. That's built into their schedules. Yes, it's built into their schedule. It's all part of the bigger plan that I realized that. And you can bring a kid out of the classroom that he knows he's being disruptive for three to five to 10 minutes. The other students are going to perceive that as being disruptive and their classmates are going to label them as the kid that needs to leave the room. And I'm just concerned, you know, there's another part of me that thinks, well, if kids have answered their pants, just throw them in a recess. I mean, maybe we need more play time in the school system, even at the middle school level. Maybe there's a, I'm just, I don't feel like I have enough information to feel comfortable with this whole process. One of the other pieces that we didn't share tonight is, and I think this might address something that you're articulating. We have an SST block, which is an intervention block that's, depending on the grade, fifth and sixth grade, it's four days a week and seventh and eighth grade, it's three days a week. And we've talked about in our conversations at the resiliency team level of, there are kids who might need intervention in a variety of areas, but their most critical one for this week or next week would be scheduling them into the gymnasium where they're actually down getting some physical activity. And kids, all kids could be grouped into that too. So that's a space that's already there. So if I'm someone who's struggling with reading and my extra reading intervention is SST, so I'm always getting that intervention. I'm always feeling like here I'm spending all of my time working on the skill I need most, which is critically important, but there is a time where I need that physical break. So that's another system piece we're looking at. We need to share that in our proposal. I appreciate it, and I understand some of the concerns that you brought up. I would offer, as a thought, and something to consider that a lot of the students, or some of the students, I should say, perhaps a lot of the students that I'm thinking about are students that would really benefit from accessing this type of space and also going into the facility center. I would wager that a lot of those students really feel uncomfortable in the classroom because they know their behavior is disruptive to others. They know they're impacting the people around them. I think that giving students the ability to taste some academic success is really powerful, and I think that we have students that, as opposed to, I think no matter how hard I try, at this point I need you to go talk to Mr. Roy down in the office, is always gonna have a negative connotation for students. I think a teacher letting a student know, hey, I think this is a really good time for a break, really presents itself differently to the class and to those students, and right now we have students that ask for breaks so we're not allowed to provide, we're not able to provide them. So there's also students that want breaks and know that they need to get some energy out and are self-aware, particularly seven to eight grade students, there's nowhere for them to go. I'm just gonna have to go on the record that I am opposed to this. I don't have enough information in it. I don't have the current system as being administered. I would like to know how many of those children are on the free lunch program. I'd like to know how many were African-American. I think having had this personal experience in my family, I do not have confidence in how it would be administered. And I'll just say that. So it's my two cents worth. I think Michelle, Tina, and Bridget, I think it's Michelle, Tina, Andrew, Bridget. And just quick reminder, at eight o'clock we've got Mike, we've got Adler School, so. I'm sorry, very much. But in addition to what Becky has said, the pile of paper is like an interesting visual, but it just doesn't mean as much to us as wood data. I don't know if that's the same 10 kids getting in trouble every week, or if that's 120 kids each getting in trouble once, and if that could be turned into data, and then we could see, if we hire this person, does it get better? But what does it look like? That would really help. I hate to even say that, because I understand that that pile also represents that you guys are having to do too many jobs at one time, and now I'm asking you to do data entry too. But I think that would be really a lot more useful to us. And I share Becky's concern about the quality of the hire. We're proposing potentially paying somebody $13 an hour. And I think we've did that a lot at Union in the past just through IA's at whatever problem we had. That's right. And then we reversed all that. Thanks to a teacher. Right. So, I want to get to the point, what is a history lesson I need at the moment? You mentioned we used to have a planning room, right? So, tell me that sequence. What happened to that person? I understand it's a different theory of how we're proceeding, but do we- Sure. So enrollment dropped dramatically? I think that that position, there were two people in the planning room at one time. And then enrollment dropped. And then, I think we were at like 176 students or something like that. And then when Steve Mears retired, we changed that position. The room disappeared. So the rooms have disappeared for increasing enrollment. Right. And then we went to the assistant principal model instead of someone overseeing the planning room. That we haven't the past had an assistant to the principal. But not at the same time as we also had a planning room. So those are two different positions. And there was never two. There was only one person. So there was the overseer of the planning room. Yes. So my second question has to do with the implication of this, it was a fast read, I didn't mention it, was they're on a plan. So is this a re-immersible? Is this a special edition? It says it's really about all students. And not all students who have breaks or breaks is the pretty much the big one. Sensory needs or new needs are on high UPS notes. That is not- That's not that first paragraph. Well, we put all kinds of, there's all kinds of plans and so we put, there could be a challenge in EST and Bible 4 IEP or it's just a behavior need. But they don't nest, it's not something that's attached to IEPs. Okay. Before I go away for various reasons, I'd say we don't have enough, I don't have enough information to make this decision. So I think what's really helpful for us is we heard the data analysis of the referrals because we can tell you what the referrals are about. So we can do that analysis, which is fine. We wanted to come and at least get your thoughts before we can, because we see it as a significant need. We do feel like we are not able to meet the needs of all of the kids in the middle school. Can you tell me why this is May 1st? And I've not heard about this anymore. So as we shared a little earlier, we had these conversations at budget season and first budget season is on October, right? Before we get too far into the year, we've been doing I think an amazing job of trying to find strategies and supports that work for kids, but they're not all working. And I honestly feel like we try to articulate this. There's not enough people power to work with the number of needs that we have when those needs are happening. I mean, what I was gonna say is very similar to what everybody else has said. It's just, I think from a process perspective, us receiving this with little information ahead of time without the types of substantive metric that folks are asking for, I think it's problematic. I mean, the general question that came to my mind is the same one that Michelle first said and it's the one that Tina just brought up, which is why haven't we been hearing about this? Why are we just hearing about this now? Why are we just getting all of this information five minutes before you request, pitch this request for this position? And maybe you're thinking, okay, this is heading into next year and that's fine, but in terms of the quality of information and in terms of the process used here, it makes me wanna definitely pause. So I think in the future, when you're coming to the board with needs, because I think everybody wants our kids to succeed and we all wanna support you in the jobs that you're doing, we certainly wanna support all of the students and families. It's just how you approach this, I think in the future, giving a little more lead up time would be really beneficial to the board and for you and your cause. Just bring it back to us. We have talked about that because we had FDs on the agenda tonight, that's why I don't look down. That was very quiet. So I don't wanna like break you guys because I know you guys were working your butts off. All right. But I do just wanna make sure that when we leave, that we understand specifically, aside from subgroup data, I'm not sure what other data you are looking for from us. That's just the one thing. And I think subgroup data can also be, you can look at it a variety of ways. So that's the one piece I've heard, but I'm not sure what else. When you save data, it's helpful for us to hear specifically what it is you're looking for. So first, I wanna say that I'm really glad that you came to talk to us. And I think it made sense to be here tonight. We're talking about other issues that may be coming up in the budget. And I just wanna thank you both for your very hard work on behalf of Kids at Main Street. And I know how difficult the challenges are that you're dealing with. In terms of what I don't quite understand, I think would like to understand more is the written proposal seems to be talking about someone who's covering scheduled breaks, which I understood to me, kids who had that built into their schedule or their plan, not a kid moving the moment and after interventions is being directed out of the classroom, which is what I think the referrals are. So I'm getting a little bit confused between the point of the position and the schedule breaks and how that connects to referrals and how that works in the budget. I think that an added person gives us the ability to schedule just from work is to have scheduled breaks that are proactive and we know is a need that they have that doesn't then prevent myself, the school counselor, social worker and times even our administrative assistants from like adding something else to their job, which we all have full-time responsibilities right now. And so that's one piece. I think the other piece is the ability for students to, I would say kind of a way to look at is to try to access the space before they are disrupting the classroom significantly or before they get themselves in trouble. In a lot of cases, it's the ability to go somewhere and sometimes they need to talk, sometimes they need to move around a little bit. Sometimes there's different strategies that you can do with students that sometimes it's just the ability to get away from the space and just kind of regroup. I think we can all kind of relate to that at different points. And so it's not just scheduled breaks. It's a lot of those needs and it's also to have someone that can help process for the students some really low-level behaviors that might not be acceptable in a class, but aren't necessarily ones that need to rise to the office level. And that, and part of it is certainly providing more time to, for instructional leaders to be in classes, to be working with teachers, to be working on those strategies that would also help engage all students in a really meaningful learning. You know, at times I think there are students that just need somewhere to go and they just need some time away. I don't look at this as a place that would be, that's punitive, that is something along those lines. I think it's actually fairly common in schools to have spaces like this and it's done really well. And we also feel like that pile is a systemic concern, not a kid concern. And so that's where, you know, that data piece is, we understand that that's important, but for us we see that as, that's something that we're not doing right for kids. And that's the part that concerns us more than anything else. Of course, I feel like there was a part of your question that didn't really get to you. I think you answered it, so the person staffing the center would also be supervising scheduled breaks but also interacting with kids who have chosen to come there or whose teacher have asked them, given the chance or sent them there. Do you have any, I mean, do you have any concerns that having a space like that will make teachers more likely to rely on it? I do, yeah, I do. That's where we're not interested in going, right? We're not interested in it being a planning room which I think does have that sense in that context, but yes, we are also worried about that and we're worried in that we know it needs to be structured very carefully. Sorry, so what happens if this doesn't happen? Because I'm hearing a lot of concerns from Ford. I think a lot of valid concerns, I think Becky raises a lot of good questions in generally about how we choose these practices and how much they're influenced by preconceptions we have about kids and about certain kids who've been put to certain profiles, et cetera. But I'm also wondering what's concerned about what's happening now and not acting base, not acting because we have gotten information for the last minute and it's not perfect, you know, however many we have and as a result of that leaving something in place that is keeping all these concerns that we've just expressed in the present and perhaps some additional concerns as well. So that's my biggest, that's my biggest take. I mean, I think it's a discussion we need to keep having but I think it's important we have to think about if we push this off, what does it look like between now and the time we get back to it? Can we get a point of clarity though because my understanding is Mike's coming to us about an enrichment coordinator. No, that's me. Oh, that's you. Mike's coming to us to increase FTE because of enrollment. Oh, okay. Class size policy. Okay, nevermind. Maybe, the question I had whenever Pam could ask for what the board needs to see, it really since before our last budget cycle we get requests, we wanna see more of this, we wanna see more of that, people here, people there, let's fix all these things. But we've been saying, no, no, no, we wanna slow down, look at the system and figure out what's in place. It feels like right now all of a sudden we're hiring, we're hiring, hiring, but I haven't heard how it's all fitting together or what's happening and I wanna appease, Matt and Pam and it sounds good and let's help and let's see what we can but are we just putting the mandate on like we said we don't wanna do or are we actually starting to implement the systems change that we've talked about the last year? We're starting to implement the systems change because we know more and we've talked as leadership team, as Pam's not here, had more about exactly having the same mentality as to what these things mean. I think we're thinking systems, during public comment, Sarah mentioned restorative practices, moving that direction, moving away from detention. I think this is really critical for some of that work. I see this person, if you look in some of the responsibilities, some of them would be trained in restorative practices that would be probably expected or hopefully a member of our restorative practices committee at the school. Our restorative practices committee is working really hard to really be able to do away with the tensions, not next school year, but the following school year. Some of that work is the professional development and building our capacity of visiting our systems and not abandoning a current system without wanting to replace it. I think that a big part of this role could also be facilitating restorative conferences and working with students to create plans to repair harm that's been done. So I think that that is a critical piece of this work as well, that it would create a focus and a space and time for those types of things to happen. So that it's not right now our system is in detention because it's behavior really, you know, people are hurt and people are affected. But right now there's not the time, the space, or the ability to really go through that process the way it's meant to be within our restorative philosophy so that students, so that we're really focused on repairing harm and building that plan to make things better rather than the opposite, which is more of a little bit of an old school type of system. Steve, and let's try to... So I'm not only speaking for myself, I think what I'm feeling, and it's radiating from other board members, but I haven't checked in with them, is you have a labor shortage and we need to solve that labor shortage. I think what are, and I think we all support a solution to that labor shortage. That's an immediate need, but it isn't the big picture that we all are starting to really discipline ourselves as a board on trying to insist on before we move forward. I think that's something Libby has kind of introduced to us is this idea of, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. Don't do anything without a big picture, right? Number one, number two is we just had a presentation and we've all, for years, we've been committed to equity in our district and now we're starting to put some real meat on the bones on what that means. And I think we are now running everything through that filter of how is this gonna work? How does this advance equity? How does that advance equity? If we're gonna spend a dollar, how's it gonna advance equity? And I think that what we want to, what we need is that bigger picture context for, if we're gonna say solve the labor problem, how do we solve that labor problem and are we really, maybe we're willing to spend a lot more than this. Maybe we're willing to buy a different type of position that would be more or less than this. I don't know, but I feel like we're missing that backstory and I think that this green paper didn't get us there and I think that what we need is, I wanna know what the philosophy is. I'm not comfortable with that we actually have a robust and comprehensive philosophy on how we're gonna change the system around discipline and support of students who are having these. We're still using a lot of the language that's been around for a very long time on these and I don't know whether that's really the most progressive way to think about these things. And I feel like we need to be convinced, maybe and that might be Libby's job to kind of lead us into one or two sessions of here's why we're doing it this way. Here's why we're spending the money here. So if we have three proposals for additions to staffing tonight and we do have a quarterly report, but we don't have a corresponding proposal to take these from the fund balance, usually when we, I assume that this would come out of the fund balance and normally we have to approve a deficit. This position, because Grant has been in training since position, hasn't been talked about like that. The other positions have other funding sources that are not on the balance. That are not on the balance, okay. But we don't know about this, because Grant's. Grant hasn't been on some grants in literally two weeks. So I mean, I fully support having enough people in the building to look out for the kids but I do want to know what is in that set of paper. I want to know, is it the same 30 kids over and over? Is it the same three teachers over and over spending their kids out, you know, what are we? So do you want to write down the list because you asked what data inputs? We have minutes left. Okay. Yeah. Just, okay. And I don't want to. I feel like Michelle's about to start rattling some off. I just want to better understand the problem that we're solving and then I want to see whether we actually solve it. And I think the other piece that I had hoped to articulate is that there is a need for teachers to have more skills around working with all students. And right now, part of that missing piece of the puzzle is my ability to do that. Absolutely. And so that's another piece of it. And then I agree with you. I don't want to kick the can in the street and leave you, but I think it came to us too quick. So I think we could right now, so I would put it back on the agenda and back some other time with more data and with assurances it's part of the plan. That this really... And you don't have any money? Can we... Yes, that's pretty critical. The issue of, is this an all over plan that has to do with how you manage kids in the building? Am I assured it's not an instruction problem or if it's an instruction problem that you have a plan for how to solve that instruction problem? I mean, that bigger picture was what Steve and I think Jim was saying. So I'm not saying let's forget it, let's just get more information. And I think in general though, I really... I know. I really do think in general though to get back to just add to what Michelle said though. In general, dropping new positions after the budget in this like urgent fashion when we haven't heard anything about it, that process sucks. It really does. That's what I'm doing. And I just, we want you to know that it's not our intent. But it's not ideal. At the same time, I think this was a tremendously important opportunity for us to share with you, regardless that maybe we didn't present it in the way that you would have liked. However, we could have tried to interpret and take a guess at what you would have liked us to share. No, I... And so we're having to do that in more detail. But we do appreciate you hearing us. And I just want to make one more comment. We're not looking to do management. We're looking to some work for you. Can I put one more thing on your list when you come back? Could you explain why we have detention and why we can't get rid of it? Oh no, we're fairly certain it doesn't fit in restorative practices. We know that. So regardless of that, why can't we just get rid of it? Well, we probably can. We still have to have a system for being able to process with kids. And that's missing. Thank you for your time. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. We look forward to seeing you again soon. Yeah. If you'd like us to come back or... Yeah, yeah. Maybe he's going to tell us something. Maybe he's going to tell you what you want. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it could be more... Michael. Mike, thank you for your patience. And Matt, since that's as long as you want to go, is it coming up after Mike? Yeah. It is coming up after Mike. It's totally your choice, but it's getting late. I'd say it's one untaught commitment. So, Mike's lost the ground. He's done his thing ground for a while. Do we have Pete Tillis on him? He's been seen today. He's been seen. I think he's been seen a little bit over the other part. Yeah, I'm seeing him right now. No, we're not. He's been mad at us. So McCreth is here because, sorry, Mike is here. I got him. Because we have a significant enrollment increase at the high school in the ninth grade. So we saw in these numbers earlier that it's a pretty significant increase and our core subjects are busting out of our class-sized policy. So it's the only time this has been said in the state of Vermont in this decade. Yes. And this is not directly coming from eighth grade. We didn't know this was coming. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Yeah, so it's pretty small. So let me just say it. I have talked to Grant. Chance to do that, not that you are high on my list and close to my heart, you are. But I think I did go to see Grant first just to see what was possible. And I talked to him about this in November. And I said, I think we're really close in English and social studies. I was nervous about English more than social studies. I said, I might need like a 0.2 FDE in English for somebody that's already part-time and expand their job a little bit. And maybe like 0.2, and I'm actually asking for 0.1 in social studies. Do you want me to put that up on the screen in the budget or would you just wait to see what the numbers are and come in the spring? And he recommended it. I'm not trying to throw him one of the Boston names. He did. You just did. Not here. Probably not watching. Yeah, I was just back, I was like, he just let everybody else get in trouble. He said that, well, you'd be able to blame me for stuff like three years. He suggested that's gonna be so small just come in the spring. And, you know, so here I am. Is this for the rising eighth grade to the grade ninth? Rising eighth, so we knew they were a big group. We knew that we were gonna be full and we knew it was gonna be really close. And basically we just need to add a section, one section of English for our ninth graders. We have a part-time English teacher who has tentatively agreed and in your approval to add a section to her job and that will do it. And then social studies is also will be out of class size policy if we run it the way it is unless we cut economics. And I don't wanna do that. It has 15 students in it. And I'd rather push them into one semester. We can just, you know, have them take economics first semester and have the teacher run a third section of social studies, global perspectives, global and international perspectives. And then the second semester, she can just run those same three sections in the second semester. So that's why it's only 0.1. So it's not even 0.2, it's just 0.1. That's just what we need to make it work. You're like, it's just 0.1, it's just 0.1. I mean, it's very, very, so that's what I'm looking for. What about the MHS data manager? That piece, we put that on the agenda. Mike and I put that on the agenda when we got some information from a staff member that has not come true as of yet. So we're gonna cross that out for right now and wait on that piece. So you mentioned the eighth graders coming up. And that was an unpredictable number? No. What's unpredictable is the number of students that are gonna come from Orchard Valley. Ah-ha, okay. So the transfer is in. So it's 116 students that are signed up for the social studies in ninth grade. Some of those are 10th graders because we do have global issues and perspectives as available to all 10th graders, some 10th graders take it. So there's a little bit of a higher number there and the ninth graders at 102, which is, again, it could be very tight and we could do that or what is likely to happen is that in the last couple of years we get another five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, students coming in and we'll be way out of the class size policy. So I think that this will do it and then you'll see what your numbers look like again next year, but right now, this is what we need to make it. Because these children have registered to be here next year. Yeah. And how will this advance equity? Well, I almost just said the super honest thing. The teachers that are going to have more FDE do some of our best work with writing and they'll be making themselves more available to those students, we'll just do more of them here. And so the class size will be a little bit smaller, they'll be within policy and so students will have more access to those teachers, particularly around literacy. Did you just say that smaller class sizes improve equity? I was trying not to do it. That's true. You didn't set any problems up for Libby for the future at all there. And staying within our policy. But I mean seriously, don't we have an opportunity when we add people to look at equity issues? I mean, isn't this a chance where we could say, you know what, while we're at it, let's offer some different classes. We've got these great, we've got a whole bunch of new students come in. Oh my goodness, the scale is better than it's ever been. This is our chance to also look at what we're offering or how we're offering it. I think that it's coming. But this year, this is what we need to stay within class size policy. And then I think in the fall, and I've left a few notes for folks. No, the drawer. Yeah, there will be more opportunities to think about programming with an increased number of students. And this place is just gonna be fuller than it has been in a long time. So there's gonna be opportunities to rethink space as well. You don't want point two on social. I have a specific question about what ifs and this doesn't bottom line. So if I say no, it can't happen. I'm gonna close the comments. Okay, so what about creative writing? Yeah, maybe we would have to close creative writing. There's 24 kids in it. So it's back to the meeting the policy and then if we didn't do this, the class would be in computer class. Yeah, and I would have to collapse electives or the smaller sections of other. Teachers can only teach so many sections under their current contract. So they would have to teach more sections of the core courses and therefore eliminate the electives. How many sections are they teaching these teachers? A full-time teacher at the high school teaches five sections. So the. At least two teachers are not. They're not full-time. So they're gonna be that much closer full-time to the kids. You're getting one to full-time and one to point nine or what are you doing? One will go from point six to point eight. One will go from point six to point seven. And both of them can do that. Yes. And you don't need point eight on the social stage? No. Because Econ? Yeah, I know I didn't get your scheduling math. Yeah, so basically. Don't bother. You're not a high school principal. You're like, yeah, you're like, how are you gonna get it? Okay. Have you ever played Tetris? No. That's only what it is. And the money comes from? The money for this comes from? Increasing enrollments. There's a lot of different places that come from. It's a very small one. So, do you wanna know the, do you really wanna know that you're coming? No, I think Libby told me not to try. Okay. She's smart. So, speaking from experience. She's like, Steve. And this is being paid for? Yeah, so if we could, we're out. Yeah, thank you. I move that we approve the request from Social Superintendents at the high school principal for these increased FTEs for English and social studies. Do you have a second? Second. Where's the money come from? Christophe. The grant's answer, if you were here, would say the percent increase is so small and we all know grant. His favorite word is conservative. That he pulls it from tuition dollars or money that he's budgeted. He's conservative budgets so much that he's hard to do. He's gonna save retirements. Yeah. That's one. Retirement. Savings from? From the inner rooms. It's all, it's fine. I mean, if we're getting more kids in and we're, there's always an efficiency of scale on that, so it works. And Mike, we didn't ask you to have this information in advance, but do you have a sense of this year's exchange? What's that? The exchange or tuition? Oh, well exchange is just with you 32. It's not with the whole, just the lottery. The lottery. Yeah, when you see about lottery, it's just different. And this board has moved from 10 to eight students that are accepted and there were 57 on our wait list. Yeah, we had a lot on our list. It's a good thing. It's nice to be, want to school. So we're at max capacity? Yeah. Doors closed, yes, Larry Patz and no longer skip down. Any further questions on this specific proposal as part of discussion? All in favor? Aye. Are you opposed? Thank you, Mike. Yeah, thanks Mike. This is our biggest class. For the high school, yeah. I don't know if it's overall. So I'm guessing it's the biggest class we've had in a long time in the high school. It's really a historic thing for our city that we should remember we're coming back up. Who knows how long it'll last, but we're there. We're gonna go back again. No, over a hundred. Well, it's unclear, okay? Yeah, we're going to go back again. Yeah, we're going to go back again. Totally. They just haven't gotten the high school. Yeah. But, you know, we're gonna end up with over 400 in the high school pretty soon. So, before Matt brings a sleeping bag and... That's fine. Very important conversation. Let's turn to Enrichment and After School. I think we can probably give this as a combined... Yeah, go ahead. That would be great. As a combined update, I can start off on After School. We have four members of the committee here. So, as folks probably know, we had this board set up a committee to work with, it would be to solicit request for a proposal for After School programming. The committee consisted of Brigitte, myself, Matt, Principal Ryan Herady from UES, two community members, Rebecca Copans and Christine Zachey. One MSMS student, Sam Brondike, and then she was not an official member of the committee, but we had Cassie Wilner, who works with After School, Vermont, who sat in on personal meetings and played a consultant role. We got four requests for a proposal. One from the YPCA, which is a nonprofit that runs several programs throughout the state. We got one from something doing businesses part two. After School Collaborative, thank you. Doing businesses part two, they became part two, and that's what's on my mind, which is a for-profit entity that was formed by two educators in Chippin County a few years ago and that provides After School services, ways to do school services at several schools, I think exclusively in Chippin County now, although they are interested in expanding beyond Chippin County. One from the Rec Department, which runs certain youth programs, insure programs for the city, and then one from Community Connections, which is the current provider of both After School license programs and enrichment programs. The committee went through all the proposals, we scored them, we asked repeated questions of all the providers to get clarity on affordability, capacity, quality of programming, willingness to work with the district to meet needs, the wages and pay scales for their employees. We conducted site visits to all four of the providers, the Rec Department did not have a formal program, we could go to, Libby's actually the only person who went on that site visit, but on all the other site visits. Not all the committee members went, but most of them did. We had extensive discussions about what we saw on those site visits, with the exception of one provider, those site visits entail substantial meetings, sit down meetings with people who ran the programs, where they were able to answer further questions. It was a long and hard process, there's a lot of quality work, I think a lot of thoughtfulness given to it, an incredible amount of thoroughness. At the end, and this was, seems like a long, long time ago, but I think it was less than a week ago. Last Thursday, the committee had a long meeting where we went through all the information for the final comment and came to a vote. The recommendation of the committee, which was unanimous, and again, I think a very difficult decision, was that we recommended that Libby begin negotiations on a contract with after school collaborative, doing businesses part two. The main factors going into that decision, they met the capacity needs, which has been an issue in this district, they were able to significantly expand capacity from where we are now. The people who went on the site visit were very impressed by the quality of the programming. When we looked at the complete structure for affordability, including scholarships and subsidies offered to families, it was the most affordable for virtually all income brackets, and significantly more affordable for lower income brackets. People making 70 to 100,000 would experience a small increase, but all the brackets would realize savings. They also had other perks that were not offered. For instance, on in-service days and late start days, enrolled students got covered for free. There was automatic coverage and no extra charge. They have quality summer camps, including summer camps at times in the year when other people did not have summer camps like the last two weeks of August when both summer camps closed, the gap between school year and the end of the school year, their wages were competitive and on par with our current provider and with the other providers, and the recommendations around them were all excellent. The principals that have worked with them that we talked to had all had very positive experiences about them accommodating, taking students a bit near, et cetera. So it was a tough decision. The decision came with a couple further recommendations. The first of which is that the cost structure, which is not as easily, it's not as easily understandable as a sliding scale, which is what a current provider has, even though it's affordability at the end of the day is more affordable, that they work with the district to make sure that the cost structure is accessible and understandable to families, so families are able to easily access it and understand it at the onset that there's not an impression that there's a cost there that's not there. And the second is that there was a huge recognition that the current providers, the people providing daily care to our students are doing an excellent job. And we would like the new provider to make sure that there's opportunities for current providers to be employed with them if they, what the caregivers so choose. So that recommendation was made, again it was a very tough decision. It was unanimous, which I think speaks to both the thoroughness of the work, but I also think it speaks to the decision. It was people who came in with very diverse views and came out with one job. So I don't know if you want to add anything to that. I would add that we had just two really exceptionally committed parent members, community members were always really slightly discounted for the way the community can step up. And that was added an enormous amount of value. And I also want to thank Matt Roy and Ryan Heridy who also on the committee and really were some steady guiding hands toward keeping us focused on the needs of the kids about keeping them front and center. I concur with all that. It was excellent and the people went above and beyond. You summarized it pretty well. I think there were some people that were really swayed by the site visits. I think definitely the large role in the decision. I think that the visit to part two, full disclosure I was not on that visit. I'm somewhat familiar with part two's worth just from colleagues in Chenin County. But the part two visit was exceptional by all accounts and really separating them I think from the back. And just all the other things they talked about. One thing that I would mention that I think factored into the decision for me a little bit. I was somewhat of a small thing but going so far as to talk about sending, if wanted sending representatives that worked with the students to 504 meetings, VIP meetings, to CSPs. And just the awareness and that ability to work with the school, connect with the school. And I think a big one, especially with the middle school, one of my big things going in was capacity. Wanted to increase the number of students they could access. And I think hearing the answer, one specifically asked about what if a kid moves into the district and programs have already started and the answer was we will, like basically we're never gonna turn that kid down. And so I think that that's a big piece too. But it was impressive. I think the process really speaks to, and the unanimous decision to go to Park Street was really a testament to the process and also the discovery of the test provider. Is there a question about the process or do you want to introduce the enrichment position and then just take questions? Totally. Let me talk about the enrichment because they're kind of related and it might answer some questions people have because the enrichment piece is definitely correct. Okay. So one of the themes that came out of this process, one of the overwhelming themes that came out of this process was the desire to keep what I refer to as enrichment programming and after school enrichment programming at Main Street Middle School in particular with a slight connection to the high school as well. That's very important to our community. That's very important to me. It's very important to our middle school staff recognizing that those kind of opportunities are what adolescents need for multiple reasons in terms of mentorship, in terms of finding a love and a hobby, and we've talked about all of those things before and I think we talked about them in the last board meeting so I'm not gonna repeat that, but I just want to say that's an overwhelming need and desire. At the last board meeting, I presented to you the possibility of a 0.5 position to keep that piece going and you offered like where's money, what's it look like, that kind of thing. Went back and I talked to a few people and many people said what if it were a 1.0 and we've talked about that a bit last time as well, I believe. So taking that through the coordination we've quite honestly drew at the middle school who helped write this job description with me came up with the job description and what if it were, kind of what if it were. And he had many more, I kind of condensed it in here so we could see it on the page. And then what would the contract look like and what would the potential monetary streams look like? So this is using that if you flip over this paper to the chart on the back and yes I could talk to Grant about this. Just before anybody asks. The district contribution already we budgeted just over $37,000 we just rounded it down to 37 I think it's 37,285 or something like that if you really go into the exact numbers. That district contribution could pay this position salary as it's currently being paid now. So the position that is provided to us by community connections is paid this salary and that is inclusive of if I get benefits and that kind of thing. That wouldn't be a pay increase would be an even steal and we already have that money budgeted that's already there. If we were to look at this does not have a sliding scale what I did was I took what's currently there and the $50 is the middle of the ground. That's not to say it couldn't be a sliding scale it could very well be but for ease in this situation of just getting up monetary ideas I just left the 50 and there's the middle number. If we were to run a certain number of 10 clubs in the seven week cycle throughout the year that's inclusive of the high school as well which is a lot of clubs and I think it's more than what we currently offer it's about what we currently offer. Parent contribution at $50 a club would be about $37,500. That money could be would be used to pay, oh I'm sorry the enrichment corner is $43 so you take some of that money to add under the $37 to do the salary stipends and club advisors if you will people that we would need to hire to teach these clubs would be about $280 a club since it's seven week about an hour and a half after school that works out at $25 an hour. So that's what the cost of running that amount of clubs would be. We'd still have money left over for $6,000 of scholarship money and about $6,000 of supply money to revamp when we need it. Canoes, kayaks, Dave was talking, David High School here was talking about getting mountain bikes that fit in high school bodies because we only have high school bikes that fit in high school bodies. So like that kind of purchasing that is in the plans. We've talked a lot, we talked at the after school advisory committee actually about Bridget brought up some good points of why make people pay, why have that. We've went back and forth on that a bit and I think that's still an open question. Jim made a good point of let's keep what we have going now, going in the way it's going for a year. So we have some time to really think how we want to do that. I still have the question. The question hasn't been answered for me. My dream is to grow this, just to grow it between the middle school and the high school. And if we don't ask people to pay then that will continue to be a local budget expense. We can't grow it as well or as easily we'd have to find out more creative ways to fund it. So that would be a barrier to growth but I don't think it's a barrier we can't overcome. I'm just saying it'd be a lot harder to grow. So that's this piece. Again, I'll reiterate that this is incredibly important to our parent community and our community after this experience with after school care. The piece between licensed care that is a big need, K through six I would argue and this is unlicensed care. Matt, would you add anything to the enrichment? I would add that it's important to it's not just the parent community, it's really important for the kids. These are opportunities. They talk about it at school. These are opportunities they look forward to all day. Sometimes it's the things that kind of like get them through today. But it's the kayaking, the mountain biking, the trips to Bolton, the sledding, and I would part it's these are opportunities that the, and some kids they otherwise don't, they won't have to, they won't get those opportunities. Oh, just that. Yep, absolutely. So this position as it's framed here is cost-neutral to our budget. It's not an addition to our budget, it's money already budgeted, just used in a different way. In the memo it's correct about a $50 fee per club. Is that only for after-school clubs or is that all clubs? That's for, that's for, that's the club that is like what we have now. So when you say all clubs, are you going to like soccer and basketball? Because that's what we talk about. Because I'm going to like RGA the conversation. Oh no, no, no, no, no, those things happen. Mostly they're some after-school, yeah, but it's during contracted hours that those happen. Well, club actions after school. Is it, they have those go, those fall under that stipend that we talked so much about last time, the co-curricular stipend. This is all this question that we have. And I really think part of what we have to do next year is really think about these fees are non-academic activities. Yeah, yeah. How we deal with them, data, I mean I think data is really important. I think access is really important. But we are trying to make sure that we roll something out. And so this is kind of a status quo rollout with the kinds of things that are currently being paid for on the sliding scale. But it proposes basically a status quo. Yes. Yeah, it kind of takes that piece and moves it in-house. I think it's the ability next year to talk about, well, do we want to continue these services and maybe start to them differently? And have the people in our employ. Yes. Who we can have the conversation with. That's a really tough question. Yeah. Right, and what the difference is between these enrichment activities and sports. Yeah, co-curricular. Yeah, private enrichment activities and other clubs. We have a lot of questions to unravel. So I understand I think that this is a money neutral issue compared to what we've talked about. But you said, you brought it back and then said, why not full-time? So I'm asking, why? Well, in other words, you came saying not quite full-time. Yeah. This is what the person will do. What was added? Yeah, good question. What I came to last time with is a logistical coordinator. So my idea last time with the 0.5 was collect the money, put out the registrations, make sure people get paid. Find the people. Right, because I didn't want to put that in my already overstressed and overburdened business office. Right? That was what I came to last time. What others made me think about was there's a lot of holes here that I know the community has brought up and the board has brought up as well in terms of all the things that we offer or don't offer and a liaison between these. So a liaison between that cleaning here at the high school and flexible pathways and other things that the high school is offering as well as with Matt Lane in terms of athletics and a liaison there. Somebody who can actively pursue grants and has the time and capacity to actively pursue grants to fund, to find another funding system. Somebody who can actively and willingly collect the data we need around. Who are we serving? When are we serving them? What's getting a targeted population? What's really increasing their participation in that piece? So those are some of the things that you see here that like the logistics coordinator that I suggested before wouldn't necessarily do because they wouldn't be paid to do that, right? So this position would offer up more of that piece. The connection of personalized learning plans. How can we connect it particularly at the middle school level to raise the level of those through enrichment and developing interests at the middle school level? Like that would be a completely nuanced piece that we've probably not many people have that piece, you know? So this would require a different skill set. Steve? So I want to shift gears to the other pieces which is the whatever it's called, the license, that's what we call it. So I think that I'm seeing these two components kind of moving in opposite directions a little bit and I want to kind of just kind of differentiate them a little bit. I think that the part we were just talking about with the middle school I think is a really amazing thing and I think from a public education philosophical perspective I think it's a very positive move because what it's doing is it's in a very small way it's expanding public education in America, right? It's actually, it's having the school take a little bit more responsibility for that whole child including the time they're outside of school because that time matters so much to the time they're in school. And so I can't thank you all enough for moving in that direction. The license piece I have some reservations about and I want to be very clear about my reservations because I think the committee probably did, you know without kind of, I was at arm's length but it seems to have done an amazingly thorough job but I think from a philosophical perspective I have some problems with it and I think that the biggest nut of that is that we're taking a function that has been in our area has been a public function has been provided by a school education and we're privatizing it. And I think that that is, we're now sending it off not just to a for, not just to a business but to a for profit business and as maybe the only person or maybe there's one or two other people on here who works for a purely for profit business and I own it and I can speak from some authority here when I say that that's a very different animal and it is, it finds, it is very, it can be very, very professional and make excellent presentations and administer programs extremely well and it finds efficiencies. And I want to be very careful if this district leaves a legacy of privatizing a public function that that new entity that we contract out to to do what has been a public function does not find those efficiencies by either paying employees less or charging parents more. And those two places are where the revenue can come from most easily and the history of private businesses is that they tend to pay employees as little as they can get away with and I just want to be very careful about that. One of the things that I mentioned during our public hearing at the beginning of this process and our superintendent agreed to it or nodded her head was that livable wages would be one of the community values that we would insist happens during this process and I want to make sure that in the contract that we have livable wages so that we do not because right now the current provider, the public entity is providing livable wages and if we don't insist on that going forward in the new contract then what we're doing is we're saying it's not a fundamental piece here. We're willing to allow the new entity to subsidize this program or find efficiencies in the program of wages. I just want to be very careful is all I'm saying. I think we can do it but I think it needs to be at a contractual level that the pay scale be in the contract and that it be very clear about that. Otherwise I think we cannot stand or keep our heads up and say that yeah, we privatize but we're not sure if it's gonna be a livable wage. They gave us assurances but that isn't the same thing as a contract. So I want to be very careful about that. And then the other piece is the family contributions which I saw the thing, it was very hard for me to kind of tear it apart because it felt like we had some of the cells in the boxes weren't quite lined up because they didn't really quake across exactly and I didn't know enough to really ask the right questions about it but it was complicated to me. I know that I think that I understand in the subsidy picture the way that community connections has done it is that there are a few families on subsidy but mostly they just kind of internally subsidize is my understanding or at least they combine the two sources of income. The public subsidies are very small usually like a few dollars but there has been some internal subsidizing too from what I understand and I understand that the new model would rely on the state subsidies probably more I'm not really sure and if that's true is there a bureaucratic piece to that that may actually leave some families behind they may not actually pursue those subsidies and how bureaucratic is that and if we're changing from what is really a very simple system right now about how you get subsidized a sliding scale effectively to something where families have to apply to the state for a subsidy is there not just a information packet but actually someone there to kind of be the facilitator to make sure that happens so we don't lose people in that transition so those are my concerns I want to make sure it is equally affordable to families and that we do not subsidize it with employees and I'm hoping that the contract will include those two things if it does not have some kind of provision for a liberal wage I'm really opposed to it so I hope it's in there, yeah I just want to say that we have a very serious substantial and prolonged committee process to vet these options to consider all of these things all of the issues that you discussed were the subject of these meetings which being on that committee was open to any member of the school and those meetings were open to the public and I just want to assure the public that this is not the first time that anyone is talking about other issues okay that was a focused intense discussion on a committee that had to make very difficult choices and again it was open to anyone on the board to be on that committee and it was open to the public to come to the meetings and many of the committee's discussions would be around how the contract should play out focused on staffing, focused on wage issues focused on the issues of have transparent the fee system is for parents so that's been what the process has been about so what's the result? and the result is that the committee unanimously recommended that the superintendent negotiated part to add the options that we had before us and provide something in the contract for their own fees and I'm not sure if that contract is settled yet how about the wages, did you guys suggest that in the contract? well the wages were in the RFP so the wages are required under the RFP to be a specific scale so the wages were in the response to RFP and those are livable? they're on par with all the other providers that's not, that's low wage childcare providers are historically low wage what I'm wondering is are they livable wages? they don't even have to be equal to whatever folks are getting paid now I don't care what I'm saying is are they, do they meet the standard of livable wages? by what? by the Congressional, or the legislative think legislative fiscal office has done the study they do it on a biennial so they go to the legislative office they establish a livable wage there's objective standards in Vermont wait a minute I mean this is an important point Bridget what I'm hearing you say is hey you missed your opportunity and I don't agree I'm on the board I'm saying I'm saying that that's fine and I'm saying it doesn't mean I can't speak up as a board member you're welcome to speak up but I think I didn't miss my opportunity right now I want to make sure that they are now in the end result that they are going to be in the contract that's all I'm asking are we gonna have livable wages in the contract and are we gonna make sure that parents aren't subsidizing this because of the bureaucracy that's required and I don't have any idea about the answer to either of those so I'll talk to you I would regard to livable wage because this keeps coming up it came up with regard to the cafeteria employees the service employees and it came up again tonight with regard to the middle school proposal you know I think we all keep saying $13 is not enough and we need to look if we're serious about that we need to talk about policy because I don't think that we can just dictate it at random when it comes to livable wage so a few things on wages the part two compared to our current provider for the there's two classes of instructors part two we might have it in front of you part two paid I think $13 to $15 for the lower for the counselor versus $13 to $16 for community connections and then for the next level of classroom instructors they were on part $16 to $18 for both CC did something which part two did not do which they employ for $11 to $12 an hour high school students and interns to provide care CC does CC does not which means that CC is employing people at a lower wage to subsidize care at the expense of people at a higher wage so on par so if you know whether you consider those libel wages or not the for-profit did not undercut the non-profit or Washington Center for those two tiers some kind of established tier kind of structures that you could go apples to apples on it was different because they don't all staff in the same way all people in the same thing and that's what I'm saying this was the subject of a lot of attention but it's not an apples that you really have to sit down and try to figure out what roles these people play how many of them there are and they're not exactly the same for each provider they have different models for the roughly director type level on an hourly wage CC paid higher I think 23 to 26 and 24 part two paid lower 19 to 21 but part two structured the job more as a full-time salary position so the I think the people in those positions were actually making more per year and the people in CC higher per hour wage in CC but it was more about the payment kind of in the low 40s which is roughly equivalent to kind of a starting teacher position I think I'm mostly concerned about the direct childcare workers and how they are because they're going to be the lowest page people in the organization and we want to make sure predominantly women we want to make sure this is treated with as a government entity we need to make sure that we're not exploiting people absolutely and I think you know clearly that was not the case and I think if you're looking at these wages if there's anything that stands out it's the CC at the 10 to 11 dollars an hour for high school care it's like how many people are they hiring at that level to provide care when they could be hiring what is that called high school care what is that called they call it high school okay and what is the difference between the two tiers that two groups are using I don't mean relative to each other but I mean how are they stacking those tiers or how are they is it like just a level one level two kind of thing they call them different things one calls them an assistant teacher one like you know CC calls their kind of lower wage non high school intern an assistant teacher part two calls it a counselor for the next step these are the same yeah they call them head teachers and teachers part two calls them a site director for what would be like a head teacher not an assistant director assistant director sorry assistant director and then there's the site director which is the highest for instance you know YMCA for similar positions YMCA was a lower actually and they're a nonprofit program staff and then assistant site director so the short of it is they both start the bottom of their scales for their regular folks at 13 yes those are all the same pretty much well the Y was the lowest the Y was the lowest the Y was the lowest 12 would be non profit for the one the counselors at part two are 13 and $15 an hour and CC was $14 an hour the one CC was $14 what was it called 13 the name of the position counselor the counselors in part two yeah all three of them work directly with kids yeah so the ones who are the site director yeah yeah so are wages in the contract the contract has not been I know but would it be is it something you can put in there yes okay and the then for the the subsidy piece do I have that vague understanding correctly correct that they're sort of using a pay scale that it's sort of an internally subsidized partially and that under the new system there'll be a more of a reliance on state subsidies or is that just a butchering of the understanding really works I would say it's a butchering part two has for any family that qualifies for the subsidy which is anyone under seven right now the way the state has it structured it's approximately anybody under $75,300 receives at least a 10% that's the that's the beginning so and that's from the state and that's from the state that's based on household size do you know yes it is so it's based on household it's not an exact science because it's household income as soon as the family qualifies for the subsidy part two gives them a 50% scholarship automatically so all families who fall under that $75,000 scale get that 50% subsidy so half goes away and then let me understand so they have to go demonstrate that they've got the state subsidy basically the concept or because the income verification is something probably would be doing but the state will certainly do it they help families work through the subsidy process it means the district can help with that too and then the state would contact part two so the money goes directly to and then the bill gets changed so it's the subsidy and then the families get a 50% scholarship so as you go between the subsidy and the 50% scholarship as you work down lower into that subsidy your subsidy increases and that's where the that's where the cost comes especially for some of the lower income families you might have to know it's it's significant lower do you anticipate more families as a percentage will be on the state subsidies I anticipate more families will apply for subsidy one of my hunches and I don't know if it's correct or not it's a hunch is that because of that people didn't and there was and I think it was not transparent and I think people thought that the sliding scale was the subsidy right nobody was informed about the other piece really unless they it was one on one sometimes and you know there was an acknowledgement that you know there will be a layer of forfelling out and bureaucracy that will be involved in accessing that money which is why we got instructions that we both work on the contract and the rollout that that be made very easy for families that we make sure they have the information and that for families that need assistance walking through that process they get that assistance so that's that's easy for them and it's not a barrier I think that's a really important part of their world I mean starting I just don't want to underestimate that change it's hard changes challenges for everyone and this this is a piece that's going to be starting May 13th there's Jeff O'Hara who's the guy who runs Part 2 will be at UES from 6 to 7 we haven't gone out yet it's gone out tomorrow um the flyer's being made now um but there will be a parent info night where he's very well versed that I've met with him today about what how he needs to really stress about his help and support and how we can collaborate in that and even though it is a for-profit you know the people that are leading it are you know are committed educators and I think everyone at least most people on the on the committee um have a level of discomfort with a for-profit entity um I think we share a concern Steve that uh you know privatizing elements of our you know what we kind of consider a sphere of education um I definitely have a level of discomfort around it um you know that said there were you know there were some concerns with the non the public entities that we had to choose from um that unbalanced for-profit entity favorable here and you know I mean it's a for-profit entity but it's also you know is formed by educators who I think are very committed to to education I mean their vehicle for doing it is for-profit but um you know this is this is a homegrown homegrown business with uh people who are very connected to the Vermont community to the Vermont education world um and have a lot of depth and experience um I think I think too some of those concerns are also balanced and in times in some cases in our discussions offset by the organizational structure the organizational capacity um and sort of the ability to take it and go um and run a you know a successful and a very um positive after-school program for students without without the district or you know employees or administrators or whoever having to to go in and fix or repair or oversee um you know and provide support and organization I think the part of that was you know the the one thing that they're able to provide it seems like you know from my experience in our discussions a lot that some of the others didn't the culture um the culture of the employees and within the organization was something that really stood out for the people that visited part two is um you know just a tight knit group um you know well trained just I think there's those elements that come along with it that that there are some of the benefits there too that they're able to also in some ways do things that you know at the same cost well hold on you would totally have me until you set a public organization can't do that and I disagree with that 100% I think that that's a question of nurturing public entities rather than putting them in competition with private entities however I do hear that this is a major benefit of the the predicament we're in right now is that we have one out of four who actually can pull this off quickly and professionally and that we don't have the time or resources to respond to this and so given that you know certainly it's obviously a very compelling piece of it is the quality of the of the part two see if I would agree with that that addition I have a couple of questions first of all thank you Bridget, Jim Matt everybody who was involved in this process I know it was very time consuming very energy intensive really appreciate your thought really important to the community and this position I fully support this position and I really appreciate I know I was frustrated a little bit ago and because I was hearing about needs but I felt like we didn't have enough information in the process I really appreciated this process I thought this was a great process you guys the past several weeks I've been explaining how this would fit into a much bigger picture we understand the needs so I really appreciate this I'm in full support of this position without a doubt with regard to the subsidies going along with Bridget's thought of well, there wasn't a parent contribution or what else could we do I do have a little bit of a concern because my understanding is previously this money was used in part to help subsidize some lower lower middle income students and now this money is going to go fully to this investment it's not not accurate we don't know exactly what this money went to quite honestly we have no budget a concern you made the revenues from the licensed program no, $37 yeah, yeah I thought that my understanding and it was a little misunderstanding was that some of that was used to that went into a pot at Washington Central Supervisor Union and no one including people at WCSU could tell us what the money was okay so I'll just I know it's late I want to cut to this really quickly and Steve asked many questions well, you answered many concerns and answering his questions that I had so how long is the contract likely for is this going to be an annual bi-annual type thing they would run starting in the fall year round programming but when we enter into a contract with them for one year see how it goes in one year contracts and make sure that we have pieces in there that they have accountability measures they have to be reached which is not in our current contract in any way shape or form and that also ensures a certain level of accountability in addition to those measures just having to be yes annual basis like that would the enrichment coordinator work at all with setting up part two would they work at all with they want to be working with them to set it up they'd be collaborating with them certainly one of the questions still in this enrichment coordination is if it's 7 12 or 5 12 actually talking to Jeff about that today just we opened up that opportunities or some of the opportunities as well and and Jeff Jeff's like we'll coordinate with that and we'll make sure kids can come in and out and kids can do what they need to do and sports teams and they're well versed in middle school needing that anyway because lots of kids are doing lots of things in middle school so they talked about a camel's hump that kids go in and out and you know like they keep track of where they are and they make sure it's available and kids are safe and they're accounted for and would certainly be working with a site director at the middle school in collaboration and making sure spaces and you know their offerings because part two will be having those middle school kids out and about and doing things and using the facilities that we have at the middle school and so we want to make sure that everybody has their space and that we work well together and that's one of the benefits of bringing this position into district we can do that we have control over it that way from Steve and some of the like the committee had these concerns too which was access to these assistance programs do you think that this position would at all help facilitate you know getting folks access to these to this assistance this public assistance at all or is that totally outside to the subsidy this piece isn't connected in that way because the subsidy only applies to licensed programs and this is an unlicensed program so that position at all in that regard that program's internally subsidized effectively right with the revenues from the program would subsidize exactly okay last thing is very late if we identify along the way and I hope we will be looking for these things if we identify that there is an area of need if there's like a benefit clip for example near the edge of where the subsidies are we have some families 50% 300% of the federal poverty level all of a sudden you know paying hundreds more more you know okay I was also thinking that might be an area where the board could step up and find we can make sure that families have care okay so we we need actually this part is a question yeah so we want to make that one I know that we hired second any further discussion? what's the favor? hi adjourn adjourn mind made of all what's the favor? agenda