 I'm going to start this meeting of the Lot Player Rocksbury Board of School Directors. Good evening everybody. Jim will be here soon, but he delegated us to begin. Begin. And as usual, we will begin with public comment. And you see we have some members of the public here, and I think that they may want to give some comment. You can come to the front. So I'm the president of the parents group of the middle school. And your name is? My name is Linnae Timponi. And I basically came to talk about the controversy around fundraising that's kind of floating around town today. As a parents group president, we met for a lot of months, several months to plan, and did our best to find a fundraiser that included little businesses, and kind of ticked all the boxes for our community. We, you know, we're all just trying to raise money for our middle schoolers. There are a lot of supportive people in the school. The parents group needed to be by the people. So I just wanted to come out and say, you know, that we love input from the community, and that we're encouraging more parents to be involved. And I'm trying to answer all of their questions that came at me last night in this morning, so that they could be informed. And that I just will continue to work really hard for the middle schoolers, and I hope that some other parents will join me constructively. Thank you for coming. Tim has shown up, so I'm just going to go to the chair, but I do want to say thank you for your work on the parents group committee. And I feel like I might just want to add, if I can say this, just that the school board does not react that quickly to things like Facebook. This was on the agenda. I haven't put on the agenda since a few days ago. Yes. So just remember to make that note. Yes, we saw that. Of course. Awesome. Great. That's great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Anyone else for public comment? Great. I'm sorry, I'm late. Moving to the consent agenda. Can I pull something up? Yeah. I have a motion to pull the superintendent's report just to ask. That would be a good question, but I made a motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of the superintendent's report. Second? I'll second. I'll do better. Hi. Are you pleased? Great. All yours. Thank you. We don't need to address this right now, but I just thought since there was mention of busing in here and since busing was a big issue last year and big budget issue, could we get an update on how, like I said, it's really early right now, but in the next month or so, could we get an update on how the busing situation has coalesced and what's working, what's not working, what the orientation looks like? And I don't know if there's any brief updates now. Yeah. Unless you want to speak now. My sense is that another two or three weeks might be helpful to really more helpful. Right now maybe Koa Lassine is associated with Koa Lassine. Yes. I agree with that statement, Jim. So articulately. I can speak to it briefly. This busing has been a significant change for our community and with change comes understanding in time and bumps to iron out. Right now the schedule is set. There are some things that were changed because of two reasons. One, because of the addition of middle school riders as well as buses being consistently late class chairs, particularly in the weather. So the bus garage decided to move it forward, move the timing forward a little bit to give them more time to get kids to school. And that's caused some consternation amongst particularly younger kid families which is understandable. We gave the bus garage a 45 minute time period that we wanted kids on the bus and they were doing the best they can to abide by that across the area. So we have a large area now that we're working with with the addition of Roxbury to the Bumpkiller buses. So that was quite a feat for them to accomplish and they have. We didn't want kids on the bus that long. Currently I actually have a meeting that was just set tomorrow because there is a large challenge as to how to pick up and drop off middle schoolers in a city that does not have a school building built or a parking lot built to drop off and pick up middle schoolers. Safely to the buses, to the community, to the traffic flow, to all of that. And we did debate lots of different ways to do it. We chose on one and people aren't happy with the way we chose it. So I do have a meeting tomorrow with Pam and Aunt Ryan, Stacy from the bus garage. The police chief met nicely by going to the fire chief so to take in some safety considerations and see if more minds can think of a different idea than we did. I'm not hopeful in that state but we do have that meeting. It may be one of the reasons we never bus middle schoolers before. It's definitely something that was not anticipated. The U-32 bus drops off near the middle school and I think they pick up and drop off near the middle school. I think they stop in the middle of the roundabout. We have six buses. So six buses would fill that roundabout right up. That would be a lot of traffic. Yeah, exactly. We've debated all these different ideas so we're going to get more of the leaders in the community around the table tomorrow to see if they can think through other ideas that we haven't thought through. Six buses. Loading and unloading at the same time. Yeah, ideally because that's the bestest. We were to move up to Main Street right in front. Not only do we have lots of experiences from our own vans as well as the bus company that things get clipped very quickly and accidents happen very quickly because people don't want to wait. The red lights would have to be flashing so you're stopping traffic on Main Street which is a very busy road. Two A's for the pick up and drop off and only two buses can fit at a time there. So it would be two buses. Load them, move them. I was going to say to line it up you'd have to have no parking forever. So there's no ideal situation to this problem. So we're going to talk about it tomorrow and see if we can come to a better solution than what we have now. We can rearrange some of the timing at the elementary school so the buses get there, middle schoolers load right away. There's no wait time. And see what happens. And did we go with two new buses? I know that's what the buses did. I would make the statement too that everybody is working incredibly hard to make what is a hard situation the best it could possibly be. I just want to make sure everybody, the bus garage is working very hard. I say Samerson spent her entire day doing our street, our runs on her own in her car today to ensure that she made good decisions and safe decisions for kids. Like everybody is working incredibly hard on this. And when you do something, it does take time to work it out. Do we know how many middle schoolers are actually riding the buses? They're pretty full of middle schoolers. No, of kids. So our buses. Do I know exactly how many middle schoolers know? We don't have that data just yet. But one of the things that we heard during the process of receiving community input was that we were likely to have an increase in elementary school students riding because people who were driving their elementary and middle school students were doing so because of that disparity in time. And so... When the middle schooler can ride so can the elementary students. If every child on the route took the bus in the morning in particular each bus would have between 70 and 80 kids on it. Which is a max capacity. That's a lot of kids. It's max capacity. So that creates the challenge in the after school world of parents who want their kids dropped off in different after school locations that if all of those morning riders are also afternoon riders, which we know they're not. So if there's actual activities in part two and extra caregivers and all that kind of stuff then the primary responsibility of the bus crash, what we've hired them to do is get kids home. So that's the primary responsibility which is the change because before there was MIRM. So we're working on collecting the data in the afternoon to find out just how many kids are on the buses and which ones are fuller. Thank you everybody. Everybody is working incredibly hard on this. So Jim, before we leave this, I'd like to say on behalf of the board, I don't think the board will mind me saying this to thank you to the staff for the opening of school. You talked about it and I know you thank them but in a lot of cases it was not quite what they thought about the couple weeks moving up to school and I'm very appreciative that it went well and we have such a wonderful professional staff. They were very close. You've done it. Done it. Done it. Mostly. Almost as Andrew was speaking to me. So about the superintendent's report, is that something that actually needs to be improved? It's on the agenda to approve so I would approve it. I would make a motion to approve by itself, yeah. Second it. In favor? Aye. Great. Andrew construction review. Talking about construction. Yeah. So, do I give an induction or do you want to? At least if you're in a facility, is Andrew the Rosa? Yes. Was that a little softball? It's always good to resay who you are if someone hasn't seen you before. More along the lines of summaries and futures and things like that. Yes, we are speaking to that last couple weeks of thrash, and there's still going to be a couple weeks of thrash around here, but absolutely because studio staff in particular from my end did an amazing job of working hard and continuing to work hard and at times seeming like they were shoveling sand against the tide, but they kept with it, and we're the buildings and the condition that Tom particularly has set for himself. No, but we were able to address the other more immediate needs and we'll get back up there. To be quite honest, I think you all have seen, as you sit in stop lights with dump trucks and back hose and all this, there's arguably never been a construction season like this that we've faced, and if we had said back in June, the contractor had said to us, you're just not going to get the materials because they're going to every other construction project in America, it wouldn't have shocked me. E.F. Wal did an amazing job on the project, making sure that we had what we needed, we had the resources and the job super, the onsite job super, by which we knew when we signed a contract with them we knew that we were going to regret it, we knew we were going to miss things that we were going to get. And it was also with the playground project in E.C.I. they did a really great job. As we all know by that, it didn't seem like it's, I don't know if it's their most difficult because you can't push, you can't get anywhere, you can't even get out of here. It was too sweet for you to get it, but when you come up with this one, you're just never going to regret it because you still have the material that it makes a big hole. God really saved the day. Absolutely, absolutely. And we agree in way that take root, we invest a lot on that side, and it's going to take a lot of abuse, so we're going to push that, certainly the play areas are going to take the most abuse, we're going to push that until we really are confident that that's taking hold. So the basis like that, and I say that all honestly, if it, to say fancy, they just had to be built. Tina's been doing a great job. Then we took, I think we kept the essence of the design and a lot from the very beginning, and we hoped to take advantage of the cost savings of being able to dispose of the urban soils over and very, the soils they just, they were clay, they weren't clay, and they weren't sufficient, or suitable for what that owner wanted to do, so they had to go up the country so they unfortunately couldn't take advantage of that cost savings. The nature of the use, we have no structure to start on, we use the forest for the rest of the land, which is the office in the new three years. We were able to use the same footage, we were able to title the walls that were here, seeing them on them, so they're, the cleanability is going to be there. Unfortunately we have to have floors over there, so that's, that helps with cleanability. What is Tarazzo? Tarazzo is the old fashioned granite chips, poorly made with cement, traditional material, and then ground down the side of it, used to happen if you can find someone to do it, but it's, it's basically concrete at this point, but, let's say with a couple of granite chips in it. Oh yeah. The other way, we designed the old leather, or the weight, although the brakes are next summer, we take out the old and need to prioritize and take care of that, we'll just leave that and take care of it on a later date, and more important things to focus on. The old fire alarm system is in place, it's not operating, it's not operating off of the system, which is always the land, it's always the old fire alarm system in place until the other one's tested and proven. We met with our chief and then we met with our director, let me say it's the one I met. There was a case that didn't take, and so they're gonna read down a little bit of the brains, but you know, it's something that has to come up from Tennessee, and that'll be here in a couple of weeks, and once that is done, we'll swap over onto the new system out of the school building, like you said, there's some work in the basement and they're working with Chris Loos to make sure that they have the access they need and make sure that we don't interact with the teaching of the children. So what we're doing now, we're building those two new internet firms, that is actually part of the capital fund. We've separated out the money, which made financial sense to, you know, the project gets two months where there's the more you can contract at once. So they are very similar with you, they've had a chance to look at the new netlots of hard-wearing services, they've finished off, there's someone again, make a little fixture there that needs to be tightened or whatever, but finally the contractors are out of the building all the way down. The students? Yes, we've done a bunch of, I don't know if you've ever seen your video of the students at the main street level, but we've had a good contractor and we said, let's do it. Okay. Like throughout, what's happened? Throughout the building, we did the first, the beginning, last year ourselves, so this year we did the lanes on the first floor that had rock ceilings, and then we did the third floor and put in new lights and put in new suns and it makes a world of difference. I mean, it's just... It's a lot brighter. It's a lot brighter and it's not broken and twisted and yellowed and, you know, it's critical. Yeah, it's critical. It's a rock ceiling? What's that? It's a rock ceiling. Yeah. It was pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It was... I'm so pleased with that. So, I'm treating them all this and, again... Saving the doors, too. Yeah. Saving the doors, too. Yeah. We're really creative and we have to deal. We're still... The doors, again, were made over in Mary, John Rose, who's a woodworker over there, and... They match the rest of the main street, which look really nice. They do. And we've had the key box system now that you can basically go into this lock fast wheel and then get buzzed into the into the building after that. Again, it's still a little bit of wiring to do and all that. The pieces are in place. Was there any outdoor work? Maybe. There was. There was. We took out the drawers in front of the building. And... So, you can't really tell what we've done to those properties. We can't really tell because they weren't all that attractive. They were hiding in the building. And it's not great to have trees right up against your building, you know, traps, moisture, and things of that nature. So, if it's true, the building would really pop, but it's still an improvement. I believe it's an improvement. We also took out a lot of the trees in front of you. We have to let that building stand out and go back to its former glory. Speaking of trees, no trees take a lot of water. So, we have a system to keep these trees alive. We do. There's a part of our disobedience portion of it. There's a 90-day disobedience, as well as a new warranty on all plantings that we have as part of the new U.S. project. And I think last time you were here, you mentioned new signs for the buildings. That's one of the things that we have a little into. And UTS, there is a new sign that Main Street is available. And we got that sort of order. It's a very hard thing. We do a lot of things. Thank you. Yeah, front-line orders. Yeah. We could do better. And here on this last summer, the August one has a new air handling system that we still need to balance. And that's in place. We have a new sound system there. We have a new planning system. And one of the things that we were able to do was, and these sound like little things, but they're kind of for the Kingdom. And so we're going to have to get up on the 30-foot ladder and get these things around. And we got this order today because I wouldn't do it. It would be probably with two very small children. We could do the gels and do all that. We have three rounds each side, FPD, adjustable lights, but they now from the left adjust what they need to do. Get them set. And never have to, I shouldn't say never, but, the need to get up that high is once every power of many years when you want to do something above and beyond what's there. But we should be able to handle everything from the desktop, which is huge. Which is huge. Because of our city writing, we have a curve in this committee and the size of the sheet that we've been working on for years. What's that? Padded chairs. Yeah. Which was a reminder to watch these three or four gentlemen from who had the, the younger generation who had these 65-year-old machines and they came in and they pulled it all out and one guy would watch ahead and showed them off and they said, where they would show it up, show it back here and then those guys re-installed them all in about a day and a half. They look pretty. And they go all the way to make an opportunity to go all the way to do this. So the same time that it all ends, which I remember this week with, originally there was a back and started. We tried to go through many iterations of what that could be. We had the right solution because we now have power control with that already original design. So that's that. New shows. New. New. It's called an exercise gym. Andrew, would you mind telling them what they were trying to do? There's a union. Who managed all that coming? It was all Ian's wall. So Ian's wall was essentially the on-site engineer for the everything that was bonded. Contractor. And all the other record for everything that was bonded. Yes. That was the playground. ECI was the playground. So there were Blackwood and SE Group. So, Ian's wall was the lead at Union on the inside groups, but it would have been SE Group on the outside group. Correct. ECI on the outside group. ECI. It was okay. It was okay. It was okay. Then, though, we sort of knew what they were about this and the projects that we have every year that we wanted to, and how many of them available to us and say, okay, we'll go back to the unions. Get us a price or see that, so we were actually able to sort of get that work contracted for now. The coordination was for free because they were here doing it. Well, as you said in the small space, with all those contractors coming and going, it's a heart. There were painters standing on the shoulder of the person. It didn't make me crazy, but... We always say it didn't. Not even after they came together as well as Glenn and Gaul and, you know, they just said that three, four weeks out, we're just not, you know, this is not going to fall to place. Actors in the small space, you know, why don't people work on weekends, three weeks, you know, two weeks into the project? And these guys, what's good, said to their loss, I'm going to get a job getting paid more somewhere else. And they'd have three offers that afternoon because it's just the construction. So you have to manage people and manage their time. You need to kind of... wait for that. I'm just curious about you being there rolling up your sleeves and doing it. We appreciate it. Yeah, we most definitely need to give you a big thank you. It was definitely supposed to be. We had two bullet points on here that, for this conversation. Can we add? To your service. To your service. Do we need to do next? Do we need to do next? I'm going to get too deep into it, though. But actually, there's a work and we need to do it in our homes. You know, we want a little piece of something that's torn off the wall or whatever. Gotta get to that. Gotta get to the next thing. You know what I'm saying? Because I haven't gotten it. So, we want to work with the faculty and staff to say, is each of them just send us a note? You know, it's obviously something you need to immediately grab whoever you need to. An extra set of eyes. This would be awesome. I think you're going to go a long way to upping the quality of schools. I mean, this is something that I just want to say, you know, I'm involved with my son in these schools for any kind of a testament to the school board of making sure that that's a priority. They really, they're not, you know, they've got some of that heavy lifting out of the way. So, we're really going to be able to see results since the infrastructure's been here. Now, imagine that we're going to see a lot of the teachers just like the students at the first time of the year saying to them, what you're going to want to do, but because one of the, you know, the student staff is trying to get things back together. This was a really bad year. So that worked on early in the season, early in the season, and that's a lot to ask of the faculty at the end of the year. Last thing in the world they're doing is thinking about the start of the next school year. But they do do a lot of things. Not really working all summer long. And so in August, they had to take a couple weeks to sort of recharge the kids and the faculty from the staff taking some of them and off of them. Maybe, maybe scheduling times for like a classroom walk through throughout the year. Well, we, the fact that we do things like do ceilings, paint, take on those projects and use of their time. And again, I think that they just don't miss not just by any means. It's something to do with what they get to do. But if we can take some of the other projects as well to say, come take a week off from August. I mean, we're part of all here. They're starting to see their most hectic time. It's a little bad. We'll also be talking about a budget time potentially. And some of the questions we can staff because our custodians are for someone who's of our custodians who works because of the use of this study. And they work over time. That's a lot. Yeah. This is not I mean, last week one of our custodians I saw him when I walked into the building on Wednesday at 7 a.m. and I saw him when I left the building after the board meeting at 9. And he got home for dinner. That's what he had done. Some of our custodians are working on that. And I'm going to take care of it. So we need to talk about the actual cycles of this sort of how to can start things until July 1. Again, we talked about being prepared to two stage things. We need to plan on going to July 1. They can hit the ground running doing the work. You know, sitting equals to spend dimes kind of thing. Thanks Andrew. Thank you. The nurses have people we negotiated with. They have additional requirements that are very similar to the gosh, I'm telling you that presented to the board to see if you are in agreement as well. Sounds fair. Have any ramifications? No. I mean they would get a pay increase. Would you find telling people why you're in support of it? I think that they make a good argument and that the additional expectations for teachers to qualify for that extra differential they have to do very similar work to that just because there's no such work in that application shouldn't mean they don't get a differential. They have to have it in order to their social workers are. They don't have to be a social worker. It's not a license requirement but they have to have it to be what they're doing now. That's what I was going to say. National board certification is a choice. That's a second place of choice for them. And you believe it's representative of comparable quality. So if you're in agreement for approving the side that are in agreement for the social workers. Any opposed? Maybe. Sure. I can talk a little bit. I do too as well. So and then we need to put fundraising on the agenda a couple of weeks ago. And it was in part a reaction to the high school sports team selling discount cards and questions that I had about whether that a few questions one was actually what are we fundraising for and kind of questions around the finances. One of the needs is the reason why the needs aren't in the budget. Is there a decision being made about why we're fundraising for certain things and not for other things. So I would love to hear some more information about that. And then also just questions about whether this is the kind of fundraiser that the district wants to be endorsing for a variety of reasons including potentially businesses and what we're having our students do. And I say all of this with the absolute understanding that the parents groups and the people that are working on these things are working really, really hard and trying to have resources for our students. I've been one of the four or five people at a middle school parents group and I know it seems like there's this different parent group activity when you hit the middle school and that's a real fundraising. And I think that might be something that's worth considering so I thought it would be good to have a discussion and then if the board wants to develop a policy we could go in that direction and then people wouldn't be guessing about what makes sense or doesn't make sense. But we might not feel that way but I thought it was worth raising. Well we did start this conversation at one of the earlier meetings this summer and kids not really understanding why they're fundraising for those trips versus fundraising for parents group versus miscellaneous fund you know other fundraising and maybe it would be worth looking at having the board create a budget for field trips that includes you know a certain number of big field trips that we know are happening to make sure that everybody gets to go and nobody has to go door and then and then be clear about what's additionally got or how those additional things are handled too. I mean we don't want to be improving every field trip either but when I first came on the board we did have to approve field trips under certain circumstances and it was really unclear as to the basis for that or how we chose that there. And that kind of exemplifies our next activities in particular where there should be an ability of students to participate and the extra thing becomes either there's a lot of pressure directly or indirectly to participate and some of the fundraising for you know the extra activities where the pressure means. I don't always do this I have to say there's a lot of little media pieces around this particular fundraiser that started yesterday and a lot of people were raising questions about the cost of the Montreal trip and the cost of the Boston trip at the middle school and how did those get paid for if families can't afford them and I actually even though my kid is going on those trips I'm not sure who goes to the high school or who determines if they raise money at the middle school what happens to that do we have any sort of explanation of that so you're asking about two different things okay one parents groups at the middle school typically incorrectly I'm wrong teachers will stop so it could be offers visits I was just in the office yesterday and they were talking about a musician and asking the parents group to pay for rotating a musician educator to come in so that kind of piece the fundraising and ask Matt about this today because I assumed Tina wants to ask this question the sports fundraisers are for the additional things so the volleyball last year sorry because volleyball was not budgeted for so those for fundraising that was not typical so put that aside from your thinking but like when the soccer team for instance does fundraising the school budget pays for their uniforms and transportation and that kind of normal outfit that has something that the kids are going to keep and has their name on it you know it's something additional to what we put on the team then the fundraiser is for that they're going to keep that it's not going to stay in the coffers of the school Montpelier High School the kids are going to keep that sometimes when the boosters they pay for something that's additional like let's say we want our sports every year without the names on it without the names on it it just says we want our high school soccer then the boosters pay for it then that does become the high school's possession and kids use them every year is my understanding of the process so it's a different it's a different piece of the puzzle for why different people fuck race so those are two but then if a sixth grade class wants to go to Montreal he does not give it to them well often what happens is the kids in the class will fund-rate so let's say the sixth grade class wants to go and it costs $5,000 maybe the kids go door to door they manage to come up with $500 then they put an application to the parents group and they say can we have another $500 and the parents group gives them that and then what happens if a parent if a family can't afford the remaining bills I think was $600 and that's where the board's conversation around equity fits in that's where it is because what we don't want to create is a charity situation which is what we have now basically if the family can't afford it and that puts vulnerable families in a hard spot so that's what connects to our equity discussion that we had last year around does the board when we think of budgeting this year want to make a blanket field travel fund and say we will fund these trips the question will become which trips are you going to fund and which ones aren't you going to fund I'm curious at the beginning of the school year all the classes decide they want to do these trips and they fund raise for it do they just have them or do we as the administration do they choose these are the primary trips that will benefit our students the most in these ages with these experiences and these are the ones the district supports and I think you get different answers if you ask different people so I think teachers would say their curricular focus never had a curriculum formalized so take your heart sell for me what answer is this tradition they go to Montreal they go to Boston they go to and we're not even in that but it's tradition it's where you go now you might say because I remember the beginning they went to Montreal because we said we can't because they we said they don't accept these are my which trips they go there for I'm just talking about what I said a year ago I was going to Montreal because I was a candidate for sixth grade now as you well know I'm coming from a curriculum background and there's no standard that's labeled Canada I asked you to leave that I just found you a discussion came from from an equity perspective though providing the same exact level of support to the economically advantaged and the economically disadvantaged without a equitable curriculum and the the the equitable super equitable revenue source I don't know if it really accomplishes our goal of equitability I am very you know sensitive to the whole concept of you know the stigmatizing the process making it exactly Andrew he's saying if you give money to people who don't need it that's not the same as equity if you provide the same compensation to someone who has an income of a household income of $300,000 versus a household of $30,000 I don't see how that improves the equitability of the situation that's public education right I don't know so this is public education and we do not care what your income is when we give you an English text or a social studies text or we give it to you to use this is part of the politics I would say so Libby's I would say I would certainly like the discussion of okay I think we should have X number of filters during from 10 to 12 during the course of the year and you can decide oh thanks we need to relate to the curriculum which we might not have so you know my theory is the product goes with the books so it's public education right and we think it's important for kids to have the experience up look we have Boston it's a great historic resource not that far away we I know we don't I've heard we don't I've heard we don't I've heard we don't I've heard we don't take kids to the ocean anymore I think which could be part of the science I have not heard that one science related we used to take third graders to the ocean I think they were the gorg now who does right now who does approve a field trip they come to I don't good I don't good those are principles in each building we decide on who goes where and it is to be honest I can speak from when I took kids to Montreal and not it was taking the children out of the country and out of the city neither of which some of them had been the parents that attended with us some of them had never been out of the city nor out of the country or the education I feel like there's at least three different threads in this conversation right so one is if there's going to be fundraising that's endorsed by the district what kind of fundraising would I think policies would be helpful if we're going to have field trips are they going to be curricular and some kind of approval that they are connected to the curriculum or not and then there's a question of if we're going to have field trips are they going to be funded through the district through the budget without fundraising so I just wanted to say I'm hearing all three different topics all important and there's also I mean there's also field trip that you echo in Burlington let's say which is a bus for a cost and then there's a field trip here's my overnight very different things yeah if you took a grade yeah $600 ahead to Montreal most of a grade it's like $40,000 to $50,000 yeah you're going to have is that the only time that happens K-12 that a whole class goes away overnight we're going to have a trip how do they stay overnight in Montreal do we you know throw the needle on the charity in a different way where we give subsidies to certain families regardless of whether they ask for instance kids that qualify for free to use lunch that would be an easy way but I don't know how I don't know how I don't know what the people just above that limit are having an easier time I don't know how I don't know what it feels like to be close to that limit I don't know what the answer is to this I'm not suggesting what I do right now I think we need a bit more information but just to say that public education because it's public education well that is equity you have this pool of resources we know that public education isn't always equitable and we're striving to create a more equitable system I think that's the tough question to ask and the other question is if we if we take down the full cost of all of the things or most of the things that are fundraised for are we willing to do that I think it's a good idea I think it should not be done I think it should not be done I don't know the things that they run they're fundraised for are not things that need to be done to the public schools I don't know the things that are still very valuable but not necessarily in the food, water, shelter care everybody I think it gets tough the parents group I don't find the same thing I'm speaking just from my experience as a building administrator and teacher for many years not necessarily as a superintendent right now because again I don't approve these requests in my position but parents group pay for different things because opportunities arise and they're not necessarily set and I also worry about getting kids out of a building particularly those from lower socioeconomic status families and kids who come speaking a different language than English and getting them out of the building the language development that things like a field trip does for kids is tremendous and experiences are tremendous so it's a conundrum and I don't I don't really want to position but I don't want to limit those opportunities for teachers to think about it it's good to hear from you that you think there's great value in it do I think everybody has a different perspective on a trip no they don't only do a trip but I think having something where a first grade teacher can say hey there's the show of the Flynn it's connected to the meeting I just did and they're doing they're told on stage I want to take my kids to it I don't know that's going to happen a year in advance so well I don't think there are any teachers that don't think they've got to carry it to your point you know it's true it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a and it's a it's a it's a you know Those are the wonderful experiences that can connect dots in the classroom that can open eyes it can bring horizons Increase appendance Increase appendance A lot of the students for some students that's that's a rare opportunity to go see my child go see Boston and have you know have their eyes open to that experience the difficulty I have and probably back to what Andrew had to say but what is making the determination about whether I can afford the trip or not is probably not equitable. Maybe you could say something like free and reduced lunch, but suppose I'm just about free and reduced lunch and actually I can't afford in my budget to pay that amount of money to go to Montreal. My car just broke or something happened. By the way, I'm not going to ask you, where am I going to tell you? Because I've always been able to pay for myself. I'm going to head on to Athena, too, and now I take off my administrative hat. My personal sixth-grader class is going to a camp, like a summer camp, but they do school things, right? It's not a choice. It's not a choice for us as parents, and so we're getting a $263 bill for that. My choices were I will work to fundraise and try to decrease my cost. I will ask for financial aid, or I will pay the full vote. You are keeping me very busy as a superintendent. You are. So a lot of times I was just checked with the $263 bill, and we're taking a board. I don't know how much I'm going to have that experience, but at the same time I was like, this is not a choice for me. So there's lots of different ways to look at it and ask what I'm saying. Could I also add just one thing from a completely different perspective? Isn't it also a good experience for kids to do the fundraising, to learn, to be independent, to learn kind of the value of a dollar, and to have that kind of ownership, like I paid for this, I helped create this trip, and I do agree with, you know, maybe there needs to be a policy about what that looks like, but I think it is a valuable experience for them. That's something that Lynx spoke about today, like if the soccer team wants to get their name on something, right, that they have to go out and they have to ask for it. They have to learn how to speak to strangers. And we have a sense of what it is like to be independent. We have a sense of what it is like to be independent. As the most advocate I'd say, however, if you were the parent, if I'm selling the chocolate bars, and you're the parent that can take three boxes to the office with you and sell them in one day, and the power by the way, don't work at a business that I could take any of those boxes and sell them at. The children gain different things from that. I'm just telling you what does happen. And the other one I would add about the time that fundraising might take from the staff, I mean, the staff in the school did, if you think about the return on investment, we have teachers and faculty that are well trained and that we're paying to teach. And if they're taking time out of their day to do, to work on anything that's coordinating around the fundraising, like Matt is, you know, for athletics, it maybe really makes no financial sense. You know, a profession, an organization that was a nonprofit that's doing fundraising to stay afloat would always be counting any staff time and the cost of that staff time to figure out, you know, to the extent that a fundraising effort makes any sense financially, they'd be counting how much they're paying their staff to work on it. And I don't think that we do that. And I realize that a lot of the work is done by parents, but I do get the sense that teachers can get drawn into it, or Matt seems to be drawn into this. And coach, doctor coaches seem to be drawn into it. I'm not sure that the district ever sits back and looked at. My recollection for the fifth grade Boston troop was that the teacher spent a lot of time on fundraising activity. And also, enough that I was starting to be like, this doesn't make any financial sense to me at all that the teachers are doing that. Also, sometimes classroom time. I'm checking off who's given me what, when, at the beginning of the day. Right, so I think that's definitely a consideration that the district should be keeping in mind. I would support Jerry's comment though. I mean, I sold a lot of hoagies. Both of them. An Italian sub. And in Pennsylvania, I sold thousands of hoagies in my youth. And I think it was really, really helpful. I'm a really, really shy person. And it was really helpful for me to have that experience of asking people to buy hoagies. And the baseball team with that shells all weekend. And that's great. There were shells selling, selling to go on there. Spring break, sure. Right. I think that's where the district can, as I was saying to Jim at a meeting we had, the district can use the help and support and guidance of the school board. And because, that trip in particular, right, there's been lots of requests to do fundraisers on campus. And we've done a lot so far this year to do outside of organizations to come do fundraisers on our campus here. And I was able to say, because I knew you all wanted to talk about it, we're putting a whole lot of additional fundraisers because the board. Yeah. So we're like the baseball team wanted to do a flamingo fundraiser thing and put flamingos all over the lawn one morning and have the baseball team talk to it. Yeah. So it's kind of an outside thing. We're not sending them on that trip. They've decided to go on that trip, right? Yeah, sports team. It's not a, it's not a league. It's not a fundraiser. The school did not decide on going on that trip. The parents of the baseball players decided to go on that trip. So, and then we had, you know, some other, you know, a couple of organizations, kids organizations, and we have a very interesting policy about outside groups. Oh, right. Yeah. Oh, I understand that. Yeah. That's an imagine that that's in our policy. I know that I missed it before. I missed it. You have to point that out to me. I will look for it. Hopefully, maybe there's the New District policy, but that issue has come up in the past. Okay. There's definitely a concern about not having outside groups. That is good to know. Because I missed that. So, I'm going to find a few issues. There seems to be some parameters around what fundraising is appropriate and not appropriate. And then if it is appropriate, what to do about, you know, how it's used and situations around equity, you know, particularly for field trips. Maybe there's a money issue. I mean, a bigger field trip falls into the category different than if I want to go to the Flynn program. It's a different price tag than if I want to go to Montreal for three days. I think that's important. What is the appropriate time for a fundraiser and when is not? And is the district going to take up any level of that in the budget? Exactly. And that gets to the accreditation. Could we put a limit? Like, there's no field trip that any family is going to have to pay more than $50 for kind of a thing. I mean, but I think we would have to understand what the... Yeah, I think that is. Yeah. I think it's important to mention that because... Is this everybody gets this field trip for $50? Yeah. Everybody's going to take that field trip for $50. Yeah. If it wasn't for that in the budget, we would need to know what the price tag is. Right. You think that's $50,000? I mean, it's $500 per family. I think it's more than $600. It's $600 in the class and about 80 students. That's including the fundraising. But if it was $600 times 90 kids, it's $54,000. Are there other high school trips that cost like $1500? No. The only high school trip is in Ireland, and it costs a jillion dollars, but that is very voluntary and very small. It's like 10 kids. 10 kids every two years. So I want to clarify, when I was talking about... When I took kids to Montreal, we took them for the day and got them home. Yeah. That was a different fee. This is three days. Two nights. Yeah. And they go back to the city on Montreal. I don't know if you wanted to allow any more comment. I was giving a thought to that. What was the board's decision? I think we opened it up. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Let me give you thoughts, and then we should probably make some decisions about... I think we're ready towards giving the policy committee... Some more. ...a task, but... We'll see what you want to talk about this issue. Yeah. You might want to do another issue. A little bit. Okay. I'm going to go with the fourth. That's one. Maybe five. Five. Six. Sorry, I don't know your name. Okay. The May. I should have known that. So next... I'll help solve some of your conversations that you had tonight. Good. I'm the president of the Mockingbird Rocksbury Public Schools Parts of Education, which is a new form of parents group that is in a rural organization that oversees all four parents groups. So, Rocksbury, the U.S. We intro school and high school. We were one of our five-year-olds in C-3 this winter, and so we have been working very hard to policy our board over the past six months. And looking forward, really the vision of this organization that we've been talking about here today is to help resolve some of these pain points. And so we want to create order. We want to create a system. We want to create transparency around all the findings that happens in our school district. And in order to do that, really the first step that the board is going to be working on over the next couple of months is taking an inventory of what are our fundraisers? Who is fundraising? How long are they asking? Why are they asking? And when are they asking for this money? I'm hoping to reveal some things if we can pull some historical data and we have a really good number to share with the board about what is the actual number that we're talking about here because we can't just keep throwing dirt at the wall. We have to have actual data before we resolve our decisions. As we start this spreadsheet, we have some good data, but it's not done yet. We still have to do a lot of digging because, as you've said, from the public as a board member it would be really nice to be proactive and are fundraising. You know, there might be outliers here and there, but really to limit that and plan for the year ahead if we can. We don't know what the number is. Our goal is to, as I said, produce that and then really create the financial policies that we have transparency. We have our own policies around fundraising. We're coordinating and communicating around all of the schools. One thing that just bothered me was our customers. So, say for a national way, for our parents, they're our customers. They're getting bombarded with fundraisers. There has to be a more streamlined and effective way so that our customers are not getting confused about why we keep asking for money. And so this is not a tea time. We're building an infancy of building an organization. As you know, that's a pretty big, a tall order in, you know, meeting that happen, but I feel that the board that we have is great. Everyone is anonymized. There's representation from all of the schools. And if you give us time to come back in the winter and share our updated information with you and have some good numbers and maybe some structure, I think that will help inform a fundraising policy that you will feel a little bit about based on some data that we can produce for you. Great. Great. I'm guessing you'll be capital of the budget committee on... It takes. I mean, this is exciting. I think we have a huge opportunity to invite people to take a role and I think we can get this done. Since you've been down this, what is your timeline? I mean... So we received a resignation of 501c3 in the winter and since then we have been really trying to restructure our financial policies so every school has their own bank. It's okay, we have all the schools under one bank account so that we can see all the accounting. We're trying to build structure for receipts because once you're 501c3, there's fiscal responsibility that you have to maintain. And so that's just taking a long time to kind of move the type of thing around all four grants groups to come under one level. And I think we're still in an infant phase of communication and awareness. I mean, there's a lot of behind the scenes work that's been done. I don't think people are really aware of what we're doing because we weren't ready to come up with anything. We're trying to be very strategic about how we build this in the right. And so that's what we focus on. We focus even more. We have a more policy. We have five laws. And so that just takes time to build and that's pretty much all we've been doing for the past six months. And we'll be at this another six months before you like to talk to us again. So actually, we have started the data. We have a pretty good outline and it's not closing our share of the minimum side of our board or to start thinking about how we're going to collect more of this information and our grants groups, maybe we can assign people help us. It's going to take a huge team effort to collect this incredibly realistically January, February. It's because people are busy in life. For the community at large, this is now essentially a tax deductible donation, sort of a foundation that's not associated with the school. It is associated with the school. So if you, we built a website and the website is mrpspi.org and attached there is all the four parents' groups both sides. You can make a tax, what is it? Tax deductible. Tax deductible. You just need to add four schools and hide all those. The finances are separate from the school. The school has because you you don't make anything of the parents' group funds with the school budget funds has been tricky. So to have a stand on this and contribute to support the schools. Yes. That's 100%. I mean, all of us are volunteers. Right. And as far as the government, you're not the government. So all the donations are 100% go right back to the schools and it's a tax deductible donation. Great. So you go back to the schools as a donation from the organization? That's part of our financial policy that we're working on. We're working with clarity exactly how it's going to work and to find ways to have the follow the rules and regulations of our 511c3 and the policies that we create. They can keep their money. We're just the oversight organization really fiscally and insurance which is really a huge deal for the parents' groups and we have health insurance that covers all parents' group events and we're here to really coordinate and streamline the efforts of all the 4 parents' groups. Eventually, we're not there yet. Could you repeat the actual names again? Sure. Well, it's actually MRPS, Partners in Education. Or is it MRPS PI? So we want that to become a household name. PI? That might be. We're making the PI a list. We don't have, that 6th grade does not have any form of sort of class trip and so I would ask the piece I think because the type of fundraising that was done or in the way in which our students were brought into it is what's causing the sort of current flare-up. But the real discussion is what do we value as a community in terms of experiential learning? And what are we willing to say as part of the curriculum and how we're going to pay for it? That to me is the bigger question so I'd ask you not to lose that focus. When you think of the three things we're talking about, flip that around and start with the what do we want to get out of this for our children? And then what portion of it are we okay with as the community of pain? As a conversation, I think it's kind of slow to decide. I don't want to make sure that that stays up front. We did fundraising back then too. We sold candy bars. I remember selling candy bars. But the trip was there and it was accessible to everybody and I think that that is something that was lost. I also have a unique perspective that my sister runs the Montreal trip. And I think she and I think she helps run the Montreal trip. She's one of the teachers. She's fabulous. I don't disagree with that. It is, they make it as accessible as they can for people to go and have this amazing experience and you do have to sort of burn it and work for it. I think that's incredibly important. I love what the baseball team has done this year. They have taken upon themselves to go above and beyond. To worry about raising, having that spirit of sort of entrepreneurship and I think that's what Crafter's Edge is all about. I think that's a great experience and they get something super fun that's outside of the curriculum base as a reward for that work. And so I think that's there. I think some of it's lost when they're selling plastic McNacks that nobody really wants. They want to support their school. So thank you. Thank you. So I wanted to circle back around to earlier and also touch on something that Adrienne said. The pie organization is in its infancy. I've actually been helping the Trevor write the financial policies for it. So I was aware and this fundraiser that has actually existed before pie started meeting. So that's why there's maybe a disconnect between parents groups and the pie organization because unfortunately signed a contract before we had any meetings. I have been with me our Trevor's report from yesterday's parents group meeting. If you want to see what we've been finding. I can say that I know the Machelle trip ran 60 grand. Boston was like 18. That was 182 per student for like 99 students. I think that those would be good to consider in terms of school budget related things. The things we fund are more piecemeal like I have a phone rental for a dinner theater and the orchestra teacher wanted to take her students to see black violin at the very outer house. So we funded things like that. To a total of 4200 parent or teacher requests and another 800 in support staff gifts and paying speakers and but yeah. So I agree that it would be really helpful to have something about it. I think that the motivation of the parents group with the big funders that we have going on was so that these parents who are looking at the $600 bill from Montreal might be looking at $300 bill instead. Like if we could not get out of the park it would make everybody's life a little easier. I have three MSMSRs and I've been paying for Boston and I paid for Boston for two last year and it's just hard parenting. And I think that we want to take the edge off of our parents so that it's not what they have to worry about. Kids everybody benefits from the trips and we all just want what's best for our students. I'll give you guys a copy of this if you want something to peek at. Thank you. I have a lot I can't email to give. I'm a parent of a 6th grader and I didn't plan on being here and I had a few people who asked me to come because I had a very emotional evening last night that I wanted to share with you folks. When I was on the parents group years ago we made a very purposeful decision to stop doing Genevieve as a fundraiser even though it made things like that because even though it was by far the biggest fundraiser and it was something that could sort of be counted on to fund some of these really important things and we knew at that time that we were going to have to find another way to find that money and so we put on our thinking caps and one of the things that came out of it was the fall festival that's happening in a couple weeks that Adrienne, it was her brain child and she said, I can't believe we're here in this beautiful state and we don't have a fall festival from up in their kids and it's something that all the kids can participate in they can do fundraising for it my daughter was going to sell earrings and one of the little vending things and the other thing that came out was a living cloud which is frankly if I die tomorrow it will be my so I was really upset when my daughter came home yesterday and slapped this package on our table and said mommy I have to go out and sell these cards and I have to hand it to people and they'll feel that and they'll feel like they have to buy it so then they won't want to hand it back so they'll buy it and it's $20 a piece and I was like wait wait because it didn't sound like what MRPS Pi was working on it didn't sound like the Boston trip it just sort of came out of nowhere and then and she said that they had a school-wide assembly to learn about how to do that and again my reaction is really emotional to this because I feel like anytime we put kids in a position where they feel like they have to come up with the money that means their parents have to come up with the money and I grew up in St. John'sbury rural and poor and I remember dreading this scholastic book fair because it was like this wealth of things that we would never be able to have and I was really glad when I worked at Union I worked at the book fair that there was a method that the teachers could help and the parents could help and we could make sure that the parents could put money in so kids who couldn't do the money could buy books so I don't think we really understand the message that kids get when they're asked to do that kind of fundraising I think there's different kinds of fundraising that can be really positive and involved and involve some sort of community event and then there's fundraising like what Natalie came home with which to me obviously it's really raw and so therefore obviously the media at her age found it really raw because if I was to get the thing that I got last year for Boston that said you can either fundraise or you can pay an installment or you can pay the cost to Boston and asking a kid to fundraise means either asking their parents to fundraise or asking the kids to go out so I'm all about fundraising my daughter worked at the 50-50 raffle several times in mountaineer games to raise money for her soft bodger I get that but it just felt like such an unhealthy delivery the message to her and I don't think we really understand I'm so glad you folks were talking about equity because even 50 dollars is a lot for some people and can be prohibitive and there were definitely kids in Natalie's class who didn't get to go on 5th grade field trip and I kind of wondered why so I really appreciate that you're talking about equity and about ensuring that things that are valuable like Boston which frankly I think she knows more about that spirit of history than I do because of that trip for our part of the curriculum and then we can talk about other ways to fundraise but that's where I think the big thing is so good to see so thank you very much oh and I wanted to apologize to Lene for the fact that I posted this on Facebook last night and she had to definitely and professionally and calmly deflect a lot of other not necessarily helpful commentary that came out of my post about that video then thank you that's a lot of money a quick 30 seconder should I come up? okay so many thanks to Jill I actually messaged her back and thanked everyone who kind of came and put some thought into it and then realized that emotions got the best of a lot of people last night what I wanted to say and that maybe will explain where I was coming from I was literally a one person parents group as of three weeks ago I was the president there were no other officers I put out a plea on front board forum for a treasurer and secretary but now we're a three person parents group so we signed this agreement back when Leslie was our faithful president and it was up to me to execute the entire thing at the start of school so I have a lot of respect for the ball festival and a huge group of parents that put the time into coordinating it but I was just one person and I am doing the best I can to support our kids but people have to get out there and they have to show up at the meetings people were posting about not knowing this was going on or how can we chose this it was always on the agenda people just have to show up we love everyone's opinion but when we're alone we can only do our best it's in the audiences it's a great job of serving the school we appreciate the time I have a question I have a response I'm Christopher I commented a lot on this I'm sorry I didn't understand fundraising very much as a supporter of all of these field trips I went to Virginia Elementary School Virginia High School I spent a lot of time fundraising doing community events way back in the 1980s and I got to do a lot of things including doing a new trip to Montreal and doing a new trip to Boston I also did a very small trip to Germany that I spent the entire summer so I'm pretty familiar with what it means to a young person to raise that money when a concern came up much in the same way in Paris when I came home I sat in a third day school lapping plastic cars with McDonald's and Burger King all over it it was pretty stunned that that was the first experience he was having of fundraising at mainstream middle school when our previous experiences were these wonderful things like the lip-sync battle and the fall festival and popcorn movie nights and the scholastic book fair which I agree again I'm so pleased that there are ways that all kids can participate in the book fair I'm not sure that that was true when I was a young person I think you had to have money to go so I asked a bunch of questions well maybe I should ask you too so I just posted my questions again and the questions are really why aren't we contracting with a for-profit group to do this fundraiser why aren't we asking our kids to sell these corporate branded cards for $20 that most people aren't going to use why aren't we doing diligence around whether or not this company actually does what it says it does how much of the money that a $20 car cost is actually going to go to support the trip to Boston or support the trip to Montreal and what I'm going to do first with right now is not a lot of sharing for a really long time and if I were to answer my question and say please give me $20 how is this going to support the work that I do and how is this going to go to a for-profit company that would be pretty hard to sell but I believe in transparency and telling people what they're actually giving towards and I can't feel good about sending my kid out with the plastic cards to our neighbors, our friends and family and say please give us $20 $10 is going to go to the cost I would rather take a letter out and say why aren't we going to support an equitable trip to Boston and an equitable trip to Montreal can you give us $20 $10, $50 and every single dollar will go towards supporting that trip I would much rather do that and I would put some energy into that kind of fundraising but it can get behind a for-profit model that takes half the money especially when there are kids that don't have resources and they're being pressured into going out and trying to sell these cards and half the money is going away it's going out of our community so that was my feeling I'll be with you I just want to say one thing I agree with most of what you said I worry parents get their information from friends on their Facebook page and you made the statement that I learned that from Facebook I don't want to speak for you but I've learned that position where misinformation is on friends on their Facebook page so if you want to pan going to Linnette in this instance coming to me those are much better sources of information than especially if it's an angry one I said I learned from Facebook I really learned that from Linnette she posted that on the Facebook page and I absolutely agree that it's not the best way to meet somebody that's a pretty terrible way to meet somebody thanks for having me today thank you to raise money to go to Montreal and I was like what's this stuff and I looked it over and I saw a lot of corporations in a few of the places yeah I looked at Facebook and so I looked at the data and I see there's an MSPHA so imagine that's the parents group if this is who is the person who are these people and so when I quickly look over see the company of Washington state and looking forward to it I see that for those one card is profit for that Washington state company you don't have to do this you don't have a quarter to do this it just says well we have to raise money because this woman in the bathrooms and got some equipment they don't want to stop taxes pay for that, that's all okay that's done so I remember she had that idea talking with her friends she was like we have to do this I'm like no you don't have to do this so I'm going to sit down here tonight saying they had to do this there's a problem one this though is if this is a part and it's part of the non-profit organization then people should reflect the full order name of that non-profit organization and this good work does not have that information that if you do have a fundraiser and you don't have to have consent I've delighted two hundred in the Boy Scouts of America you know we have a whole family that's going to be here and every family that we have in three schools must have so that's what I was sitting down last night and you have to know that because I'm not taking it I thought I was not going to do it and I'm really sorry yes, as well as my opinion hello yesterday when I got home yesterday I gave these cards to my mom and we had to sell and she was like what we just have nothing to do with the full festival and we could get these prizes and like everybody wanted the prizes sound cool there's not a lot of local things on here there's a whole bunch of fast food there's Langdon Street in China Star which are like the only local things and we don't really go to China Star because we can't really eat from this food and my mom said I wasn't allowed to do it then she went on Facebook she posted a whole bunch of things and uh tell your mom to call me next time okay no that's great it's a solvable problem so it's a topic so are we sending something to the policy company that went along with it can you speak up the training that happened at the old school assembly repeat phrases to then tell a lot of people they were trying to sell these things it's one thing that you have an opportunity to sell these if you'd like to but to be training our children as force feeding sales people is something that we need to consider as part of that policy that's what I was just about to say there's some things going on here that are very separate from what we began this conversation and it seems like we could probably the policy committee could probably establish some general guidelines so we have the data to make decisions about do we want to pay as a tax payer base for all people that are wondering which we want to pay for them that would provide really helpful guidance I think that's an easier piece and then the current fundraiser that's underway right now that people are not happy with is generally speaking not our business do we want to engage with that at all or do we want to leave it to Libby to work out clarifying what's going on with that that's a really good question there's definitely a lot of I think stuff swirling around in terms of whether kids were being told they had to do it or sports teams were being told they had to do it and the schools would be clarifying that I think this is definitely a management territory because a lot of territory is on the community territory and since we're in the middle of now it's actually are you going to open the comments? sorry are we sure? yes we just have to decide who would decide I it's a perception at this point rather than like it doesn't really matter what happened it's more that we need to make sure people understand what's going to happen I think what happened matters though I'm still unclear on if kids were told you have to do this thing or you don't have to do this but when I can speak to them I'll be there nobody wants to be here all night my kids think it's great because it's half bad time so I was there I actually introduced the fundraiser that he was there to speak to kids I told the kids a really quick short about what we fund your photo booth for the school bands you're pitching on your field trips this is what we are trying to help raise money for so you can fund all these things for you this year Bob came up in terms of things they had to say the only thing he really pressed was make sure you thank people for their time they won't remember what you were selling them but they'll remember the way you treated them that's what he pressed so that you have to sell it you're going to be in trouble if you come back without them you'll be financially responsible if you lose them all of that came out of nothing mess we are all baffled as to where that came from middle school kids talking to middle school kids I had teachers come up to me afterwards who were like that was really good he was a good speaker the kids were really solid none of us were shock and awe horrified at what he had said I was equally surprised to see the comments about kids feeling like they had to do something that was never conveyed to them he did express that or Pam did express that this is the only fundraiser we're going to hand you this year the only one for you guys to support your school community because the parents group can't find their things if they don't have funds to fund them but the force that's being expressed behind things just didn't exist I called Pam's morning and was like we both were there and we couldn't figure it out so that's what happened thank you for that I think I still remain concerned that there's a perception there are mistaking perceptions that's all it needs to be addressed both with the athletic teams and I know personally that some of the athletes on the high school athletic teams got a particular message which I think is not the district's message and I think that message is out there so I agree it's not management territory but I do think it's important we need to figure out how how there's another meaning about identifying the expectations I did get a comment from a parent that their high school athlete would be given some of the original workouts if they didn't sell that was a dress that's been covered so that's been taking care of the middle school parents understanding of how the fundraiser works seems murky so a clarifying statement to middle school parents about addressing the fact that it's not a work and the spoons maybe we do too I try to kind of spread the news and answer all the questions last night we need to cover 100% of the parents we can use our switch I worry about there is in several instances in a lot of times about what is district and what is not and this particular one was not district it was a school assembly I think yeah I think once again it has to be so I don't think it's a stretch to ask that if we crafted something clarifying to everyone that she would be willing to send it out to the school right Pam can be very curious to the fact that it's a parents group fundraiser but here parameters of this parents group good I did email Pam as soon as Natalie came home I haven't heard from her yet I just wanted to address the perception because it's all about the context so when you call all the kids together there's a whole wide assembly there's an understanding there that the school community has entrusted this person to talk to our children and if you're telling a fifth and sixth and seventh grader all these wonderful things that they experience and know about and that this thing is related to that and that you may as well have told them so a very strong message to send I know it's very compliant good kids too please good intentions which is down to very limited really has been searching for an effective fundraiser and this has raised money elsewhere I don't really understand how it's raised money because I've downloaded that and tried to go through the process and I don't see how it's going to raise money but apparently it has raised money really well elsewhere so I think that they worked hard to find something that would work and we don't want to constrain them but they can't effectively raise money it constrains us we've got this great amount of creativity Leslie and I once did a non-scholastic book fair in middle school partnering with a local bookstore which was a lot of fun and a lot of work and I think made $0 same as that we did a local alternative to scholastic book fair at the elementary school two years and it was a disaster I also it's really I feel like I could get an octave for this and I recognize it there are families who don't have the same value around stores like McDonald's that go to McDonald's because that's the store they can afford on a night when they need to have a cheap easy meal and so the comments about the bigger box stores are things that Montpelier doesn't value there are families in Montpelier I know who didn't value those types of opportunities for their family and see it as they night out so I want to watch her just as we're thinking about equity and our lenses that we all come with a very big level of privilege around this table and we have to keep that in mind even using my privilege spending resources on the app I was not generating much revenue for Montpelier I would rather just write a $50 check to the parents group and not get that but we love one we did outside we did look into the two con books of past years that we had used that were local after they failed miserably last two years ago we had to pre-bought them all and ended up with we probably could have built things out of extra cute con books so it was a net loss we surveyed parents and said what can we do differently and they said it was reusable the app with the coupon book had been a disaster and had parents what was it renewed their membership and they assumed the money would go back to the school but in fact that wasn't the case so we did the look for something and schools surrounded us and used this fundraiser with a specific person and with great success I was just going to say it must be the area because at Montpelier it was a year or two trying to sell me that yes yes last year we certainly did try to keep it as local as possible and this is the avenue we ended up at it sounds like we're going to show you where the parents come up with guardrails that makes sense they are independent we're going to do something we can try to we need to we need to form the commissioners of the policy committee doing this probably mine as well I don't think this will even with that at this point so the policy committee to draft a policy around fundraising I'll make that do we want to we probably don't even want to specify right now about like budgetary type equitability type issues we're just talking about something we can react to I second that well the fundraising policy um it doesn't seem like the fundraising policy is the right place to address this question of how field trips connect with curriculum and are accessible to everybody that seems to be a different question it's a different conversation important conversation but it's definitely a different one but it may be addressed in what's the project conversation curriculum budget and the equity policy might be a good spot for that can the policy committee um I know we have a motion but just before I vote on that motion I just want to understand what that includes so if it doesn't include that can we charge them with us another task the policy committee if anybody really wants to know who the heroes in town are because there's so much work can we charge them with finding where in our existing policy we address the connection between field trips curriculum and equity just I'm probably interested in that question so I'm happy to do that but I don't know if it's a policy committee Ryan and I tried today and couldn't find any think that I figure out how they're going to happen yeah if we need a separate motion just a more general motion to address the conversation that was before the board tonight yeah I think about it more as a curriculum piece it's the board's purview under educational quality standards to approve our curricular I mean it's your curriculum typically that's where this entity fits into that discussion I think it's stated very clearly in the educational policy or educational quality standards so the curriculum the board approves curriculum itself should speak to field trips and equity no what the board's purview would be under EQS is to approve the district's curriculum right so something like a field trip is would have to have a tied connection to what you've approved the fourth grade curriculum to be based on the standards that are guiding that work but you can connect it very easily that way so how does that come up for discussion good question okay we could think about it yeah but there are two different things right one is a little bit more there are other field trips and we should create an action item so that this doesn't just linger out there for the next several months and actually that was the data that somebody else said they would help us with I don't think that's what you were saying she was talking about fundraising data oh and you were saying there are no field trips in our budget as far as I know right now everything they fund raise for would be there is a line so that's what we're paying for right now what are we not paying for I have absolutely just how do you do this we're going to get out into your future process so we can in process we don't need to get this ironed out for this year's budget we're working on the curriculum right so this could be a longer term question I think especially if we want to do it well and not just throw people into mayhem we're not just saying we're going to fund Montreal and Boston because that's what the trips have always been right teachers I'm sure for this year's Boston and Montreal trip so let's answer this question with an idea next year I think of course it is maybe that's what information they already have and I think that's the finance committee to do that task I'm going to send people to get the information we're going to have the information we'll have to go to the principals and grant grant might have that but we can do that I don't know because sometimes a field trip is like elementary school kids walk over to the high school to plant lettuce seeds or kids go to a lost nation theater show I would say only the cost one so field trips that cost money okay how does that happen every year? like the black bottle in it everything here is a place for what we do every year because they're related to the curriculum we find them very valuable for that reason and then there's I would hope I'll find somewhere whether it's the PTA or the school board or something that says spontaneous things of the moment and I'm sorry but you have to stay within those limits so there's seven spontaneous things this year you will only be able to do two yeah does not need to be accounted for so we've divided this since I'm on one of these committees I want to be clear about what is part of the committee assignment we do it thanks what is the it talks about fundraising not about field trips or curriculum yeah do you want to make that motion again just it was made in a second