 All right, I think we're ready to start. So, opening the meeting of the Montpellier-Roxbury Board of School Directors at 6.38. First order of business is public comment. You're done. Consent agenda, do you have a motion to approve the consent agenda? I moved to approve the consent agenda. I second the pause of favor. Is it okay that it just says resignation so we got a new one? Do we have to do something different or it just falls in there? Actually, I have a question on what item in the consent agenda. So what? We take back that. We take back the consent agenda. How about that? But Andrew, go for it. I flagged something, there was an issue with something in the minutes. Anna, is that corrected for this version? The attendance for the finance committee? Yeah. No, it is not corrected in the current packet you have, but will be corrected. Okay, does that require any action from us? I don't know. The only change in the minutes is I was not president of the finance committee. I don't think Anna's got to correct that. You were there in spirit. That is true. Right, is there a thing in there around us? Ghost? But I think it's a minor thing, but that was... I think it's clerical. It's clerical, it's typographical, it's not a big deal. Yeah. Our parliamentarians. A really easy question. I haven't. What? Really, maybe an easy question. It says the first day of school is August 24th, but then August 24th has this funky box around it and I don't know what that means. I haven't seen a person in the last day of school. That's a question, I didn't see that much in this talk. So I'm like, thank you. So it changes in response to EDA compliance and visibility on their website, just so you can see why the change from all colors. It's a better start. I'm glad you said that though, Michelle, because we were starting on the 25th and ending on the 16th. The one that's in here is the 24th and the 15th. I'm glad you said that, Michelle. Well, that's what the three plus three days. So we should not be approving this calendar? No, you should not be approving this version. Okay. We haven't approved it, I voted. No. We did vote. We did vote, sorry. We should do some kind of parliamentary unwind. Yeah. We've got enough mess here. Maybe just to like, what's the process for? Unwinding. Unwinding? Can you move to reconsider? To, yeah. Let's reconsider the consent agenda. I moved to reconsider the consent agenda. I'm so glad you said that, Michelle. Okay. We went through multiple versions of the calendar and the one we ended on is starting on the 25th and ending on the 16th. And is the 24th a teacher day? 24th is an open day. Nobody has to be anywhere on the 24th. Right, okay. A lot of teachers will use it as a discretionary. I have two suggestions. I mean, one is we can put off approving the calendar until our next meeting if it's not considered urgent. But I do know that people, well. It is our parents already asking. It's, we could, if it's possible to generate the correct one while we're doing other things in the meeting, we could come back and re-vote. I haven't had it. I haven't at my desk. Yeah, I just happened to put it in the wrong one. I'm being inclined to try to re-vote the correct calendar given that people are already asking about it. Do you know if you feel like that? It's just that one little mistake. Yeah. Can we approve it with the, with that change? And then we're done and everybody has some concrete planning skip tools. I mean, approve it without seeing it? Well, is it just the one change? It's two. Well, it's two. It's two. The first and the last. I don't mean to cause more trouble. I'm thinking the more concrete we get to families as soon as possible, the better that's all. Well, she was suggesting that she just bring us back the right one in 20 minutes or so. Oh, even better. I was thinking next. That's right. Sorry about that. Brigitte still had a question. So my question about the minutes was just more general and I meant to bring it up last week and forgot and I just thought I'd bring it up since Andrew brought up a question about the minutes. I think there's been a number of times where the minutes recently have said things like the board agreed. I've used language in the discussion along the lines of the board agreed or it was agreed. It was agreed and I think we have to be careful about that in the minutes because there really isn't any board agreement unless we take a vote on something. The minutes as they are are far more detailed than they need to be. The minutes really just need to be a record of decisions made. And I know that it's nice for transparency to add more but as you add more you bring in clarity. Yeah, and I just need that feedback. She just never took a look before. Yeah, that's all. I would say though, even though you're only recording the decision, sometimes we've had a discussion and then later on we try to think what we had the discussion about and we can't remember. So if there was some two-liner that said something about the discussion, I'm trying to suggest an in-between. It would be more like a discussion occurred, is that what you mean? The board discussed the data regarding gym usage and questions raised by the community about gym usage. And there's many levels of discussion you could get to but when it gets to the level if it was agreed or the board can see if it's reviewed in this way, it's going I think beyond what you could put in the minutes. And sometimes I know like it'll say like, Steve Henshin said this and I feel like that's nice to be on the record but it really doesn't matter what's being said by any one member of the discussion because it has no weight. And plus then you really feel like you need to read it. Right? You make sure that I read it. That really sets it to the real issue, Michelle. Yes, she leaves the board. Well, and we have recordings on file. Yeah, there are videos. And there are videos. So if we need to go back to some issue, we can go back to that. I can get rid of that feedback. Easier for her. Much easier for her. She's typing like mad. Well, you might just give her examples of Heather's minutes too. Which we're actually also overly detailed. But not as much. Yeah. But I do think it is good to know at least discussions because sometimes I have one vote. Right, even you young people forget. Okay, so that's not an action that needed. That's just a comment. So do you want a motion to approve the consent agenda without the calendar or do you want to just redo the whole consent agenda when we get the calendar back? Let's do a motion to approve without the calendar and then we come up with the calendar when it comes back. I will move that we approve the consent agenda without the district calendar. I'll second that. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? So here's on a vote, if we don't get, because I stopped it. I didn't say any opposed the last time, but still a vote as soon as you have a majority. And if you don't complete the vote. Oh, I thought you had done the whole thing. I hadn't gotten to the A's. Oh. So we've gone off the vote. But it was a unanimous aye and told people to say, hey, wait a second. I didn't mean that aye. Okay, we will approve the rest one and it's back. Monitoring reports. Yes, we have two monitoring reports. Travel reimbursement, the ever exciting ones. We're following that policy to the T, back to I think more to the T than it actually needs to be. And participation of home study. I'll close that monitoring report. I'm happy to take any questions about that, that the numbers are there, which is part of the policy that we have. I am. Two quicks. Go for it. On the second page about participation of home study students. Number three says students must participate in the following three areas. That's like saying, these, if they want to participate, these are the areas of participation allowable. Oh, okay. It reads like. They have any home study to, anybody that wants to participate must take phys ed, health and fine arts. And I knew that. No. It seems like it would say students. It's more like choices. I can fix that up. Cause I can understand how it reads that way. And my other question is curiosity, which almost all school boards ask, which is, do we know why these students are homeschooling? No. No. I think how would we find that? I'm intrusive. It is, but sometimes there's an underlining reason why more students would choose not to be in the school, but somewhere else. And clearly we don't know one. I'm just asking. I'm curious, maybe a ballpark idea. So these are home study students. Do we have any idea how many students are outside in other placements like a Catholic school or another private education? I can get that number for you. I don't know it off the top of my head, but I can get that number. I believe I can get that number for you, maybe. I don't think they actually, maybe I can't, because they don't have to register with us if they're registered in a different school. Sure. They're not. These are still, they have to register. We have to have them on early to recognize that they are their resident school if they're home study. But if you go somewhere else, I don't think you do. So these numbers reflect all of the students in the district that registered with AOE as home study students, whether or not they are engaging in a district. Right. And in a district. Right. I just want to make sure I understand that. And then the number of the main street middle school has one home study student taking PE. And that's the only one of these that are involved in the school. Yeah, I'm sure we had a few more at high school, but we don't have that this year. Another thing about home school is they have the ability to participate in our co-curriculum. Is that right? Do we have any record of the numbers of home schools who are using our athletics or co-curricular programs? I don't know that number. I don't believe. I don't. It's not a lot. Yeah. I don't know that number. And then it's not by any means urgent, but just it'd be interesting over time to track some of these things longitudinally and over time to see whether our numbers are going up, down. Well, we will with the policy monitoring. Right. As long as we keep it all the same, yeah. Because I have the same policy monitoring for last year, so we most definitely will be able to do that. It's part of a policy that I have to show the numbers each year. I was going to say it might be interesting to see them column wise. So we'll last year and next to this year and next to next year. Yeah. So you can see the track. So you can see the track. Yeah. But and then the other is we probably keep track of students in private. Right? Hey, I don't know. You must know because there are how many students are involved in these authorized educational facilities. But they might not know it by number, but they might not know that they were from up there. Because all the students ages six to 16 are required to be in school. Yeah. And you've got to know where they are. These are all excellent questions. I should not know the answer to. As you know, other schools as well. There's no other schools as well. Right. But I wonder where there's a list of Montpelier resident people between six to 16. That's beyond child count. Right. I'm not sure there is one, is what I was saying. We had this in relation to why or we had this discussion once at the board about Catholic schools and private schools and whatever is like wonder why someone would choose that. So I was excited to see. Is there a way of finding out? Otherwise, we just have numbers. Yeah. You really don't have a way of knowing unless something comes up that the superintendent might know that I wouldn't. That would be she's had four or five people come in and say, I'm going to such and such because of X, Y, and Z. Which has not happened. Right. I assumed that. Do we have a motion to approve the body for the discussion? Do you have a motion to approve the policy monitoring reports? Make the motion to approve the policy monitoring reports? I have a second. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great. Policy monitoring reports approved and learning focus. So, Eve? So today, I hope it isn't here. So I'll just be saying some things around some things you wanted me to add. So for student celebrations, we have the very first Black Lives Matter flag has been framed in the main lobby along with the testimony given to the board. And this is just to remind us of the day that MHS raised the flag in the importance of continuing to spread the message and education behind Black Lives Matter. And going along with that, the RJA has decided to hold affinity groups, which are basically small group meetings after school for students of all races just to continue to talk about race issues and to foster more diversity and inclusion and maximize the impact. Club Interact, explain what RJA is. OK. Is the Racial Justice Alliance, it's, yeah. And Main Street Middle School is raising the flag on Friday morning. That's great. Yeah, so Club Interact students cooked food for the warming shelter last week and volunteered to host. So it's good to see students getting more involved with the community and stuff. And for student issues, I've talked to a lot of students. And a large concern is the current health curriculum. And it's kind of hard because health is a very wide topic. And it's hard to be inclusive and get education for everything you need to. And but currently, the big issue that I talked about was its pro abstinence in the health curriculum currently. And there's not a lot of discussion on safe sex and safe LGBT sex and birth control options, which is really important when you're a teen and you're growing up. And it's very important to make it more inclusive. And I know that they're trying to do that, but there are ways that we can strive to be better at doing that. And we just want every student to feel safe and have a good sense of belonging and know about safe sex practices and mental health issues. Another issue is students leaving food around the school, which I know Renee tried to address. But there are some backlash with that. Yeah, but some students have expressed concern with not feeling comfortable in the school's cafeteria. So I think it would be good to have a group of students brainstorm some ideas of making it a safer and more comfortable place. And the last thing I hope want to need to add here was Lindsay Holman, with Up for Learning, will facilitate youth-adult partnership retreats with MHS and MSMS students and teachers who are working on restorative practices. Questions for you? Yeah, the cafeteria, you just mentioned, some students don't feel safe there. Can you expand upon that without putting any students in the community? I think it's just very clicky and stuff. And a lot of students feel that they don't have a place where they can comfortably and safely eat without feeling like they don't belong. And it's an ongoing issue. And I know it's obviously going to happen clicks and stuff. But I think there are definitely ways that we could improve on it. And so students feeling the need to not eat in a place where they should feel safe, too. Do you have, are there any solutions out there? Do you have anything around? Yeah, not yet. That's why I think it would be good to organize a group to discuss things about that. Do you think a student-led effort would be the way to drive a solution? Or is there any, I'm just thinking from a board member's perspective, it's something I'm concerned about. But I'm thinking about where's our angle here versus where's the student's angle and teacher's and administrators? I think definitely starting with a student group and the generating ideas and then moving off of that. There are big tables. So if you come into the cafeteria, you have to choose to sit at a table. Which might not have people you want to sit with or might not have people sitting at it that want you there, right? Yeah. We had a former administrator years ago who made the observation that when he was hired, people welcomed him and said, you're going to love NHS because there aren't clicks. He's like, that's ridiculous. There are clicks everywhere. But then what he observed was that there's like one huge click because you guys are together and have known each other forever. So like, if you can fit into the big click, like everybody's pretty friendly to each other, but if you don't fit into that big click, you're really stuck outside. Right. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And so the challenge for all the time that I have been aware of this is how to create an inclusive environment for those kids that can't get in. It's tricky because they're all different kinds. You know, it's not like one group that's excluded. It's the kids around the edge that can't get in. Is it really isolated? Well, the physical makeup of the cafeteria has a lot to do with how people feel comfortable. It's true in the middle school too. It's the same issues to some extent. So, you know, the reconfiguring if necessary of the physical space can make a difference. Well, maybe new furniture. Well, that's maybe what it takes, but it takes some thought. I mean, it's not just break it down into little tables. Right, no. There's more to it. I had a question about the health thing. Yeah. Well, maybe about both things. What is your avenue, these issues are great and they're issues we've heard, you know, for a while to some extent. And I'm wondering, do you feel like you have an avenue to talk to the principal or to have an impact when you feel, for instance, the health curriculum is something we are talking about and the administration is focused on a little bit and there's like a, you know, it's in the middle school, so it's not a new concept, but where is your ability to influence that at the high school? Where do you feel like you can actually insert your values or opinions? Yeah, I feel like a lot of students have these opinions but they don't necessarily know what to do with them, so they usually just keep it to themselves. But I feel like if we establish a good person or place that they could talk about these issues, people would definitely organize themselves and find solutions or ways they would like to improve stuff because the health issue, I noticed, only came up between like other students and they just, they don't really know where to go from there because they just accept it. So I think just establishing a good person, like a faculty member would be a good solution to that. Is the health curriculum in the school, is it the class in ninth grade? There's that same year, there's high school. Right, there's the one that's often taken first year. Is there another required class or just that semester? It is that health class you're talking about? Yeah. Is there integration between the health curriculum in the middle school and high school? So there's a flow? Right now we have a health curriculum committee with parents, Planned Parenthood, teachers on it. That's Mike's leading, Mike Berry's leading. So it's in the process. And so what is the current curriculum does it, it's a big question, but where would we go to find out what exactly is being taught? Because when I hear it. Here in the high school would be the program of studies. In the middle school, we're working on that. There isn't any formalized document. And like what does pro abstinence mean? You'd have to look at the program of studies and ask the teacher, because I don't know enough about it from the pro abstinence perspective. Is it like a part of a menu or is it like the preferred option? I have not been there during the class. I don't know, because I have not been there during the class when the conversation was happening. Oh, it's been a while for me for years. Just yeah, I talked to some freshmen who were in the class in my team. Yeah, that's basically what it is. I don't know about high school, but I do know even though it was a while ago about middle school. And this is a hot button issue. Not only for the students, but the parents because parents differ greatly on what they think you should teach or not teach their children. Absolutely. Yeah, but they're not all evidence-based. Yeah. I'm just saying it's just a hard question. I've had five meetings with parents about curriculum, all of them around health, none of them around reading, math, science, or social studies. And all five of them had a very different perspective of what should be the focus of in health. Depending on where they were coming from and what their student is experiencing in their life, not in health class necessarily, but in their life. Very much for what's working. Right. Or what's needed for individual kids. Yeah, right. And health is just really one part of it. You and Mike are really looking to kind of re-envision how curriculum is oriented within our district. I don't know if you want to touch on that on the subject, just the... Well, when we took over a year and a half ago, there was no curriculum. There were a program of studies that, at the high school level, that may or may not be connected to the standards we're required to teach. The middle school, again, had something written down in multiple Google Docs, not in one area. Like, you couldn't find it if you wanted to find it. And again, it may have been connected to standards we're required to teach, but most likely it wasn't. And there's nothing. So, we focused on math first, because that's a relatively easy, easy, right, curriculum to target. We're working on reading slowly and health right now. We're also working on P.E. art music that the specialists right now. Because we can target those teachers in a different way as classroom teachers. So, we're targeting that work. The health got pushed to the top because of the demand from community. Personally, I think our reading curriculum might need to be pushed further up, but that's not the priority right now from the community. The community is the health curriculum. We don't have a lot of time in health class. And if you add more time, what you take away is a big question. And again, I've had five meetings, and each of those five meetings had a different perspective. Either mental health or only solely LBGQ plus, or solely sex and consent and that kind of thing, or solely not sex in any way, shape, or form, or drugs and alcohol. Those are the five biggies. So, then each parent was equally as passionate in their argument or whatever their cause was. We also had a group of students come to the board asking for changes in the health curriculum. So, Mike's working on it. He has the committee together. He meets often with them. And once a month is he working now, or twice a month? I feel like he's working on it quite a bit right now. The health curriculum team, which there's lots of things been happening, but that one is forming, the group is forming. It's just been identified. Who's in that group in their first meeting? He's been meeting individually with the members of that team for the past two months to get people's perspective and get them relatively in the same boat, growing in a direction. On the other hand, Mike has nice piles of... Yeah, you see all that? Yes, so it's not health, but it's math. We're formalizing it. We're working on it. It's a big problem. There's a lot of work to be done in the curriculum area, which is one of the pillars we stand on. We need to stand on it. Yeah, and health is very important and it's very tricky. But, like all five of those issues you just mentioned are things that are still relevant in my daily life. I can't tell anything about calculus, so. Right. So. True. But we're glad you can read. But we're glad you can read. I can't read. But what I read in 9th grade English, I couldn't tell you that at the end, except I think the Kilomachi book, but it was very important. I'm not diminishing reading because the duty of reading is important, but it touches really important things that carry through a lot. So it is sort of. Everything else. Financial literacy, so there are other things too that are not requirements either. So it's not an easy conversation when you get a PAC schedule in a small school. Yeah. So is the issue that we have as a community come to a consensus over what percentage of our day we want to spend on? Because it feels like I'm feeling some pushback from you and I think that's healthy. But what I'm saying is I feel like you're feeling it's taking too much space and I don't mean that in a bad way because I think that we have to always find those balances. But I want to be careful because there's so much concern from students and parents about this being a high priority for them, so. Which is why it's moved to the top. No, I get it. I feel like you're respecting that. But what I mean is, also there's a feel of tension there from you. There absolutely is tension in the sense that we don't have the time and our schedules are days to truly do justice to all the pieces around how to have a healthy life in one class or in one middle school section that they do twice I think in middle school. But Libby, so I've had two kids go through all of that. The maximum amount of health education you can in this district and there is a lot of room for improvement. Absolutely. With the time available. Absolutely. But I think the issue. Totally agree with you, Michelle, we're guilty here. Totally agree with you. And what I've talked to Jim about is that there's a difference between curriculum and pedagogy, right? And supervision and evaluation of said pedagogy. Yeah, absolutely, I totally agree with you. Yeah, I mean. That's the Libby hearing the concerns that you've brought forward and listening to what the parents are bringing to you. It might not necessarily need to be more classes but maybe more avenues for the students to access quality information source. I don't know if it's more guidance counselors or social workers or a health instructor, like an open office that somebody can come into and have those very specific questions on whatever the myriad of health concerns might be in their life right then. And you 32 just took up birth control like a month ago. I'm actually testifying at the Health and Human Services tomorrow around a bill that's coming about, around birth control and requiring secondary schools to have it available, a free available to students. So I'm testifying on that tomorrow. We don't have currently contraception available for students in our building. So that might be something this board wants to take up or wait until to see what the HHS decides on this legislation, which might be smart because it's coming your way anyway. I mean, because I get the sense that the quality is as big about the bigger issue than the quality of the time we spent on it. And also, kind of going to reading and literature and to science and other things. A lot of those subjects touch on these issues in various ways. I mean, I wonder if there's a way to, there are certain books you read that have themes that touch on sexuality and health and alcoholism and not that every teacher needs to be prepared for that, but looking for those opportunities to discuss tough issues outside of HealthBoss. And some teachers would tell you they don't have the training to discuss that. I think that might be correct, but. But I think they do. It's just not perceived as health instruction by the community or students necessarily. Like they read Speak in ninth grade, which is a book that talks about sexual assault. So I think, although when my daughter was in ninth grade, the boys were given the option to read a different book. Well, I mean, those are the type of things that. Hopefully that's no longer happening. Yeah. Yeah. I think in fairness to you two, I know I heard two areas of concern. One is, you know, how much of the day do we want us to take? But the other is just that there's a lot of curriculum that needs to be worked on right now. So in terms of squeezing other things out, it's not the curriculum itself. It's the development of the curriculum that's squeezing things out right now. And that makes sense, right? It's like, well, what about reading? Shouldn't we be working on that at the same speed? So I'm not trying to be critical at all. I know you're balancing. I'm just saying, I just want to make sure we all are heard around. And I know we are, is that the community is like screaming for this. And it's quality, I think they got it right. It's not time. But another thing that Libby did just say, and I do not end your position on this, is she's hearing from parents on polar opposite ends of the spectrum. And whether it's evidence-based or not, sentiments are very strong on both sides of this. And Libby's in the middle, just, you know. Yeah. Sorry. Good luck. Thanks. Tell me more about that. How do I understand that? I mean, beyond us just wishing you well, I think I have said this before on this topic, and I would say again, we often tap the reserve fund for one-time expenses related to buildings, but there's no reason that we can't tap our reserves for one-time expenses related to curriculum development. So if there are, we can't phone Mike, but if there are resources that could be brought to there to help the crunch on curriculum development, I would want to hear that that need existed and to make some work. Right. Yeah, and that's my end. It's just getting to the people at the table. Wish you luck. Yeah, I would support that too. Not that I'm relevant anymore, but I can solve it. Well, you're relevant right now. That's pretty nice. A couple weeks from now, not so much. The next time just comes up. So back to the cafeteria for district frequent, there must be schools that have solved this or done creative things about it that have models. Yeah, the cafeteria thing is evoluted too. There was, Renee had a bit of an email snafu. Yes. She probably know. And that, while that was a mistake that I won't really get into right now, the sentiments that she learned from it were really important in what Eve is bringing to the table here is what we learned. She learned from it, right? So she is well into how do we solve this problem right now? Like what do we need to do to solve this problem? And she's not backing down from it. It's almost, it's not to say like we're ignorant of it, but it really came to head when she sent an email that she didn't mean to send. And that's a good thing. The fact of this conversation, it's uncomfortable, but it's a good thing that we're gonna start having it. But literally that happened what? Thursday of last week, Friday of last week, so it's new. It's new. And hijacked the learning focus. I know. I don't know if hijack is the right word for it. Don't you get interested? Just off of it. Yeah. It responded, exactly. We were very interested in learning about it. Do you have more though that you kind of went off? No, not that. That's just it. Well, I mean these are totally some common themes that we're struggling with. We're glad that the administration's paying attention to them. And we understand the community challenges associated with it, the other challenges too. We're leaning into the health curriculum now. You just, you can't do that fast. You have to build a coalition around it. You gotta take your time. You gotta do it right. Or else it's gonna be done wrong. Yeah, yeah. And you'll never do it in a way that will satisfy every last year you remember. Right. He's got the right people on the team. He's got really concerned people on the team. So, we'll do a good job with it. Excellent. Are we ready to move to Bekah and pre-K and X-26? Great. All right. Can I introduce you? Yes. You can. You can introduce yourself. I was gonna say hopefully I'm less controversial than the last day of the show. So this is Bekah. And she is a regional coordinator with Winooski Valley. So we were, prior to me, we were one of the very smart places in the state that when X-166 came, the superintendents of Winooski Valley said, we don't think we can handle this on our own. And if we're going to be sharing kids across districts at the preschool level, we need to have a common coordinator. So each of us pay a little bit of Bekah's salary. She owns Bay Eleven. Yeah. She lives in Berry or, well, she lives in Burlington, but her office is under, is a Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs in Berry with John Pandolfo. So welcome, Bekah, thank you for coming. And I have to say, because I learned today that the Winooski Valley doesn't have anything to do with Winooski. It happens to be made up of the school districts around here. Yeah. The Winooski River. The Winooski River. It is the Winooski River. It is the river. Well, it's the river. Yeah. And I know. It doesn't correspond to the river yet. And to further confuse the issue, what I've learned. So I'm a new employee. So my background is I've been an early childhood special educator, and then I went off and did a whole bunch of really consulting and professional development, working with providers or working with people who work in child's cares. Did a lot of developmental screenings. Did a lot of systems. Work, graduate from ECLI. So did the spelling system for early childhood. So I'm relatively new to the team. I started the day that the big kids went back to school in August. So a few months into it. The piece that really confuses the situation. This is not going to click for me. The piece that really confuses the situation is that when you see Valley Superintendents Association, only this, when the people who are, when the superintendents who are in the association are talking about it, it's not a standalone legal entity. It's a group of people who talk about it because we need a shorthand conversation. So let me was so kind as to, one, issue the invitation with you all. But also kind of give me some talking points in terms of information that you may or may not know about. Act 166 that you may or may not know about preschoolers in the WVSA and within the Munezki Valley Superintendents Association. So you do have, there's a couple slides that are hard to read with the numbers and everything and I didn't know what people would walk away with. And as Libby can attest, I'm one of these people who's not shy about saying like, I have no idea, let me get back to you and following up with you. So feel free to jump in and ask any questions. I did put my, where you can find me, Harry Potter under the stairs, I love that. All my contact information is on the front of the presentation, so feel free to reach out. I'm pretty consistently reachable. So that Act 166 education law is the universal preschool law in Vermont. It basically funds any child who's three, four, or five, which is a little quirky, we'll talk about that, by the kindergarten caught off, so by September 1st, to fund up to, well to fund 10 hours of preschool in a 35 week period. It's paid for through the ADM money and kind of divvied up by the school districts, which either pays for your in-house program. It pays for a Montpelier student who might go to a public school in Waterbury, or it pays for preschoolers who are residents of this area who attend childcare anywhere in the city. So it's kind of this like, I say that I wrestle octopuses all day. And parents have that choice, so parents can choose which of those options they wanna do. So the agency that really defines Precina Garden, there is a pre-qualified program, that pre-qualification process that all of the providers, school-based, home-based, childcare center-based, have to go through. There's an enormous list of things that the AOE says, you have to have a licensed teacher on site, or if you're a home-based program consulting to you, if you're a school-based program, the teacher has to be in the classroom during those instructional hours. There's definitions around funding the AOE is constantly sending out kind of clarification, memos and pieces, a couple have come out this week. But they really start from the premise that what we're trying to do with this law is really increase high-quality education. So really thinking about their definition is really high-quality and effective instruction, licensed educators, which is key, using evidence-based practices intentionally designed, aligning the curriculum with the AOE learning standards, and really this piece about inclusion and access. For those of you who aren't familiar, the Early Learning Standards are a continuation, or the start, to the grade-level expectations and learning standards that we talk about it at the upper ages. Does that make sense kind of as a where we are placing us? There's about 659 kids throughout the Winnisee Valley region who are tuitioned outside of their home district school-based preschool program. I have a quick question for you. Where do AOE define this? Is it in the role that they define that? It is, I don't know if it's actually in the legislative law, it's on their website, and it's on all the timelines that they send to everybody. So it's fairly well publicized, and out there, I don't know if it's actually in the legislation. It might be in the, there's currently legislation that's in process. The last one I read was the beginning of last week. It might be re-updated into there as well. Do you know what that bill is off the top of your head? I can look it up for you. Okay, I'm just wondering. Yeah, I can send the link to Libby to distribute. Thank you. It's pretty constantly updated. There was some testimony today. I know there's a full slate tomorrow. And it's really looking at, and we'll get into this a little bit more, but it's looking at the fact that the study, so the AOE said, let's do this thing. The legislature went for it. We've got this whole system in place. The year was just a report published by an outside organization that does research, and it was just published in January, looking at the 2017-18. So a few years into it, so like two or three years into the law, they were reflectively looking at whether it was working or not. So now there's all this traction and speed because we have the results of this research from an outside Vermont organization. So here's a pretty picture of where we are for the Winooski Valley. So the oil south, the oil north, or the in central, orange, Osbury, White River Valley. What's not on this map, because this is the map that I have in central Vermont, what's not on this map, because this is my like already thinking of moving our publicity stuff towards 2021. Twinfield and Cabot School districts have been with us for this year. This was their transition year, so they're going back to Caledonia with the rest of kind of that mission-figured school district. But they've been with us for this year. So I do lots and lots and lots of things, but this is the like, when you look at the job description, this pretty much sums it up. What I really do is I act as the liaison between whoever's providing the preschool services and the school district folks. So every school district, every supervisory union, all 11 of them have somebody whose job it is to coordinate the local level. So Tracy Locke is the person for Montpelier-Roxbury. So she's the person who, if a parent brings a question to Montpelier, she kind of frontlines it and then moves it kind of either to Libby or to finance or to me and hits it that way. We also coordinate on the paperwork. It's my job to make sure that whoever's providing the 10 hours a week of public pre-k has their insurance and their licensed teacher and I go out and I visit them and I do some on-site and off-site monitoring. I make sure that there's policies that are giving to parents. If a parent's unhappy, it usually comes to me first. And then really in terms of designing the publicity pieces, the programs all enter a contract. We just got it back from the lawyer. Superintendents are gonna talk about it on Friday. So really that sort of stuff is all wrapped into what I do. Can I ask you, I think I might be missing a piece. Why is this, if there's really, the districts are a funding district for the positions of coordination, right? Correct. They're not really, there's no boundaries within the state in terms of the mobility of families to put their kids wherever. There is, but they're going away under the new proposed. So right now, and I think it's only one, so the law affects every preschooler in this state. Within our group of 11 who holds that local district position is the curriculum director or the special ed director or sometimes the principal. So it really varies who that person is. So the idea of my position is really that I have the time to do this. The school districts can apply under current regs, can apply to the AOE in order to say, we don't really wanna pay outside our boundaries. As far as I know, the only one is the Rutlandt corridor. And in the new bill proposal, that's alike. We're done with that. Because the districts were able to make those decisions on their own originally, I remember that. So then I guess the last question of that is. No, that's good. Does there need to be local people in your position? What is it, why not have the AOE do this in other words? I'm not trying to, I swear I'm not trying to eliminate a call. I'm just don't understand why this needs to be organized locally, not necessarily even regionally, but why does every school need to feel these questions if it's a statewide system? Right, so I think a couple, and those are like, yes, come testify, not that I don't want my job, I'm very happy with my job. So I think there's a couple pieces to it, right? So in terms of local people and my position, I definitely, we need to have people within the district who are identified as the people who kind of like, because the kids off the register as Montpelier Roxbury School District students. So I get their names, but I don't do that stock of registration paperwork or move that or put it in power school or in SIS or any of that stuff. In terms of the state, I think the piece introduced into the conversation, before we talk about capacity, the piece to introduce into the conversation is that for preschool age children, not preschool, including preschool, but not just preschool, for children who have not yet reached school age who are in this kind of quasi-land before we get them in kindergarten, they have to work under the child care licensing rights, which is the agency of human services for programs who are providing public pre-k, universal preschool in this funding model. They also have to straddle the agency of ed. So right now, they have to follow both sets of rights. That's your next slide. Is it? There we go. So which is a challenge and which is addressed in the new bill that I'll get you the link for. So there's this piece of two ownerships. There's only about five people in the early end department in the agency of ed. And so regardless of this particular program, there's not a stable workforce and there's not the number of people. They don't have the capacity in the new proposal. The proposal that's out there for the bill is really looking at would be kind of somebody on the, I had called them all the local district people today and somebody said, well, you know, in the divorce. So in the bill there would be a division of kind of this dual oversight. And right now the proposed bill has the agency of ed taking that role. And has in infrastructure that they would increase the monitoring, they would increase, like all of those pieces we just talked about, about what I do is in that proposal. Well, isn't another big thing that it's not mandatory? Right, you don't have to go to preschool. I can choose as a parent to send my children. Which is different than everything else the AOE takes care of. Exactly. Well, and I think, you know, part of the conversation that those of us who, who's, you know, live and breathe early ed is, you know, the dual oversight is a problem, but agency of health and service, of human services are really the people who are so used to looking at all of those other pieces around care of young kids. Right, you get a three year old who goes to Union Elementary's preschool program and their, I mean, kindergartners are still babies, but like they're not the first grader who walks in who can be independent that, you know, kind of that same piece we were talking about about different developmental needs at each level. So there's a lot of, a lot of conversation. Does that? I mean, that's an efficiency, but I was looking at why does each district need this, but I get it. I mean, they're registered at the district level, so they're students of the district. Right. There's some ownership of them. Local control, Steve. What's that? Local control. It's a funding mechanism too, the way it flows through too, so that's the other piece of it. It's a funding mechanism, I mean, it's local control. Yes, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Equalized people, they're one and a quarter, a few people, so there does need to be some. 246. As of right now. As of right now, right, still to be discussed in multiple bills. Because they're only 10 hours of getting money. Yeah, no, no, it's okay. That was the piece I'd forgotten about, was that it comes through the school district, yeah. And you don't have a choice as a school district about participating in it or not. You have a choice about, do you want to run your own program? Yeah. But yeah, and so kind of as an interesting piece, the Waterbury Stowe Morrisville is our biggest kind of line of number of students, but the greatest number in the WVSA, the greatest number of providers are actually up in Chittenden County. So that question that you were asking about, like the do we know why, is really around parent workforce. Yeah. And also about the fact that Roxbury doesn't have any community programs that are eligible, right? And Montpelier has many more than many other places, but it's also a piece. So another challenge to implementing is that this comes through as a local funding mechanism, but it's funding differently and separately from special ed services. So if you have a student who lives in Roxbury who receives special ed services, it doesn't have to cross, the special ed services don't have to cross the district line. So when you think about like, how am I funding this? What we know from the report that was just done, the study that was just done, is that most children with special ed services actually are enrolled in their home district's school-based preschool program, and then there's always the question of parents refusing services. We know that low-community program numbers, so are there availability of spaces that are Act 166 qualified? But if we don't have those program numbers, that's when we tend to see more public pre-k, publicly housed pre-k. And then licensed teachers is always an issue. So the WVSA does not issue provisional licenses based on a whole lot of pieces, including the fact that Libby's not gonna sign off on one in Goodachittan and County and supervise a teacher in a preschool classroom. So, and that's the reality across the state. It's a reality in terms of the messaging that's out there for private preschool programs, child's cares are in desperate need of having teachers who are qualified, who are licensed. But we have three school district programs that are on a shoestring right now and trying to cover maternity leave and don't have licensed teachers within those programs. So it's not just a community-based problem, it's a school problem as well, as I'm sure you guys see at the other ages. But that's also a huge, that's a huge reason why we don't have more community programs that are pre-qualified and can do Act 166. So provisional are not allowed or is it that they're not required? They need to be either, they need to have on their teacher's license and endorsement in early childhood or early childhood special ed. We as a WVSA, super, they as a WVSA superintendents group because of the method of like who do you choose and how do you supervise them? It doesn't sign off as a signing off body on provisional licenses. If we had a problem in our program, in-house program, could we have a provisional? Oh yeah, in-house is different than out-of-house. In-house we get provisional all the time. So that we can supervise. Yeah, absolutely. But the challenge becomes, I'm not gonna sign off on a provisional for somebody who doesn't work for us. No, right. Because they're basically working under my license. Yeah. And it's not a living thing. It's a like, it's a native language thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well this was a issue we had at the very beginning of this because we were asked to take on provisional licenses and there's no reasonable way for our superintendent to supervise and evaluate and so forth. In a program we have no control over the effect. Right, right. And the AOE has just, the AOE just put out the, based off of a testimony that they just did, they just put out the new monitoring system. So hopefully there will be some AOE pieces. Right now, if I hear about, if I hear through the grapevine or if I happen to stop in and there's an issue, that's monitoring that takes place. There's not, just like Libby's not in every program, I'm not in every program every day. We have about 60 partner programs. Both, you're kind of at home-based, school-based and the center-based. So just a quick thought on that free and reduced lunch. She's accessing the program. I got these numbers from Tracy who talked to the local people. So at Union there are two, three-year-olds and seven, four-year-olds in the program who are receiving free and reduced lunch, who are eligible for free and reduced lunch. And in Roxbury there's one four-year-old. And those numbers pretty much are balanced in terms of actual student enrollment in those classes. The Union Elementary's in-house has 15 students in the AM and 15 in the PM. And the morning program is a collaborative between Head Start and ASU. And Morgan is owned by Montpellier-Roxbury School District. She's a school district employee and that was based on that Head Start couldn't find a qualified teacher. So Morgan and Brett could teach those two classrooms. And in Roxbury Village, Dottie has 17 students that are enrolled within that program. So those are your in-house public pre-school based numbers. And then I'll talk about the community in just a minute but just a quick note on that special ed to go back to those challenges. Montpellier, Brenda gave me these numbers. There are three or four children both in the morning and afternoon classes. So combined, they average three in one program and four in the other who are solidly on IEPs and receiving special ed services within that program in their regular classroom at this point in time. There are five children who are Montpellier-Roxbury residents who receive services in their in-district boundary Montpellier pre-school programs. So does that make sense? So like over at Montpellier Children's House or over at Montessori because they're in the district boundaries. Four kiddos in those community care and education programs are currently being evaluated so that also boosts your numbers but also talks to the really great collaboration that the public school and the programs especially in this area have going on and one child is served as home-based services on IEP. And in Roxbury, there's one student who is currently going through the about procedure, the developed process. So again, those numbers kind of line up with where our kids who are receiving services. Just a key piece about Roxbury. There are nine preschool age and I got these numbers from Let's Grow Kids. So there are nine preschool age spaces. I can group kids care and then Linda is a home-based child care. Neither of those programs are ALE pre-qualified programs to provide this Act 166 service. So they're not, those nine slots plus Linda's depending how our numbers are are not public pre-K, universal pre-K funded slots. And are those available slots or filled slots? I don't know if they're available or filled but they don't meet the pre-qualification. Because they don't have a certified teacher. Because they haven't gone, they haven't met all of the criteria. I honestly am not familiar with this program. I don't know, like, do they not have a teacher? Do they have licensing violations? I do know that the data I got from Let's Grow Kids, Linda only has one star and you have to have three stars in order to even enter the process. So I do know that that's the piece around her program. There's a lot of building requirements to use. Are you just talking, this is the universe of what's available? This is the universe of what's available. So in Roxbury, you have nine spaces that are for three, four, and five year olds and then whatever Linda's kind of home-based care. So figure 10 total or whatever. 10 total that are not eligible to even talk to me about forming a partnership. And zero that are eligible. And zero who are eligible. So you have for a public program. Of course, yeah. And the 17 in the public program. So in Roxbury, I did, and I'm totally understanding, I'm from Burlington, so like the whole geography thing is a little mucky to me. I get the 10 miles is not, could be a really easy drivable distance and could not be depending where you were talking about. But if I go into the child care registry and do Roxbury pre-qualified programs, 10 miles as my filters, there are 13 programs, only one is pre-qualified. It's Springfield School and it's in Weitzfield. And Kira, I talked to her on Monday. She has 27 slots, they're full. She anticipates that they're already full for next year. So that just kind of gives you a kind of lay of the land, the instant length. Is there a lay of the land? You can get them for child care capacity, Act 166 capacity. That's good. Does that? Yeah. Okay. And then I did the same. And here are the school-based programs that are within 10 mile radius. So anyone but within 10 miles of Roxbury can go to these. The Braintree and Brookfield School-based programs are not through their Act 166 pre-qualification yet. We're working on it next week. So those are not listed, but probably would be available for next year as well. So these are the public preschool. And remember that anybody in this state can go to any of these. So can Roxbury preschool kids come to a popular program? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So they can go anywhere in the... Can we establish geography preferences? How do you do that? You can't establish, you can, for special ed, you can't for Act 166. So how do you deal with too much demand? You can choose to serve your home kids first. So you can say Union Elementary has capacity for 30 kids. We are only gonna serve residents of our districts. So that would include Montpelier and Roxbury, right? We're only gonna serve these kids. We're not accepting out-of-tuition, and you can do that, but you can't be on that. You can't be, you can't say our Montpelier kids can only go in this geography. But can we say, we have 30 positions and we'll take, and we have 25 kids are, okay, you can do that. Yes, you can do that. Can you do that? Do any of these have excess capacity? We have a lot of more demand than supply. Yeah, we have a lot to get in because we have more kids that want in. Right, I'm just wondering, does anybody have excess demand in the public? Yeah, no, excess supply, sorry, excess supply. Excess supply, no, they're, I can tell you from experience because I sit in my little cubby hole, the very person sits with me, Berry City is over capacity in terms of kids at that pre-k. Berry Town is looking like they're gonna have like three spaces that we know aren't full for next year. But that probably doesn't mean that they're actually available. There are 59, I ran the same filters. There are 59 programs for Montpelier. Eight are pre-qualified. We've worked with all eight of those programs. They have active partnership projects with us. One program is religious and it's not eligible for Act 166 tuition because it's public school funding. So a program that's affiliated with the Catholic schools is not eligible to receive tuition. Does that make sense? And there are your... And again, we have the pre-qualified programs, what differentiates the pre-qualified and non-pre-qualified programs again? So pre-qualified programs have to go through the A&E has a pre-qualified system. So it's basically that you're using teaching strategies goal to you're using the assessment tool that we require. You have a licensed teacher and the variation of what does that mean for a requirement differs on what type of program it is, but you have a licensed teacher. There's some pieces around like your handbook has to have kind of the inclusion, the not-refusal, you have to agree to work with your public school. Are there any financial differences between pre-qualified and non-pre-qualified schools? There are some building requirements. And are there any... There are... Like for example, is there a cost difference? Or a funding difference? Like if we have more kids going to pre-qualified pre-K... Kids can only go to pre-qualified with their... With their children. Okay, so that's... My kid can only go to pre-qualified program if I want to ask for the money from the school district. If I just want to send my child because it's a voluntary program, I can go wherever I want. But you don't get the money. But you don't get the money. So if all the pre-qualified, if all the pre-qualified supply is full, and is there any mechanism to provide families with money or not? No. So the money travels with the child. So if a child starts in this location and moves to this location, any tuition that they haven't attended for yet goes to that new place. It's a set amount I've been working on next year. So I apologize. I don't have off the tip of my tongue this year. Next year it's 3,445. And so parents get that chunk of money spread out. The school districts all pay invoices on a monthly basis. And the WVSA does it on a reimbursement system. The programs, the school districts up north of us all pre-pay the programs and then kind of figure it out and rebalance throughout the year. The WVSA school districts, so this piece, all say, okay, you were enrolled by September 4th. You're billing me for the services in weeks that kids attended from September 4th to October 1st. We'll pay you back for that expense. The law says the tuition has to be spent directly for the child. And it has to, it's not Montpelier writing a check to the family, but it's Montpelier writing a check to the program who has to apply all of it to the education. That doesn't mean that the $98.43 that the program is getting for that kid for their 10 hours is anywhere near the cost of 10 hours of early care and education. So programs still set their own prices, but it's a huge help. Does that, did I just muddle the issue or did you get it? A little bit, but I'll, I can follow up. Money goes with the kid. Money goes with the kid, but only if they go to pre-qualified programs. Exactly. And the pre-qualified programs are all full, so. They're not all full necessarily. They're not all full necessarily. The public ones are. The public ones are. I would say, you know, this is part of the childcare crunch. Like this is the effect that as a school district, we feel when you hear all of those conversations about like, talk to your legislators, there's not enough childcare, this is part of it. So there is space. There is space in some of the school-based programs. I think if you were to look at a list of what we have for public programs and you think about the amount of young children that can happen in an area, you know. I have one question. Yeah, no, go for it. Way back on free and reduced lunch, too. Yeah. You had nine kids, which if we had two of our grade level classes, that would be 160 kids, and nine out of 160 is only 5%. So that doesn't correlate at all with our free and reduced lunch population. Our preschool program's smaller, though. It's not as big as our typical grade level. Okay. This is a small number. Nine kids out only a quarter, right. Because this is your school-based. So it's a third, almost. So one of the holes in the data, so, well, you have 15%. Well, if it's nine out of 30, it's almost a third of it. So our free reduces. So that does align. Yeah, well, it's higher. I would like to do something, but... Yeah, it's higher than, yeah. And there's holes in the collection of data. We don't have really some districts within the WVSA, some districts not, collect the free and reduced lunch forms, and some don't. So we don't actually, I don't know what those nine is out of, how many free and reduced there really are. That question is specifically a community. Right. Because it's not necessarily a data point that they collect. So we're working on it. And that's one of those pieces that I want to. I have another question on the actual context. My understanding is that the, what is the weights field school district called? Harwood Union. It's Harwood, thank you, Harwood Union. You're welcome. My understanding is they're able, they have a pretty robust pre-K program, public pre-K program. The, they have publicly housed pre-K programs. That's always the language, right? Because it's all public pre-K, but it's not public pre-K in the conversation we're having. They have Act 166 school-based programs in all of their like elementary schools. So you're looking at one location, whereas they have multiple locations. There's two. Two locations. You have two. You have two, right. And, but they have, they have, my understanding is they're doing a pretty good job of meeting the demand. They're doing a pretty good job. I want, don't quote me on this number, but I was doing the like, how much people are going to pay towards this for next year. I was doing that today. They have, I don't know how many they have in-house, but they also have 116-ish kids. That number's like sticking in my mind. That they tuition out to other places. So I think they have high capacity goods system. And, I mean, to some extent, really savvy educated parents as well. And a force is where a large percentage of their kids are enrolled out of district community childcare. So here's the other thing to consider. Remember, we're the anomaly about growing population of kids. In other districts that's population has dropped, they've got the room. If we wanted to run another preschool, we don't have any place to put it. In physically in the building. In the building. So that's why some districts have more room to run more preschools, because they have the room to put it. Barry's School District has 127 kids in-house, but they run the equivalent of the preschool classrooms. Right, they run, they have two schools, they run four classrooms twice, it's like twice a day times two. But they have a huge number of kids and, you know, Lauren's like, we can't steal any more room from the late night. They are capped out, they're just capped out at a different number than you are in terms of space. And we have how many? 30. We can. We have 15 at a time. We have 30 spaces, but. You have 15 in your morning Montpelio program, 15 in your afternoon program, and 17 in Roxbury, but I think Roxbury's program can fit a little bit more than that. But we have Montpelio kids that are going to the other. You have the right. Do we know how many we have total from Montpelio? I can pull that number for you. And Roxbury. Yeah. You mean go into private? Total? Yeah, total. Yeah, or yeah. Yeah. We've got a lot. Yeah. Because we have a lot of choices that are pre-approved. And I need to have that number at your place. Yes. That's an easy number. Public is just a very small part of meeting the demand, but it's really important for the special education, too, especially. Well, and it's important to have the balancing classrooms. We don't want those eight, nine kids on IEPs. We don't want our publicly-based preschools to be the defaults for the children who are lower in income and receiving special, and or receiving special ed services. So I just want to get through two more slides. And then I can stand here and talk about this all night, because I'm so passionate about it. But I also want to recognize things. So there's a couple of things that we know if this is working or not. I did a family survey that I sent out. The quick, done and dirty, because you can read the slides, I put them in. The quick, done and dirty is that it was sent out to somewhere between 800 and 900 families. I was sent out via Survey Monkey. Some school districts, yours included, chose to send them to your in-house kids. Some of our WVSA school districts didn't send them to in-house programs. We, as far as the WVSA, got about 450. Got 450. It's not an about. Got 450 responses, which, like, I walked into John's office and I was like, oh my god. And he goes, I'm watching the emails fly again, because it's his account, right? So he gets the updates. 450 was huge. It was a 14-question survey. It went out via Survey Monkey. And then programs, if they asked, I sent them the paper copies and they sent them back to me and I entered to them. The overall response is that people are really happy with this program. They want longer hours. They want more support financially. And then I identified, was it easy to register my kid? Because they have to register with you and enroll somewhere else. So unless they're in the school district program, you get all the registration paperwork. They do all the enrollment with their program. So the quirkiness around that is something that the school district individual 11 people and I are working on and have spent months putting into practice heading into next year. So we'll see how that goes. Quick demo, you're on the teaching strategies. So at its most basic level with the legislation, initially it went in. The legislature said, we need to have beginning and end data because we don't know if this works. We don't know if preschool works, which of course all of us early-end people were like, well, of course it works. Kids develop. But this is how we're measuring this. It looks at 38 different learning standards and objectives. And so the children's skills are scored on a continuum. Next year, when you invite me back, I'll be able to give you some real data. The data right now is you can't compare this year's fall to last year's fall because of the amount of school districts that changed in the towns that changed within them. It's really mucky data. And my question is politically. But I have it if anybody really wants to talk to me about it. And then the kindergarten readiness surveys. So I just threw up here kind of some of the who responded. There were 72 respondents from Montpelier. So there's an idea in your ages. People are mostly finding out from your website. This is Montpelier data. This is not WVSA data from your website. And then kind of in decreasing, it's that community networking and then their community programs. For a little AOE website, have one. She can't find anything on it. Where's website ever? I do the link all the time because I'm like, I have no idea where to find stuff. And then I think this is pretty substantial. That out of 72, we've got 35 who agree that this process was easy and strongly agree. And then I just got, I pulled out, these are regional. I didn't have a way of sorting it to be like the Montpelier. People are saying this. But this is kind of, these are thematic around the piece. So I just pulled some of those out for you. And like I said, I am so passionate about this. I've probably talked way more than you want me to. I'm so sorry. The questions. Any surprises in the data? In the data from the Family Survey. Not really. The pieces that came up were really in line with the challenges that are coming up in all the studies. They're coming up in those conversations with people. And then the other pieces around the data in terms of kind of what people are thinking and want to see are really particularly around registration. It is so complex. I don't have kids, but it's so complex to think about the fact that your three-year-old in March now, when they turn three in July, you're already starting to talk about school registration. But they're staying in their same child's care program. So it's very odd as a family to do that process. It's cumbersome. Like I said, we've been working really hard this team of 11. And I, for the last, this has been my push, is if we want to give high-quality child-care to kids, we need to make it as easy as possible for people who truly care about their kids. Like, you care what your kid is. You care about the people who educate your kid. But it's only the one little piece that Jim was talking about about your life, right? So we've been doing a lot of work around simplifying processes and getting standardization between the 11 of the district. What's the state doing to get more certified preschool teachers? They, as terms of AOE and state, don't seem to have any initiatives they're putting out there. Great. I mean, is there an issue? Let's give kids and the Vermont group of the National Organization for the Education of Young Children Association for the Education of Young Children are working together and working with VESAC. And both in terms of grants and VESAC funding are really pouring as much energy and money into it. But you've still got the 20-year-old with no degree who wants to do this, but she's got a child at home and she's working full-time because she needs to work and can't go to school and balance it. And then you add in the cost of school. So there's a lot of, like, really, everybody recognizes the problem. The pouring money in it isn't going to solve the situation either. So I'll get the bill. Is it the one that was introduced last year? They've introduced it last year, had submission on it. We thought that they were going to start from what they were working on, but they actually refamped it. And so it's a new bill. It has many, many iterations. The last one that I saw was the 12th of February. So I'll email you the bill, and you can disseminate it. I get you the, we wanted to know the number of tuition for Montpelier students. I think it would be helpful to know the total number of pre-K students that we have going to pre-qualify. That isn't Montpelier. I'm also, I'm really curious to know for a lot of it, what are the total number? We have 30 open spots, but. Actually Grant would know that, too. He pays the bill. How many people are trying to get one? How many people are trying to get one? I mean, anecdotally, I had inquired with Libby a couple of times about pre-K South. This is generally to the board, because I live in a community of young families. And I'm of an age where I have a lot of friends who have young families. And one thing I hear from them, the primary thing I hear from them when they're like, oh yeah, you're on the school board. Like, do you think we need to expand our pre-K offerings? And I'm like, I don't know anything about our pre-K offerings. Well, now you do, and you can say, I had this really confusing presentation, but she rocked it, so I know who to ask the questions to. The answer is no, because we don't have space. You can't expand space more. We'd have to build an authority. Or rent some space from BCFA, who might be interested. But you have to have, Tina's right, there's significant building requirements because of the HDSM. Yeah, it's a high entry cost. We had to redo the rules at Union so that they could pre-school. There's a lot of requirements to pre-school. It was a project just to be able to do that. Yeah, I mean. Well, and it's really this developmental age thing where it's not the first grade that I can, you know, and totally like, I know, I know it's not as easy. My background is elementary yet, but it's not as easy as we have books, we have students, we have a teacher, we have tables. Right, I mean, those kids have to wash their hands when they enter. They have to wash their hands after they use the bathroom. They have to wash their hands before snacks. They have to wash their hands whenever they touch the... And they're little, right? So there's huge infrastructure costs to it. What do you know what pre-K educators get paid compared to... Depends where you are. Depends which program you're in. So it depends which program they're in. They're better paid in the public. Yeah, because they're under the teacher contract. They are better paid in the public schools because they're on a teacher's contract, but it also, like, you also get benefits and vacation and health and dental and retirement, like you're a teacher contract package. I was paying as a director of the Y. I was paying my licensed teachers $17 an hour with you paying me back $3,000 for benefits. There's no retirement fund. And guess what? Here's your stack of personal days. You can use them or not use them, but it's your sick time. It's your vacation. It's your personal time. Which is less than a pair, so... Yeah, and Head Start doesn't pay. I mean, Head Start pays along those lines, but yeah, they're probably bringing down somewhere between 20 and like 25,000. It's miserable. And we have to be really careful about the conversation that we need to increase for everybody. There's nobody new coming into the field. I can tell you this, like, being a well-networked person for the last 24 years, there's nobody new entering early at right now. We're really looking at people who are moving from program to program in search of a better environment and in search of better benefits. That's why we need to train more people, right? Yeah, but who wants to be trained into a profession and that underpays for really tough work is what I'm getting at. And has limited capacity in the public schools. Which is a statewide issue. Right. Yeah. All right, so I'll get you program community numbers. I can work with Tracy to figure out the lottery numbers and I'll get you the link to the bill. You guys have my info. I'm full-time, so reach out and connect. And I just sent like a page and a half email with all of the links on my registration for next year to all of our partner programs today. Kind of in this gap between school day and here. So all of the materials are ready for next year. So if you have questions or you want to see them or you know, check them out, email me and I can link you into those. They're all on Google Docs. So thank you, thank you. Thank you. So that's so helpful, thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. And if we missed like if Libby and I missed anything with the brainstorming, like let me know. And thank you so much for like allowing so much time and conversation and like I said, I'm passionate and it's important. So now we are having a little celebration and saying thank you and farewell to... Oh, do you want to do a calendar too? Oh, we need to do a calendar. Listen to the calendar first and then we can say thank you. Then we can say thank you. Farewell. Farewell. To approved, amended and set forth in front of you. Second. All those in favor? Aye. And the opposed, nay. Great, thank you. You have a calendar. The rest of this consent agenda was approved? Yes. Yes, so we are all good. Now. Now. Yeah, so this is the last meeting. We'll have Michelle and Tina with us as board members. You're always willing to drop by. We have public comment, right? We'll call about that, Michelle. Good morning. Comments, thanks very much. Yeah. Yeah, but I would say thank you both. You both have been here before I was here and it's been wonderful working with both of you and I think I speak on behalf of all the board and I say thank you for all your time and effort. I know you both have worked extremely hard over the years and accomplished a lot of great things for the district and great things for our kids and I think the schools are much better off as a result of the effort you've put in, the leadership you've shown on the board, so big thanks for me and I think we have some sort of treats. And a couple of cards I have yet to sign. Oh. We are so organized. So Tina, Michelle, thank you. On behalf of the Rocksbury, come on over. Did you make that? I worked all day on this. All day, maybe searching for a nice place to play. This flower all over her office. That's right, that's right. And it's a special, thank you too. I thought you might need some relaxing time and a good book. Thank you. Hope to be with you. Thank you very much. Yeah, I don't know what I'm gonna do with all this. I know, I know, I know. We're all the work that you've done. Bastard. So we could take the cake in the executive session? Yeah. Make sure you get to pee. Yup. Okay. So I think we need a flower to do that. Why don't we have a motion for negotiations? All right, I move that we find that discussing contract negotiations in open session would put the district at a disadvantage. Is that what you do? Yes. I second. Yeah, and then do we want to add a quick discussion about the time, huh? Oh, about the board personnel discussion and... And personal evaluation. Yeah, just, it's a motion to go in for those three reasons, the executive session. Now, first of all, we need... You need to vote on that. You need to vote on that. Do we have a second? Yes, I do. Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Mm-hmm. Okay, now a motion to go in. So the motion is to enter executive session for the purpose of discussing contract negotiations, personnel evaluation, and board personnel discussion. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I'm not sure there would be a second that. Tina's up. Tina's up.