 A lot of this discussion would be much better with Megan, but I don't think we should delay. So we'll do what we can without her and then we might have to continue some of the conversation at the next meeting. So did anyone have any questions about the minutes? I guess Leslie, we didn't approve the August minutes at our last meeting. That's why they're here. Yeah, yeah, correct. So we need to take any questions or comments or suggested edits for either the September 23rd meeting minutes or the August 10th meeting minutes. And if there aren't any, then we need to approve those. So I would just say again, Leslie, they're fabulous. You do such a good job recording it. And I would move that we approve the August minutes. I second it. All right. What was that? Borrowing no questions. Yes, no questions. All in favor. Opposed, nobody. Okay, September minutes. Any questions, comments? That was a really tricky one to capture. So not tricky, but then. Thank you for your input on that, JoLinda. Yeah, I mean, it was just so much. And as a matter of fact, it's really helpful to reread it because it's all sort of in one place. All the issues of who does what and how can we manage this differently? So it's actually a good document to spring from as we keep talking about all this. I already had a whack at it. So I don't have any questions or edits. It is a three pager. Well done. So what's that? Four pager. Oh, God, I move that we approve the September minutes. Second. Okay, all in favor. All right, done with that, let's talk about money. Why don't I share my screen? If I can figure out how to do this. A little present now arrow at the bottom. Yeah, I'm just gonna figure what I'm sharing. Okay. Because I'm not seeing it there. Let me try a different way. Aha, there we go. Okay, so I can use, okay. So I'm showing this year's financials. I had the bank balance at the bottom highlighted. So there's over $33,000 in the live accounts. And you can see how it's laid out. The majority of that half of that is MRPS PI. I mean, middle school and the high school both have fairly significant amounts in their accounts as well. Is there a way to make it bigger? Sorry to interrupt. That's a very good question. I mean, I don't know. Is everyone else having a hard time seeing it? Yeah. Yeah, bigger would be better. Or maybe I need to change so that I don't see any faces. That's good, that's good. Okay, yeah, I'm gonna change my layout too. Okay, now you can't see the headers, but. So not a whole lot has happened this year in advance of this meeting. Obviously a lot probably happened at the Fall Festival, but that hasn't all come through yet. So we'll look at that next time. A couple of, there was a National Life Grant that Jolinda's gonna talk about and a really nice donation from a couple of anchors. Thank you, Teresa and colleagues. Other things have been fairly small for this year. Yep. We also have the data from last year and unfortunately I can't show this to you with you seeing everything. But essentially we did end up spending a fair bit more than we brought in last year, which was fine because as you can see, our bottom line is okay, but we were unable to do very much fundraising last year. We just had the two main fundraisers, the one for the family needs around the holidays and then one to give a small gift to the staff. So that's what most of the income and expenditure last year ended up being around. Let me share this with all of you afterwards, but generally speaking, PI brought actually had a net income, but all of the caregiver groups had net expenditures last year. So just a thing to be aware of that without Fall Festival, we certainly spent more than we brought in last year. But again, because of all the good fundraising you had done in previous years, that was all that ended up being okay. I'm happy to answer any specific questions that people have, but I'm also happy to just share this with folks to look through afterwards. Our bookkeeper and I were finishing it last night so I was unable to send it out in advance. Okay, and because my eyesight's not great, it looks like those numbers reflect what I sent to Suzanne of just a few hours ago about what transfers needed to be made, they do not. No, not yet. This one is last year's. This year's is pretty minor in detail so far because most of the fundraising and activity happened this past weekend and it's not yet reflected in there. But what I mean is what I'm seeing right there for each of the caregiver groups looks correct as of the October donations in terms of how they've been distributed. Yes. So that's good, okay. Yes. Okay, good. Are there any questions? No, I would love to see those balances but you're gonna send that out, so that's great. Yeah. Right, yeah. Yeah, I don't have any other questions. Anybody else? Okay, I think we can move on then. Thank you, Carla. That's considering everything we've been doing it's still pretty good. Everything we've been going through, I should say. Yep. I really think it reflects the good fundraising work of this group before I was on it and before COVID hit that we were able to go through last year without needing to do as much fundraising. Yeah. Let's see. So next up would be the fall festival and the family support fundraiser that you just mentioned, Kara. I'm gonna, Teresa, I'm just gonna do them in reverse order because I think the fall festival have a little bit more to say and the family support fundraiser I think I can keep really succinct because I had a quick call with all the social workers who were just please pass along our appreciation to the pie board and all the caregivers, alliances who helped make this happen last year. Basically, can you do this again for us the raising the funds to have the gift cards to give out to families that they completely organized and tracked and managed other than us getting the cards was really, it was really helpful for them and they really want to make that a regular thing. And we've also talked about it being something that would always be part of our fundraising plan. So I just, I gave them thumbs up but I wanna tell my board and have a conversation about any concerns that people have before saying for sure that we're doing this the same way. And most importantly is the fundraising goal because they would like to have a goal of 10,000. Last year, I don't have the exact number and I meant to grab it but it's very close to like $8,600 was raised. That included a couple of larger donations like 600 bucks I think from Kiwanis and Emma Bay Hansen is on a donor advice fund through VCF. So she had like, you know she helped get $1,000 from Vermont Community Fund donor advice fund through VCF. So those were two big chunks that we were not expecting. The rest was individual donors from our community. And I believe what happened was there were a few other random donations of gift cards to hand out to families who requested and it totaled very close to 10,000. What we raised through this particular fundraiser which started roughly, you know, November 8th you know, which would be next Monday. And then I think we distributed them around the first, second, third, fourth of December and they mailed a lot out because of COVID whereas in the past they had handed them out. So any thoughts on that dollar amount? I still want to do this of course. I think it's not very difficult to do online fundraisers with this community and with everybody pitching in to get the word out and it's sort of become like our centerpiece middle of the year thing that everybody can get behind. I wonder how everyone feels about having that goal, that dollar goal and that of course this money is designated for that sole purpose. What are they basing that goal on? I mean, I think we kind of have to be guided by them since they know I'm just wondering what they're, are they basing it on last year's numbers or knowledge from this year? Yeah, I think it's both. I think they saw how much they gave out last year and they see the same needs and particular families struggling that they see now. I didn't ask that exact question that that was sort of the nature of the conversation amongst the three of them. I can certainly ask them. I mean, you know, Chris Parker sort of was saying we just would like to pick a number that's not too low. And that doesn't, you know, it was very close to what we raised last year. So we could certainly like from a visibility standpoint if saying 9,000 sounds better because it doesn't sound as large and we go over, well, that's what we do. It's not like a goal means that is all that we would raise. Whatever we put last year, I wanna say it was six. We blew past it and then some. So I can get you the exact numbers but I wanna say our goal was six and we came in at like 8,600. My question would just be, does this take away the option of using money for other school and student related programs? I mean, of course the answer is yes, but you know what I'm saying, is that relevant or important to- Sorry, can you repeat that? I didn't quite get that. That asking for this much money from the community for this specific purpose prevents in theory prevents us from, you know, you can only go back to the well so many times for the community donation. So is that something that we wanna talk about or do we feel comfortable with that number for this purpose? There's also the timing in that we just had a full festival and we're asking for money around that. So I think whatever we do pick, you know, as a goal for this winter fundraiser, I think we just need to be very clear about what the full festival money is used for and what this is gonna be useful because they're different things. That's a good point. The other thing to remember about fall festival and you don't necessarily know this yet because we haven't given you the breakdown is that the majority of funds came from sponsorships. So not actually out of pockets of community families. So we're not really going back, you know, into the pockets of our families. I mean, yeah, just a little bit because of the raffle but you're ready to reset. It's not, it's certainly not a direct overlap. I mean, my feeling is I'm comfortable with that number and I'm comfortable setting it up. Doing all that we can do in terms of promoting, sharing this online fundraising page in all the regular channels that we normally do, word of mouth and everything else and get it up by Monday. So we have the same timeframe to raise that money. And worst case scenario is we don't make the target but you know. We're not committing that to the, no, because it's just that we're saying that would be our goal. Then I don't have any harm in saying hey community, let's do a little, just a little more than we did last year. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, if for some reason only comes in at 6,000 then that's what we give them. The only competing thing is going to be is the raffle which may not be a really competing thing but we did want to run that, we did want to run that raffle through November 14th. Yep. We'll get that. Yeah, I think you will see that somewhat differently. Yeah, and being clear that the difference between the two and you know, setting a goal is setting a goal and then the social workers get what we can, what we can give them. Okay. Well then I'm going to, it sounds like everybody agrees. I'm gonna go back to them and say we'll put this up as quickly as we can. But I suggested I could do it by the eighth which is Monday. It'll be all the same details. I believe it's PayPal giving is their charity fundraising arm and that's the cheapest way to raise money online that I know of without having to get a new piece of software and use the 10,000 as a goal. Okay. Well, festival. Theresa, you wanna give a little quickie overview? Yep, we met with Montpelier alive yesterday. They had some preliminary numbers. So it looks like we raised $20,000 in total. Again, the majority of that was through sponsorship. So I'll have to, I don't have my notes in front of me but about 15,000 of it through sponsorship and the rest of it was raised through the race, the raffle, just kind of like some random donations and about $5,000 worth of expenses. So which is actually pretty cheap to pull off an event like that, considering everything, all the different areas that we covered with expenses which included promotional print, renting of the tents, giving the performers, small stipends, lawn signs, all that kind of stuff. All added up to about five grand. So, and we're gonna split that down the middle with Montpelier alive. So maybe around 7,500 a piece. So I'll just, I just grabbed my notes and I have the exact numbers he gave were revenue right now was 19-2. And like you said, 15-5 of that was sponsorship. A little over a thousand was from the race, which was amazing. And already 26-50, 2,650 per the raffle. And I felt really good about that because we were trying to get over 2,500 for the raffle to just meet the value of everything donated. And we still do have two weeks. Well, now we don't. We have 11 days left to try to push that. And I hear what you're saying about it, competing with the Family Support Fund, but it is like Jen said, it is two different purposes and it's only gonna be overlapping for six days. So I thought I would give the raffle, put it in the swoop scoop and all the principal emails that I can get to this Friday, raffle, raffle, raffle. And then Monday, we'll kick off the Family Support Fund, hopefully by Monday. Can I just say, well done to you, Teresa and Jolinda, for all your work on the festival. I think it was great and I was there a little bit and I thought it was great and nice to have it on the state health law on this year and have that partnership with Montiel alive. I think that really helps to kind of make it better known and put it on the map. So thanks to both of you for your hard work. Thank you, Leslie. Adrienne Gill is a super hero. She's a superhero, like her capacity to get things done blows my mind. So all I committed to do was be there on the day and help get the run organized. And that is really all I did. I think that was about 8% of it. But yeah, we're really lucky to have Adrienne's energy to do this and Teresa is amazing getting all the sponsors. So thank you, Teresa. Yeah. So we're gonna continue to talk to Montiel alive about what next year could look like and what role both of the organizations can play again collaboratively because there's some potential changes and ideas for working it differently. And of course, next year, this year was a magical alignment, right? Of the timing, right? Because it fell on a Sunday with Halloween and the downtown businesses were geared up and ready to go. So that was just really perfect, but next year it won't be that way. So that has really been a catalyst for us to continue to have a conversation about what next year could possibly look like. So we'll see. Yep. And I guess we'll report out when, you know, when the money actually comes in, we'll send the board an email, let you know. Mental Health Support Grant, I don't have any exciting update to mention right now. I just wanted to keep it on everyone's radar because you, you know, as I think, well, Teresa doesn't have students in the school system right now, but I think everyone else on the board is familiar with what, maybe is familiar with what's going on, but it's really, I'm hearing from parents and families that things are really hard right now. I'm hearing from students and, or sorry, teachers and staff that they're just very, very stressed and I'm also hearing of bullying and other difficulties happening specifically at the middle school and just a lot of things that are coming up in community conversations that keep kind of coming back in my brain to how this mental health grant money can be used. And so I've got a spreadsheet of ways to spend the money. I've obligated about 500 of it to Mary Bechtel's tools and posters. She's the director of social and emotional behavioral learning and the social workers have some ideas there's a lot of energy around some anti-bullying and just giving some more attention to what's happening socially and emotionally at the middle school. So those are sort of swirling around. I like for you all to know what conversations are happening and what thoughts are going on. I just really want this money to do some good and I would love for it to do something before, say February so that we can go back and ask for more. But either way, I just wanted to do something good. So like for you all to hear that so you can keep it in the back of your mind too. If you hear of anything, know that there's roughly $4,500 that's still not spoken for because I didn't want to just throw it at anything and people are still, everyone is just has so little extra mental capacity to give that I get like dribs and drabs of people. Maybe this, maybe that and a lot of really good ideas. So keep them coming. If you hear of anything, let me know. And I'll try to turn this into spending money on actual program and activities probably before January. Well, Linda, does it make sense to go back to Anna Pipko and put this to Anna and say is there a way that a collective group within the district that has this very highly placed on their to-do list, or lack of a better term for my brain is fried. That they could kind of put their collective heads together to give us an idea, some ideas of what truly they believe is needed and that it's feasible. Do you mean just, do you mean a group of people like district staff? What do you mean? Right, right. Instead of us trying to poke around in the dark. Yeah, I know. I did, I, you know, I sent a lot of inquiries like what would you like? And Mary Bechtel had quite a lot on her wish list. She seems to not quite have enough, well, I shouldn't say it like that. I'm not sure that she has a budget that fits all of what she wants to do. So she's one person I did obligate, like I said, the 500 bucks for some tools that they use for their SCBL education. I wanted to consult with district staff but also caregivers since this is not school district money, it's caregiver money. And I felt like the priority was what families feel is the best use of the money. And I'm hearing a lot of voices loudly from the middle school. What I'm hearing loudest is crazy stuff happening at the middle school in terms of social, emotional and flat out teacher and staff burnout. Those are the things I'm hearing the loudest. I mean, I like what you're saying, Teresa, I just wanna make sure that we're representing the caregivers when we figure out how to spend the money. If it's what the district thinks is a good idea and the caregivers think so too, then- Right, where does it meet? Right. And that works. I wanna put some more into this in terms of making it clear to each of the caregiver groups that this is up to them as well. I'm sort of thin in the middle of that. I did have a survey at the fall festival but there was a lot of other things going on so I didn't get too much feedback. JoLinda, have you consulted or asked the principals at school? We did in the spring, but I haven't really been, I guess I sent something to them when I sent the email to the social workers and to Mary Bechtel. So yes, I think they deferred quite a bit to Mary and it might be worth going back to them. Just thinking, yeah, the timing might be good to go back to them just because of, and we're gonna discuss it later in the agenda, but just, we have been hearing from the principals about the stresses and strains and so on and the high school principals, you know, addressed it in her newsletter to caregivers a few weeks ago. So, yeah, I'm sure it's something that's really on their minds at the moment. They may have more ideas now than they did in the spring. Okay, that's really great to know. Okay. Well, let's move on. Like I said, that wasn't any earth shattering update. I just wanted you to know what's happening. Oh, well, nice segue, Leslie. Staff shortages have heightened the immediate need for volunteers. How else can we help? Yeah, so I just got fingerprinted this week because it turns out I was not able to volunteer at all until I did that. So the UES specifically, there's custodial staff shortage and instructional assistant shortage. So the two roles that have been sort of created as a volunteer, caregiver or community member are cleaning the school in the evening and monitoring sort of like playground or lunch or helping out at drop off because there just aren't enough bodies who can be outside getting kids where they need to go. So my general question by putting this on here and I'll lead into the next point too about staff morale from the president of the union here was, can you guys, should we be talking about anything else we can be doing, mobilizing people, supporting people? This is a question that maybe we don't answer right now. I just kind of again wanted on everybody's radar. I don't wanna be the only one thinking about it. It seems like the schools are asking regularly and it feels like any communication we have going out could include that but I'm not sure there's more we can do. I don't feel like we have a large body of volunteers who are waiting for something else to do. Right, no, we don't have, we use everyone else's sort of distribution list. We don't really have our own audience. I always send out for caregivers groups to use their lists. That's fine, just kind of wanted you all to know it's happening. Do we have it on our webpage? Do we have it on our Facebook page? Well, we have posted on Facebook. Yes, I don't do much updating on the webpage because I'm usually doing it in five minutes and so I just use Facebook. Yeah, that's a good point, Teresa. I don't think it is on the website and that would be, I'll check. That would be a good place just to kind of keep it as a reference for people to go find out more or, you know, cause stuff in Facebook tends to just get lost as new posts get added to the top. So I'll make more about that. Okay. Jomanda, just a quick question. Is Anna still at the district office? I've heard that she was on leave and do you know she's back? I think she might still be out. She had twins in, I think early September. Yeah. I think we're now. So I wouldn't be surprised if she's still out. Sorry? She was such a great resource for kind of centralizing requests and information. It's true. I mean, I could certainly send her an email. I'm sure I'll find out pretty quick when she's back. I'm just making a note of that. Okay. Yeah, that would be my comment too is have we reached out to Anna, but obviously if she's on leave to see what the district needs are beyond just a couple of those things and then has a mass blanket email gone out to all the caregiver groups and volunteers of for those requests. Yeah. I know from the UES perspective, the Peter did a special swoop scoop that included this, all of the details about how you can volunteer. It actually wasn't had, didn't have anything about the cleaning. It's a little, it's a little confusing to me why. So there was a parent who at the very beginning of the year inquired with Peter, can parents assist in like, I think it was specifically for lunch monitoring. And so the swoops who went out last week, I think that had our names Emily, the whole write up of what you can do and a link to click on is very concise and easy to figure out how to volunteer. That's the only one I know of. So I don't think that anything has gone out like with the middle school caregiver alliance is pretty active. You know, Roxbury is just so far away. And to be honest, I don't know if they're having the same staff shortage issues that we are. I certainly wouldn't expect someone from Roxbury to volunteer UES and vice versa because it's just not logistically feasible. I know very little about MHS for some reason I fell off those emails. So I need to get back on them. Would you like me to reach out to the principal and ask her about volunteering? Sort of see the test to stay opportunities. That would be so great, Jen. I, at the beginning of the year, Renee emailed us, you know, I got the email but emailed pie just to say, I know you guys are struggling to keep boosters afloat. What can we do to help you? You know, she's just so great. And I said, I don't know. We're trying to figure out how we can get more people, you know, kind of pulling boosters back together. And then, you know, just the school year really got going. And there's been nothing since then. I did see her on Monday when I went to do my background check. She's standing outside the front door, welcoming students, asking them how they're doing. And I think that would be great to reach out to her. And say, you know, what's the most helpful thing we can do? We know there's volunteering, but what do you really need? Which leads me, nice segue into the next thing I just wanted you all to know. Again, I got an email from Carolyn. I'm just gonna read it. She is the MREA, you know, president. Hold on. And it was pretty striking. Carolyn Kinnery, K-I-N-I-R-Y. She is MREA union president. I'm reaching out to your organization for some assistance if your group has the capacity. The pandemic has been exhausting for everyone. School staff's levels of stress and burnout are unlike any other time I have experienced in my 28 years of education. This year, teachers are in need of appreciation more than ever. A little will go a long way. I am wondering if your group might be able to find small, low-cost, or no-cost ways to appreciate MRPS staff on an ongoing basis for the rest of the school year. I am happy to work with you, but I'm feeling overwhelmed to do it by myself. My team is maxed out with teaching because of this. I'm unwilling to ask them as I did last year. Libby is certainly maxed. I totally get it if your group does not have the capacity, but I wanted to ask. I appreciate your consideration. Are you looking at what she's actually asking us to do? Staff appreciation. Just events? I think like anything. You know, last year, UES, with COVID, just kind of the caregivers group, sorry, the UES caregivers group kind of reached the point where they said, all we can really do, all we're going to focus on is just do some kind of staff appreciation event or effort once a month if we can. And I thought that was a good choice because just everyone was just so exhausted, so it was actually less of a commitment for volunteer parents and families. And it was really from what I heard really helpful. Like a lot of teachers came up and said, you have no idea how much it means to me to get a thank you card or a piece of art or something that's just, you know, so simple that it's just a morale booster. And so her email really struck me because it's here we are, it's the same. And I think it's worse. I guess because of staff shortages, it's much, much worse for them right now. My daughter's teacher said that to me at pickup last week. She said, I actually didn't think they could get worse than the 2021 school year, but it already is, it's already harder. And I think it's because there's just not, the UES is there's short like five IAs and a few other things like a custodian and something else. So, and they're about to be down a principle. So, again, ideas for how we can, I responded and said, of course, we're gonna do what we can. I explained kind of how pie and the four caregivers are connected and just gave her, yes, you know, we want to do whatever we can. We're gonna share this message for the caregiver groups. And do you, I asked her if she had specific ideas or thoughts on what we could be doing. So. Did she, did she respond to that, the specific ideas? Well, not yet. I haven't got a response from that. It was only, oh, it was yesterday when I responded to her. So. I wonder if she'd be willing to pull together some of her people to maybe meet with us in brainstorm, you know, like a short brainstorming session. Cause she does have people, you know, who she works with directly. Maybe, I don't know, maybe it would generate some ideas that we could actually pull off. Yeah, I mean, I think she's, you know, she's just a teacher. Like she just happens to be the union president, I guess. So of the MREA, so just the Montague Rocksburg Union. But yeah. Good answer. I was just gonna say, I'm also wondering, wondering if this isn't something that we should communicate with the caregiver groups about. It seems like they might be in the base position at each school to find out what each school needs and, you know, connect with, pull together a group of parents or call for volunteers from parents in the school to do that. Oh yeah, that's what I told her I would do. I'm trying to, you know, practice what we talked about by being more just an overlay. And so I know from UES that this conversation's already been had and we're actually doing pizza. Don't tell anyone, it's supposed to be a surprise. Pizza after the early dismissal at UES tomorrow. And that came, that happened very, very fast. But I also know that UES is probably the most active caregiver group who can kind of move quickly on stuff like that. But yeah, I told Carolyn that I would be sending this message out to the caregiver groups. As Jen suggested talking to Renee, I think that would be really important, Jen, because boosters is sort of, you know, there's nothing happening right now. So there's nobody really, I wouldn't even know who to forward that to. Yeah, and I could do some tracking down of that also. I just have a quick idea about Thursday, I mean, the Thursdays during November, let's try to get a social media campaign going and just thank a teacher. And it doesn't have to be teacher in the traditional sense. Just it's Thanksgiving month. Let's just make sure everybody's thanking your teacher through a note, through a letter, whatever a drawing. And that's an easy enough thing to pull off. That's a great idea. Did you say something about Thursday? Well, I was thinking thank a teacher Thursdays through the whole month. Like that's what's in my mind. But it could be any day. It's gonna be the month of November will be thank a teacher day. And it'll be a quick way to just kind of give, shoot a little bit of a morale boost into the community. If we can reach out to caregiver groups, they can reach out to parents. Enough kids will make letters and posters and stuff for their teachers. I also think about a surprise sign, the week of Thanksgiving that goes in front of each school that just says, thank you for all the hard work you're doing. Yeah, that's great. UES, before this pizza thing popped up, we were having a similar conversation and saying, let's do whoever's available in the evening to sort of paper the school the way we did. At the beginning of the school year, a year ago, my gosh, September of 20. So we did those sort of arts that look like apples or apples that look like hearts. I'm not sure which it is, but and plastered the school with them. It's a little bit of a waste of paper, but I think it was worth it. But that's cool. I love that idea, Jen. Would you be willing to help the social media campaign part? Yeah, for sure. Because I always want to volunteer, but with this pandemic, I really, I can't go into the schools and put myself at risk of exposure because of my job. So I'm happy to do stuff behind the scenes. If I can email, that also papering the schools makes me think of when the phantom shows up, Valentine's phantom, what can we do the week of Thanksgiving to all of the buildings? And I go to Northfield, so I'm happy to do what needs to be done in Roxbury so that there can be some appreciation that's shown and immediate. Yeah, do you think the having it up like the last day or two before the Thanksgiving break makes sense? Yeah, I do, yeah. So they show up Monday morning to school and there's a welcoming sign and just appreciation signs around, just in addition to what the students are going to be doing. I don't think there's any school Thanksgiving week, is there? No, there's not. That's what I meant. Do you think doing it? So the week prior then, I just don't have that calendar. Yeah, yeah. No, I think Friday the 19th, Friday the 19th would be the last day of school before the week off. So we could look at something like that. So you could help with social media. I can draft something to send out to the caregiver groups. And by caregiver groups, I really mean, you know, Eileen and Adrienne are handling things at middle school, which is great. I know who to send it to at UES right now. It's mostly Chad, Amanda's super busy. Hannah Zajak, as you may have seen, has resigned. She just got too much going on. She did say she would try to find someone else from Roxbury to sort of be connected to Pi, but I don't know how long that's gonna take. So we'll take anyone's help, Jen, with connecting with Roxbury, however. And then Boosters is really just, it would be so great to have somebody else who can at least be a communication. I don't, I could ask Michelle Simard, but I know she's got a lot of other things happening right now. And I'm happy to do that. I can, when I connect with Renee, I can figure out where all of that information is. And, you know, in the past I've done some stuff. I'm sure we can mess up some email addresses and... That would be so great. Even if it's just communication, I can't do a ton of other stuff, but... No, I think communication is the biggest part of it right now. And even if we're... Go ahead. Jen, I'm happy to support you on that. And if there are, you know, events running where we're doing pizza or whatever it is, if we decide to do something. I think maybe Michelle might be, if she's able, would probably be willing to support where she's able to. So, you know, there's help out there to support you on that. It sounds perfect, right? You know, the other thing to... The other thing we could think about is a riff off of the local love brigade and also the postcard writing campaign. So a bunch of us have been involved in both of those efforts, which could be replicated in this. So the local love brigade is people get together on Sundays. This is happening throughout the city of Montpelier, by the way, and in other parts of Vermont. They're getting together on Sundays and they're writing cards to different people or different organizations, you know, that need support. So for example, when I was at Digger, for one Sunday, it was all dedicated to the reporters at Digger. And they wrote notes of encouragement and support of journalism and freedom of the press. And Digger put them up all over the offices. It was really kind of wild. And we've sent letters to people who are incarcerated. We've sent letters to people who have been victims of hate crimes all over the, pretty much all over the country, but also some international work has been done. And then the postcard advocacy campaign is to get out the vote. And that's happening all throughout Montpelier too. And I'll bet you that some of our parents have been involved in both of these. Yeah, yeah. I've coordinated a good-sized group here in Montpelier of those. Yeah, Jen is one of the spearhead leaders of the Get Out the Vote postcard campaign. With Lee McCracken. Kelly McCracken is one of the moms who's involved in the local love brigade. So, you know, we have parents where we could actually maybe adapt that whole process, you know, into something like this for our staff, you know, for the staff. I think that's Kelly McCracken about that and... I think that would be great if someone could take that on and we can keep it as simple as what Jen just said. You know, thank a teacher. We'll come up with two hashtags and we'll do social media and the actual cards. I think it could just be as simple as coordinating a day. I love that idea. And I also love the idea of making sure that if we're doing multiple things that everyone is getting something as well, because there may be some popular teachers who get lots of cards and some folks who are sort of overlooked in making things happen. And so just want to make sure... Yep, the group kind of manages that, you know, and make sure that, you know, if someone has someone in particular or that they really do want to write to, you know, then the group kind of manages to make sure that everybody, you know, receives an accolade. That's what happened at Digger. So, and the group kind of forms its own pod, you know, so there are these pods who are writing postcards on and they have their own Sunday that they're doing or they have their own day of the week or evening that they're doing it. They pay for their own postage. They have the cards made. They'll get out the vote is a little bit different. That's, all that material is coming from national organizations, you know, that divide the small groups with the stuff. But I think in this particular instance, the, you know, although maybe that's a place where Merp's pie could throw some money, you know, for supplies, you know. Yeah, even if there was a consistent postcard that was made that people could pick up or we could drop at the school for people, parents are, I don't know, I have a lot of ideas about how that could work. Yeah. We wouldn't need postage though, Jen. So that would be a good idea. No, no, because you would just drop them and we would just drop them off at the schools. So I have a lot of ideas about this for how to make sure everybody's getting information and stuff, you know, you write one for your favorite teacher and you write one to drop in a box sort of thing, you know, and then the principal will make sure everybody gets, whoever's going to distribute in the school, make sure that somebody gets something. And this is something that you can do all throughout until the end of the year. Yep, yep, we could get it off the ground. It's something that once you get rolling, it just is ongoing, you know. So, Teresa, will you talk to Kelly or whoever else you know, and see if maybe we could get some people to organize it and possibly could we do one before Thanksgiving would be my question. I'll talk to Kelly about, yeah, I'm just one of the writers. So I wasn't one of the organizers. So not quite sure how they pulled that, you know, all together, you know, Bridget Assay is another leader. Oh, okay. Great. And they can always reach out to me too, Teresa, because I'm happy to put my two cents to work too. Okay. All right. But we can maybe thank a teacher Thursdays for this month and then look at something broader for the December month for, you know, more in the holiday. Or map it all out for the end of the year, you know. Through the year, yep. Yep. Another quick idea is Renee's newsletter that she sends out every week. She gives out what she calls a solo and solute to students who have done something that is noticeable or noteworthy. Maybe we could do something similar for faculty and staff, you know, if somebody's gone beyond the call and or gone the extra mile, we could give them, we could come up with a fun name for it and recognize them in some way. Sounds good. Just mindful of the time here. Let's see. So it sounds like we have some action happening around those ideas and you guys, we can be in touch on email, whatever's easier. I will write up something to send the caregivers on this idea of the social media campaign. Jen, I'll make sure to put you on that. We should move on. I've plopped all of the pie structure, change and communications into one section because I think it's less onerous than it looks. So let's see. Last meeting we all, I feel, we're very much in agreement that pie can be really, really streamlined. It can be much more of just, I keep saying an overlay of the caregiver groups, but this is how I'm describing it to people. Tell me what you think. Rather than being sort of a separate board that feels like a separate entity, it's members of the caregiver groups connecting with each other four to five times a year for the purposes that we have in this document, which I'll set on the side for a minute. And with room for people who aren't, such as Theresa, a great example, who aren't associated with a particular school right now. There's always room for people who want to contribute to the school community and all of the support we wanna provide it. But in order to make this sustainable work-wise, we're trying to streamline down to just being caregiver groups working together, connecting with each other and supporting district staff as needed because they're not attached to a particular school. So, I think that was a really clear articulation and maybe the clearest I've ever heard and it makes a ton of sense to me. Thank you. Great. So I clumped a couple of different things that are all related to that, sort of related to that all together. I think Leslie, it might make sense to just kind of go from the bottom, which is the policies that we've been writing and tweaking and trying to come up with a decent version of as a kind of good place to start. Leslie, you feel pretty good about the communications policy on plan. Yeah, so I ended up doing two, just because it seems like there were some things that were kind of related to immediate events, things that are happening this year and how we want to communicate about current events. And then it seems like we also needed kind of a more long-term document about how we approach social media and so on. Yeah. So I ended up doing two documents, one I called one a policy and one a plan. And so, yeah, they're both stored in the Google Drive. They're linked to, I've linked to them in a minute. So, yeah, people can take a look and let me know what they think and if they have any comments or changes. Okay, I also linked the financial policy and the fundraising policy, which is really just a list of key points. It could probably be polished a little bit more into looking like a more proper policy, but the important content is all there. And I didn't want to get bogged down in making these look perfect because I think the goal here was to sort of gather up all of these pieces that we need to communicate with the caregiver groups right now in order to transition into what I just so eloquently described. And I want to, I don't, it's not perfect, but I want to kind of have a package of like, here are some policies that are starting points that can be finalized together. And here's how we are seeing pie now and like the way that I just described and the critical piece of, you know, we really, this needs to actually be active caregiver, active members of caregiver groups that are involved in pie. So the one thing I would say is that the financial policy that you have linked, I had done some updates to, and that's not the most updated, which is fine. And I can find that and share it with you. It's not in PDF form cause it wasn't finalized but there were some of the things that Carolyn had in there that I didn't think were necessary. Okay. Could you put a copy of that? Or is it already in that MRMPS pie policies folder that Leslie has? It's somewhere. I don't know if it's in the policies folder, but I can look for it in there. I, you know, I looked to the bottom and I found a PDF and a docs with the same date. So I just grabbed the PDF. But if you don't mind just dropping it in there and maybe giving it a date of something more recent, I don't know if that may help or say final draft. We can get rid of those links and replace them. I guess the most important piece of this whole section for me, well, there's two things. What do we do now in terms of communicating with the caregiver alliance saying this is what we believe pie should be? I proposed five meetings not to be controversial, but I can see real purposes for those five meetings. I don't know if anyone's looking at the agenda, but I put in there basically September is you're still kind of reviewing fiscal year end. Obviously the books are closed, but you're sort of looking back and you're welcoming new people. November, like we have now annual meeting, any kind of voting, it's two months later, which is doable. Then like a late January, where you're kind of looking at the second half of the year, a March, late March maybe where you are talking about events and ideas for the next year and trying to sew down so what you think you can do. And then I thought right before school ends, like a late May, mid May, you could have something more celebratory, open house kind of style where you can try to get more people involved, have some fun, celebrate a year well done, even though it's not completely done. Nobody wants to get together in June as we have learned. So do that in late May. And then all you really have to do is kind of just close the books in July, which we don't have to have that July meeting. I don't think, no, Paris is no. And tagging on to that, I didn't get, I didn't hear back from John Holler yet, but Carolyn feels very confident that he would still be happy to help us. I did send him an email this morning that had been on my list forever. And I lost his email and I got it back and Carolyn said, oh, let me know if you don't hear from him. He may need, it might go to spam. So she's still available to kind of help with that relationship, but she felt really confident that he would be happy to help us with any bylaw amendments that are related to how this changes anything. Just a question on the meetings. Having the annual meeting in November and voting in new offices, wouldn't we want to do that earlier in the school year so that new officers and directors are on board earlier? Yeah, you know, the last meeting, our last meeting, I put that in there because we had moved this annual meeting to November, but you're right. But the only reason we did that is because we didn't warn it properly, right? Yeah, right. So otherwise it would have been. Yeah, so we can change that. Yeah, we can change that. November would just be, it feels to me like you want to have two meetings in the fall and then either two or three between January and the end of the school year. That's just what feels right to me if I'm thinking of all the activity of the caregiver groups, not having another meeting after September. On December just gets so crunched, but I can certainly change it so that the annual meeting is in September. So I don't want to stew around on this too much, but I do kind of feel like I could be, I need to know like, need to figure out what's the next step in this process of shifting pie into what we've just talked about. Like we talked about, going to attending caregiver groups and kind of walking them through this. I don't know who has the time for that. So I don't know, like in terms of how to communicate, do you all have thoughts on what's a good way to start? I kind of feel like, I don't know, I kind of feel like we're on the trajectory, we're on this year and that the key thing would be to gear up for that main meeting to really be welcoming new people in for the coming year. It's right, it would be really good to go to each of the caregiver groups over the next few months and make sure that everybody understands what we're doing and how they're invited to engage. But it does feel like in terms of really transitioning, it's maybe something in person and outdoors in the spring where we can get people together and celebrate a bit and I don't know, maybe that's too slow a schedule. It's a thought. Yeah. What do you think, Leslie or John? Yeah, I mean, I think that's what we have to do because we need to be working with the, I mean, we've said all along that we want the caregiver groups to be, or they are part of PAI and we want them to be on board with what we're doing and, you know, collaborate more in how we do things and so on. And so, yeah, we have to do that, either going to their meetings or having maybe a one-on-one meeting with the head of the caregiver group or however it is gonna work best. I agree with Kara, I think over the next few months that's the way we have to do it. Okay. All right. Although I could also see, you know, if the January meeting is about prepping spring events, trying to really get the word out that that's what that meeting is about and try to get people starting to see that as a meeting that's about them as caregiver groups, as what the schools are planning as well. Yeah, I wondered about trying to not worrying too much about exactly when it happens, but trying to sort of roll out, for lack of a better word, how we see this looking different. Because what we are asking is that at least one and maybe preferably two people from a caregiver group are part of the PAI board and the PAI board becomes very sort of not a heavy lift anymore. That's the piece that's different, right? So we'll just pick on Leslie for a minute and say Leslie becomes a Boosters representative on the PAI board, but she's active with Boosters. She has a couple of responsibilities on the PAI board and there's only four meetings a year or five meetings a year that she has to sort of worry about and her role is the communicator back and forth between Boosters and the other three groups. For example, oh, Boosters is talking about doing XYZ fundraising and she brings that to the PAI board and UES says, oh, we were also talking about that. I mean, that's what we talked about before. So letting the caregiver groups know that that's what we see happening. That's something that I would like to start doing soon. And like I said, I'm not too concerned about a deadline for that, but just sharing that vision sooner rather than later I think is smart. But it's 640 and we're not gonna do this tonight but I want to just think about maybe I'll try to draft something and it could at least start an email format with the people who we know are involved in caregiver groups right now and then see what's the next step. Wow, we did it all except for elections. So this is our annual meeting. We are to do elections for people whose terms are up and officers. Is president the only one Leslie that we have to worry about? The only officer. In terms of officers, for directors, Teresa's term is officially up. And then I wasn't sure about Jen and Jen because their term started partway through the year, early last year. This is also something we could change in the bylaws. You could. Yeah, that would be helpful. Yeah, I mean, I feel like you do whatever is easiest within the law of course, but if Vermont says we can have terms up at the two year mark from whenever that person joined in some ways, that's easier. And then the annual meeting doesn't have to always be just the elections. But we can talk to John about that. Yeah, I think that's how we had it originally. And then last year, I feel like we switched to doing all the elections at the annual meeting, but I'm fine with whatever works. We can switch back if that's better. Yeah. I think it's easiest if it's all at the annual meeting, if it's all at one time, and you don't have to remember all of the rest of it. And it's just like they have two years plus whatever it takes to get them to that if we can do something like that. Right. So how do we do this? Teresa, your term is up. Do you wanna be on the board again? Here's my chance. Don't you dare. Don't you dare. Well, I'll stay on at least for another year. I don't know if I can do two, but you know, at least another year. Now the word, you know, now the word media darlings, we have to say. That's right. If you were to walk away now, I would have to. Yeah. We gotta continue to look at Orca. There's Orca. Yay. You're recording us. We're slowly but surely getting on people's radar. Do we have to do a proper vote last week? Or how do we? I think we do. I did not check the bylaws before this meeting, but yes, I think we do. So I'll nominate Teresa for a one-year extension of her term. There you go. I second that. Anyone opposed to Teresa continuing? All in favor, aye. Yeah, yay. Teresa, good. We probably, it makes sense to reach out to Jen Bryant, because I haven't, I don't know if anyone's gotten emails about pie, but I haven't. I haven't. So maybe to reach out and see if she wants to continue. And Jen Matthews. Do you want me to reach out to Jen Bryant? That would be great. She's very busy and I know she's teaching and I know she's getting her degree. So it's not surprising that she hasn't had time. I shouldn't say degree. She's getting certified so that she can be your teacher. But yeah, that would be great if you could reach out and see what her intentions are. So I think Jen Matthews, it looks like your term ended as well or no. Oh, January, oh, 2020. Oh, so this is early. So maybe it's only in annual meeting next year, officially. Jen Matthews, you can't leave. Jen, where am I going? I've been away since 2023. So I'm around for a bit longer. Perfect. I don't think we need to vote on these to be honest, because I think that they're not hit their two year mark. So that leaves the president position. I've been avoiding it, as you can see. Does anyone want to be president? Ben, they're done that. Maybe, Jolinda, since I know you don't, you want to officially resign, it's not fair to make you keep doing it. So one option is to rotate it. Yeah, five months or two months. I was gonna try to sweet talk Megan, but she's not here. Well, no, in all seriousness, the questions that I have are for John Holler for the bylaws, because we talked about Megan and I sharing a lot of the responsibilities. And I think that could work. I'm not trying to do nothing. I just need it to be a little bit less. And now that the fall festival is over, it's a little bit less, but I still would love to know that someone else. It's like a co-chair situation feels a lot more sustainable to me. So that's a really, it's a good question for John and hopefully he'll get back to me soon. And that could help us move forward on this topic. I don't want to keep kicking it down the road, but I also, you know, you shouldn't volunteer for something you don't want to do. So, but yeah, you're right Leslie. I mean, that's an option as you take it spin for a few months or something. Could I ask a question about the role of the caregiver reps to the pie board? Would that person then be the point person for the administration? If the administration had a need to reach out? So the administration would then know that if it was a need that was particular to UES or MSMS or MHS and they would go to that particular person as opposed to you, right? As opposed to the president of Merp's pie, right? So I don't get a lot of individual requests from say the principals. I mean, Renee goes to me cause she knows there's no booster stuff right now but like Ryan, you know, before Peter Ryan was, it was, it was working pretty well at least at UES. Right, but like Anna and Libby, like what would that, like if it's coming out? Well, so they're not with a school. So yeah, they come to us. Right, they come. Could they feasibly go to the point person for the school that it pertains to that the need? Right, except when it's not for a school. A lot of times what they would say would be for all, for the whole district. Trying to think of a good example. During COVID there were many and it was usually the whole district. And they saw us as the way to communicate with all four of the caregiver alliances, which I think we really did want them to see us that way and they should. It's just about managing that, you know, communication and communication out. It's, I think that's a great use of pie. It just needs to be, honestly if all I was doing was monitoring and managing communications through the email, that's a fine role for one person or two people. Okay, so maybe something you and Megan could hash out. Yeah, I think it's just, there were so many other things. The board meeting, you know, meetings and agendas and recruiting. Well, we haven't been recruiting but thinking about, you know, getting more people on the board and all the communications with the caregiver alliance. And, you know, I think it's just spreading things out and then what we did at the last meeting, do we really need to be doing all of these things? No, those streamlining and then sharing the load. To have a president, like I think that that's a state law but we're gonna find out, we'll see if John will help us. I think if, you know, you have to leave that kind of those titles in your bylaws, I think. But there's no reason from a practical operational standpoint, you can't just sort of have a co-chair style board, you know? So we'll find out. So we'll just kick that down the road again. I don't know what else to do. In all fairness, I think we would have made progress tonight if Megan could have come, but she, yeah, she's got something going on. Yeah, it's okay. We got a lot of other things done and I really like some of these ideas. Jen, Matthew, thanks for those good ideas and I'm excited to do something. That's what really matters. It's that people are feeling supported and we all are doing what we can, you know? For sure. All right. So I think we're good. I think we're done. Is there anything that I missed? No, I think we covered a lot. Yeah, we did. Okay. Well, thank you all very much for your time and energy and I'll see you around. Thank you to you, Julia. Goodbye. Bye. Bye-bye.