 at 6.34 this evening. You can see we're gonna start off with the RTCC senior profile, so we welcome Jason Gingol to share the information with us. We've got board survey results from our outreach activity, outreach afternoon at the block party, some collective bargaining agreement to review, a few other things as well, as far as the Raven Building goes, et cetera. Do I have a volunteer to do the reading evaluation? Thanks, Ashley. Is there a form? She does. Is that in this? No, is this yours? Okay. Use in the back. All right. Since Nicole probably doesn't have anything to say, we'll move on. And you're first. So we'd love to hear from what you want to say. Hi, everybody. I haven't met everyone before, so I'm Jason Gingol from the Director at the Randolph Technical Center here in our college career lab. This is senior profile for this year. We don't have all our data yet, so I have what we have for now, and then we'll give you the longitudinal data study that we do all the way in June. Thank you. All right, so 57 total seniors. Our usual kind of centers. Remember, this is the first year where we don't have Chelsea High School, Rochester High School, or Merged into White River, and even though a few Chelsea students and Rochester students are now here at Randolph Union, this is what we have left. Our Harwood student will graduate this year. We don't have any more coming in. We'll have a student who's not on this list from LaMoyle. We'll lose our Sharon student, and I don't think we have another one, and we may gain about four U32 students. 57 of our 57 students are female, and they're in our mechanical wing, so either in construction trades, automotive, built agriculture, forestry, or the diesel program. 21 are what we consider economically disadvantaged, and that's based upon free and reduced lunch. 30%, I'm sorry, 36% are on some kind of service plan. And 20 out of the 57 are going on to secondary, post-secondary training or college. Zero this year entering military, however we think there's one who is applying to the State Police Academy, next year it's from U32. And 30 are gonna go work, post them in their field, which is great news, we really want it. Questions so far, please stop me at any time. What's the seven are working? They may not in their field, but they have jobs. And by comparison, so the 36% of the senior class at the tech center that is on some sort of support plan. By comparison, the district as a whole is around 21%, and then depending upon the school, it ranges from 20 to 26%. And that 36% could be IEP or 504? Yep. Is that typical? I think we're usually closer to 32, 33. Yeah. It's not out of the back. Right. I had a question on the enrollment. Yeah. Do the other schools, do they send their kids to other places or, I mean, it's really, it's not surprising that Randolph has the most since it's right here. Right. But it surprised me, like you have just one kid from U32. Right. Do they go to other tech centers too? Their first teaching is technically the Central Vermont Career Center. Okay. And same with Harvard, Harvard and U32 both are technically supposed to send their students to the very tech center for their center. But if that, if Central Vermont doesn't have the program the students want, they can explore otherwise and transportation is kind of on there. Most of those students tend to come to us for diesel or criminal justice. That makes sense. That's why I was kind of, thought it was odd that U32 only had one student in the tech program. And remember, this is also just seniors. Okay. Right. As well. And Williams County is starting to send a few more students to Central Vermont Career Center. So in some respect, that's kind of our region. But that could be for a program we don't have. Yup. So our end goals. We pride ourselves on our industry-recognized certificate. I haven't counted them all yet. Our state data isn't due until next Tuesday. Normally we're around the 300 range. I think we're gonna break 300 this year. I think that's- It's the LNA test of this week. LNA test. Right. LNA test was last week. Oh, okay. And 10 out of the 12 passed. I was here for both ends. So that's really good news. But that also includes the game of logging, the automotive service exams, not only for automotive, but for diesel, the licensed nursing assistant, last week, please, only Monday, the state seniors in auto passed their state vehicle inspection. So they all got their license for that. We're the only tech center that does that. The education services earned their early childhood fundamentals, which is also a certificate through CCD. Traktor Safety CPR, our advanced manufacturing program got their NIMS and FEMA certifications. Most of them account for wing and advanced manufacturing got their OSHA 10 and many more. So we really pride ourselves on that because we know that when students get an industry graphic as a certificate, they're gonna earn 18% more than someone who doesn't have that certificate. So that's really important to us. This year we had 31 seniors participate in dual enrollment and earn college credit. We got a 57. We offered an ASPAD to all our students and all 57 seniors used the ASPAD this year. Those scores are a little more difficult to kind of report to, but high school can use those scores as part of their ESSA plan as well. What does ASPAD mean? Oh, it's the military. It's the military services. It's the education. Oh, okay. The aptitude, the average, or something. But we don't use it necessarily for the military. It's great because it tells the student if they're in their right field. So someone scores in the 90th percentile in mechanical and they're not in maybe the mechanical field. We're kind of saying, hey, you have this amazing ability. You might be in the wrong program. Have you ever been interested in this? And that's how we tend to use it. Work-based learning, 35 out of 57 experienced work-based learning. 57 students experienced over 102 guest speakers just fabulous because basically what we've decided is by using guest speakers, it enables students to meet an adult that they can then envision themselves going to that career pathway. And so we had 30 students visit S.D. Ireland and go to their site in the Coltester, Burlington area and five walked away with jobs. So they have jobs right now because of that. So we're really proud of that math and literacy skills. And since that's now in ninth grade, they wanted a different assessment. And so this year they asked all the technical centers to beta test this and we were the only one who chose to do it. We used our Perkins funds and we used the month of May to administer that assessment. So it's in two categories, applied math and workplace documents. There's about I think 35 or 60 questions and they start at level one and go up to level seven. So they start a little easy. It takes them about 45 minutes to an hour. So I think before I got here I would say maybe six, seven years ago they started using this and then they stopped. And so we tried again. Next year the AOE will require us to use this assessment. So for us this is great because it's just numbers for us. It gives us some data for next year. Scores can range from one to seven or 65 to 90. If a student gets a five, I'm pretty sure I keep hearing this that they can use that five that they score with us and use it at CCV as their graduation kind of get out of jail free time. So we administer the test and the number crunching and this is just for seniors. Our seniors average in workplace documents at 3.9 or 77 and 11 of them scored five or higher. So five, six or seven. And then for applied math they scored a 4.24, 75.2 and 16 scores of five. So we'll kind of get into this detail a little bit. We just got the scores back last week. We'll give it to our math and English teachers so they can kind of develop a better understanding of the assessment. Next year we hope to do a pre-test in October and then a post-test in May. That way we can really show, see if there's growth or not. That'd be the ideal. It also costs $12 a student to take the examination. And so we were using our Perkins funds for that but we're hoping that AOE will cut a deal. So that cost will go down. And these are seniors doing it in May. Yep. So they're on their way out. But you know what? Were they pretty good about doing it? They were. You can really see, because I can see the name of the student and I can see their score. And you can kind of see who was just clicking. And you can see those that were vested. And the reason I say that is because for the most part most of the students did three or higher on everything. Those that might have scored a little lower I think is more based upon their service plan ability than their effort. We did not follow, we didn't read to students this year just because we were beta testing it. It's the student required in their plan. The other thing that we did in Carlos did a great job with this. When he explained to his students why they were taking this our funds are directly tied to this assessment. And so when we talked about if you want nice cameras we need you to do well on this test. Because if not we have to use our money to improve your scores before we can buy the equipment. So then all the teachers kind of followed that suit. And I think the students bought in a little bit more. And it's also, I mean 45 minutes to an hour of a test. It's not too bad. It's not too bad. It's not all day. I also graded them. Right. Extra point to me. In English, Mr. Pointexter previewed it with them and then they just took it in English. And then because we now a full-time math teacher Ms. Tana Beatty previewed it with them and then gave them the assessment. So I think it wasn't as bad as something else. Well we don't know next year is it everyone has to take this or can we use these scores for returning students and they just do another or reimpose. I don't know if they're really like three times that might be pushing it if I ask someone to take it three times. I can see that. I could probably get away with this. Discipline data. So I keep a running track. I write the discipline letter so I do keep running track. One for bullying, harassment. And this is just for seniors. Two out of school suspensions. Two in zero theft, which is nice. This is the highest this year. Right. We talked about if you read the Herald and we were at the give or mean or Green Mountain Care Board last week. No fighting, no safety, no improper use of technology. So and this is our third year I think of keeping discipline data. And this will be in the longitudinal study as well. And then what we're gonna focus on for next year. There's a little poster note beside my desk that says what's public education for. And for us, career, college, math, how are these students? What are they prepared to do after high school? I think Anne works with us the most and I think she'd hopefully speak well of us and say that's what we're really trying to do. Where are students going after high school? And not just working up at the bar in our McDonald's. They don't need us for that. So what are they gonna do with us? And Thursday at our recognition day we talk a lot about opportunity. Are they taking advantage of the opportunities that we present, not only certifications and dual enrollment, but those 102 guest speakers so they can network with someone and get a job. Or go to college, either way. So we use this room a lot for that. We're gonna continue to work on the cycle of poverty. In May, I went to Montpelier listening to Paul Gorsky speak. And he's a big proponent of equity across the board. And we've been basing a lot of our work on bridges out of poverty. And he's now saying that's not the actual text we should be using. So we're gonna dig a little deeper into Paul Gorsky. And we're also gonna work with a gentleman by the name of Mark Perna. Who wrote a book called Asking Why? And we're gonna use our Perkins funds if they're approved, about $16,000 own. And he's gonna come in and help us do some career trees and develop a marketing message in which we're also hoping we'll help work with poverty. Because what we find is that students come to us and have this, they may not say they have a poverty mindset but they're unwilling to break their cycle. And that could be based upon relationships that they currently have. It could be based upon an equity obstacle like transportation. And how do we get them to understand that but also break themselves out of that cycle. And it's difficult because I'm just a middle-aged white guy that, you know, I'm their dad. I'm some old guy that they don't necessarily always wanna listen to. And we can give them the best advice but it's like listening to their parents and, you know, parent voices at sometimes. So we try, we convince, we build relationships. And the other thing we're gonna do is we're working, trying to work with Jenny Campbell who's from the Claire Martin Center and Jenny B who will give us a one day training on trauma-informed mental health for youth. So really about teens but it's a one day certification and they don't wanna break it up into two days. So I think that might be early September or our next full-in-service day which is not till November or January but they don't wanna do two half days. So that'll be our professional development for staff. And then unfortunately our digital portfolio and our open house would really well this year. We moved away from tri-folds and health students really got into their digital portfolios but the platform we were using called Protein, they're closed. The entrepreneurs made their money and gave up. So we'll probably be moving to LinkedIn which I don't think we'll close anytime soon hopefully. But we're also doing some research and people say LinkedIn's the new resume so we'll find out pretty quick. Question. I'm always here, open doors. Are there any program or programmatic changes for next year that you anticipate? Yes. So we are taking our environmental resource management program and merging that to the agriculture program. We're not gonna change the name. Next year will still be Diversified Ag. They will take over the sugaring. Besides that most of the competencies were pretty equal as far as the standards. So we're not adding a lot other new things to that program. The numbers worked out better going that way. And so you're not having to turn kids away from that program or two, yeah. Correct and it gives us, if you haven't been out back in a while inside the parking, you can see the five garden beds, the high tunnel. Now they have the sugaring operation. It really makes for a land steward program rather than two separate programs and trying to appease both. So that's our first programmatic. Right now we don't have any students signed up for our business management program which is a real shame. Students walked away with up to 12 dual enrollment credits in that program and we can't fill it. What do you attribute that to? The question, we've been banging our heads on that. You know it just may be not, and I hate to say this, but not hands on-y enough as a program. And so this year Mr. Boulay's staying and he's gonna go or for next year go into some programs and really work on building those business skills that all of our programs need business knowledge in the past those days. So instead of kind of coming to him they'll go to them but he'll still teach his three dual enrollment classes as well as financial literacy. And if you go back to the beginning slides Harwood Union High School requires financial literacy as a graduation requirement, so does U32. And so we're gonna start, we're not, this year coming up we're not gonna require students to take financial literacy but if a student needs a math it may not be ready for after algebra two or even algebra two. We're gonna slide them into financial literacy. So we're slowly getting towards maybe requiring that ourselves as a school. We just don't wanna double up. So the student needs pre-calc and financial literacy. That's a lot of time out of program. Those are our only two program changes. We'll have a new teacher for health careers just waiting. I don't know my recommendation calling I'm just waiting for the hard copy recommendations before I send the recommendation to Mr. Millington. And that was somebody that's already been here for a little while. It's not a bike which is good pre-tech. Well, so Mr. Pre-tech, that's another one. I'm gonna sit down for this one. So we have an open room behind us in our forestry program. The idea is, let's see how I start this. So that opens up a space. We don't have a lot of space in our school. We're not gonna build in a building or anything like that. So the agency of education through Act 189 really wants the tech centers to do career exploration with students starting as early as sixth grade. Not necessarily, it's not marketing, it's not recruitment. It's really understanding of career exploration so that students then can identify with a career and start planning their academic pathway and have the right skills to then be ready by the time they get to ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th grade. So because the forestry program closed after the budget was approved back in town meeting day in March, we have a little bit of a surplus or budget that we can then use to start a pre-tech foundations program. The application went to the state last month and Mr. Millington and I and Ms. Pembroke are meeting tomorrow at nine to discuss what that would look like. The idea would be that we would start a small career exploration program grade six, seven, eight and that wouldn't just be for Randolph but Williamstown is really interested as well. The Northfield principal who was leaving said he was really interested but I don't know if that would be the case with the new principal. White River hasn't responded at all. We won't go into Montpelier at U32 in those places but the idea is to do a STEM math and science program based around career exploratory with kind of a traveling teacher both for here and at Williamstown and using our resources. There's a model up at both in Linden Institute and at St. Alden's where it really works well at Linden Institute to have a lot of Northeast Kingdom bicycle trails and so their pre-tech program is all about like the science of biking. So that's how they're using their internal resources. So we have to figure out what that means here. We're kind of thinking like the Y lab why do things work and not just necessarily recruiting for the programs we have but students can come and get academic credit in math and science, understand about different career pathways. It would not be an all day program. It's not another Raven. It's for every student short blocks, quarter or semester long. So you're gonna, are you gonna bus kids from Williamstown? No, the idea would be that our teacher would go to Williamstown. Oh, and do this. Because they have a block seven period that they would allow us to use. Oh, okay. And ours would be in the morning here. Okay. So it's figuring out the revenue first and that's why we're meeting tomorrow. How do we count these students? And I think from what I've heard from other tech centers is we just roll them into our full-time equivalent count, which would be really good because that also means that tuition would go down the following. Well, later, not next year, but six month semester. That would be pretty good. So that's the wish list. I have the job description ready. Just have to know the financials are there. Are you at capacity for the enrollment or do you have to? If we did some quick math next year, we would have 11 programs and capacity would be 11 times 16. So, 116. 116. Right. Plus. 116. 176. Yeah. Right now, we're at 130. Our building is not built for 160. We have one toilet in the men's room. We are not physically built for 160. Our best is like 145. So, just judging from your earlier presentation, which was very good, thank you. There are some really nice successes and I'm wondering how you're capitalizing on those in a marketing way to entice kids to consider a technical program considering their workforce needs within our state and certainly locally. So, my hope is Mark Pernop, the gentleman I mentioned earlier. He's worked at Stafford Tech recently and I believe Burlington Tech and their enrollment is at capacity. And when I asked those directors what it was like working with him, they attribute their work with him to their increase in enrollment. They also have four times our budget and could use him more often. Our budget's not that big and they're using Perkins funds. It's solely what I'm talking about. So, he's willing to come here and spend a full day with us on September 3rd. Start us on our career trees. We'll do that work and then continue to work with him for the year. But that will be helped become our marketing message, our new marketing message. His book is on my nightstand. I have not read it yet. That's my summer homework. But according to him, we are recruiting wrong. And by that, he means our message in verbs. So, I have to figure out what that is. We also are in a smaller market. The numbers that we have to recruit from are reducing right now. Period. And so, I don't think we'll ever go back to the 175s. There's also, we were talking to Jamie Kinari who's the Williamstown principal. And he has 70 students out of his building that aren't, that are not only at tech centers, but are at early college. Dual enrollment, work based learning. So, it's not just the kind of that competition. There's other opportunities now that were in competition. Sure. Thank you. That's the idea of working with this gentleman. We'll hopefully help him. They had a pretty good upturn in enrollment the last year or so. When they transitioned to Jen Charles as a guidance counselor, they started a really good job in terms of marketing along with Jason. Which is one of the reasons we were up, up of where we are at this point in time. When you've talked with the other tech centers, a couple of the other tech centers, they all have sort of a computer oriented program. Are they finding those numbers are good? Is it, because I just, it seems like. When I was in Burlington, they had a computer programming Cisco program and then they closed it and they're starting again. So that could mean a couple different things why they did that. My fear is that in K through 10, there is no computer programming or really technology class in this district. And I mainly say this district because we get the majority of our students from the Randolph area. And it would be difficult to all of a sudden trying to entice 16 students to come to a computer class programming all day kind of program class. Right. But to have an experience in that from K to 10. So next year we will do some research because in 20, let's see, so 19, 20, 21, right? Two years from now, we will have the opportunity I think to start two new programs at the center. The other way I'm looking at this is I don't think CTEs can afford a large umbrella of offerings anymore. There's too much competition. The governor or the current governor, his mandate is advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, which we're putting into our criminal justice program. That's another place for computer programming. And also agriculture, healthcare, construction trades. Those are the big ones. So as we look at our centers, what can we afford? Again, we can't build on new spaces. So what do we have? What can contract? What can we combine? Also what can we double up on? We have a very successful NLNA program which is great for students for one year. But if we built on a different health careers program and it doesn't mean one has to be first or the second, two different tracks that if they were combined, we'd been told students can go to Norwich University and start a sophomores. That sounds like a pretty enticing message. And same thing if they attend in CCB. Now all that still needs to be worked out, but there's enough room for an NLNA program and a med diagnostic, phlebotomy and terminology. That kind of work. Part of us wants to do, we still need to do our labor market research, but an electrician program because then you can build also into the apprenticeship. And that would fit nicely in that room based upon its size, where plumbing, I don't think would work on that side of the building as well, in that specific room. So there's lots of opportunities, but I think we have to be careful of what silo, in some respect. You know, I think when we hear silo, that's kind of scary, but I think a little bit of contraction will give us better numbers rather than being too spread thin on random programs. So ideally by November, December, we would have an application in the state to start tuning programs after we see our labor market research. And you're approved, because it has to be in the minutes. Thank you very much. Sure, thanks for having me. Okay, so the next thing up is the board survey results. And we have Paul here and Anne, feel free to chime in. If you want to come a little closer, if you're free. Oh, I certainly, yeah, come on in. So a number of us were there at June 1st, Saturday afternoon. We had a lot of people come and sit down and take time to fill out the surveys. I was quite impressed. And thank you to all who participate. It was great. It went quite well. So we were there until about 3.34 maybe. Yeah, about 3.30. Yeah. Things were sort of just being packed up at that point and they were getting out the beer tent and dance music. So it just was the time to leave. We don't need surveys after this. No, no, no. I thought it would be more fun to have those responses, right? So there was quite a lot of discussion. People sat down and talked. So it went quite well. And thank you to those who participated on a very nice Saturday afternoon. So I want to sort of digest that. Did everybody get a chance to read the survey results? Did everybody read through them? It was, I don't remember the exact number. And they're 27. 27. So 27 people filled out surveys. I know when I was there, there was several people who didn't want to fill out the survey, but they talked to me for 30 minutes. And so I filled out a couple of the main bullet points and threw them in there. I think overall, it's kind of a scattered result. If you saw some were, oh, this is great. There's nothing, I think everything's going very well. Some are in the dark on what's going on. And then others, they are very pointed at what they think needs to be addressed. And I didn't see too many doubling up. I don't remember seeing any kind of trends. There was nothing, it was very person oriented. Just so you know, when you're reading through this, response one to each question is the same person. Like every, you know. So the response one, response one, response one. They're all the same person. I'll weigh down through the 27 responses. I just thought having all the answers to the first question first would be good. So you know that you can say you can read it or not read it. I think there were definitely a lot of positive responses. There were a lot of negative responses, as you said. There was just some that just don't have. I had a lot of folks that I can't fill out a survey because I have no idea what's going on in the school. I don't have any connection to the school at all. And I would have, no, looking back on it, maybe I should have had some sort of a, we should have had some way of recognizing how many people didn't feel like they had enough information to fill out a survey. Because maybe that's a response that we should know about too. Because you have to be fairly invested in the school system to even fill out a survey at this point. So people over there, would you guys think they want to? I think it was a very good thing to do. I think we should definitely try to do more that type of stuff. I think that would help the perception of the board with the general public and the parents and whoever. But I thought it was a good time, good thing to do. Yeah, Tim, people were really, I was surprised by the number of people who stopped to talk to us. I was actually thinking people wouldn't even know what to say or wouldn't be interested in it. So that was encouraging. One thing next time we shouldn't have, are you athletics on it? Yes. Is this about sports now? How about sports now? So we should get a tent or a new sign? Or we probably should have just turned it around. There was quite a few people that thought it was the athletics tent. Gotcha. Yeah, that was the best we could get on quickly. Yeah, that was the best we could get on quickly. So can we think of another event that we could do this going forward? I mean, me thinking aloud here, the next event I could think of is the 4th of July. There's usually some pretty big festivities throughout the day. Parade happens and then I'm not sure if they're gonna be able to buy a pool again this year, but there was community there, not just activities, yeah, for hours. Yeah, and somewhere along Main Street too, as people are waiting for the parade, it would be a great place to have a tent and be sitting. And are you envisioning doing the exact same survey or? I think, yeah, I personally would like to see the same survey on about you guys just because we got responses, but I didn't really see anything that jumped out at me as repeated. Nothing that's usable right now anyway. 27 responses and all 27 were pretty much different. And so I think if we did the same questionnaire and then perhaps get another 27, 50, something like that, then maybe we could see some kind of pattern that we can address. Is it possible to build an electronic forum either through survey monkeys or something like that and send it out through Front Porch Forum? I can do that tonight. Yeah, there was definitely a couple who asked for that. Because then you can send it out that way on Front Porch Forum or how people wanna do it via social media, I don't know if that would work. Does the school have paid survey monkey because I have the free survey monkey, maybe we should go through that. Yeah, Tina's pretty good if we can connect right up with her, she can actually develop it before you get it together, have you check it out and pull in all the results. That's a good idea. Very good idea. There's also the farmers market every Saturday. Yes, perfect. Yeah. And then starting in this first week of July, we'll have the community concerts every Tuesday night that are free through the summer. So it's quite a few events. Is it generally the same group of entourage of people that come to the farmers markets? So I don't know, because I'm usually working at my farm. So I don't go to that one. Yeah, I've never been myself. I go to the farm. It's well-attended. I work at most weeks and I see the same people there every time I go. Even though you're talking about vendors or... I was talking about the people I see. Yeah, the people that I actually go, I usually see the same people. But I think I'd only go once. Maybe just say what's... Yeah, like when things are really in season. Yeah, I would say July or August. If you go right now, you're not gonna get many people because none of the whole farms are... If we were to go in August to the farmers market, that gives us a month difference and maybe a different audience and maybe somebody who said, I don't know enough to fill out that survey but looked it over would have a month to think about it because sometimes those things percolate in your mind. So just thinking, farmers market in August, 4th of July, parade in July. So maybe in June, is there anything left this month? When did you say your contract start? July? But I think Melody's idea of a survey monkey. Yeah, survey monkey this month. Because that can be... Yeah, yeah. And you know... I'm trying to remember, I think we had... We did one at the beginning of the year that the board asked me to do, I think it was October. We had pretty good... I think it was over 200, somewhere between 200 and 300 people responded to that. So then we typically don't meet in July. So we will have to correspond via email to see who might be able to sit for a couple hours until I 4th. And we again can share that responsibility. So don't forget. Does anybody know the details of the parade? Anybody involved or anything? I can find that. All right. As far as... If they're gonna be over by the... Oh, I'm guessing they will be. Because they've been in that two years now, I think? Yeah, more than that. I mean, it seems like... Is it been one, two years? Oh yeah, yeah. And going on since my kids were little. But all the tents set up over there? All the activities, yeah. Over all the tents being over there. Oh, maybe not all the... There's usually some... There's some big activities. Yeah, yeah, all right. So we can count on that happening. Yeah. And this year, the Kimball book sale's not happening. So maybe we could use that long. Oh yeah. Before the parade. And then just not do anything during the parade and then sit up at the pool after we could ask. Yeah. You want me to ask him? Sure. Okay. Are there a lot of people? I don't know. I'm up in the neighborhood where the parade comes. So I never am downtown. Tons of people. So there's usually... Okay. And everyone's waiting there for a good hour? More. And a lot of people park at the high school and walk up. Oh, perfect. Oh, great. Right by the kids. That's why I was thinking about that end of town is best. Yeah, yeah. I mean, very unlikely they know that the library's not doing their annual book sale. And so they're gonna go through there anyway. They're looking for the book sale. Right? They're gonna book sale. Nope. But there's a survey. Yeah. What would you like the answer? Sure. It's not a book. But you could write one. Here you go. Yeah, forget about that. All right. Is there anything else anybody wants to say about the survey? Does anybody want to change the survey? Well, what are we gonna do? So we're gonna gather all this information. Then what are we gonna do? What's our plan? I think first we look it over and kind of collate and see if there's any trends. Any trends? Yeah. Is there anything that people brought up repeatedly? And then perhaps if there are, then we can maybe investigate that a little bit, you know, kind of pull the string a little bit and see what is going on here. I didn't, like reading through this, it's good information. But then the only thing that jumped at me and I thought to myself, yeah, why is that? Is the accreditation. We're not accredited and so I looked into it myself, like kind of thinking high school accreditation, I don't know if that's more or more or not. And the state, me and Ask would be who we'd use and there's only about, I don't know, 12, 15 schools in the state that are actually me and Ask. For me, Ask has been falling out of favor for about a decade now for a couple of reasons that actually started in Massachusetts, started in Belmont when I was there. They are a self-created organization that popped up many decades ago and they're incredibly expensive. I mean, your yearly, your yearly dues are 10 to 20 and they don't do anything until year 10 and then it's about 60 or 70,000 to have them come in and do the site visit. Really? That's not listed on the website, it's listed as 45,000. It depends on your school but that's not... It goes by size. Yeah. So what ended up happening was that when No Child Left Behind came in and the state started collecting all these data on all the schools that we report out and the report card to everybody, it was like, why? We've already got all the data that they're going to generate. It's a self-report that we do ourselves anyway. So a lot of schools have just stepped away from it just to save the money because it is all there in terms of their trends and everything else that they need to know about themselves. Matter of fact, Jason at the tech center pulled out of me ask last year because of the cost. They still have to do an accreditation but he went with a group that does a very good job that was a tenth the price. And his was a little bit different because he had to do this every three years, I believe. I was usually with that at high school. That's an awful lot of money. Awful lot of money for... And the people that really do the work, you spend two years... So year 10 is when you get the site eval. The two years prior, too, it engages the entire faculty at the high school. They're the ones doing the work and doing the analysis. All of the folks are doing when they come in on that site visit. Is there a check-in through seeing if you've got some evidence to back up what you're saying and then basically saying, yeah, you got it right. Some of the people who come in on site visit, aren't they other educators? They're all other educators from other schools. Yeah, they're volunteers. That would be helpful, though. Having outside eyes come in to speak to our administrators and teachers. I think that's the benefit of this. The state has a process that happens every three years. We're going into it in the fall and October. The IR, I forgot what the last piece is, but it's their review cycle. So they will have educators from other schools that come in. It's very much like the NEAS process. It's just it doesn't cost a arm and a leg, because the state runs it as part of its requirements. And it's every three years instead of every time. And is there a self-study that's associated with that? A little bit, yeah. So basically we're saying that NEAS is just obsolete. We talked a little bit about that at the last meeting, but I can pull that information back up again for folks. But I believe that comment I was there when that was made, that comes from a former teacher that was here. And she was not extremely happy with the way the school is now. And she had been a longtime teacher here. You can tell by that note that she's not very happy with it. But that was pretty sure that was the same one. When I saw the two teachers when they left, I read me read because I was very interested in what teachers had to say. Two of the better comments. That's a lot, yeah. Integrated field review. Yeah, so that happens every three years when the state comes in. And it was interesting reading through what it's kind of new in the state. As a matter of fact, it was piloted three years ago and this district was a part of the pilot. But it's very similar when I read through it as part of the prep for it in the fall. It's almost identical to the NEAS process. Okay. So maybe we should talk about that then. Yeah, maybe. I'm just wondering. So for an example, Bellows Falls is one of the schools in America that is like a top. If you go to the website, it says NEAS, you know, it talks about their accreditation. And all colleges in Vermont are NEAS, I think. I don't think there's any way it's got a different regional accreditation. I think they're all NEAS. And somewhere on their website it says, hey, we're NEAS. We go through this process every year. Yes, maybe all the schools in the state are going through the state process, but like I didn't know, and I'm even on the school board that we do this every three years. And so that would have happened like when I first joined the school board, and I don't remember it being, you know, when NEAS comes to Norwich when I'm there, it's a big deal. Everybody knows NEAS is coming because lead up for two years is a self study. And then when they're there, everybody has to meet with these guys. And I don't recall that happening when, I mean, I'm sure teachers did meet, but it wasn't a big deal. And so what I'm wondering is, do we want to point it out and try to make it more of a big deal so the community understands that, yes, we're not part of NEAS anymore. However, the state has this new process. It's great. It's wonderful. It does the same things. We just don't have to pay for it. Yeah. And it's easy enough. And as far as the NEAS is concerned, I don't know when you guys stopped. Yeah. I seem to remember Brent talking about it, but I don't know if it had stopped years prior, but I remember Brent mentioning it. Yeah. I don't remember him mentioning that we are not doing it anymore. Oh, I don't remember you. Yeah. And it was financial, and it was a waste. It's a huge cost. Right. It's not what it used to be. Right. So it is. I haven't seen one. And Swamp Scott was a smaller school, and so we're going back about a better part of a decade now. But the integrated field review, until I go through it, I won't be able to say if it's, but the way that it's set up, the process that it follows is almost identical to NEAS. So what policy would be driving us to direct him to do this? Right. Well, you have a right in terms of your ends. If you're discovering things through your survey and you find patterns there that you had verified to believe them to be the case, then you modify your ends. I would argue. It's an assessment of the ends for sure. That's the whole reason they're doing these things. If it's like the NEAS, then they're going to be coming and looking at the processes leading to the grades and whatnot, and then they're going to be looking at what are the outcomes. And with NEAS, anyway, I don't know about this, but it's towards the school's goals. So NEAS looks at what your stated goals are, what you're doing to achieve those goals, and the steps that you're doing to ensure that the goals are being furthered. And so if it's similar to that, then it's exactly what we want to be looking at. And they have a little bit of a stronger focus. Again, I'm just learning about it in terms of a lot of the state initiatives that are out there. How are you doing on behalf of Personalizing Pathways for students? Do you have your multi-tiered support system set up and in place? So they do have that eye on things as well. They're looking to make sure that all the quality standards that the state expects to see. That's really what they're evaluating you on. That's NEAS or the other? That's the state. The integrative? Field review. Field review. So those are two different. So it sounds to me like it's a thorough evaluative tool. This is a point four position for art, replacing Candy Van de Greek at the Brookfield and Braintree. Do we need that motion now or when we do the consent agenda? What I would do is, recommendation is to do a motion now to put it on the consent agenda so when you hit it, it's just there. Okay. And it gets approved with everything else on the consent agenda. I'd like to make the motion to add a teacher contract to the consent agenda. Excuse me, consent agenda? A second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. So let's add that to the consent agenda. Okay. Thank you. So the support staff negotiations, we were there, you can speak a little bit as well. Well, the support staff wasn't there. I was there for the very first meeting. For first. We had a tentative agreement with them. And I can go through all the details as much as you want. Made them an offer. They agreed. The board actually voted on the offer. They did not. The offer sheet that they were given had two pieces to it. Is this the handwritten one that you had at the last? No, that's the teacher's contract. So support staff are like the paraeducators, cooks, facilities, folks. So they had the agreement that was there. The offer was basically two bullet points. Actually, I'll give it to you if you just want to see what it looks like. And then on March 21st at 3pm, I met with the lead negotiator because they were asking, what does this mean in terms of new money? And we talked about what the definition of new money meant. And I said, you know, I'm happy to put that down there for informational purposes. But the definition that I'm using in terms of new money is everything in terms of your benefit. So when your salary goes up, it also means that we also have to pay a little bit more for FICA. It means that we have to pay more for your long-term disabilities. So that's what we're using. We also spoke in that meeting at the time that if we were going to negotiate at the table, it wasn't going to be around new money because it's too confusing over definitions. So that's why the first two bullets were the offer. What happened after the agreement is they were saying, well, there's discrepancies here. And I said, well, what do you mean in terms of discrepancies? They said, well, I remember the agreement was, you know, offering folks 4.25% or a change on the initial grid, whichever is greater. And I said, well, do you see that in the sheet that you signed off for the tentative agreement, which is in front of you? I said, more importantly, that 4.25% or the starting grid, whichever is greater, was never even discussed as part of any of the meetings. And so what I think is happening is they're like, well, you know, you kind of got a discrepancy. Our calculations of new money don't quite match yours. So we want to go back to the table. And so that's kind of where we sit at this point in time. I recommend going back to the table because what we kind of had planned to give is what we want to give. And they're kind of at that point where they're accepting of what we want to give. We just got to get back to the table to do it. Right now, we're kind of locked in a position, trying to move forward because procedurally, they're supposed to vote. So unless the board here decides to go back to the table, we can't do that. So they're asking to kind of reopen negotiations because of the discrepancy. I can give you the update of where we're at. I think kind of we had set aside a certain amount of money in the new budget that was intended to go all in for them. The reason being for that is as we've kind of discussed previously, is that one of the executive limitations on me is making sure that folks are in the comparable range. A lot of the categories in the support staff group were not in the comparable range for what's happening around us. So we were trying to bring them up to that. The piece that we've put together and that we'll talk about in executive session in terms of an offer does just that. It gets them into the comparable range, especially the ones that we're lagging behind, but also on the competitive edge of it, which is kind of where we want to be. We've had a lot of turnover. The cooking staff, the facility staff especially, were lowly paid and that was one of the reasons for the turnover. So they're going to have the biggest impact overall in terms of the negotiations. We'll talk about that in executive session. Okay, so let's table this until executive session. Yep. All right. Draft of annual agenda, which is a close to power agenda. Linda, this was just sort of pretty much what we had last year. Yeah. I think I moved the auditor because last year we had it like January, February and that's not going to be able to come. So I put it what it was this year. Which was May. Yeah. Is this just a guide on or do we need to approve this? No, this was taken by Mike Andrew. It's an agenda for the board that is kind of not only stating for you, but stating to the public what you're going to be meeting on when. So I would say you would need to approve it if folks are happy with the state that it's in. We can approve it as sort of a skeleton. We do move things around as things come up or sort of, you know, just the way the schedule changes. I don't think we need to discuss the superintendent contract again, do we? Won't we have been done with that? I think we need to approve it in August. Yeah. And this is that one. That's usually a board function is putting up. Right. So let's take the time to. We're not doing the keynote speaker. Right. Literally I took what you had last year. Yeah. So why don't we right now, if anyone sees anything else, let's mark it up a little bit and. Well, there's plan community events. Right. Are we. I think after this whole round of community engagement this summer, we might be, maybe we should put something in there. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Does he think that this would be appropriate to have this summer? We might be, we should put something in August or September or review community engagement from the summer months and then plan for the. In response to community engagement. And then the next steps. When do that in September?對 September, I think. market so that would give us time to do that and then we can just see how that went overall and kind of put together a new thing but I think that we're gonna want to keep moving with certain things you know that was what this time was we're in the meetings for you guys to look it over and give you back to each other do we have a community engagement plan we don't really remember we had talked about creating we had Val come in yeah I would say we don't you were on the subcommittee with Kate yeah no it was we needed more input we we had so little like that's what we we we have so many questions that we couldn't get together I mean I think it would be worthwhile to use one of our policy governance trainings at the end of a meeting yeah to talk about you know and develop a strategy really for our outreach and receiving input as well would it make sense to do that in October if September we discuss about the results then think about it yeah I think work you know my intent is to continue to schedule ongoing policy governance discussions just so that we're all involved with our own our own governance so one of you guys are writing changes I'm writing some changes okay thank you the plan staff appreciation I think Lane I'm not sure but I think we discussed where we're just gonna make that a regular occurrence that during national teachers week whatever that's called appreciation it's national right yeah so just have it or the reoccurring event that happens yeah would you like one of us to help with that or is it up to you it's easy enough for us to just play it on I say as a Tuesday when do they reach right all right that's that's fine so just eliminate that the only thing we got to do is the carts so if that's in May right it was in I thought it was April was it the end of April or in May I don't think it's April it's April I think it's the end of April so we should have signed the cars maybe in March in March yeah and then we'll do the same right yeah the same things we've had been doing just probably are I know when it was like the week before we were doing ours and I remember when I was making the last coordination I remember thinking myself why do we do it every day they had some other event around when we did last week yeah these kids were doing that's a good idea it's in May the same week is healthcare I'm just gonna say it is May 4th May 4th April and April yeah and I believe that the RTC C meetings will start to happen on our board meeting days isn't that correct so we will have that September November February and May so we'll have a somewhat earlier board meeting a six oh we had talked about right we haven't decided exactly that's the way it's gonna work but because there was such poor attendance at the tech center meetings that it would make sense as we are responsible for the tech center anyway we you know we approve their budget etc it really behooves us to be more involved and really provide a listening ear and feedback to Jason so we decided to incorporate those into our meetings there are four required tech center meetings typically they've been scattered throughout the year September November February and May and so next year we will incorporate them either by starting earlier at 6 or by just starting at 6 30 and having the tech center meeting first and then follow with the OSD so plan that I have to add that to our agenda too or at least somehow to the meeting which month September yep November February and May so they have separate agenda I mean we're to discuss all that yeah we will yeah they have read through the law of each and I talked for a little while they have to serve in a true advisory capacity so anything in terms of changes the policy that group needs to be able to have a voice in and if the board this board even though you're the controlling board goes against what the recommendation is of that advisory group I have to actually submit a letter to the Secretary of Education not that it changes anything but I just have to say this is well as I understood though none of the advisory board members have actually attended so yeah one last week or one so you know we're going to continue to invite them and and send them the agenda and warn the meeting to to all the others participating schools and community partners like Vsac or CCB and whatever else but you know so that advise your advice report will remain yep how many people are voting members for for if so after the console after the consolidation can't be too many I'm gonna have to ask Jason to be sure because a lot of the sending schools were consolidated consolidated under White River I'm sorry that'll be a Jason question we'll make sure we ask one of them more than three I mean well in Williamstown and Northfield are now one although that they still have their two separate high schools but they're under one superintendent yeah so they hate to think it's just two but yeah because it seems like it'd be us and then it would be Norfield and White River it's three I could think of so put that down as far as schools I think you're right but then you know it's CCB right then a few community members right that are on that advisory board right we definitely never have we haven't had a quorum here but I'll get an exact number the other thing if folks are interested is Massachusetts by law required advisory committees and it's actually it's got some really good guidelines they were actually pretty lively meetings they were a lot of fun when we ran them so people are just email that around as you know maybe a protocol that we follow when we run the meetings well we should also ask Jason what he would like from an advisory board we could do something useful to right well and maybe we can reach out and ask some people to we should try again we should definitely try there will be cookies pizza too yeah now like we were talking early early on is I think if it really gets down to some of the real policy questions I think you're gonna get people that are interested in showing up to be able to have that input because those are things that contend to develop a good sense of urgency for folks and I think they could it's just right now there's nobody to come so you can't put any meat on the agenda yeah because you only have it you can't vote on it so this will put this annual agenda will approve it at the next meeting August if anyone else has any other things to add or suggestions to make a couple of months all of us will be here for our board meeting so you'll have like 10 community members and one board member on a minute what happened there okay we need you at a point we'll be a point our auditor do we have a I can give you I can give you a little detail so you guys have used a father girl Sigali and Valley for the last two years now there I was actually a sticker shock I was finding out how much the auditors are in the state so they're the first year that we had them they were at 55,000 the second year was 43,000 and then the coming year they're estimating about 36,000 it did go out to bid at that point in time apparently there was a gentleman CPA that was being used for a long time who retired he was about half the cost of all the rest but these guys were the low bidders when it went out to bid one of the reasons that the the cost is going down is because of the consolidation when you originally consolidated they had to look at a lot more details they had to look at a lot more the financials to make sure that everything was coming together the way that it was supposed to so the cost will continue to decrease as they get more accustomed that now that we've transitioned over they kind of know us they know what they're looking for so you're looking about 36,000 the recommendation it's a board decision but the recommendation from Robin is to stay with the same would there be any necessarily reason of how long you should stay with a CPA like that should we you know go out to bid again in the remember they're they're helping you serve your oversight function so if you feel that you're getting the information that you need and as a board and they are responsive to you I would say no unless probably what should happen is it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to every couple of years if you're sticking with the same one to at least go out to bid just to make sure that what they're charging is in line you know there's no reason right now to believe that it's not but that would be my my suggestion so as a board you know are you getting what you need are they giving you the information I know for the years when we have the other gentleman we went out to bid and he was so far under we just like oh yeah Robin said he was like half he was does anyone have any questions or concerns about the auditors or the auditors report that we receive this year they picked up picked up on two pieces that we've got to work on which is good that's their their job I just think it would be helpful to have that material prior to that meeting with the auditors to be able to review it and to be able to come a little more prepared to ask questions or to press any issues that may be of concern that's a good point we should suggest that we do have their reports before the meeting the other piece just throwing it out there as part of the discussion is that you know I know that folks were hoping to get those reports earlier in the year that's one of the things that could happen if you do a bidding process is you could state when you expect it done as part of the bidding process and just see if there's anybody out there who can manage that as a possibility what are the constraints as far as when our financials are all ready it doesn't depend on the budget process or anything like that when they actually can do the audit they typically remember they're looking at the year behind so they typically come in right off of the bat you know into September fall yeah okay so so you've got time be any constraints then yeah just do we want the report earlier well I would suggest it just in that you're waiting a long time if there was an issue I didn't realize they came in in September and we heard from them right I mean that's a long time so if there was an issue or concern not to say it wasn't being responded to by the business office but I would imagine your board should be aware of that like it's their their big constraint was the folks I think we're looking for April which is you know had heavy tax season there were two months for tax season there's corporate tax and then there's the which was the reason so they have done it earlier if they have done it in September is when they came so could they have done in November or December I don't think so because we asked we asked yeah I remember you asking nothing we originally had it on the agenda maybe February or something quite early so I mean we could ask them that question whether we could have it whether they would be prepared to present it say in January or $36,000 you think they were yeah excuse me I'm happy I'm happy to ask I mean you don't necessarily have to make a decision right now what if well I mean our next meeting is August which is a little late so how do we want to handle this what couldn't it be an ask and then Lane you could email us and we could do a board you know resolution or vote whatever to say we would like it on December 1st or I'm imagining that all the other schools are waiting that long to get that information typically this was when we got we've always gotten it well what we what you might be able to do is that we can ask and say hey we'd like it this month and then if they're unable to provide it you know maybe we're locked in for you but then that's the cue that's time to go out to bed doesn't guarantee that if you go out to bid somebody's gonna be able to do it but in the bidding process you know you put in the dates when you expect the work to be done and so do we want to appoint the auditor for this year and request that maybe we get the report earlier what month you looking for I mean ideally would be like November because that's when we're actually talking about the next budget and so ideally would be before we come up with the next budget in case there was something that was glaring that needs to be addressed I think that would be ideal but if they're coming in September I don't know how long it seemed to hurt three three months November November might December might be doable November December December folks are comfortable timeframe and we'll get a response from an explanation if not I think you guys are talking about the written report I'm not sure when I don't know how long Robin had those before do you know or think we got a try to come actually so I think there's two different things when Teresa's executive report then I'm comfortable with that being available as soon as possible right whatever that is but if if she can't meet until May I'm okay with that report okay I mean I don't need to talk to her if I can get an executive right that's what I want perfect yeah they should be able to produce was the summary of findings at that point I'm even a little have the full document don't give us something to work with yeah do we need to vote to appoint the auditor probably okay do I have a motion to appoint Father Bill Seagal Father Gil Seagal and yeah auditor do I have a second second all those any opposed okay and then we'll see when we can get that report so next we've got we need to accept the 2.7 report which was enclosed in last month's agenda and we talked about it and had a month to review read it over laying last time last meeting answered question did anyone have any further questions on 2.7 I have a motion to approve gail 2.7 as written a second okay all those in favor say aye any opposed all right so 2.7 is approved next we have this facilities plan update which is a checklist here yes Jimmy don't have it in color you have a color copy folks want to see but it comes in color in the electronic when you get it so I'll talk a little bit about this because it's it's kind of in transition and we did do our some direct observations which I thought was good basically there are items that are completed that have the yellow highlighting on them the reason that those are in there those are ones that were actually taken off the report because they've been completed a while back even up to a year ago reason I put them back in there was to do the direct observation was to actually go out and check and make sure the work was done so that's why you're seeing my my initials on there so there aren't a lot of dollar amounts I didn't have them go back and track all that down and put it in but I at least wanted to make darn sure that you know that that work had actually been completed if you see dollar amounts in the estimated column that indicates that the estimates are physically in hand from a vendor in most cases so if you look at the very top top of the report you know you've got the the Brookfield updates to facilities to meet state of commerce preschool 25 000 what that means is that we actually have those estimates in hand if the board would like them we can supply them at any time in most cases especially if it's over 15 000 there's going to be at least three estimates that we can hand in we can talk about why we chose one over the other when the dollar amounts are in the final cost column that means that we have the final bill and it's at that point in time that I would go out and do the the direct observations and then my initials go in if I've seen it or if robin is looking out there her initials I can go in that that space as well questions on any of the parts and pieces that they pull out my column copy because my support lines so I do have a question and I'm sorry because I am a finance girl so I do think it's interesting that we know on here thank you for going out and checking and making sure things are completed but there's not the final cost so um I would assume if that was the case that we then used internal intelligence to create that and we did not track salary or parts but if we didn't and there was actually an external vendor that came in why would we not know with that we do these are or things that were done and done in front of the board with dollars and whatnot over a year ago I can go back I'm sorry I just I didn't I didn't want them to recreate but what I wanted to do was to add in that separate piece which was the direct observations I'm happy to do that it will take them some time to no I didn't know it was that long ago to yeah some of these are like the from like lap summer a year ago okay yeah so what we did is we I kind of went back through pulled everything else up as part of the tours and said let's go take a look okay make sure that those things are actually here and the work was done so I certainly think moving forward that would be I mean in my opinion something an estimate and a final cost that should certainly be documented for us to see yeah now that well that was part of the question so and again it depends how intensive you want how much time you want to take for facilities if you want them here were all the estimates for the first call so people would just want to see models what they look like do you want details every time or if there are things that you really concerned about you know do you want to say hey we want to see that or you can spot check or we want to see this one or this one for the next next time around and that's the other possibility but for them to copy all the because they like I said in lots of cases are getting multiple estimates and whatnot it would take quite a bit of time for a body there yeah that's a discussion for that for the board just tell me what you want I mean I from my standpoint I if we don't have trust that that these are the right estimates I mean I you know we have other problems then at that point I at least I don't think it's worth you know I think we need as an oversight board I don't think we need to know that see those and my initials around there so if you think something is funny yeah you're holding me accountable for got it we're not doing it so the other piece I've written up a kind of a two two-page protocol for how they enter data into this when projects are completed after it's shown up in a board report once those projects are then removed from the list so that it's not confusing I'm just so folks know so all these ones that are completed that have been signed off on they've got the initials on it from the direct observation those will be removed from this report the next time you see it make space for new stuff and so it doesn't get too confusing but these reports are part of the record so they're always the old ones are always accessible so really in the long run if you are going if you if something needs to be redone you can look back through the completed things and say okay this was this was done on this state here's all the backup documentation for it here's the vendor that did this so that we can go back to vendor yep you have everything more organized that way but it's in a list like this yeah especially the warranties and stuff yeah maybe it helps I don't know is there anything particularly we should notice about this report or something you want us to know um I think I mean a lot of that was meant to try to keep things simple um so as folks are going through like in some cases here there were funds that were requested for some things that were denied a lot of this stuff was we're at the end of the year so there are the is the surplus monies so the ones that are in orange just means hey of all the of all the priorities that we've got that wasn't at the top of the list you know we're we're using those funds funds elsewhere to support facilities and we can talk in a little bit more detail on on some of the other things like raven and whatnot we'll talk about the widget boiler and you know I didn't move on from the report that are part of the facilities piece but I think it's it's is it usable I get the question is for the board is this usable for for the board um does it get at that that piece that that I think for years you know kind of was was missing which was the somebody actually had the eye on this to see was it actually purchased or the work was the work actually done um and then you know we're being very good about making sure we've got all the back up documentation again that's one of the requirements they do not put it on here unless they've got the back up and that wasn't being done before you tell me and the and I don't mean that to to to turn it around one of the things that I did notice and of course I only looked at one or two of the reports like you're going to get the surplus requests or excuse me reserve for requests for me today for two school buses and for the work on the paving um from what I saw and the old days when you got those reports there was no estimate attached to them you will have you have asked you have usually had estimates on in in the chart like this but yeah but I'm talking about the actual estimate from the vendor so that if I'm requesting 171,000 from reserve funds I've got the vendor document attached to it so that you can see I'm not pulling that number out of my right right that we never saw so you're gonna rent might have seen that from yeah but you're gonna you're gonna see that tonight it is attached to those reserve requests okay and that's part of the change is now you know you know on the day-to-day basis that it's all based in something there's a reason for those requests like I said the reports the old reports that I saw from the the old facilities director there were a lot of requests from reserves but there was nothing attached to it it was just that request form that they would hand for out yeah I remember seeing this but I was assuming Brent was following up with it and doing that part yeah and you know if that went into a lot of detail I mean if he's just checking the paperwork that's coming in or checking with Robin to see how did the paperwork come in on this if somebody's just falsely generating the paperwork it's going to look like it came in and it was paid for by a vendor yeah so this will help avoid that I think are you comfortable with it ultimately you're the one I am it's going to take a we're it's it's adding a little bit of work but it was kind of fun to drive around and see all the parts and pieces that we talked about so many times so I've got a really good understanding of a lot of the internal workings of the facilities now which is actually kind of cool but no I actually think it is it'll take the facilities crew you know a little bit of time to adjust to the extra documentation in the report because they're really good facilities folks but you know XL skills are not so that's that's that's the hardest part and then making sure that they keep up on it not you know rush it you know the week before so it's just getting into a routine I guess but no I'm very happy with it and you know especially you know pulling the estimates from them because they'd be pulling the wool over your eyes if they were sending stuff in and saying hey I need reserve funds for this and now you've got a process in place that's holding them that's saying yes they actually do I mean somebody could always fudge a estimate but I mean we're not we're not we're not making it easy and we got a safety net there to catch them you know it was actually kind of fun like even you know last year I would have taken people's word for it because I because I trust them but you know this year you know Jason I need a new truck for the the tech center you know can we can we do that out of the tech center surplus and so yeah well let me see the old truck so he went out and he showed me all the big holes in the floor and the the back end all rusted out and actually the poor thing didn't look like it had even been running Lord knows how many years because it was so mad off so yeah so it's good to actually it's a good thing but then it also I can I can be very impassioned now too about really going for the money when they're asking for it because I know how bad things are for some of the things they're asking for you know it's one thing to hear and it's another thing to actually physically see it so okay thanks for that revised facilities plan update I like the way the estimates are included and the money my line too so do we have a legislative update that you want to pass on or uh yeah uh do you want to talk on Raven first since we're at facilities or do you want to sure skip over no I didn't know that I noticed that here but of course it's a yep so actually it's the the Raven piece so where they're at right now they've got the three bids in on the demolition so the hope is they're going to accept one they were actually coming in much less than than we thought they're in the $30,000 right which is awesome the hope is is it after the July 4th holiday you know the vendors chosen that blades on the ground and that that building is coming down it should take two to three days to take it down on the construction side of things that is currently out to bid we've got one bid in so far we've got to get at least three to meet the state bidding process requirements we may not get them we've actually started to reach out to people to say hey do you want to bid on this because if we do that and they say no then we can fill in for a waiver with the state for the other two bidders we have a moving company that's going to be coming out and doing the move of the the real heavy expensive equipment that's there you may have seen and we've got the storage pods that are in place there's two over by the old raven building some of the smaller stuff the raven staff thought that they wanted to move it themselves so they're going to put it in the pods the pods will be moved over they'll they'll unload it there is a large pod that's by the new building and that's for overflow so they're actually going through getting rid of a lot of old broken equipment that's been collecting for years the stuff that they're undecided on may sit in that overflow container for a while until they decide if they're going to use it or not the other piece that kind of came up during the work was there were a couple hundred gallons of hazardous waste in barrels in there some of the barrels had been there since we actually received the building so they guaranteed me that you know that at least the barrels and stuff were in good condition they weren't leaking there was nothing coming out of them they think most of it is probably either just used motor oil or park cleaning fluid but we did have the the crew come out today to start removing it that does the cleanup of the the chemicals from the science lab and we're putting a plan in place to not keep that stuff forever yeah well that that's what was interesting is like i said it's a good chunk of it they didn't generate it was there when we received the building that's so interesting yeah so it's it's it's a yearly when the we talked about it when the the crew comes out to to clean out the science labs they'll they'll pick up that at the same time they don't really generate a lot themselves except for a little bit of used oil yeah so it's never good to get around yep so the old building the disconnect is happening on friday consolidated wireless will be there green mountain power the programming company will be out to disconnect the building to get ready for the demolition there is one problem however and they've been trying to work with the town they have no idea where the water inlet and outlet is for the building so they've been doing a lot of work searching around to find where that is so that they can cap it off because it needs to be capped off before they can start digging so just thought that was kind of interesting the old command center that was in the what will be the new raven building that has been moved over to res it is pretty much up and running so it's a backup command center that the the old facilities director created and there are still a couple of monitors that need to be installed but there's enough of them up there that you can monitor all three right now that you monitor all three sites at one time if you needed to and then the last piece was something they noticed when they were looking for the water main was that the tax center was built directly on top of the main sewer connection for this part of town so that's well it's just it's a matter of how extensive is the work on that uh if work needs to be done how much of this building do we have to tear up for the folks to be able to get to it so I have a feeling that the reason that they were bringing it up is because it's some work that may have to be done in the next five to ten years at which point in time obviously the right thing to do is to reroute the lines around but we'll we'll deal with that is the town bringing that up yeah well that that was part of I like I said they were trying to figure out where the water main was coming into the raven building because they got a cap it off they couldn't find it so I think they kind of discovered that when they were looking at things oh my god they built the tax center right on top of it well that's good planning yeah so just parts and pieces there the wood chip boiler first time so this was a question that that came up in the community a number of times it was part of the walkthroughs it was a million dollar grant at one time that that put that that thing in there and it's yeah so it's it looks brand new the problem with it when we did the inspection and it was actually west one of our co-facilities directors right now that used to do a lot of the work on it until mark mark took it over is there's the giant metal boiler and there's a firebox on the inside with the wood chips burn lining the firebox are supposed to be insulating bricks because what happens is the heating and cooling over time the bricks will crack they'll need to be replaced and then you replace them out the real reason that that boiler hasn't been up and running was because for whatever reason a choice was made instead of replacing the bricks to save money is they mixed up a slurry as the insulating material it was kind of like it looks like concrete they did a really good job and poured it into the firebox but the problem is is that after the heating and cooling cycles and when that started to crack it's like well how do you remove it which is like somebody poured concrete in there and so we've got instead of doing the fireworks and so what we've got is we've got a crew coming out to take a look to see what can be managed you know is it going to damage things how badly will it get damaged as if that gets removed and to see if we get the the fire bricks in there what would be nice is to get a trailer load get the thing up and ready to go get a trailer load you know 16 little wood fill up the hoppers and just having to sit there in case we have an emergency there's a war on the cost of oil it goes spikes within within a couple weeks there's a lot of reasons to do it but it'd be nice to get it up just as a secondary system so right now we're not using that hasn't been used in years but as far as we can tell on our our visual inspection that's the reason why and otherwise it would be fully functional like i said i was i was amazed going in there there's a they actually back into the the the building out here there's two giant bins they look like garage doors they can dump a dump a 16 wheeler load worth of wood chips in there there's a giant auger system that'll actually pulls it probably at least 50 feet into where the burner is and it all looks brand new i mean it's it was it was incredible equipment whatever it was the the issue is that fire box no when they stopped using it was it because the price of oil dropped or because of that fire box now you're getting into that it's i don't want to go on record i can tell you what my impression is i believe that the legitimately the price of oil was high at the time so everybody in the state was fighting over wood chips so they didn't have great availability but i think they're by the same token an equal factor and that was they had poured that stuff in there it was time to replace it it was we didn't quite do it right it's going to cost a lot to replace it we don't have the money to do it so we'll figure out how much it really was how much it really is to get that get that fixed if we can never heard stuff about the resource no and it has the capacity to heat this entire building yeah it's it was amazing there's it's it's the little ash box on the side it's probably about the size of half at this height about size of half that half of this table if they they said you know you can do a whole 16 wheel or full of wood chips and you know the ashes are you know easily fit into that whole really efficient that's pretty impressive to talk about so we'll we'll see there was a lot of discussion in and around the town especially with the r3 work that was going on about why that wasn't being used so that was part of a mistake i'll look at it but interestingly like i said there's a lot a cool stuff here any thought of since arias is so close is this is it big enough to to heat both buildings uh we could ask i don't believe so i mean my guess is is that they probably figured out what the output was to properly heat this place and built it you know for the economy scale so that you know you weren't you know burning up you know twice as much wood as your is you really needed to for the for what for what you were trying to eat but we could check the other piece associated kind of with that since we're kind of talking on facilities the solar projects so there were a couple of different little solar initiatives that that we looked at we've got the final bid in for for one today and i'll talk a little bit with the board just to get a feel for what people were thinking and to get to give kind of my opinion um the big thing that kind of killed the solar projects is there's a main circuit down here that green mountain power operates and when you build in a solar array it pumps electricity into that circuit so green mountain power is saying that we need some pretty expensive equipment to upgrade the circuit here to be able to receive you know the amount of power a school sized array which would require so that that's one of the reasons that those talks died jim miriam from norwich solar came out and spoke his plan is a little bit different than you know the district kind of purchasing our own basically what we would do again the green mountain power issue is still still a problem that this would have to fix the circuit is basically they would find a buyer who would buy the solar you know use our space to put it on so we would have no upfront cost to it we would get a discounted we'd buy the electricity from them at a discount and then their big savings comes from the tax because they're a private private investor so they save you know the 30 percent in terms of taxes that they would get for the total cost of the project my concerns on it i think it's great you know it's no cost they do all the maintenance they do all the management my concerns on it is it's a 25-year agreement for a district that's paying right now about a quarter million a year an electrical it would save us about 30 000 a year and then there's no end game and by that i mean what happens to all that equipment when the 25 years is up who's stuck disposing of it so i love the idea but that again and that's part of the input from the board i i get nervous of that 25 year uh your threshold and then i also get very nervous about you know when the use of the life is up you know who's who's taking care of all this about who's disposing who's paying for it because that's usually not included in these plans is the disposal that's a really important piece is it their equipment though so they should be responsible for for removing and disposal so what we could do now here's here's the catch um is that you know they want an agreement by June 28th the reason being is because legitimately part of the reason an investor would do this is to take advantage of that tax break right 30 back on the or maybe it was 40 one time but 30 back on the the the cost of the array you know we'll come out of the taxes over the course of the next couple years the way the law is around it is that tax break is decreasing so it starts to decrease after June 30th if you start your project then so they're saying well now if we're really going to make this happen at the the savings that we quoted is you know we got to get an agreement in by by June 28th you know part of the agreement is we could have them put an agreement at the end you know owner takes the equipment off the building but again i don't know what that'll do to the savings again it's 30 000s a lot of money compared to a 19.4 million budget is it worth the longevity is it worth uh i don't know i'm not comfortable with it but i'm not you know i'm i worry because it's beyond my time and you know i worry about what kind of headache i might believe for somebody else maybe perfectly fine i don't have enough experience to judge it really would have been useful to have jim come and present it to us yeah i can still i'm sure he's happy to i can have him him come in i mean i literally just got this we met month and a half ago i got this a few days ago so i think they're scrambling around because that that june 30th deadline is but if anybody wants i can email it around and i can i don't brought a copy with me um like i said i think i think of all the possible things as ways that that we potentially looked at for solar from purchasing our own to purchasing it from somebody who may be putting an array up on the old landfill i think this is probably not a bad way to go and probably provides the most savings but i just he knows our district so well having served on this board for 10 years or you know he's um but even even this i i got to find out there are some agreements that the vermont superintendents association and the vermont school boards association have had um it doesn't really need to go out the bed because it's not like we're paying for anything up front but it seems like there's got to be some sort of process to choose to provide equity in terms of choice amongst the companies that might offer something like this you mean we have this would be what which number of proposals that we have from people just of this business model for solar this is all in solar in general um we've got had adam we get come in that his was for looking at actually putting it on the building we buy it and own it and then the other one was we went up took a look at the proposal from green lantern solar who is it's kind of a similar to this but we we wouldn't get as much of a discount because they're not putting it up on our property right right there's that there's that aspect of it too we're just we're just we're just reaping the the lower cost of the electricity their profit from the tax incentive wouldn't be bundled into the one that's coming from green lantern solar is my understanding whereas we'd get a little bit of a benefit from having it on our buildings what i was wondering is having three separate proposals you might even want to ask if that counts is yeah i don't even know if we have to well that's that's part of that we got to talk with if people are interested the the folks folks at the state um you know i i don't feel like we have anywhere near the information yeah i don't need to do it by jet june 28th yeah and i've been i've been looking at it for six months um i'm kind of conversant with things but i'm still not again the the piece that leaves me the the the shyest about it is just that it's the time frame you know you're talking the green lantern was 20 years this is 25 i mean should we reach out to norwich solar gym and uh cfeb willing to present at the august meeting yeah and you know i don't whether maybe it's not worth their while or hours if it's past this july 1st deadline i don't know but i think you know we simply can't move i don't think on it without enough without more information yeah um and getting well getting it's more agreeing it keeps saying well it's not binding and it's like you know for because the problem is is that the second that we sign something like this it's wrapped around a specific bender and so kind of you know if we move forward then we're kind of you know not that this wouldn't necessarily be the best but it seems like you know we're locking district assets technically you know the buildings themselves for 25 years it seems like there should be more than just looking at one group but i'm happy to have him come in an august and kind of kind of talk what what's the consensus among everyone else well it seems like there's a lot of issues with this and then just sort of even thinking about well you know there's there's a financial reason to do it there's an environmental reason to do it but maybe not everybody's on board with an environmental reason to do it um and then we're talking about this roof right so we need to know about the condition of the roof and because it seems to me with these building roofs after a while they need replacement so where 20 years cycle so they don't want to install the the solar panels and have then it'll work on a roof that needs to be replaced yeah so that just did this roof yeah the roofs are good good for for about 20 years um you know you do get some protection if they do a good job of putting the panels up there but then you got to figure out you know this is not a metal roof there's no seams to clamp things to so you know how many holes are they going to be putting in the rubber coating that's up there and you know the ideal place and the environmental impact is is something i don't think has been studied yet um because when these panels come offline and need to be disposed of because they degrade you know they they lose one percent or so they're generating capability every year that goes by when they degrade and they need to be thrown out what happens to them right i don't think that's right that's the whole thing yeah so it's a it's a huge huge question for what it's worth i remember we had this question about solar with brunt as well i don't remember if it was a man meeting or if it was a one-on-one but he had the same everything that you're saying right now is the exact same thing he said he said 25 years is not something that the school district should lock up it shouldn't go on the roofs because of the roof then they will damage the roof in the process of doing it inadvertently something's going to get damaged and then we'll be on the line of trying to fix that roof i don't know i mean i i'm happy to listen to jim and and listen to everything but that's two superintendents at a row looking at information from different vendors and come to the same conclusions at different times that i don't know i if he could sense a lot of that i'm thinking i don't want to push you know again it's the it's the time frame it's the time you know if we could have it out or they had to remove it or you know even even the it's it's also the amount of savings versus that you know thirty thousand a year yeah he's got it he's got it increasing as the cost of electricity goes goes up you know if it goes up as predicted right and then you know it's it's converted to you know it's this you know a quarter million dollar electrical bill 30 thousand savings for a 25-year commitment with other possible ramifications hey i've got you guys can have if you want i just wanted to listen so what's the board's pleasure on this so what's the more i guess and i'm probably coming into the sleep but what's the motivation for this i mean is this just again because i'm solicited okay somebody came i think the r3 process generated talk so i just wonder though is there benefit um it obviously there's concerns among this board there's concerns among the superintendent would they're not would we not be better served to wait to see the progress of r3 and to be a part of that local movement and to show the collaboration between that and the schools yeah um r3 was kind of a they're continuing some of the groups are but it was a big one-year kind of push to get things going and then those groups are supposed to take take off and they are continuing to be especially the energy group but the bigger concern as well well as for me is you know what is green mountain power committed to fixing that grid and reading jim's proposal kind of what it's stating is that you know we have some some power and some push with green mountain power to get them to to make that change to the circuit here that expensive change but the way that it's written it sounds like it's actually coming out coming from the people that are investing in solar in the area so green mountain power isn't paying for it it's the whoever in the area is trying to invest in solar they're going to add a charge on them to great well but i almost wonder are there is the money better spent on doing more efficiency projects within the building and i think about you know right now changing over to all led lighting and i mean we've been able to clearly show the decline in our electric bill and is there a ways to just educate kids and the staff on turning off lights and you know how you powered out a computer and i mean is there are better ways to maybe teach lifelong lessons instead of putting solar panels on the roof yeah and they've vermont efficiency vermont has come through they're ready to do kind of another survey so they've done a lot of those upgrades already so we've we have capitalized on those savings i mean a lot of the discussions in terms of electrical right now comes down to basic protocols why is there a refrigerator in every classroom those are expensive to run if you got one in every classroom even the little portable ones why do we have you know 40 40 um you know microwaves out there they're going to blow the circuit anyway if you got too many of them running i mean those are things that we were already talking about you know everybody has a faculty room you've got the one big refrigerator there it should be enough unless you're science lab or something you've got the means for so those are the other things that can be pursued i think there's benefit in trying to change habits yep more so yeah so it sounds to me like the consensus that will table this and maybe not pick it up you know until something i'm going to keep changes i'm going to keep looking at things i'm going to get real excited to dig in really deep if green mountain power changes that if that circuit changes but i don't want to be subsidizing that that's the other piece and i have a feeling that that sounds like it's a part part of you know the project you know okay so let's we don't need to plan for anything in august we'll just table this for now and see what happens in the future around solar um we are definitely running behind our time the time a lot but um legislative update was there anything you wanted to the lead through the acts of all the ones that kind of have been through the general assembly probably the lead is the biggest and then the workforce development so with the lead it did did pass both there is a tap inventory survey that's due june 28th in other words the facilities managers have to go in and tell them all the taps that might be accessible for water across the district they're doing that so that they know the number of testing kits to send us they did decide on a four parts per billion threshold any hits above that are going to have to be remediated the state will reimburse up to a certain amount to replace fixtures um then whether or not those dollars are well aligned to what the actual cost is it does not appear to be so um the other part of this is when we start doing the testing so you know we've got all the all the access points that have to be tested they're supposed to it's being done by the department of health they're supposed to be sending us out of rotation you know you're not supposed to do them all you know in the same week um you know you're going to work on this building this part of the building first and and work your way through so it's supposed to give us you know that that rotation how we're supposed to do that but we're also supposed to be putting out notifications once the testing starts five days before each round to test that it's happening to keep keep the the the town in the loop by the way since we're on it the the lead testing at Brookfield is clear and has been clear for a while so the water is usable it still has a little bit of the salinity issues what i've got them doing is they are doing full salinity testing every six months for the next year and a half because what we want to see is if those their levels are significantly lower than they were before we did a little bit of work on that well but what we want to see if is if the ions right they're charged ions are just sticking to the the bedrock that's down there that's containing the water and if over the course of time of using the water if the salinity levels are going down right may take some time to literally years to wash through those rocks and clean out all that the stuff that was in there so that every six months for a year and a half should give us an idea to see what's happening with those salinity levels if they're not going down if they're staying steady state it means two things it means we probably can't even drill a new well there because it's just the aquifer and we'll have to either just keep bringing in the bottled water for the the drinking portion of it or we'll have to look at a reverse osmosis system to put it instead of a well so you know right now kind of on hold just to see what happens with the testing over the course of time. The other one which was interesting with Jason here tonight workforce development bill they part of that H533 is requiring a study to be done that's due in january of 2020 to see if it's possible to integrate state college programs into technical centers in other words it looks like potentially having technical centers take over some associates degrees really interesting so well it's a question is it to shut down the colleges or what's it was unclear and kind of reading through what the motivation is but it would literally you know vermont tech a lot of its associates degrees up here well it's the only state college that has the associates degree really i believe well ccv yeah but but as far as technical degrees yeah but they're looking that that's so they're not saying it has to happen but they want to study on the feasibility of it by 2020 and that means that it's probably because they want to bring it up in the next legislative session decide if they want to make some changes to it so i thought that was actually kind of interesting space would be i mean i i can't understand how they could incorporate we just don't have the space right associates that's a two-year degree that's a two-year degree you've got the the kids are in the tech center and you know juniors so maybe they were starting their associates degree as a junior oh they have to finish their high school requirements one would think but anyway yeah it's just i threw it out there just because it was that was one that hadn't been on the radar it hadn't shown up anywhere and it just it popped up in the last you know part of the sessions i go it's kind of neat where did that come from it's weird yeah first i've heard of it it's a legislature all right so we have a number of things on the consent agenda we like to approve them as a slate so we've got this teacher contract which is a point for art replacement for the elementary schools we need to approve the minutes from our osst meeting our last regular schedule scheduled meeting which happened at brookfield the minutes are in our packet we also have to approve the minutes from the special meeting which was held at the end of may i was just approving future contracts we have to approve a local education agency plan which form is enclosed we should each look at that we have to approve arbitrage you want to explain what arbitrage is to those who do not know it and even the local education agency so local education agency plan we get IDA so individuals with disabilities in education act funding it's usually used to provide direct services to the students with disabilities it's a form that's required to the board to sign in terms of assurances that we're going to use the money the way that we're supposed to use it so that they'll grant the money to us so it's a step in that process the arbitrage i we talked a little bit about it at the last meeting our new fiscal year starts in july we don't get the first round of the new tax money from the the the state until october so we need funds to carry us over until the tax money starts to roll in significant enough quantities to provide for our for operations so that's what the arbitrage is it's it's the board agreeing that you know we're able to go out and borrow those funds robin looked at four or five different banks her recommendation is to stay with community bank they actually had the lowest loan rate so i can read this for you really quick after doing the tax anticipation bid results i recommend the ossd school board approve the borrowing from the community bank of three million one hundred and forty five thousand dollars at a rate of two point seven five percent for the period of july 1st through june 30th now here's the interesting part we don't have to spend all that money at once that's to keep us operating until you know and to invest with community bank at the rate of three point four five percent so the money that we haven't spent while we're waiting to spend it we can invest at a higher rate than we're actually borrowing it for which is interesting under the laws in in vermont that was kind of cool to learn about ossd board is smart of this also needs to approve the rtcc borrowing from the community bank right had the best rates under the same conditions for them it's a half million to keep them going so again two point seven five percent for the borrowing weight and then they're able to invest it at three point four five percent that's guaranteed and it's also you know it doesn't there's there's no risk on it which is kind of cool so so um do people does anyone have questions on any of those portions of the i think we need to approve those five items for our consent agenda because we will be others we'll have to talk about in a little further detail so are there any questions concerns comments about the minutes or anything else that's uh in this five parts of the that we're going to vote on right now no okay so do i have a motion to approve these first five items of the consent agenda to make the motion to approve the first five portions of the consent agenda a second all those in favor of approving this hi hi any opposed okay so that those are approved the next you can see we have the board review and acceptance of the district continuous improvement plan so this was actually approved by the board a year ago what the district in continuous improvement plan plays into um is it's how we justify to the state the consolidated federal programs funds that receives a title one and title two it has you go and do an analysis a lot of that we kind of did together in october so a lot of the the data that was pulled from this came from the ends report and it's just been updated with the 2018 data so it's the same as as the previous year it's been updated with the minor changes because of the 2018 data once the board approves it proves that it goes in under the assurances page for the consolidated federal programs just to say the board has approved the cip actually i don't even think the board has to it just looks good if you do but what this is really playing into for that those title funding those are funds that are meant to serve underprivileged students students of poverty in our case because our district has such a high percentage of that on those funds are usable across all the schools in the district as a whole and it focuses primarily on the the two things that no child left behind was worried about was an improving mathematics and eLA so it talks about you know have you gone to the data have you taken a look at what that's telling you how does that apply to these these quality factors that we're we're concerned about in the state of remontant that we want you to use the federal funds for so that's what you see you know academic proficiency safe healthy schools high quality staffing or some of the things that we're trying to address based upon what the discover the needs in the data analysis review i can go to in much detail as you want for this but like i said this was approved by the board uh here we go does anyone have any questions about it do i have a motion to approve the cip so moved a second second all those in favor of approving the continuous improvement plan say aye aye post okay next on the consent agenda is the transportation reserve funds so that is a form in the packet kind of describes it on the front and on the back is the actual the the the bid the winning bid that we decided to go with what this is for is that money was traditionally put into the transportation reserve fund so that the two oldest buses every year would be replaced i mean that's what we're seeking to do is to replace the two oldest buses of the 15 that we've got in the fleet went out to bed to three places this was actually the low bidder in what which was one of the reasons that it was chosen but in addition to that they were also able to supply some of the extra accessories for the bus that are needed for this area they've got a little bit better attraction control on them they've got an enhanced heating system for the engine for the cold days they come pretty wired so that our camera systems that we use on the other buses can can be attached so this was was the best overall deal so the 71 passenger bus a little over 85 000 a piece we're looking for two and again historically that's what that that fund has been used for as every year we replaced the two we didn't do it last year by the way because we bought two new buses just for the extra students that we had come into the school so we have not replaced them in the old ones in two years any questions so you went out and checked to make sure we actually needed to replace the old one yeah one of them it's it's amazing they they're it's actually not a lot of miles for buses they're both over a hundred thousand they get beat the heck on the back roads here one of them has enough rust and holes in it that the fumes are coming up through the back so it is needed what's really sad about about it is um you know if you try to get trade-ins and what not on they're not worth a thing you know if you get four or five thousand for real buses because somebody wants one for you know the fix up and uses a camper or something you're loving but yeah so do i have a motion to approve the transportation reserve funds for these two buses so moved second follow some favor say aye opposed okay facility reserve funds so on the back is the magnitude estimate from newboys and king um and what this is for is it's actually for three things um it's for the resurfacing of all the pavement finishing up the job that was done it looks like it was done in three pieces originally they started over by the central office they've done this part of the parking lot it's to resurface the remainder of the parking lot all the way around the rest of the building so that's one chunk of it that's the hundred and seventy thousand and then the main loading dock for this building is in horrible this repair they did come in and try to decide could it be repaired did it need to be replaced they basically said yeah we can repair it but you're going to have to probably replace it in eight years if we do so it's an additional 40 000 for the replacement it is a big project so there's another 12 000 that is in there for a company to come in and be the project managers so they make sure that you've got the contractors the contractors are here when they're supposed to be they're doing the work that they guaranteed that they were doing it is up to the proper code and then all the permitting is is done including the wastewater permitting that should have been done when the original work happened and didn't so they're kind of the project managers for the whole thing and then just to be on the safe side since this is coming from reserve funds so that we don't have to come back they added in another 9 000 just in case so what they're looking for is approval for up to what is it the 231 000 to get that that projects funded and get that work done this summer any questions have a motion to approve the outlay of these facilities reserve funds up to 231 thousand dollars and there's 3.3 million in that account right now so moved second second all those in favor of the dispersal of these reserve facilities reserve funds say aye aye okay next is a superintendent's report which everyone should have had time to read is there anything else you want to highlight or discuss not unless they're just given the time unless there's questions that folks have we talked to talked about the raven talked about kind of primary focus a little bit for next year in terms of communication taking a look at the fact that you know the teachers came in in their contract looking for a 10 percent raise taking a look at the fact that the survival of districts in Vermont right now depend on increasing enrollments and we've done a good job in that in the last last year or so but trying to keep that trend going the best way to satisfy both of those needs is just the overall academic performance of the students getting it up there as high as we can what happens in a high performing district is that parents will move into town to take advantage of the schools there so you get your enrollments up when they come because they are very pro education and very positive about education you tend to get a tremendous amount of support for the schools and salaries for the teachers go up and it starts this nice feedback loop that builds on itself and so the hope is is over the course of the next year or so is to really get the communication out to the community about how important those scores are if we want to get that feedback loop going and the community means the faculty the students the parents because the the general tenure has been that oh it's not it's not important well it is you know especially if we want to make this and keep this a viable district that's able to grow continue to build programs and get people moving into town to increase the tax base I mean it all kind of flows together into one so that was a lot of the discussion that was here about you know ways to accomplish that talked a lot about the board's ends last October we did an interpretation of them and so what's happening at this point in time and I put in the special education teams work in there they have taken the work that was started last October and as a K-12 team have developed their own interpretation of the ends how they're going to measure it how they're going to report it to me and how they're going to report it to the board so that they're setting themselves up for continuous improvement that process that that that ownership that interpretation of what it means of determining what measurements show improvement and being accountable to that is going to be happening across all the departments right now the work is happening in you know special education and mathematics but the big focus for next year is having that happen across all the departments that tie into the ends the reason being is because it goes back to improving academic performance and getting that feedback that we want so desperately to happen so the lunch program the folks that go out and do the bidding they're estimating a four percent increase the cost of purchasing food next year we were trying to figure out if I had to do the tariff for that's going on right now at the federal level but it'll be until July to see if potentially we have to increase the cost of school lunches because of it don't believe we will it's a it's a possibility so there's other principles reports and administrative reports in our packet hopefully everyone has taken the time before we got here to read it financial report lane is there anything we should be concerned about or everything is is actually really good we have a have a surplus that we've been using for for some of the outstanding projects and there should still be a good chunk of money to go over to the reserve funds at the end of the year robin's trying to get the final totals even after our spending it's in excess of 200 000 so we're in very good shape let me find I have some notes here a lot of pieces some point in time but it might might be good maybe in the fall as I can take folks through and to take a look at this a little important and know what the parts and pieces are here the only one the one that usually comes out in terms of of questions is usually the food the cost for the lunch program it's showing negative 70 000 it's actually a little bit better than where we were last year and we actually should pretty much be in the black because the last two months of revenues are not in that number yet so it looks like that's working out right now but everything else is on track just just like it should be I kind of said before one of the things that I do in terms of talking with robin as I look at where the negatives are that's what I ask questions about but the other thing that I do is I take a look at the total amount of money that was was put into the budget in a certain line I divide it by 12 and then I can tell based upon that you know no spending is really linear but I can tell if we're kind of on track you know given where we are in the fiscal year we're all on track things are in good shape okay so yeah anything else yes there's questions actually how would you okay guys this is the first time I'm going through this so I haven't even touched the back page yet however what I wrote for notes I said the time schedule was off however we incorporated pertinent topics um that were not noted on the agenda and the chair does a nice job soliciting feedback and encouraging involvement but I'll fill up the numbers thank you you did a good job it always causes a rush at the end so we are impressed um next we have an executive session