 I'm the moderator of the Orange Southwest Unified Union School District, and this is, or will soon be, the annual meeting of the school district. Before we begin, I want to let people know there's a copy of the warning and a copy of the budget up front. If anyone does not yet have those, please feel free to come up and get them. The meeting tonight will take up articles one through six inclusive. Articles seven through 13 inclusive will be voted by Australian ballot tomorrow. The voting polls will be for the residents of the town of Braintree at the Braintree town clerk's office from 9 AM to 7 PM. And for residents of the town of Brookfield, the Brookfield Elementary School from 9 AM to 7 PM. And for residents of the town of Randolph, Randolph town hall from 7 AM to 7 PM. And by residence, I meet people on the checklist of those respective towns. Before we begin, welcome. And I will call the meeting of the school district of order. I will dispense with reading the entire warning at the beginning, and I will read each article as it comes up unless there's an objection to that. Seeing no objections, article one. To elect a moderator for term of one year beginning July 1, 2019. What is the pleasure of the call? Patsy. Thank you. Peter Nowlin has been nominated and seconded. Any other nominations? Oh, please. Hearing none, the nominations, the nominations are closed. And I'll just call for a vote. All in favor of Peter Nowlin, serving as moderator for the ensuing year. Please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? I'll close my eyes. Say nay. Any abstains? As it appear to have it, the ayes do have it. Peter Nowlin has been elected. Article two. To elect a clerk for one year, for a one year term beginning July 1, 2019. What is the pleasure of the hall? Hall. Linda Lubeau has been nominated and seconded. Are there any other nominations? Hearing and seeing none, I declare nominations closed. All in favor of electing Linda Lubeau for a term of, for a clerk for a term of one year beginning July 1, 2019. Please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Say nay. The ayes appear to have it. The ayes do have it. And I declare Linda elected. Welcome. Thank you for coming in. Article three. To elect a school district treasurer for a one year term beginning July 1, 2019. Are there any nominations? Hall. Theresa Godfrey has been nominated. Is there a second? James seconded it. Any other nominations? Hearing none, I declare nominations closed. All in favor of electing Theresa Godfrey for a term of one year beginning July 1, 2019. Please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Say nay. The ayes appear to have it. The ayes do have it. Congratulations, Theresa. Article four. To fill any vacancies existing or occurring on March 4, 2019. I'm not aware of any vacancies. It's the clerk aware of any vacancies. No. It's the superintendent aware of any vacancies. And we will go pass over article four. Article five. To hear and act upon the reports of the officers of the school district. The report of the school board is on page 93 of the warning or the town report that I have. There are some annual reports up here. Do you want to make any oral supplements to your report while people are reading it? Okay. It's dealing with the budget. Talk a little bit about what's been accomplished over the last year. And what we're looking to accomplish in the coming year should be tomorrow's budget pass. Current budget year accomplishments, a year that we're in right now. We harden all the school access points across all the schools in the district to train the staff of Alice to make sure the teachers and the students in the schools are prepared in case of emergency. All the emergency processes and safety protocols have been updated and are in the process of being practiced by the staff. We have improved the district's capacity to deliver effective math instruction, grades K to 8. All the teachers were trained in the 8 standards for mathematical practice. And the majority of the elementary teachers were trained in the first 20 days of math. Both are practices that are tied to the common core to enhance mathematical instruction. We've also brought in track my progress software package that helps teachers being informed about their instructional practice. There are assessments in the student state. They're short and they're brief, but they give feedback to the teachers on how the students are performing and each one of the mathematical standards so that the teachers can adjust their practice to match. If the students aren't doing well, the teachers know to stop, go back and reteach. If they are doing well, they know they can move on safely and the students can be prepared for the next year. We created a high school program to mitigate trauma-based behaviors. We brought in an adjustment counselor and a behavioral interventionist into the high school. Those people are here now. We are currently working on the digital literacy curriculum that's in development across the district in K to 12. The special education department is working to develop a means to assess student progress for students that are on IEPs as a means to come back and inform us on the effectiveness of our programs that we have in place for those students now. And with enough information to be able to adjust if necessary. We also moved critical personnel from grant fund positions into the regular budget. That was a technology director and instructional coaches. Instructional coaches are folks that work directly with the teachers to improve their practice. We accelerated an exceptional amount of work in terms of facilities initiatives. There were extensive repairs to the plumbing systems across the schools. We replaced a lot of the water heaters and the water storage tanks. There was extensive work on the HVAC systems across all schools. We finally completed the fence at Brookfield. We reclaimed the well at Brookfield as well as part of the work that happened this summer. We are currently addressing the lead problems at Brookfield. We had the water up to the point where it was palatable for the students to drink. But then we had some issues with the faucets that are up there that had been replaced. We're waiting for the final testing. We have a composting agreement that is now in place so that all the food that is coming out of the cafeteria that is waste is going to be composted. We are currently working through phase one of replacing the Reven building to support students with special needs. And then we are working to ensure that we are in compliance across the board and all the buildings in terms of the fastest copper of the lead water testing. Next year's goals. We spent a tremendous amount of time this past year looking at data. We looked at enrollment numbers, we looked at student performance, especially in mathematics and PLA. We took a look at enrollments in our subjects, specifically our students with disabilities. And we pulled together all that information into creating the budget that we've been talking about now for probably the last three or four months in great detail. And what we've discovered really came into creating the goals that we have. We've got to mitigate the impact of the trauma-based behaviors that are happening across the schools in the district. We've got to examine our special educational practices to make sure that we are doing the best by the students that we can while not over accommodating them. We must focus our resources on the core areas of math and PLA. And we must expand our programming, especially in the high school, given the increase in enrollments that we've had roughly by two to five years. In terms of what we are attempting to build should this budget pass. We would like to get a preschool in place at each of the elementary schools. We are doing an exploratory program to examine what we want to bring in for science and STEM at the elementary level. We are doing an exploratory program for a pre-technology and pre-technology program. We will be building a therapeutic program to serve students at the elementary level across all three schools. We will be increasing staffing for interventions, fixing the gaps in knowledge that all students, regular ed, as well as students with disabilities have. Getting those gaps fixed while we improve our curricular practices. Increasing staffing, especially at work field elementary, because of the increased enrollments that we've had. Doing a major increase in the facilities budget for a limited time. There are a lot of things in terms of maintenance that was either undone for a while or partially done. We've got to kind of accelerate that process to get things up to speed where they should be. Focusing resources next year, especially in terms of mathematics at the high school. We've got a professional group from Wisconsin that's looking and coming out and coaching our mathematics teachers. Helping them develop a curriculum so that it's perfectly aligned with the common core. And also improving the practice in the classroom. We're bringing in a software package called STARS so that their instruction is informed. They can do many assessments with the students. And get information immediately on how well the students are picking up on the standards that they are being taught. The last piece to kind of talk about, there are some increases in there. Probably the most important ones. For the first time in a long time, the departments have been able to come together. And actually state what their needs are at the department level. What the teachers need in their classrooms to support their instruction. What professional development they need and would like. And we were able to address all of those requests in this year's budget. I think that's going to be a vital piece being able to improve the academic programming. Any questions of laying for his report? And I'm going to open it up. Any questions generally about the budget? This is as good a time as any to start asking about those. Seeing none. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Can you tell me more about this need for behavioral management? I'm curious because I teach locally in the college. So I'm curious for two reasons. One, really you have to do all this at this moment. And two, what am I getting? Actually, good question. So not behavior management, but Trump dealing with trauma-based behaviors. Across the state of Vermont and there's a strong concentration of an essential Vermont, not just here in Orange County. We have students that have suffered significant abuse and neglect. And when they come to school, they're in our classrooms. They have picked up behaviors that are detrimental to learning, not just for themselves but for the other students that are in the classrooms as well. The behaviors are really a part of a protective system that have come into place as the students have experienced the trauma and their lives in the outside environment. And they're not really compatible with school life. And so the important piece here is to try to get some programming in place so that we're teaching these students how to self-regulate their behaviors if they can be successful. I can go into a lot more detail if you want. I'll give you an indication of the impact. Special education here is $3.3 million of our budget. It's been growing by about 50% per year over the last two or three years. Most of that growth is because of the students who have experienced trauma-based behaviors. If we don't mitigate them here, which is much more cost-effective, we end up having to set them out to out placements. It's a cost to send a student to an out placement if they're low, kind of on the spectrum. It's probably about $36,000. If they're high on the spectrum, it can be in excess of $200,000. That does not include transportation. That's an annual cost. It is required under the IEP process. Second, they need it and they're identified that they need it to be able to advance in the curriculum of services. How much has that increased? 15% per year. So, you know, $3.3 million out of this past year, $16.5 million budget. And in terms of percent population? Percent of population are, depending upon which school you're at, 21 to 26% of the students in a school are on IEPs. That does not mean that all of them are on IEPs due to emotional disturbances. But that number, like I said, has been increasing. It's the biggest increase that we're getting. It's going up every year by about 1%. So the total population of the district, 1% more of that total population is on IEP as each year goes by. The majority of the new ones are students with emotional disturbances. Older students primarily happen there. Where are we in comparison to the nation? Our 21% overall district average is about twice the national average. And that's true for most of them. Any thoughts on why that is? It's mostly home environment. It's drug addiction. I mean, there's neglect is a part of this as well. It's not just severe physical and sexual emotional abuse that the students suffer. But there's neglect that the parent is drugging and not being attentive to the student. The student or the child has to witness that. That's traumatic. If a parent is abusing the spouse in the home, that is traumatic. If a student is very young and can't take care of themselves and is not being taken care of, that's like the diapers all day for two or three days at a time, that is traumatic. And those traumas, those adverse events that those students are proceeding and seeing every year that they're translating to be papers that happen in school. The protective mechanisms that come into place to help them deal and to help them cope, right? Fight, fight, freeze. They act out in the classroom. The fighting students, especially at the elementary level, they yell, they scream, they kick, they throw. And it can stop education in the classroom for an extended period of time. And then it takes an awful lot of time to get that student regulated again, calm back down to a level where they can kind of process as normal as they can. The fight students run. You know, it's not unusual last year to have two administrators out, where they're still being persecuted. And the problem with these behaviors is that the systems are autonomic. In other words, they happen below the level of consciousness, so you can't get the student to rationalize them away. And it just, anything can trigger. The body has a sensory memory system. So anything that's happening in the environment that may trigger through the senses a memory, the body identifies as potentially dangerous for a second long, could be as simple as a new person in the room, could be a facial expression, and it doesn't take much. So our goal, our job is kind of long-term investment. If we invest the money up front, we mitigate these students, we get the behaviors dealt with, they're going to be successful through their means or their lives. We're not going to be sending them out, especially by the time they hit the middle of the high school public, because the student kicks and screams and throws things, is not safe for them that day. Not safe for them to respond later, but certainly not safe for them that day. It's about the resources as well. Mitigate it now, if we can solve the problem now, get the student in a better place, then we're not going to be paying or being absorbed in the announcement. We had two students come in last year, 300,000. We've got two students this year, 204,000. And those resources, once we have them, when the program starts to work, we'll be initiative in doing things, making sure we've got public preschool across the district, and all the elementaries pumping money back into the advanced academic program. That's it. I'm really glad to hear that you are going in this direction to call a treatment or whatever that these students will get. Are we at the point where that is evidence-based or evidence-seeking? Yeah. Matter of fact, there are two pieces to this. The preschool is intended to help a bit, and then the therapeutic program is intended to help a lot. With the preschool side of things, if we can get the students early, get them in around other students. Just the normal action of having that social support from other students is incredible for their resilience. What typically happens with these poor guys is that the behaviors that come out, these trauma-based behaviors, don't go well for keeping friends. And so they lose that whole structure of support that could be there otherwise. So getting them into the preschool program, this isn't just going to help them academically download down the line well research. We know that that's going to happen. But it's also about building that resiliency piece. The therapeutic program is based on years and years and years of research. A lot of it was pulled together for us by David Melvin. There were two of us that went off and took a course with him through Castleton that really delved into the research. What is trauma? What do we believe that current causes are? What are the best ways to build the program to treat it? What the therapeutic program is designed to do is built on that because it recognizes something that's critically important. That's the fact that once the behaviors are starting, once the students have been triggered and they start acting out, it's too late. There are physiological changes in that fight-fighter or freeze piece that happened first. If we can tune the student into their own bodies and their self-awareness, my stomach is feeling a little bit upset right now. You know, I breathe them a little bit harder than normal. That's an indication that they're about to be triggered and you can disconnect the system at that point. If you wait and try to treat the behaviors, it's too late. So the goal of the therapeutic program, giving them a safe space they can retreat to, giving them a person who can help them regulate, could calm back down and then process what happened and look for what those portends were, what things were foreshadowing the behavior that was about to come out, and then working with the students on some special strategies. Okay, the stomach starts to feel a little bit upset and what are some things we can do to break this cycle. And it's usually simple stuff. It's little dexterity exercises. It could be as simple as a walk. It could be a deep breath. But they've got to start to associate what's happening in the body with the potential. What it's saying is going to happen next. And that's what a lot of the work is about. The students with the therapeutic program that we're building, they're still maintaining as much of their time in the regular classroom as possible. They get a chance to develop some skills. They go out and they practice it. They will fail the first couple of times. They come back. They get a chance to kind of calm down and be easy. And then aside from all that, one of the most important things that those students need is they need to feel that they have some control over their own lives and somebody carries them. And sitting down one-on-one with a competent adult who's working with them on this specific problem is going to do just that. So there's a lot of parts and pieces to this. But it really is designed to keep the students as engaged in the regular classroom as possible while creating a safe space where they can have deep breath and they can practice the skills that they want to build again. There are certain things that we can't do. There are two components of an unaffected program we can't do in a school setting. And one of them is just physically processing the traumas that have happened in the past. That's something that would have to happen outside. And given the nature of trauma-based behaviors, it's not necessary anyway. We don't need to deal with the behaviors. Dealing with the behaviors isn't going to be effective anyway. What we really need to do is teach you how to figure out what you're going to trigger and how to short-circuit it right now. So the behavior piece, that's for something bigger than us. Anyone else? Or anything else? That's it. I'm curious what it is. The moderator can't explain. I know several of them are... I'll have to answer. I don't know for all of them. I know some of them, they don't get out of work in time nowhere to get here for six. Our meetings are generally at 6.30, and the reason is to accommodate their travels so they can get here for the meetings. I know one has a re-occurring meeting on this Monday, and it's first and third. And so usually we meet on the second Monday and so that kind of thing. And then I'm aware of at least one member who is sick. Thank you. I'm not sure about all of them, but I know that the flu or whatever the bug gets going around has to get to some of them as well. We're going to ask at this point if we have any candidates. That would be improper. This is a meeting. We can't discuss candidates. I just, you know, to know who they were. I know some of them. Any other questions? We have other reports, a school board report, a principal's report, or an RTTC report in here. And copies of those are up front if you have questions about any of those reports. Seeing none, I will move to Article 6 to see whether the school district will authorize the school board to borrow money pending receipt of payments from the member towns by the issuance of notes or orders payable not later than one year from the date they're of. What is the pleasure of the meeting? Lane. Can I make a comment? Yes. Just so folks... You can make a comment before there's a motion on the floor because we're pretty informal around here. Just so folks know what this is. School budgets. They run from July 1st to June 30th. We are up and into operation in the new budget year before any tax money comes in. Typically we get a little bit from the state in September and we get tax money from the town in November. So this is unusual coming to Vermont from Massachusetts in that most districts, if not all districts, have to borrow money to be in operation until that part of the year. That's what it is for. Betsy. So... Second. The motion has been made and seconded. Now is there any discussion on the motion? Hearing none. All in favor of the motion to authorize the school board to borrow money pending receipt of payments from the member towns, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Say nay. The ayes appear to have it. The ayes do have it and the motion carries. Articles 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 are to be voted on by Australian ballot in the respective towns. The polls for the town of Braintree are at the town clerk's office and open at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning and are open until 7 p.m. The polls for the town of Brookfield are at the Brookfield Elementary School and that opens at 9 a.m. and stays open until 7 p.m. The polls for the town of Randolph are at the Randolph Town Hall and those open at 7 a.m. and remain open until 7 p.m. Linda. We can make motion. So the motion, if anybody wants to make a motion, to suggest that we move to accept the various reports of the school officials. The officers of the school district. Been moved? Is there a second? There's a second. Is there any discussion? All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? The ayes appear to have it. The ayes do have it and the motion carries. There is an unworned any other business to come before the meeting, proper to come before the meeting and it's my invitation to ask any of the elected school officials or administrators any questions you may have, remembering the unworned article would only be an advisory opinion, not an acting vote. So, is there any other business to come before the meeting?