 All right friends we into 630 and we have a pretty full agenda. So I will go ahead and call the meeting to order the Montpelier Roxbury public school board of directors at 630. And seeing we have a couple members of the public it looks like on zoom. Would anybody who's a member of the public like to speak during public comment. Doesn't look like I don't see anybody raising their hand. Okay. I just wanted to say a little something before we get started, even though Amanda isn't here tonight, as we all know she has stepped down from the board and I just, I'd like you to take a moment to say thank you I don't think she's listening. I'm sure I wouldn't be listening in on my first board meeting that I wasn't at but I would like to publicly say thank you because she was really an incredibly active member who made a really big impact in her time here. She spearheaded the equity committee's work to establish the equity tool that the board can be using as a framework for making decisions. She really pushed us to codify and operationalize proactive community engagement. She asked important and critical questions about how equity shows up or doesn't in our students education and in our board practices. And she was a driving force behind the creation of the climate survey that we did in collaboration with our teachers, as well as a key co author of the report, summarizing the results of that survey and that's really all only the work that I saw her do. She also served on the policy committee and we're about to talk tonight about a lot of the work that the policy committee did to update some important policies about how the board governs and I know she was a critical part of that and I was just really impressed time and again with the depth of her knowledge and the research that she did to to you know do her best to see an issue from many different angles so I'm just really personally grateful for the work that that Amanda did on the board and and I know it was also really tough at times. You know our board just like just about every other institution in this country is operates with norms that are rooted in white dominant culture and many of those are seemingly invisible because we are so used to them and it's just it's really hard work to confront those norms and and break them down and and I also wanted to say I hope that we as a board will commit to you know keep doing that because I sincerely believe that we are stronger as a board and it supports us in making solid good decisions that will have a really important impact on our students but mostly I just wanted to say for whenever she maybe hears this thanks to Amanda for serving. I would like to name my brother Amanda as well. I feel like when I came on to this board. I thought that we were interfacing with the community and just like the impetus to do that was was really not existent and I feel like I'm on to really work to center that work for our board and the time that I've been here. And I also just want to appreciate I think our last meeting, just noting that tension and disagreement are very normal aspects of process and progress, and I just want to appreciate that perspective that they she brought to us as well. Thank you. The next order of business is the consent agenda. Oh, oh, Emma. Emma has her hand raised. Hi. Yeah, I was actually hoping I guess usually I would do it after the consent agenda but I was actually hoping that we could put a quick minute on the you know maybe three or four minutes on the agenda to talk about the open seat and filling it. And I also wanted to thank Amanda for her service to our school district because her contributions to every school board discussion was invaluable and she brought a level of empathy and insight that was deeply appreciated and she was a tireless voice for equity and inclusion and that will be sorely missed. I was hoping we might be able to add a minute on the agenda just to make sure that the public understands that there's an open seat. But let's do that. Do you mean just to like talk about what it is to that that it's open. Yeah, that it's open and I have one thing that I want to discuss in terms of maybe making it more available to more people. Okay. So if it's, I know that we have a really packed agenda but I think it could just a few minutes. Okay, let's put it right after the equity committee update. I emailed Jim a while ago but I know he's traveling. I'll hope I'll hope to remember that when it comes to 815. Okay, so is there a motion to approve the consent agenda. I'll second it. Second. Great. Any discussion about the consent agenda. All those in favor. Hi. Any. Okay, I see you Zach. Oh, and Merrick. Oh, I don't see Merrick's face. Thanks for being here. Do we have a student presentation. So, can everyone hear me first of all. Yes, we can hear you loud and clear. Great. So Zach and I didn't feel a formal presentation was necessary this evening because we only have a short update but we'll go ahead and share that anyway. So, first, from our last presentation, we talked about starting a student school board subcommittee and since then we met with Emma to flesh out some details around getting started and development of it is well underway. Second, at the last policy committee meeting Zach and I joined to discuss potential revisions to our DEI policy with an emphasis on curriculum and equity. And that meeting served as first steps toward potential changes. And we're going to continue that conversation in future policy meetings. But that's about it. And that's why we didn't put together a formal presentation. Awesome. And I don't know if Zach has anything to add but yeah, I'm not seeing Zach make any motion. All right, great. Well, thank you for that work behind the scenes, even though it doesn't come with the fancy slides that it usually comes with. For sure. Well, you know, you don't have to. You're doing great work. So thank you very much. Thank you. Phil, you're up. Yes, we're moving it right along. Glad you're here. Can folks hear me okay. Yes, everybody's louder than life on zoom there. Let's just make sure can or can you hear him. I don't know, but it was fantastic. Just a little children. I mean, we are. This is great. All right. Great. Well, thank you for the opportunity to be here. It's always a privilege to think about governance with school board members and I don't know what you know about me, if anything, I'm, I'm in my 16th year working in school board development. I worked for the Washington Association, the National Association and the Texas Association prior to coming to Vermont. So, very intrigued with the state of Vermont and our changes and nuances in governance, but especially just all of the breadth of rural mess, if you will. And so what a great setting to be in and have those conversations. When I talked to Jim, a couple of months ago about this evening, we talked about trying to get to a collective sense of why for the board. And I don't know if everyone in the room had an opportunity and read chapter one of the governance core. This is an outstanding book on governance it's really put together from two streams of thought that are steeped heavily in education administration and research in that area, as well as education governance and research there. So, as you noted in the chapter they talk about a lot of different things but at the heart of this book is is the idea of a moral imperative. And that doesn't need to be a mysterious term I I've had people when I mentioned that word. Think that I'm talking about changing their morals or something that's that's not what is meant by the word. It's really what is that compelling force that the board can agree to that this is what we're we're here to accomplish. Right. And so I put together a couple of slides for this evening just a few. But they they talk about these essential elements and perspectives of good governance throughout the book. One of those that's always stood out to me is the idea of a trustee mindset. What does it mean to think like a trustee. I was just in a state a few days ago where they use that word trustee to talk about school board members. And this idea that is board members we're stewards of the people's trust, they're two most precious resources right, their children, and their money. And one of the things I appreciate about the book is that extension of the, the superintendent thinking with a governance mindset like, what does that mean in this case for her to think with the board from a governance and strategic perspective. And that that's like right at the center of this book but to me that the notion in chapter one about a moral imperative is the driving force that that's the compelling force all throughout here. They looked at the etymology of the word governance which at its core, it means to steer a ship it was a navigational term. Adam's longtime school board member a trustee in the Houston independent school district and education researcher governance researcher had said simply put governance is steering management is rolling. So that that connection between, where are we going. If you think about the apex of leadership, it really is the why. Why are we here why water, what is it even before we get to what are we going to accomplish. Why would we want to accomplish it. And that's what the authors are trying to get out with the idea of a board having a moral imperative, like, why would you do this. I was a school board member like you in a suburban rural area outside of Seattle. I got some sucker to take my place a few years back and I let him know of course it was just one meeting a month it takes about an hour month and really no preparation just kind of show up right and maybe someone told you that or maybe we need. I don't know, but obviously good governance is a whole lot more than one meeting a month one hour in a meeting. It takes a different kind of commitment than that. And Danny's learned that. What is governance, you know, it's interesting as I think about good governance. The question comes up from people at times, and these things are straight out of the book. So there's a quote really, but governance, according to these authors, it's setting direction. It's providing a structure that's established. It's holding the system accountable, and they talk about both fiscally and for programs governance is a connection between communities and professionals. We see that as the school board being the nexus, where public meets public education, like right we sit in that intersection, where the public is coalesced into a unified voice to give guidance and direction to the public education system. And in it in a nutshell, that's what a school board is that's what we do as school board members we come together to use our best judgment to make decisions on behalf of the community. I had a boss in this school board association work a few years ago he used to say that really what school boards are doing is purchasing education for the children on behalf of the community. There's a lot of depth in that. Now I would encourage you to reflect on that idea that as school boards, we're purchasing the education of the children in our community, on behalf of the community, again that idea of community stewardship. Campbell and fallen in this book they suggest that this is a question for any and every board. Will the board choose to create a cohesive unified team working together to create a common vision, driven by a shared moral imperative. The figure 1.1 in the book it kind of gives this idea of a fork in the road. There's option a or option B, and option a is a collection of individuals, each with their own agenda. That's one option. I've worked with school systems where that's modus operandi. However, they suggest that another option is a board that will lead the school district as a cohesive unified team. Think about this just for a moment. Maybe you've heard the expression no person can serve two bosses. When I do organizational development work that's one of the things I'm looking for in an org chart are people trying to report to more than one other person. You really can't do that well, and if you've ever made the mistake of trying to, or had an employee that was trying to please two bosses. Inevitably there's one that they're going to make sure that they meet those needs and expectations, and the other ones kind of secondary. It's, it's critical that a board not function like just a collection of individuals. The superintendent cannot take direction from nine different people. The superintendent needs clear direction. They can't be, they can't be evaluated. They can't have their work overseen by nine different people. It's really imperative that the board come together with clear voice to give guidance to the superintendent and to evaluate their work to give that feedback. Obviously they're suggesting and I'm suggesting to you that really the fork in the road, it has one path that leads to a lot of dysfunction a lot of drama, a lot of uncertainty a lot of chaos, and it's kind of another option that can lead toward improvement over time. If boards can do anything that adds value to student learning. It is a consistent course of action over time. Right, a consistent course of action over time. This is so critical. There was a meta analysis done of educational leadership literature back in 2005. The authors found this very serendipitous finding they were trying to find from the literature what are the characteristics of leadership that makes a difference for student achievement. These guys went on to write books and develop programs and curriculum and all kinds of seminars Bob Marzano and Tim Waters were were two of the authors on that study, but they, they found a serendipitous bright byproduct was the longer the longer the superintendent stays in a district. The more likely student learning is going to be improving. And they found this kind of uncanny, even when there's a mediocre superintendent. If they just stay in place. The system is more likely to make progress over time, link to a superintendent's tenure is board member tenure and board consistency. I'm not sure if you know are we all on the board for 15 or 20 or 25 years, but are we contributing to something that makes sense. Michael full and education researcher out of Canada. He's very well known for this concept of coherence. I've used the word alignment for a lot of years, like is there alignment between what the board does what the administration does what's happening in classrooms. If you use a more probably appropriate concept is their coherence. And what they find and you'll see in later chapters, if you delve into this book. They've been asking these questions for a few decades. So what administrators do. Does that make any sense with what teachers are doing, and what students are doing in a classroom. Is there a relationship between what principles are doing is it just administration. Or does it actually have an effect on student learning in the classroom. And what they suggest is, there needs to be some coherence these things need to make sense you see my hands moving, because they always draw Venn diagrams. What these authors have included is the idea of what is the board do. And does what the board do make sense with what the administrators are doing and what the teachers are doing in the classroom. I would suggest in in the highest performing systems. There's probably at least a fourth circle for the community. And that piece of community engagement community involvement, highly effective boards have found ways to get community input when they adopt visions when they set goals, and when they evaluate their progress as a board. That's something you know maybe to delve into it another day. But I think you know a learning organization is often situated within a learning community, where the whole community is learning and growing. But these things are probably not new to you just for me they're at the heart of what constitutes good governance. So they use this term moral imperative. And out of those five themes of good governance and chapter one that that second one is really the highlight that I think is most important of all. Does the board know why they do what they do. Does the board collectively have a shared understanding of why they do what they do. And what I would encourage that we won't accomplish tonight because I'm, I'll get the hook here in a few minutes. What I would encourage is for the board to develop a thoughtful. Well construed moral imperative. People might call it a theory of action but I think it's, it's more focused even than that. Like, what is the collective sense of why you're probably familiar with Simon Sinek's book and his work start with why a lot of authors over the last couple of decades have talked about the why being the apex of leadership. Even above as these authors say, even above vision. But most every district in the country has some beautiful vision statement. Some have really good ones that are pointed and give direction. Some have fuzzy nebulous ones that sounded great to a committee. But rarely does the vision make much difference for kids. Right. And I think as these these authors are saying it's that board shared moral imperative underneath that really gives kind of a sense of true norm. This is why we do what we do this is what we're about. They offer a couple examples mess that up, but they offer a couple examples. You can see that the examples that were in the chapter where the board says our moral imperative is all children can and will learn. But it just needs to be co owned and to be co owned it has to be co created. So all children will achieve we will not allow an achievement gap. These are examples of school districts moral imperatives. All children will have access to high quality teachers. All children will be in a safe, healthy learning environment. These could be core values. These could be other statements, but the power of a shared moral imperative by the board is that it gives the board something to consistently go back to is this helping us advance. What we said was most important to us. Well, I'm curious. I know we've got how many board members online to one, just one online. We've got one online and we're missing two two student reps that might have. Yeah, that America they're still there. They are still there. Well let's pull them in. So I want you to take just a moment and some of you have something to write on some don't. But I'd like for you to think of one word or one concept. What you would hope individually that this board has or will have as a shared moral imperative. I want you to think about what's one word or one concept that you would hope that includes. Some of you, you're quick to process and thank you maybe already have your word instantly but I'll give you another 15 to 20 seconds. And we certainly want the students to share what they would hope the boards moral imperative would include one word or one concept that will pull will pull Libby into this too. Are you Jim Christian. So what one word or one concept with you hope the boards shared moral imperative would have. I wrote down equity and access equity and access, and your name, Rhett, Rhett. Thank you. What, what's one word or one concept foundational foundational. We may come back to unpack that just a little bit. It's good, I think, and it's safety. I think our Wi Fi password is a good word to the community. You let everybody know what the Wi Fi password is. It's on Oregon. We have access. Any cat. Excellent. Excellent. Mia growth. Great. It's funny. I've got a phrase. I'm really trying to splice your last name and first name together on it. Well, you can call me that Libby or bone steal doesn't matter. I got a phrase. Okay, that we use internally that all graduates will have any choice available to them upon graduation. So choices at pathways. I get it. And then it's Emma online right. Yes. What would you include? Inclusion. Nice. That was a nice setup. What would you include? And then we have Zach. And Zach, Zach and Merrick. Yep. Go for Zach. I also said equity. Okay. How about you, Merrick? I said thoroughness. Yes. Thank you. And Libby, you said all graduates will have any choice available to them. Any choice available to them. I want to come back to you. Tell us a little bit more about what you mean by foundational. Well, I think, I mean, I might be naive, but I think about getting on the school board to support teachers and administrators and to provide support. And that seemed like a little. Right. So a foundation that people feel supports them sort of is kind of what I was thinking about. Students, teachers, principals, Libby. Yeah, support for the system. Yeah. Something that's as a more imperative. Yeah. Stability. I don't know. That's big. I mean, that's, that's big. You know, the governance research really suggests stability is critical. And I know there are times where we have to make changes, we have to adapt and be flexible. But doing that within parameters that doesn't tip everything upside down and actually offers support. I like that support. Community. What, what about the community would be part of a moral imperative? Is it, is it inclusion? Is it. I would say inclusion and also creating graduates that are that are part of the community and contribute to the community. So, so, so taking feedback from and also giving productive citizens and productive students back. Okay, students that come through the system are leaving as productive members of society. Locally, globally. Right. And I think it also comes with a certain amount of empathy. It's going to be part of the community without having empathy. I'm adding empathy now. Anna Kat, what about excellence? What, what does that say to you? To, I was thinking of excellence in everything. So when we are providing education, we're providing, we're striving to provide the excellent education that we can. We are, we want our kids to excel in, in whatever path they choose in life. So preparing them for that. So it kind of overall excellence is in different ways. So, high expectations and standards for students, staff, board. Exactly. We're striving towards that. Now obviously we can all be perfect but but striving towards excellence. Yeah, reaching, reaching. Yeah, reaching. And that has a goal in mind to reach. Whatever we, we, we wanted to, you know, we want to provide excellent education to kids. We want to, we want our kids to, to be in the, in the world and be excellent in whatever path they choose to, to go to, right, if somebody wants to be an athlete. We want to provide them the means to be the best athlete that they can be. If they want to go and be teachers, we want to give them the tools and have that foundation to be excellent in teaching. Think about how the board can model the type of excellence that you would hope to see in the system, just something to think about play. Not an answer, not a, not just one thing, you know, but what, what might the board do consistently over time to model the excellence that they want to see in the system and sort of almost back to that idea of support and foundation. Give me your name again. Kristen, I didn't get it written down, but I thought I did so that's dangerous. Kristen, you said equity and access. We have a general idea of what's meant by equity. What do you mean by access. I mean that every student is able to access the training, the supports, the resources, the materials, the safe environment, you know, physically and emotionally to, to learn well. Every student. Every student. Who else teachers that teachers are able to access the, the training that professional development also the materials and resources is based that supports them delivering and they impact curriculum for students. Who else needs access. The community, I would say families access to teachers and administrators and access to a collaborative relationship with those folks to see to it that they're so that there's a partnership that's supporting their students education. Again, all all great answers. Think also, over time, about what the implications are for the board for equity and access like what. What is the equitable access, not trying to box that in too much but what access does the board need to ultimately be effective and fulfilled. Mia, you said growth. Tell us what you mean. Well, we're a learning community. And I feel, I think the purpose of learning is to grow. And, you know, quite literally, the students that come through our system grow every single year, there's a big difference between a graduating senior and a graduating kindergarten. And so, it's important that we as a board keep in mind the growth that everybody who's within our learning community is going through on a daily weekly yearly basis and over the course of their time with us. So all the students and the staff and the board I mean I think it's it's also an invaluable thing for the board to be committed to is growing and improving. So you might ask yourselves, you know, what is the board doing this year to learn to grow to develop right to lead that idea of a learning organization right there's a lot of work that's been done on systems theory. Peter Senge is probably the biggest name out there, but but he would suggest that the people at the top have to be learning in order to lead a learning organization. You can lean or learn, you can lead an organization that's just going through the motions and doing things, right without learning. But for the organization to grow and the organization to learn the people at the top, have to be learning to, in order to lead that that personally I think it's also very important from a modeling standpoint. We've just got a webinar coming up in a couple of weeks that will underscore this point that, you know, school boards need to model the type of reflection and reflective practice that we expect for teachers in a classroom or administrators or students to have that we're modeling that type of reflection like, well that that didn't work so well, like being honest with ourselves and self assessing our performance as a board at least once a year. Ideally before we evaluate the superintendent that we're taking that inside look and say, how are we doing as a board, are we supporting the superintendent success are we hindering in some way. Again, modeling that kind of like reflection and growth that we want to see happen throughout the system. Hard not to call you Bonnie now Libby. So, you gave us this internal slogan all graduates will have any choice available to them. Great. Love it. What about the boards moral imperative. What, what might it be ideal just from your years of experience and vantage point like, if this board articulated its moral imperative. How would that connect to all graduates having every choice available to them. Absolutely. It's a lot of what these board members have said, which I think has been pretty impressive, especially when you push them as to what they mean by that. So, you know, when I, when I think of this I'm thinking of, there's a certain understanding that a learner needs to have in order to have any choice, right, they have to have a certain level of education be proficient in certain levels in order to have the choice of a four year college, they have to have confidence in their own ability to learn in order to do anything coming out of school. So if I'm thinking about the board's role in that it is the board's responsibility, perhaps you can say moral imperative I don't know if those two things are the same or not to ask really hard questions to demand where we are on that, you know, to ask for presentations to say prove it, you know what's the path to get there, and what are you doing if they're not there so I think that's part of the board's moral imperative is to is to ensure that the managers the people, what rowing the boat, growing at an appropriate speed and the appropriate direction and the, you know, to get to that exactly to get to that place. These individuals and my crew online here all said I think. I think help at that. I think we I think we can do a better job though of both from the administration side and the board side of what is it that the board needs to see to trust that we're moving in the right direction. Right, I think that's a, that's a big question that sometimes has gone unanswered. So I find myself guessing, right. Yeah, which is not ideal. Right, so I think the board want to see this, right. It sounds good. And so we so that direction piece really kind of speaks to me and responsibility for that direction. One of the things that you'll hear me talk about often, because and I suspect it becomes part of newly mandated governance standards in state law is an emphasis on board priorities. What are the clear board priorities what does the board want, and I appreciate the master educator piece here she's laying out the scaffolding of you've got to have the understanding you've got to have the confidence. A lot of times educators call that self efficacy, right, now that you've been to 21,000 feet elevation, you know, you could probably make it to 24,000 feet elevation, right, I mean it's once once you accomplish something it gives that confidence. I can do this I can, I can reach a higher heights I can grow, I can excel. I know that's been very fundamental in my life, even as an adult is when I realize I can do something it's like, wow, you know, if I can fix the plumbing under the sink, maybe I could actually put in a shower. I mean, like right and that's dangerous. All wives are thinking that's dangerous or partners I shouldn't say. So let's hear from Emma. Mia what time do you need me to be quiet. 735, but we did give you an early start. Yes, you could maybe maybe get 10 more minutes 10 10 12 more minutes by 725 for sure. That'd be great 20 would be a good goal. Yeah. Okay, I stretch that just little. That's okay. Emma, what would you add to this what you said I think was inclusion. Yeah, yeah. I mean a lot of what I was thinking has already been touched upon. I want schools that feel welcoming and inclusive to all people where students feel welcome and have a sense of belonging where their ideas are welcome and there's no stupid questions where unique perspectives are included in the curriculum where they can relate what they're learning to their life and their aspirations. And then I am one step ahead because I know you're asking us to relate this to our work. So I want our board meetings to be accessible, welcoming and inclusive. I want our community members to know that they can trust us to listen and to be responsive. And that barriers to participation, both for board members and community members are removed or at least an effort is made to remove them. So that as many voices can be included in our work as possible. So Emma, since you articulated that I just I would encourage you to think deeply about. I guess I should look at the camera right. I would encourage you to think about how could board meetings be something in a positive way that community members want to attend. What would be different, because a lot of board meeting work is just business meeting that tends to be kind of boring. Not, you know, it's just, it's not newsworthy. And unfortunately, it's the undesirable things that end up making news. So you might be thinking about how could the board meetings actually engage the community or anyone that's attending in ways. And one example I would give you that I've seen be very successful is a board that made the commitment to make the main thing the first thing. And what they meant by that is that there would be some presentation some interactive discussion of how the students were doing in the district at the start of every board meeting. And that wasn't necessarily students reciting what they'd learned or student presentations. A lot of times it was a discussion of either academic achievement data or some other indicators of success. But engaging the people in the room in a conversation about how the students are doing, typically led by an administrator but that that idea or that what became like a mantra for that district of making the main thing the first thing, always having the board's priority of student achievement, student success, the very first thing on the agenda. Like before reports before introductions before awards, always starting with a focus on students, and that's continued to be successful for that district for more than 10 years. So let's hear from Zach and Merrick. Which ones first Zach. I think Zach, go for it. He's smiling at me. What's the question. Well, you said something about equity I believe I believe it was you was it Merrick. No, I think that was that. That was that. So, what about equity. What about equity is a moral imperative you think this board should have. Um, I think I'm trying to think of how to how to word it. You can to have Merrick go next and then you can think about it while Merrick talks. Um, I think, well, I think equity is just so important in sort of every aspect of life that it would make sense to expand it to the school board or further it within the board. Whether that's in how we communicate with the community, how we make decisions, how everything happens. I just think it's a very important value in general. Let me let me give you a concept to think about Zach. This has been heavy on my mind the last few weeks the the idea that, you know, as you look to politics, especially nationally, but it not just in the US other countries to, you know, they're they're pretty intense divisions in our country. Unfortunately, sometimes in our communities and and I feel like and I wonder, you know, because 90 some percent of people living in the US today probably went through public schools somewhere. It makes me wonder where in public schools did we fail to create a more democratizing society. What, what have we missed in our public education experiences that allows people to kind of balkanize or barricade themselves and you know, I'm on this side and you're on that side and maybe it's not as simple and you know public as not to blame for everything. But I wonder what it would be for a school board to model a democratizing process and democratizing way of doing their business in a way that kind of saw those values pushed down throughout the school system. You're using the word equity others have used the word inclusion and access, like, what would it mean for, you know, one person one vote so to speak, kind of throughout the school system everybody's ideas coming forth. I think it might have been Kristen that was getting at that a little bit more of students, or maybe it was Emma actually students being welcome and students, knowing that their voice mattered. I just wonder how we as school boards could create a more democratizing community society. And maybe that sounds grandiose but it feels like an important aspect when we talk about equity. Rick, what would you add to what's been said here you use the word thoroughness. Yeah, so to me that means making sure we're not missing any areas of educational development or missing any aspects of our school board goals. I would also say it includes equity guaranteeing that everyone staff students and the community have the resources they need. What I heard you say now about thoroughness reminds me of what the superintendent was saying about all graduates having any choice available to them. So like, all students, you know, have not been deficient in math or in reading or science or some art that allows them to have options that they can't fulfill you know because I'm sort of double speaking here but I'm trying not to use double negatives. They haven't missed out on essential pieces of learning and growth and development that thoroughness has fully prepared students, and also speaks I think to excellence of the board being thorough, but educators throughout the system being thorough. That was a lot. I was a lot of thought some of them very connected some of them sort of one offs about a board's moral imperative. Again, I would encourage you as a, as a governance team to think deeply about your why it may be the most important thing to do is to be really clear and what your why is, and not just individually, that's important for individuals, but ultimately for the board to coalesce around a shared moral imperative, a shared sense of why. This is what we're doing. This is why we're looking at these policies this way this is why we're allocating our budget this way. This is why we're making decisions for how our board meetings are just structured, or for what we as a board or learning together as a team about it all makes sense, borrowing that word coherence again, because it fits our agreed sense of why. You know, I live locally, I'm seven miles north of Montpelier and available as a resource, anytime if I could be of assistance to you if any of you want to get together and talk about things we've talked about tonight, or if you want to talk about something climbing, I'm available, and just appreciate the opportunity to be with you I hope this brief conversation adds value to your work, and become something that maybe can just be like one more piece of structure board development. And let me know if I can be of assistance to you in other ways in the future, because I think this is an important conversation for you to coalesce around me. Yeah, thank you, fella. Yeah, 719, which gives us a couple of minutes of folks have questions. First of all, but you mentioned board evaluating itself. This is on the superintendent evaluation committee, and it often has occurred to me like, I want to know how we're doing in support or driving the system forward or whatever. And I'm just, I don't know exactly what that looks like for us to sort of evaluate ourselves whether there are tools, processes that are effective that you know of or maybe this maybe other board members or Libby is is aware of an answer to this question or a tool or a process that would help us do that evaluate our own work. There, there are a lot of tools available, the SBA has a very good one it's solid. You could take it and just use it just like it is and it would be valuable, or you could take it and make some adjustments to it because there might be specific things you've agreed in advance this is what we want to work on and hold ourselves accountable to. So that's that's one option. I co-edited a book for Harvard Education Press a few years ago it's called improving school board effectiveness of balanced governance approach. You can just email me up, send you a link or something but there are three chapters right in the middle of that that are all about board self assessment or board self evaluation they kind of get at the, the essence of this and how to do that in a most effective way. Thanks for that opportunity. Sure. I have a, I guess clarifying question I definitely understand what you're saying about how, you know, district vision statements and board vision statements can be pretty fluffy and not really have much to them. And we have been going through a process for the last year to hear from the community about values to help us define what our vision is. Yeah. And that's actually what the gentleman sitting behind you is here to help us do. And I'm curious if it would, if it is possible for the vision to be the moral imperative and to use it as one. Yeah, I think that's one of the different things they are. Okay, you know, again, they, they should be aligned or coherent with each other. If the moral imperative is going this way and the vision is kind of over here. Generally, a vision statement is broader, and, and it lacks that clear sense of true north, generally, okay, I've seen exceptions. It's not to discount that that, that is important, I think it's hugely important. And but this idea that the board has a clear sense of their why is, is a little different than this is our vision for the ideal state of the future of the district. Generally, a statement is thought of as here's the ideal state. And, and you, you had that direction where the vision statements like this, or excuse me, the moral imperatives like this rock that's an anchor, and you're, you're not going anywhere without it. Like, you know, we will have equity, like, like it's, it's just an anchor like that. That's helpful. Thank you. There's other ways to frame any of that. Yeah, it's got me off the cuff so anyone else anything I can help with Emma Zach Merrick. I was jumping in. No, she's shaking her head. Thank you. All right. Thanks. Hi, Nathan. It's been so long. Do you need any warm up act or not a long back. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm just going to be in. This is that bills at your projection. Okay. Okay. Oh, okay. I can. Okay, great. We just did it. I don't know. Anna, you got Nathan's presentation as well. You could share that. I do and I came in. Yep. Thank you, Anna. I'm not sure. I can share it. You almost want to get into the zoom right now and then you can see the screen. Oh, sure. Instead of the projection. Yeah. Don't forget to mute yourselves. Right away. You guys got that. Join the zoom, please. I can get into zoom. Also, let's do that. In fact, you might want to turn the volume off on your computer as well. Just remember you did that tomorrow. And then remember you did it tomorrow. I can't figure out why. All right, so. I need to give me a second to find the zoom. Okay. You guys can all see this. Yes. Okay. Great. Anna, you can hear me. Okay. So. And I'm going to assume you can hear me. And you'll. Will you give me the next slide, please? There we go. So I'm going to keep my mic off. Because I'm on. Okay, great. All right, so. This, I mean, there are two versions of the vision statement. They are. My best effort at taking what. We all worked on where we're in a sort of the workshop together. They are not. That we should take a little bit of time to resolve these tonight. Because I don't feel like we had. Final final language as of last time. And I took. I took a few liberties. Hopefully they're helpful. I have the raw stuff. Later on in the presentation. So the first one reads. Okay. Okay. And let's go to the slide. To the next slide. Sometimes Nathan, there's just a delay. Okay. I'll be patient between those zoom and the. What's happening in real time and then come back down. Okay. My pillow Roxbury public school graduates practice, respect and dignity for all. They positively impact the people in the world around them. They graduate with the skills, confidence and knowledge to make any choice in their futures. They have the tools to think critically, respect diverse perspectives and recognize the impact they have on others. And will you give me the next slide? Because it could be hard to compare these. If you don't see the next. I was like, what's so different? Did I just. Just need to check to make sure I got this right. Hold on. So really the only difference is they have the tools. Yeah, but let me make sure I got that right because the. I want to make sure I didn't. I just want to make sure I didn't basically paste the two. Yeah. So this is right there. They're not big differences. The. They're a couple. No. Hang on. Sorry. Are. No. No, no, this is. Right. So the difference. The differences here are the. It's just different on yours than mine. Oh, because I'm on the wrong side. All right. Hang on a second. So, if anybody is interested in the governance for the whole book, it's an easy read. I have to meet more than welcome to borrow mine. You can order some for you. I apologize for the notes in the chapter you got. They were all mine. But if anybody's interested, feel free to bring us on with you. Okay. Okay, so. We can also order more copies for you. Can you reload? Yeah. Assuming you're in there. Yeah. When you just reload that slide. Thank you. So the, the, there were two different, there were two differences. One was a little bit of word order. The other piece is that one piece of language said they have the preparation support and learning skills needed to fulfill their potential and succeed in pursuit of their passions. And the A is graduates have the skills, confidence and knowledge to make any choice in their futures. So there's that. And then the. One of the changes. In is the. In a year original language said grad graduates are given the skills instead of graduates have the skills. And so the. Because because we're talking about vision and we're looking at a destination. I changed that to have. And then. The. The only other issue I have here is that we've got. I broke this into bullet points because I think that's a little bit easier to track. In both of these we have the positive impact of people in the world around them. And then it closes with the recognized the impact they have on others. And so we could. Change the word choice there. But the. What we moved away from was. Have the skills and abilities take their to take the. Take responsibility for. Their beliefs actions and. Take responsibility for their beliefs behaviors and actions. And so that was. In the end of our discussion, we realized that there was a little bit of. Some pieces of that they're a little bit problematic. So. I want to hit pause on this. For a second. We'll come back to it. And can you give me the next slide? Okay. So this is approach. This is what. You'll generate in the last session. And this was a move that partly initiated by Mia. Moving away from. The sort of vision and values approach. Vision values structure and. Choosing. The purple. It's very hard to read. Yeah, I'll get, I'll get there. Okay. And then, and changing the. The structure to calling this approach and trying to incorporate. Some of the most important high level stuff. In this piece. The reason that that one phrase is highlighted or, or made magenta is that. Rhett pointed out that there's some language in here that. Didn't come directly from. The community engagement. Or rather was the board saying, wait, this is something that we're going to do. I'm just pointing that out in the language and. I don't need to highlight it going forward, but it was in response to the comment that Brett made. So these, this is the language. You all generated. You know, and. It's hitting these high points, right. Communication engagement culture and community school environment. Equity and inclusion and rigorous learning. And so that was. I thought it was a really good process. You went through to get to that. So then. As you think about where this process is closing out and what remains in your hands. The lingering questions that came. That we were trying to learn more about in the community engagement process or that came up through the process. Or how might the district best use its facilities. Sorry. I don't know what you give me one more slide. Of course, I'm changing on my screen and I just assume you can all see the same thing. What's the best use of the facilities women within the district. This theme of accountability, responsibility and behavior. And that. Sort of how the board and the district audience to that discussion. And then also who, who we're thinking of or who you're referring to when you think about that. And then also students staff, the district as a whole, in terms of accountability. The ideas about sort of choice and student choice, especially in the direction of their learning and they, and the approach. And the balancing act that. The district administration building administrators. education leaders and new teachers take in that. I'm not sure that you necessarily as a board have to take a stance on that. You probably end up supporting the choices that the education leaders are taking, but that was a piece that just came up over and over again. And so you need to be aware that it's there. Student needs and support. And this is, I think, one of the most challenging questions that any district is facing right now. How do students show up ready to learn? If they're not ready to learn for various reasons, what responsibility does the district take to meet those needs or try to make accommodations so that students are ready to learn or can achieve the vision that you're talking about? And we didn't get into that a lot as a group. The findings within the survey and other community input were not definitive, right? So the community thinks this, right? So if we were talking about sort of what should schools be a hub for all kinds of services for kids, et cetera. So that there wasn't a strong agreement or strong lead from the community in that area. Culture came up in many different ways, sort of within students, between students and teachers, within teachers and other staff within the district, even to the point of what are the sort of political leanings of our community, of our district, of the teaching within the district. And so that's another area where there's, I would say, so within school culture, there is an indication that that's something that's important to the community within something like political leaning or political bias as it may be present in the way education is practiced in our district. That was all over the place, right? So you had some people saying, this doesn't feel like it matches my political leanings. So maybe to the point of don't even feel comfortable expressing my political beliefs, and all the way to the other end of like imagined continuing there. Early, early in the process as we were developing the scope of inquiry, so what we were going to ask about in this process, we brought up fiscal responsibility or fiscal stewardship and got some feedback that that seems like that's implicit in how this district goes about what it does. But it came up again later in the process with the board. And so I'm just leaving that on the table if the board wishes to sort of name that explicitly or if the sort of VSBA guidance and other sort of explicit and implicit imperatives are enough and you don't feel like that guidance or that some statement about that needs to be present and invisible at this level. Further work is to resolve the board or district positions on the topics above to maybe revisit the values question and I describe and define those, right? And so if the structure of vision and approach is sufficient meets those needs, that's fine. If Bill's point about moral imperative is compelling and the work that we already did some of on values is compelling, that's more worth that you could do and not least thinking about what work does that language do for you and for the district? Where might it be visible? How might it be useful for anybody? A student, a teacher, member of the board, member of the public. And then building out of the vision, establishing goals, articulating those and then prioritizing those. And then this came up folks talking about smart goals and earlier on Libby saying, okay, fine, but where are these things measurable? And one of the things that we came to with the last month or two was, okay, the accountable questions, the measurable stuff is gonna live within the goals as opposed to in the vision and the approach. At least that's the direction you're already. Don't move, Anna, hold on a second. Okay, and if you can go to slide nine, so that's skipping the values ones. So what's next? From my perspective is that we close the vision process so we just resolve a piece of language that is most resonant to you all. And we did that tonight. You've already seen the draft report, the final report, we contain language you have agreed upon and that becomes final. You, we did resolve the raw data question and the way we did that is that I shared that sort of pretty heavy Excel sheet with multiple tabs, but you have the raw data of the community engagement, the free answer information, the keyword tools that I built in one of those tabs. And so that's a, if you, I would argue that it's a rich mine of information or if you have questions that come up and you say, I wonder what the community thinks about this, there may be good evidence already in there. And if you find yourself asking that kind of question and trying to re-enter that data to work with it and you want support, give me a call. I'm very happy to say, okay, here's how this is operating and here's how you might search it. The question about whether you wish to refine the values, addressing the unresolved questions that were in that previous slide. And then for my work with the districts, initially we had planned a sort of public presentation that was when timing was different and we might have been doing this in the summer, early fall, the fair weather. When I last had a conversation with Libby, she thought the most effective way to do this would be to essentially present this information via social media, the school website, et cetera, and it goes available to support that effort. And so I'm anticipating collaborating with Libby and Anna on that unless you all have input about how we might go about that. Then communicate, communicate, communicate. I think that this is, I think that the community was engaged and then what we've been doing has been mostly quiet and not that visible to the community. And so, will folks have questions? How will you all sort of use this and push it into the community and then explain, this is the process we went through to get to this. This is how we intend to use this work. We are now in budgeting process. We're now in the strategic planning process. So you all doing the work of explaining to the community how you'll use this and where it came from. And then a piece of that is putting this into practice. If it is useful to influence or shape policy, the budget, planning in general, et cetera. So I'll pause, take some questions and then I wanna return to the vision language and get to some resolution that you feel good about. And I'm, Emma and Zach. Zach and... Merrick. Yes, Merrick. Okay, so I just, I don't have my volume on, so I'm gonna rely on other folks if you have questions or comments. Anna, thank you for driving on the Zoom. So it was the first thing for the board to consider which one of those two vision statements to go with. There's some modification, but before that, are there any sort of broader questions or comments that I can respond to? Emma, sorry. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, yeah. But now I just turned the Zoom off, so that's okay. Go for it, Emma. So just when you had the slide that talked about things that were still sort of lingering or missing, one of the things I remember spending quite a bit of time talking about, and then when I looked at the findings of the visioning work was the concept of transparency where that word came up quite a bit in the values and visioning work. And I'm just wondering sort of where that fits in. Great question. So the, I think to me that one sort of sits within the question about whether you revisit the values. It's not, so in the approach, right, there's communication and engagement, which is probably the closest it comes. Learning requires a collaborative approach. Therefore, we intentionally engage all members of our school community towards student success, but that doesn't really get to all the elements of transparency that came up. When we were working on, oh, and then the, yeah, there's a piece about accountability under rigorous learning. When we were working on the values, we talked about, well, transparency isn't really a value. It probably resides under accountability as a concept, as a value. And so the language around that, as it stood, was under accountability. To achieve our goals, we are accountable to the public, our administration, our teachers, and our students and their families. And each of these groups is accountable to the others. Within each building classroom team and meeting, we practice transparency and communicate clearly to explain our reasons and decisions and to make information available. Each member of our learning community takes responsibility for their beliefs, behaviors, and actions. So again, we, as a group, you all sort of steered away from that, that I don't think you necessarily wholeheartedly completely rejecting that approach, but rather to get to some resolution around vision and approach. That was, I thought, a really good pivot, but I do think it, I would recommend you come back to the values piece for that reason, among other reasons. And am I do, sorry to interrupt, I do have the values as we had drafted them to that point on two slides here, if you wish to look at them this evening. Yeah, one of my, I mean, I'm sure this is already, like, in the works, but I would like to make sure that your presentation ends up on our website. And then I was also wondering, like, I guess I was sort of hoping that we would eventually we would eventually hear from other members of the committee and was wondering if that was, you know, if you had thought about that, considered it, if it might be part of future work. At this stage, I had not thought of it, happy to think of it, you know, most of those folks are still engaged or around some of them on the school board itself. The, in terms of when we communicated with them and recruited folks to that committee, we really advertised them being engaged in a process through May or June. And so we didn't set the expectation that that would come up again. However, you know, one of my vision, one piece of my vision about the shape of this process was that that committee, having done this work, especially engaging with the community would continue to be able to act in some way in service of the district. As conduits, and conduits who are sort of familiar with the things we were grappling with. I'm happy to chat about, I mean, those committee members are known and I'm happy to chat with you all about ways you might wish to reanimate them. When I developed the draft report, I did circulate, this is quite a while ago, I did circulate that to the committee and asked for feedback and didn't get any. You know, I think that was, they may have sort of, in terms of their mind-share, moved on relevant to this project. Any other questions before we move to thumb wrestling over, version A or version B? Okay, Anna, will you go back to slide four? And so for board members, just so you know, I emailed you Nathan's presentation, so you have that, if you don't want to go on Zoom, you have it in here. Thank you. I'm PSC-Man. And just to be clear, I broke these out into bullets mostly so that it's easy to sort of move a component or adjust a component, but it will easily go back into narrative form. The trick is there is some sort of repetition which we may or may not wish to embrace, right? They positively, they have, that can be better. I think that can be better. I would offer that A is more direct. It has less wiggle room for us educators because I can say I gave them the tools, they're not, yeah, you know, they didn't use them. So it's less wordy slightly as well, which I think is important. I just want to plus one that because I don't think it's the vision of the district to just have created the tools. I think it's the vision of the district that when they graduate, they have the skills. They can be critical thinkers. They can be empathetic. So that's my thinking there. I have a question if it's okay. Oh, I'm gonna hear, C.G. was ready to go and then you're in the stack, Emma. Yeah, I'll agree. I was just gonna vote for A as well. I like the conciseness of it and the point that you two raised about how it's not just giving the tools and making sure they're not using them and implement them is the way to go. Emma. I guess I'm just feeling like, you know, it's almost eight p.m. We've done a lot of work on these statements and the visioning work and we have more to do as Nathan outlined, like sort of future work. I'm not sure if other people would feel comfortable but it feels like, you know, Jim and Jill and whoever will be taking them on this spot are not here tonight. And I just feel like we could potentially wrap the finalizing of the statement, the vision statement in with the other future work and schedule time to do that where we can really honor, you know, the finality of that. So hold off is what you're suggesting? Yeah, I think hold off and then bundle this work to revise the vision statement with the other work that we have to do around vision and goals. I'm not sure you're asking me, Emma. My thoughts on that are, I'm aware of how much other things you have on your dashboard and my sense was that you guys have made such tremendous progress in our last sort of group session that I think these are resonance. Well, I hope they're resonant. You know, when I'm thinking about the, when I'm trying to channel Jill or Jim, you know, thinking about academic excellence or thinking about some of the pieces that they were really advocating for, I think that those are represented here and then in the approach. But it's your, I mean, I think it's, if I were sitting in your shoes, it's about can we resolve this and keep and just move forward or defer and then when are you deferring to? I think that we're making this. So finalizing that, I mean, it feels like, I'm of the same opinion that it sounds better. I was trying to see the third bullet if there is something missing that we can incorporate, but it's a small thing. So that's four of us if you're on the same page. I feel like we're so close. If you guys from the same area, I wanna, I would recommend that we finalize this. And I agree with Emma that we need to schedule some time later on to then start working on those next stuff. But I don't think that should hold up this specific thing. I like it, I feel like if Jill or Jim had a really strong feeling against it, I think we would all have that conversation. I don't know, it's gone so, it's really a long process, which is important, but it's nice to feel like you're finishing things too. And also just as a point of the board in general, the board has a forum, not that you're doing an actionable vote right now, but you're kind of setting the vision of the district. Well, you got two very similar ones. I mean, you've had lots of conversation around this. It's not like it's new. I am the nation. So I don't know if you wanna hold more decisions, hold all decisions until the entire board is present, especially when the amount of conversation that has happened around us has already occurred. I also like A, it just feels like it centers the graduate and it's like more active in its language. So I would wanna go with A. I think we can move forward with it. And then it does seem like we still have a pretty big plate of work to do. And so if we put this at the top of the agenda, when we take up the work next time, just to kind of make sure-sure with all of our folks that aren't here, and if it needs to be reopened for discussion, it can be at that point, but I also feel like we've had a lot of process and dialogue, so I feel comfortable moving ahead with A, with the opportunity to open it up for discussion at the next work session. I don't feel too strongly about it, but it does feel nice to start the next work session being like, this is our vision. Okay, so now what do we do with it? Instead of, oh yeah, still have another piece to do. But like I said, I don't feel all that strongly. We'll see a slide in the budget presentation with the vision. With some pretty graphic. I'm glad, but Anna I'm sure is already brainstorming right as we speak. She's good like that. Emma, is that all right? I'm feeling pretty clear on A here. I want to make sure if Zach and Mary have any thoughts too, I want to make sure to hear from them. I also liked A. I agree that it's just concise or more active. Yeah, that's really all I have to add. And I think it's nice just to move things along as well. And Zach is nodding. Nodding's head. Nodding, okay, great. I love how Zach smiles every time he smiles. I liked the Zach head nod too. You've gotten quite accustomed to it. Great, I think it sounds like we're going with A. I was going to offer that there's impact shows up in here twice and I think there could be maybe a tiny bit more refinement to reduce the repetitiveness, but I also am not, again, don't feel all that strongly. We did work really hard on this and we have, I think what to me feels like, wow. You know, when we've got students graduating out of our learning community with this at their kind of like facts, it feels really powerful to me. I mean, when you say that, as I read that closer, Emma, not to start wordsmithing, the second bullet, well, I am worst with the thing actually, the second bullet and the last part of the last bullet say the same thing. Right, that was the debate we were having at the very end of our conversation, however many meetings ago it was, we turned take responsibility for da-da-da-da-da into recognize the impact they have on others and you were making the excellent point, like let's talk about it being a positive impact. So I think Nathan was like, well, let's show both of those things. So anyway. Yeah, I mean, we have respect showing up twice and impact showing up twice in slightly different ways. So you can, we can smooth it a little bit more, but I think this is, I suspect this is workable and somebody who's sitting here or Jim or Jill is quite capable of sort of that last little bit. How about we just revise it this way? Go for it, but yeah. Yeah, I think if we were to revise, we would work off of A, then work off of B. Right, that's what we are. That's what I'm getting to. Okay, so we could wrap here because this is the work that you were tasking us with tonight. Or we could take another few minutes and do some kind of like, okay, so what are the immediate next steps and who owns them? We've got from you, Nathan, a long list of what's next. Should we just not assume, but I'm confirming with you that the things that have you next to them, you're just gonna do, we're not, okay. And then review report and internalize, that's kind of us on our own time. It seems like the board needs to put together our own timeline for figuring the rest of the stuff out. Yeah, that third bullet point though about review report and internalize is sort of me nudging you because I do think, you know, this was a pretty comprehensive process. It is going to have further impacts down the line in terms of how you go about decision making. And I think it is helpful for you to be able to say in response to a query from anybody. Right, this is what we learned. Some things were not decisive, so we made a decision. Some things were decisive and we're following that. Right, and just the more conversant you are, or the more you're sort of carrying that with you, I think that, you know, part of this is a tool that enables you to respond respectfully to the community through the process that you oversaw to Bill's point about governance. Right, so as far as figuring out the timeline for what's next, it seems like the simplest way to do that is with Jim. Jim was nappy, like that kind of thing. Just assign it to Jim. Well, just, yeah, we'll volunteer him. I think Nathan's going to get the report to Anna and I and the rest of the board. And Anna and I will be working on, perhaps, wordsmithing those last couple words and designing a graphic just with the vision, just for the vision piece. For a website and for distribution and for all that kind of stuff, work out a social media campaign. Right, that all is for that. And Anna, you know, could be a jump off that budget, that first budget meeting, which is next to the board meeting will be it, to jump off a little bit and perhaps try to connect our budgetary priorities to those, to the vision statement, right? So as much as possible, that's pretty broad. So as much as possible, yeah. So that's what I would see as next steps that would be happening in the next two weeks. And I should be able to, I should have that stuff to you within the next day and a half. I think it's worth, as you were thinking about communicating to the public, the vision statement is, I think quite succinct, but it's not comprehensive. And so the question of where does the approach document reside and how is that visible? I think it's worth thinking about it. I think that's more conversation with the board, perhaps. Yeah, okay. Yeah, and then there's a thing standing out to me that because Phil was raising earlier, how would we, the report is gonna have a lot in it for us, but it's not going to be the, we're not gonna point to it and say, so therefore these are the board's priorities. And I think there is a step in here where it's important for the board to wrestle with, if this is our vision, this is the point that we have on the horizon. And here's where we know where we are now. We gotta set some priorities that will move us in that direction of that point on the horizon. And I feel like that's part of what Nathan is, what you're telling us here in the lingering questions sort of and the further work. So I would like to make sure, and I'll just follow up with Jim, because I know that he's got his mind more in the arc of the year of the board than probably any of the rest of us, but just where that kind of stuff it's in, in board discussions and any decisions we need to make. You're looking like you're not sure what I was saying. No, I was thinking of the arc of the year. And how you're moving into, we are moving into budget season and that takes up December and January, pretty much wholesale. And then there's elections. Correct. And so you have a new board potentially after town meeting day. So I feel like that kind of work could be super important for the new board to take on. But that's just my opinion, knowing where we are in the year, but there's not a lot of time in board meetings other than understanding the budget presented. Gotcha. Yeah. And the massive amount of policies. Right. Thank you. Board meetings. All right. So I think we're wrapping it for now. I don't know if it's reasonable, but I imagine it is. I think among the top things that kind of came up in the work that we did, collectively understanding systemic inequities wasn't really one of them. And I wonder if you can put in that the board feels that that is very much at the top of our priorities. And I don't know if that's a reasonable thing to do, just to sort of make sure that that's part of the report because it's been very much part of our conversations. It is our intention. It is a high priority. And I want and maybe that can be reflected in the report or something. I don't know, but it's not, it's. It's a good question. I confess that I didn't in preparing for tonight. I didn't myself go back into the raw data. I think that if I were a board member, the roots of that are probably in the school safety SRO committee and that community engagement. And if I'm right about that, then it is indicated by the community engagement process, although not the one that I shepherded. So I will look at that and get an answer. And if it's not there, then it was generated by the board. But if it is, then you have that as addition backing, is that? Yeah. Great. Thank you, Nathan. Thank you very, very much. Emma's got a hand up. Oh, thank you. Sorry, because I don't have, I can't. Sorry, Emma, I didn't have the Zoom screen up. I just want to make sure that I'm hearing. So are we talking about sort of advertising the vision statement and then putting that out there and then putting off the future work of the goals and stuff, the values and goals until March, like after we have an election? I think between now and then there's not a lot of board time. So maybe in February, because the budget's cooked by February. So, and you're just waiting for town meeting to happen. And you will have at least one new board member town meeting day, if not more. So it's just something to consider. What I heard, Emma, was that Jim, Lucky Jim who's not in the room, but does understand the arc of the year for the board is going to be the one catching where might this be located? And I suspect if you were to say, hey, I think it's more important than that or I want it sooner. Start going back. Yeah. I didn't hear that that was a closed decision. You know, that was resolved. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I guess I would want to work on it sooner, even if we have to break it up into like smaller meetings and not like a big retreat, that's four hours. And then also I would, kind of something that Nathan said about the community seeing the values and the full finished product presented resonates with me instead of, like I worry about people seeing just the vision statement without all of that other stuff to accompany it. So I wonder if there's something to be said for just sort of like, it can be a soft launch, but maybe not like social media and everything of the vision statement as it stands until we have the other stuff to accompany it. I'm not sure you're asking me this, Emma, but I've been reflecting on that also. And, you know, this, for example, the slide presentation from tonight is still somewhat a process document, right? It's not a, that itself is not a final document. And then the report, which will be populated with the vision statement that we're, you know, you have right now, that will be a final document of sorts, but it is also, you know, 39 pages. And so that's not, it's not, it's not going to feel that accessible to casual members of the public. And so I think I'm speaking for myself, I'm sort of putting a pin in that, and I want to swing back to it with Libby and Anna and think about, well, I want to hear what Anna's thoughts are on how that might, how more texture might be presented to the public. But as Libby pointed out, that's also a question for the board, which you're raising right now. Yeah, I don't know the answer. I mean, it's appealing to be like, we just did all of this and here's what we have, but I definitely understand what I'm saying. It feels like if we only share vision and not other things that could land as incomplete. And I mean, we have the approach is pretty much finished. I think it's really just the values or the other, as you were talking about, the circles, the intertwining circles. It's the other big circle that's not really very well-baked yet, but the approach is. So, and I feel like those two together are pretty strong. I can see they're getting value in putting effort into this in February, if there's a window because the process has stand. So I personally am, but it's like, I have to kind of relearn, remember and kind of just reaccess the files for the information. So, it does feel like December and January are packed full, but if we could find a window in February to make a good push to bring some finality, I think about the, a new board member coming in could find it very, could find it very ground, like their work could be very grounded in knowing that we have these kind of pieces final because they're very defining in terms of like our vision, not quite our goals, but our values and as just sort of an anchor point, to kind of enter the work, having that completed before new folks come on, I could see as being valuable. All right. We're gonna wrap here in the interest of time. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Nathan. And move on to an equity committee update. I'm gonna see if my fellow equity committee members would like to take the lead in sharing thoughts on an equity audit. It's something that we have been thinking around. We've talked about kind of as this committee has been coming into its own and really developing its plate of stacked high work. We have taken a look at some other districts work in doing equity audits and looked at them and said, this seems like really valuable work to setting a baseline in a district and really understanding where we are at in this very high ideal of achieving equity in education. So we've discussed it and at a recent meeting as we were kind of plotting forward and thinking about priorities, we had reached out to Olivia about what would it take for us to, for the district to do an equity audit? How could it be funded? What would the process be? And Libby mentioned that there could be some available funds in the Acer bucket, I believe, to dedicate to that. So it seems like there was some synchronicity going on. There's been conversations going on with Libby and her team and doing an equity audit and Mia and formerly Amandha, been very involved with the equity work in the district both as board members and non-board members in trying to kind of develop equity definitions. And it was actually the recent work of the grant application that we did for VSBA for a mini grant was to do some board work and have a process around our board actually defining what we believe equity to be. And we did not get that grant, however, it does feel like that work would still be important and an equity audit would really give us kind of a baseline, a starting point of kind of equity and action in our district to do that deeper board work. In our policy, we do state that we were committed to doing, continued learning, board learning, board development around equity. And this just feels like it would be the stuff that we could really sink our teeth into and really think about how, and I think it's like then we'd be dealing with actuals versus assumptions or kind of data pieces here and there but connecting all the dots. And in my understanding of an equity audit is it's big and vast and which I do have some questions about that and I don't know would be if you want to talk about that tonight, but so anyhow, but it would just really give us a pretty fundamental baseline and where the district is at in achieving equity and allow us to think about that in terms of policy and budget decisions. So I'm excited about the fact that it was already on the radar. Was there a link to another district's one? Yeah, Mia sent that around earlier today. I'm sure it didn't get, you know. That's where that was. Yeah. Yeah. I think the audit just like Chris said would be great because equity is a very popular but somewhat nebulous term and this gives us a way to really measure it and see where we're at and get a baseline at this level and then make incremental improvements and work on it. So very encouraging that it was already, there's already some talks about, you know not using the fund balance but using master fund sets. That's a great progress, I think. Yeah, we'll just start with the action which we're pretty positive that there will be money left after the actuals come in. So then I would suggest that I work with the equity committee over the next month or so or two months to get at really, what are we talking about, the parameters? Right. Because I know a lot of the equity studies that have been done around Vermont are based pretty solely in racial equity efforts and there's no judgment there, it's just that has been and it does the board wanna include poverty indicators and things of that nature, which would you know? So I don't know what that entails because I'm totally talking out of like probably what I would like to see too but I have no idea what the companies can offer us either because I haven't spoken with anybody yet. So I think that's a good conversation for the equity committee to have. Yeah, let's do that. And maybe that would culminate in the actual RFP that we would put out. Yeah, I think that's good. Great, yeah. And like I said, there's no actual formal vote the board needs to take tonight because it's kind of already in the works but also just good to keep everybody on the board and the community in the know. So what some of these plans are. And that's good. And Emma. Take it home. Yeah, I'm just really glad to hear that this is already being talked about. It was one of the questions that came up during our policy committee meeting last week with Zach and Merrick because one of the main things that they've been asking about is or been hearing about from other students is this idea around curriculum and sort of improving the curriculum from a diversity, equity and inclusion lens. And when we looked back at the policy monitoring report for the last policy monitoring part one of the things that was talked about there was that we were in the process of or that we had future plans to audit the materials through an equity lens. So I would hope that that would be part of any equity audit that we plan to do. It might be Emma. My understanding is that an equity audit would lead to a curriculum audit, but they would probably, and this is after I've heard it from like one panel at a VSBA conference. So maybe there are places that can do an equity audit and then a curriculum audit, but it sounds like if they actually follow, it follows. So it's all up in the mix, but maybe not all at the same time. I think that's it. And then so let's go to the open board position, Emma and the minute or two you wanted to take there. Yeah, I've just been thinking about the process by which when there is a vacancy, like how is that advertised? Who's hearing about it? Who feels comfortable applying for it? All of those things. And I don't feel like we usually get like a lot of interest and maybe that's just because there's not a lot of people interested and that's fine. But I just would hope that we could sort of improve spreading the word about the board vacancy in an attempt to get more people interested in filling that seat. I know Jim already posted it on a couple of different sites including from which firm and we have received at least one letter of interest. So that's good. Another thing that it brings up in some of the circles of people that I am in communication with is that a lot of people are talking about how challenging it is to be able to set aside this amount of time, especially if they are a single caregiver and they don't have childcare or they have certain limited hours with their children and limited hours of childcare coverage. And it just made me think about sort of touches back on what Phil was talking about, like what can the board do to make the meetings more accessible and inclusive. And one of the things that I was thinking about that would be great for both potential board members and making it easier for board members to attend meetings but then also community members is, and I know we've done it in the past. I reached out to Jim and he said that they've done it in the past, but not on a consistent basis but offering childcare at our meetings and potentially offering food that would be able to be given to the children that are in attendance. And I'm sure we're not gonna have tons of people taking advantage of that. Maybe we won't have any people taking advantage of it but I feel like it would help expand our pool of applicants and I just feel like if it doesn't feel reasonable for a single parent or caregiver to serve on the board then I don't feel like we're really leading with our values. So I was hoping maybe we could consider putting some of our school board budget towards that. Child care and food. Offering like a childcare stipend. You know, if that, if we didn't, if there wasn't a need consistently to have childcare at the meeting, if we could offer a stipend to an individual that is a member that needs to be able to hire a babysitter and pay for that babysitter. Maybe that could be an option. I like that option because I want my kids to sleep at eight o'clock. I was thinking the same thing. Yeah, those burners that can do it all. My wife, who makes all of my presence here possible. But I appreciate Emma's point that we're not leading with our values if we don't try to find ways to make this as accessible as we can. Right, and I think the stipend idea would be hard for individual people who are thinking about dropping into a meeting. And I know we have Zoom and that's very helpful. I think that's improved participation, but the stipend idea would be a barrier to entry, I think, for people who just wanted to drop in on a meeting because they heard that something was being discussed and they wanted to come by. But if it was like a general, you know, a thing that people knew that we just always had it, a standing, you know, one or two people waiting to take care of children, then they could always come. And I mean, children are welcomed at our meetings as well, I know. And I thought you were referring specifically to a new board member coming on, but I think you're talking like public at large that we can have childcare so that people, the public could attend. It would be both. So I think it would make it easier for board members who are in a bind with childcare to attend meetings and it would also potentially encourage easier participation from our constituents. Is there any mechanism where we could use kids from high school? I can tell you that the organization of this will not be following in my office. Yeah, it's a lot of organization and responsibility that I don't think we have the capacity to take on. So if the board wants to do it, I'm all for it. And who's our clerk? Is that right? No, she's a proletariat. The description was very light. No, no, it is daunting to think about. I think it's worth putting a little bit more thought into. I mean, for example, who their every fourth board meeting happens at Roxbury, are we finding somebody in Roxbury to do the childcare here? Or are we finding a Montpelier person to come out? So, you know, there are logistics that would definitely need to be figured out. I think it's worth doing that thinking to see and maybe trying it out for three months, six months, something to just see if the theory that having advertising that childcare is available makes board meetings more accessible to everyone. Everyone. I think, Emma, if we were gonna go forward with it, I think it would be worthwhile to put some of that thinking down in paper, like figure out what the mechanics of it would be and including like who would manage all of it and what the cost would be. And then that would give us something more concrete to say yes or no to. Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to help. I mean, I would be happy to sort of like put it out there and try to find people too. So I'm happy to help. I agree that it's a challenge and that's probably not why it's done, why it's not done consistently. But I think it's worth an effort. Yeah. Maybe we can leverage and agree like part two or yeah, like an organization that does this already. And if there's room in the budget, we maybe we can offer the work to them instead of giving it all to Rhett. To do all the coordinating. Yeah. Right, yeah. So that's an idea. So Emma, you're volunteering to try and get this, get the mechanics of this laid out to see how it might work. If we had offered this before, what was, how much of it was used? Do we have any idea on that? It's never used. It's never been used. But Emma's right, it's not on a routine basis. We've not. Not on a routine basis. But on one off basis. So whenever we use it, I believe that the we've tried a couple of times for the budget forum when we want people to come talk to us on the budget. And it's not, it hasn't. We advertise that as well, right? They will be childcare. I remember talking about it in the town hall or we had some town hall format meetings that we had arranged for episode three maybe or maybe discussions for that. Yes. And we had offered at that time. There was dessert at one dessert tour. Yes, the food and childcare were offered that. Was that used if, you know, that's another data point that we can use when we're talking about this is like, we have some, we may have some idea if we do offer it, we have offered in the past how much of it was used. Yeah. I'm also kind of wondering if there's a way to reach out to the community and ask if this is something that would, that people would find beneficial seeing what kind of response there is. And then... We do have thought exchange. The board couldn't easily put together a thought exchange that says something along the lines of, you know, name the top three things that would engage you more in the board's work. Or, you know, that might not be the right question, but we do have that. That's still in our cover. So... Yeah, might not be the right word, but you know what I mean? So that, that is an option. Toolbox, toolbox, yeah. If you wanted to query the community to see what might engage them more in board meetings. That could be part of, part of this. Emma, I'm happy to work with you on it. Okay, sounds good. Great. Okay, we're moving on to policy monitoring. Right now we have two policy monitoring reports to review and approve the report, the monitoring report on policy C14, the grievance and the monitoring report for F11, people, privacy rights. Let's do them separately just in case. So let's start with a motion. Can I get a motion to approve the policy monitoring report for C14? Is there a second? And then any discussion about this policy monitoring report? I think I had one question. Now I'm just waiting for my notes to come up. Oh, the, is there anything in the policy about staff not being discriminated against or is it just about students? I have to go. Okay. That level of detail. I don't have committed to memory. I'd have to go back and look at a few different policies. Okay. So I feel like it's somewhere else, but I could be wrong. Oh, I see that this is one. I just don't have it that bad. That's my C14, right? Yes. So the policy does, I mean, mentions employee and students. Yeah. So I, we do have staff members who are on 504s and we're following ADA compliance from multiple measures. Yep. So I think that's the reason it stood out to me is that your interpretation has that no student is discriminating against. And I think I would just include no student or staff. That's all. Any other discussion? Okay. All those in favor of approving the policy monitoring report? Any opposed? Okay. Is there a motion for approving the policy monitoring report for F11? Second. Thanks guys. Since you're here. Any discussion? I have some questions. More so just about, I guess the content of the policy bit. Like what are examples of third-party surveys that have happened in the past or that might come our way? We don't have a lot of third-party surveys at all. Yeah. So it might have been in the past from, would the military be considered a third-party survey perhaps or a software company or somebody, you know, like somebody would just be from the outside. It does not happen. Yeah. So I think it's just a part of the, Yeah, it's part of the required policy. Yeah. And then I was wondering what Vermont Student Privacy provides to the district? Yeah. So that ensures that looks at software and it ensures that the software that we're using doesn't sell student data and sell student information. The reason why when you, you know, search on Amazon for your kiddos Christmas gift of, you know, toy trains, all of a sudden you have pictures of them on Instagram too or whatever it is, right? So that basically it ensures that the software we're using doesn't sell student data without our knowledge. So everything has to go through that piece. Pretty much everybody in Vermont is a part of that. Thanks. It's also a place where a lot of teachers like to get free apps, right? And so that will flag free apps because often the free version will sell data where the version you buy doesn't. So that's a place where that comes up or used to come up when we first got it quite a bit. Yeah. Okay. We had to use some education so that our teachers are on that. Yep. Great. Any other discussion? I don't know if Emma's got her hand up or if Merrick or Zach do. Sorry. I told her she should text me if we're on call in honor. Okay. All those in favor of the policy matter report for F-11? Any opposed? Okay. So moving into policy readings. So we have a first reading. We will have a second reading at the next board meeting and then we voted into policy or is there a third reading? There's a third reading. And then after the third reading, then there's a policy vote, right? So that's just a good reminder that we don't have to like tackle everything in all of these tonight, especially given that it's already 8.33. And the policy committee and Emma, you're the sole representative here. We appreciate you. Has done a ton of work, obviously. And so I think this is like a good opportunity to maybe ask some questions and maybe provide a little bit of feedback, but don't just keep in mind we'll have a few other looks of these, you know, before we lend them completely. I don't want you to be surprised. Well, I guess we'll just take them in order, right? A-20. I'm gonna kick it over to Emma to see if there's any other context setting you wanna do, or maybe you can walk us through these. Yeah, so the context is that this is an effort to make our policies more aligned with the Vermont School Boards Association. And so we've been doing a lot of that work over the past several months. And what we noticed is that our policies just, they were not only not aligned, but they were sort of like, they just didn't exist on the model policy page, some of them. So we are taking these five school board policies. We already have the board member conflict of interest, which is the only required board policy listed on the VSBA website. And then these are the five recommended board policies. So we kind of took them as a bundle. We looked through them. We changed some of the wording to better suit our district, but not significantly. And then we are in the process of adopting this bundle of five new board policies that align with the VSBA. We're also repealing A-02, A-03, A-04 because of basically redundancies and that they're not either mandated or required. So the language in the five sort of cover the language that was in the three policies that are being repealed. So, and like Mia said, this is the first reading. We wanted to get them in front of you, see if there was any sort of glaring questions or concerns. And then we're gonna go back to the drawing board in between this reading and next. And make sure that we address those and then there'll be a second reading and a third. And then at the fourth time you see them we'll be voting on them. So, Emma, it seems like it's probably easiest to take even though they're a bundle, take them one at a time to be able to ask questions. Does that sound right? Sure, yes. So do we wanna start there trying to see how they're listed? Are they listed in numeric order? Yeah, so A20? Yeah. Yep. How may I ask, is this what is on the BSBA website? Or do you guys take that and adapt it? Or how much change have you made in what is there as the recommended policy? Just as a process question. Did you hear him, Emma? Yeah, so I'm not sure if we were trying to make the document in a way that you could like see the original language of the BSBA policy alongside with the new language and kind of like track the changes. I'm not sure if I could go to like version history and show you that, but you can access, I thought we had linked the model policy here, but we haven't. So would you like me to link that here? You can read the model policy. It's very aligned with the model policy. And then we took a look at it, Jim, Amanda and I and sort of finessed some of the language, added little bits here and there, but it's not significantly different from what the model policies are. That's the whole plan is for our policies to align with the BSBA policies. Okay, I don't think I need to see the original ones. I just wanted to, I was just curious how much change. Yeah, yeah. So on the regular meeting schedule, it says the board shall set a schedule for regular meetings to be held at least twice per month throughout the year. I'm wondering if that boxes you in to summer meetings in July and so I... Yeah, I understand that it's at least two. I was on average twice a month per year because with your retreats, you do average out to at least twice a month. So I'm just wondering about that verbiage if you don't want to box yourself then. Yeah, there have been times where we haven't had. I mean, apart, even apart from the summer ones, I think we had to cancel one of the meetings and yeah, one month and then we just didn't have two meetings in that month. So yeah, I agree. We probably average out twice a month over the course of the year, but we certainly don't have every single two meetings. Yeah, great feedback. Thank you. Keep going, Lemmy. The only other one I had, I had a stupid question, but it was a stupid question. I just read it more closely. I think Emma said earlier in this meeting there are no stupid things. That one was. So then on agenda distribution, the proposed agenda together with supporting materials will be distributed to board members by the superintendent three days prior to regular meetings. We certainly try to do that, but presentations sometimes we're still working on because we're getting like up-to-date data or we're relying on other people. So if that is set in stone, then I will move our timeline up. However, like is there any wiggle room there? It's for the presentation part and that's not for materials. What about guests? Right, guests might come in. So that would be my only other piece on this. On this. So can we omit just the other supporting materials apart from that? Or together with supporting materials as much as possible or reasonable effort? Reasonable effort shows up a lot in these, which I appreciate. I think it's, that's the way of bridging that gap. Because we're never making a presentation the day of. Right, that's never happening. We're not procrastinating. It's just we're trying to make it the best we can. Yeah. Emma, what do you think of that? Shift that language a little bit to be reasonable effort to three days ahead. This is why more brains are better than three. And I feel like when you sit with these documents for as long as we have, you start to kind of get blurry vision. So this is helpful. Yeah, we'll just go down the line here. I had one on this on a 21 thought, which was there's a lot in there about the agenda preparation and agenda distribution. And I wonder if it would be worthwhile adding like one sentence that names a expectation for board members for our preparation. Just something like, you know, board members will come to meetings having, you know, read the materials and agenda and ready to discuss and make decisions. Is that in a different policy? Emma, is that in board expectations? It wasn't the old one. Oh, okay. We're getting rid of that one. Yeah, okay. Yeah. She's deep in thought. Yeah, I am deep in thought. No, I think, I think Libby's right. Like the language that you're looking for maybe used to live in the board member expectations. We are also planning on having, you know, that board handbook that we're planning on having a board handbook and guide on how to engage the board that the equity committee has been helping us with a little bit. And some of that type of like detail will be in there. So sometimes we talked about like, what makes sense to actually, what language makes sense to live in the policy and what language makes sense to live more in those documents. But I will make a note to discuss. Great. Any other questions or comments on A20? Graff to A20. I know the agenda was posted in the clerk's office. Is that every agenda that's posted in the clerk's office? Okay. So we're on to A21. Public participation in board meetings. Should we just start to? I don't know. Yeah. I have a question. I have a question. The implementation of post-polygist priority will be given to district residents who will stop under some caregivers. How do we make sure that happens? Good question. You know, I hear what you're saying. And I'm thinking about not necessarily what's happening in our community, but in other communities where people outside the community are coming and not helping conversation move forward. But really, Andrew. Refuse service, sorry. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I do see the necessity of having some sort of language and I hear what you're saying at the same time. Not only that. I'm just saying that if we're having the language, we should have some kind of process to ensure that. It may be just- Even if it's a question from the chair that says public comment from Montpiler and Roxbury residents. Yeah, something like that. Are people specifying that, yeah, I want to comment and I live in Montpiler, Roxbury or whatever, right? Yeah. The place of, yeah. Something to that. So the discussion in the policy committee around this bullet list was sort of like, a lot of this is kind of like Libby saying, like most of the time it may not come into play. And it's just sort of, but it's a way for us to have something to point to if it has to come into play. Yeah, yeah. So I think it's more like if it ever became an issue and we had 200 people arrive at our meeting that Jim could go back to this or whoever the chair is at the time could go back to this and say, okay, I'm gonna tighten the reins for this particular meeting because it looks like it might run until one o'clock in the morning, which does happen in other districts. Mm-hmm. And I'm not a person to take apart the language, but is this saying that we will need to do that or are we trying to say that, hey, we reserve the right to do that? I think it is more the reserve the right. That's how I read it. Okay. Anyway. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I could imagine like if this room was filled with people ready to speak a public comment, we could start by saying, all of those of you who live in Montpelier or Roxbury can please queue up first. And if you don't live in either of our towns, if we have time, we'll hang time. So one of the benefits of having a lawyer on the policy committee, which I hope we always have a chance to have one, so Jim was very cognizant of the language being used. So you'll see like implementation, you'll see in that first sentence may be used. So it's not that we have to do it this way every time, but that if we feel the need and if the need arises that we can implement these more strict bullet points. Okay. Any other questions on A21? I'm working on keeping us moving right along. Excellent. Do any of these speak to what happens to the documents after the meeting is done? What documents you're talking about? I mean, everything's posted on our website and you can go back and look, but I'm just wondering if any of these speak to that because I didn't really see it, but it is of course the practice and I don't know if that's in a VSBA policy or if it's a warrant. Statue? I think it's sort of open meeting law. And so yeah, we sort of went back and forth around like how much of that language do we have to like spell out? Like we went back and forth about Robert's rules. Like do we need to like talk about all of that in the policy? And we kind of figured if it already lives, like we can put cross-reference. And then also we're really hoping to have this sort of like board engagement. What is a school board document that's modeled off of one that we found from another district? And we're hoping a lot of that can live there too rather than in policy. This might, Emma, fall into that category where it lives in more of a handbook or something like that, but it felt to me as I was reading this one, A21, under implementation, maybe we could benefit from adding a bullet point that says like, these are actions, the board, and maybe make every reasonable attempt that the board will take to support informed engagement because all or most of the bullets here under implementation are all, this is what sort of is the responsibility of the people who come to engage. And it felt a little bit like maybe we could reciprocate a little as board members and say, here's responsibility we are taking as a board to encourage participation. So I guess we'll put a thought on that one, but I also think that it would be reasonable to say that that lives in the handbook as well and not necessarily policy. She's nodding. Yeah, yeah. All right, anything else on A21? All right, let's move on to A22, notice of non-discrimination. Emma, just really quick, you have a typo on the second page and the subheading, it says title four and in the paragraph it says title six. You just switched around the Roman numeral. Is this A22? Yeah. Do you see it? Yeah, I guess I'm not 100% sure which one it's supposed to be. Do you know? Title four under federal grants has to do with multilingual learners. So my hunch is that it's title four. I don't know what title six is. So if I were a betting girl, I'd go with title four but we might want to check that out first. Don't take my word for it. Oh yeah, in the second paragraph. Yeah, it's a six, yeah. Yeah, you have title six twice, in which case I should probably educate myself into figuring out what title six is. I'm gonna figure this out, I'm gonna make sure. All right, did you have anything more on this one? That's it. This might be a question for the lawyer on the policy committee, in which case I can just ask him myself, but there's a phrase in here, nothing herein shall create a private right of action. I have no idea what that means. That's so Jim. That's the legal use. Yeah, yeah. Where are you? This isn't my problem with. Oh, I see. Just above accommodations. I think that's, I don't know, but I think that that's language from the model policy and where there was pretty clear like legal use, we tended to steer clear of revising it. And that was at the recommendation of our lawyer too. Yeah, that makes sense. So I'll just ask Jim to satisfy my own curiosity, but it's good. Yeah, we should probably know. It should, yeah, it should live, it seems like it should not be stricken from the policy. I also wanted to offer that maybe you've got some good cross references down at the bottom, and I think maybe our DEI policy would be another good one to cross reference in A22. She's got it. Yep, great. Any other thoughts or questions on A22? Kristen. Did you guys address the title six mentioned in the footnote? And the footnote one, it also references title six in parent disease. It says raised color national origin. There you go, Kristen. Title six it is, Emma. I had to get my spectacles out. Wow, it's Cheney. Way to go. It's over there. Yeah, it's also a good practice just for, I mean like the model policy would tell me to. So this is, I will just triple check. Unless it has to go. It might have been from there. I don't know. Anything else on A22? Okay, let's keep moving then to A23. Community engagement and vision. Questions or thoughts? All right, I'll go again. I had a couple of questions, Emma. One, it mentions in the policy a strategic plan. And maybe this could then live in Handbook or someplace else. But I know that the district has adopted the board has approved the district's continuous improvement plan. And I don't know how, if that would be the same, like we could say, oh good, that's our strategic plan. Or if we're talking about something else, do you know? Yeah, we did talk about this. There's a few times where the VSBA like mentions things that we don't have in place. So our interpretation of this was it was more like our vision and goals. That it was the board's strategic plan. But that sort of reminds me, like maybe we need to change the language to align with what we're actually doing. Like what we're calling it. Well, yeah, I think what we, I don't know. Like I don't know if this continuous improvement plan is actually our strategic plan. Perhaps, as you just said, we would, you know, set a diff, not a different, obviously, we don't want to go in different directions, but I don't know. So it is just, I think probably fine to leave it. And if we decide that there is, it should be replaced with continuous improvement plan. We could do that at a later date. I'm saying that I think that our interpretations with that was that it would not be replaced with continuous improvement plan, which we saw more as like an internal, like administrative document and more replaced with the goals. So like adopt a strategic plan to implement the vision. And I think what we were thinking might go there is like adopt goals to implement the vision. Gotcha. Something like that. Like align the language with what we've been doing in our visioning process. Gotcha. But I will revisit that with Jim. And then there was another question I had about under implementation, the board establishing a structure that, and I'm curious to know if you all talked about how community engagement would fit into that structure. I didn't see it totally laid out. It's the first sentence under implementation. I'm just refreshing my memory within my slow brain. I mean, so community engagement is in that other policy, right? Or? This is the community engagement policy. Sorry. Yeah, I think it's so, you mean like is the structure defined? Do we want the structure defined in the policy? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, maybe. What does the second sentence sort of define structure? Yep. That's how I really do it. So maybe what I'm saying is in that second sentence, we could add community engagement so that we're holding ourselves accountable to community engagement being a part of our structure. Okay, yeah. And it also, there's a little bit here in this paragraph of receiving community input. Yep. Right, so we'll use multiple methods to solicit feedback from parents and other community members. So you're talking about, includes employing a superintendent, developing and improving policies, formulating budgets. So you're just saying in that list. Yeah. Engaging community. Yep. The only thing I was thinking about here was receiving community input. I wonder if provide opportunities for listening sessions is too specific for policy language. We have past experience that listening sessions don't necessarily engage a whole lot of people like they engage three. So I wonder if that's too, because there's not a laundry list of other ideas for engaging or getting community input by the district. So it appears by reading this that that would be the thing that I would monitor the number of listening sessions. And I'm not sure if that is, I think the board would want us to think about multiple ways to engage the community and actually get the input that shows them getting input. Whereas, three of the same people coming to any listening session I offer is not necessarily community input. So provide opportunities for multiple ways to engage. Something like that. Great. Looks like she made a note to bring it back to the policy committee. Any other thoughts or questions on A23? I had a question about the sentence that you brought up. The board will adopt a strategic plan to implement the vision which moves the district forward. And we kind of already went over it, but I was curious what your thoughts were on that, Libby. When I read it, I was like, doesn't Libby implement the plan? And I don't know. I do. And I bring it to you and you technically adopt it. We approve it. Yeah. Okay. That's where I just need clarification, because I was like just getting into the place where we're, what is the line? Where we're powering you or micromanaging you. That's where I want to know where we're in the right place. Okay. Let's move on to A24. Board superintendent's relationship. Questions or thoughts on this one? I don't know where a reasonable effort to not give directives to any staff member is good enough under the fourth thing down. I don't know why we would want to give directives to staff members at all. It's like make reasonable efforts. It makes leave space to kind of do that. And I don't know if we want to leave space to do that. Oh, you think it should be stronger language? Kind of. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. It feels like it leaves space to do that. And I don't really want space to do that. But that's just my opinion. I don't know if that's... We're, you're thinking we're make reasonable efforts to not give directives to any staff member in the fourth paragraph. Yeah. It seems like that's leaving room for someone to do that and not violate the policy. Right. I would agree with you. Isn't that right? I mean, I thought of the same thing, but I then re-read it. And it talks earlier about board members being involved in other school related activities. And that room basically it was given so that if that activity dictates that specific thing that they wanted to give directions for staff members that would prevent it like some other. I don't know if there is some other volunteer activity that they're doing. And now they're telling people, hey, you got to do this. I think that board members in general need to understand that when they're on a committee or a parent thing or something where the principal in particular is in the room, teachers not so much because there's a couple of degrees of separation there. But when there's an administrator in that committee as well, if a board member speaks in a way that could be interpreted as a directive even as a strong suggestion, then the principal emails me and says, do I have to do this every time? Like hands down, every time, happened just last week. So there will always like they are very, the administrators are very cognizant of the fact that the board is my boss and they want me to be in a good light, right? And so if, so they want to do what they're told, right? That's coming up for me with the RBS parent group, all of our fundraising things when we're trying to announce, you know, it may be you communicating with Beth or with Tina, it may be the few of us that are doing a lot of that communication are asking to share like an announcement that there's this particular drive or I don't know if that's not a thing. If that's putting somebody in an uncomfortable place, maybe it shouldn't come from me at all. Like I sent something and I made a suggestion that potentially at the bottom of the buzz, there's a link to the parent group page. So if you sent that to Beth, then she's saying I have to do it because a board member told me to. That makes me feel uncomfortable. Then I said that doesn't make me feel good. And I will say Beth has never said anything negative about the review at all. I wouldn't want that. Or has she ever said that you made me feel uncomfortable? Yeah, I wouldn't want that. This part of the policy was talked about at great length and Jim definitely put his legal mind and role as chair onto this language. And so it's exactly what you guys are getting at all of the things that were discussed. So like the example that Rhett is giving right now is sort of why we wanted to protect board members who make sort of like an honest mistake as a parent or part of a parents group or whatever. Like there's gonna be times where you're gonna be interacting with the principal and it would be a challenge for us to not interact at all. And we don't want board members to feel, you need to be aware of your role and that's in trainings and stuff like that. But also like that there are reasonable accidents that happen that are interpreted differently. Like not intended, I'm sure Rhett the example you're giving there was no intention of you making a directive but that it's interpreted that way. And so that's why we chose that language was, I don't know, just to protect board members who might make a reasonable mistake like that or that something is interpreted in a way that it wasn't intended. We can also, I'd be really happy to, if somebody wants to take an opportunity to try to wordsmith that sentence and send it to me then I'll bring it to the policy committee. So I'd be happy to take suggestions on ways to sort of get at that concern and address it within policy language. Let's do that, especially considering it has been talked about quite a bit. Alrighty, on the policy committee and tonight. So other, so it's clearly an important point. Other thoughts or questions on A24? Just for a point of clarity on the hiring process and makes final hiring decisions for Supertenant, obviously any district director position, business manager and principals. I just wanna make sure that the statute's pretty clear on this, that it's not like I bring two candidates to you and you choose, right? It's that I bring a candidate to you and you're welcome to say no, but it's usually in the consent agenda. You know what I mean? Like I just wanna make sure that everybody's clear on that, like how that goes. Right, board members are always on those committees. There's always representation on those committees. And it does say here, the board will generally defer to the hiring recommendation of the superintendent unless there are compelling reasons to make a different decision, right? Which I think covers that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just wanted to make sure there's a point of clarity that our understandings are the same. Yep. So it's basically you're bringing that, hey, we need to hire this person or this is your recommendation and the final decision is forged, right? But we're not, yeah, approval. Right, yeah. Yeah, yeah, approval. Final approval means you can do it, but yeah. This was also discussed in some depth because it was sort of what we ended up doing was we looked at those other policies that were going to be repealing as part of this process. And we wanted to see like what's in there that's not in these five policies, you know, like, and that was one of those things that with the language was quite different. And we were just wondering historically why and Jim was able to shed a little bit of light on that. But it's, you know, it's hard to imagine any bad actors when you have somebody like Libby at the helm. And I think it was kind of like that. Like there was some strained relationships in the past with superintendents and the board wanted some checks and balances in that process so that the whole, you know, just to maintain that check and, checks and balances in that process. Yeah. I have a couple of other, you brought up the part I'm of like, what might be missing from the ones that we're going to get rid of and replace with these. There were a couple of things that seemed like it would be useful to include in this policy, but maybe they, maybe again, they live more in like a handbook. One is copying the chair on requests of the superintendent lives in the old policy, but not in this one. And that feels helpful. So maybe it is handbook and not policy. And then some of the details of the board's evaluation of the superintendent, the way that the old policy laid it out, I felt like you had good specifics in it. So maybe what I could do is actually re-Wordsmith, just like it's like two sentences and send them to you and Jim for consideration in the policy committee. Cause as I was just thinking about it with the superintendent evaluation committee hat on, I was like, oh, this actually feels like it's useful. Like the language of the old policy felt, the specifics felt useful. And the last one was there were a few things in the old superintendent expectations, like establishing an emergency superintendent, asset protection, communication with the board. Are those things that would live in handbook instead of in policy? I'm not sure. I'd have to, it'd be helpful if you sort of type this up and email it to me. I'm trying to capture what you're saying right now, but it's hard. Yeah, I'm kind of cruising through it. Yeah, but so I'm not sure. I would have to take some time to kind of like cross-reference the other policies and see if it's something that we felt was covered elsewhere or if it was something that we imagined living in the handbook. Okay, do you know off the top of your head, let me be okay if you don't? If having an emergency superintendent, for example, is statute? I don't know if that's statute or not. I know it's definitively in one of the policies. It's only one of the old ones that we're about to read. Yeah, so I'm not sure if that's statute language or not. Okay, so I'll include that in my emails. Good premise. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When I win that Powerball, Sagey, what's happening? I'm just gonna go climb that Everest. Any other questions or comments on A24? Okay, we've got one more. Can we do it? Follow through, it's a soft point. Yeah, F2. Any questions on non-discriminatory mascots in school branding or feedback to give? So I will just say that this one's pretty different from the other ones. It's one of the new required policies of the SBA. So with those, we tend to, at least for the first read, not touch them at all. So the language that you see is pretty much directly from the model policy. Yep. And just like we changed it a little bit just to add our district's name and stuff at the top. Another thing that we're trying to do when possible is to have this statement of intent at the top. And but there was, that language is pretty much exactly the VSBA language as well. But we're just trying to be consistent in the formatting of our policies as well. It also seems like a policy that we probably won't have to use because I don't see a derogatory mascot being approved to the point where it gets printed on shirts and things. So yeah, it's good to have. The only thing that crossed my mind would be if some, if a sports team kind of went rogue and added something to one of the warmups or something like that. But I also don't anticipate it being a big problem. And but also glad that it exists. So it's a rowdy solence. Yep. Never know. Any other thoughts? I just have one in general, I just really appreciate how much easier these new ones are to read. It just, it feels like a really huge improvement. So, and I can tell that this is a ton of work. So thank you to you, Amanda and Jim. And will you get me the second draft for the next board packet before the board packet goes out? Yeah. Yeah, what is that date? December 2nd. Yeah, the board packet goes out December 2nd. And Anna, so I usually get all my stuff to Anna the day before that. But if you get it to her the morning of the second, that's fine too. I think that we are actually not slated to meet until I think our meeting is on December 2nd. It might be that the second read. I mean, this is the nature of how, why it takes so long to get three readings. But if we wanna- Your new policy states, it's three days before. So if you, I mean, that's when the whole packet goes out, but we could get it out, you can get it out on Monday or whatever too. You're making a reasonable effort. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I'll communicate with you about that. Okay. All right. Do I have a motion to adjourn? I have a question about the empty seats. And how, do we have an idea of how long we wanna wait until, and it would it be an interim thing? Yes. And then in the meantime, does anyone have any objections to me helping with the policy committee and making that switch from finance or is that something that we all, we wanna wait longer on? I mean, if there's work to be done, I just assume try to contribute. Well, what was the deadline that Jim put in the post? I'm not sure what the deadline is. Typically it's been like two or three board meetings. Yeah. We give people the chance to come in. And the process is this person would fill, it's actually a great opportunity because this person would fill the seat until town meeting day. And on town meeting day would be able to decide if they wanted to run again or not. And for that run, they would only be running to fill Amanda's seat, which is only a year. So it's a relatively short stint to try a board hat on. It is budget season as well, which could be a huge learning curve right away, but that's what it is. So I think just to directly answer your question, it won't be long before we've filled the seat temporarily. I mean, any board member is welcome to go to any other committee meeting. I mean, the public could go to policy committee meetings. So I don't think there's any objection to you showing up and helping out. And the finance committee meeting is not going to be. Yeah, we just had one, so. Yeah, I don't see it. And do you think there's something worthwhile to taking a step back and looking holistically at committee assignments when we have, yeah, when we have a... Which moment like this? We do in the meeting after town meeting day. Right. After town meetings. Right. So I guess that's a way of saying go for it if you would like to show up at the policy committee. Go for it. Yes, Rhett, pencil in to your calendar or anybody else that wants to help. Or if you have more questions about this bundle of policies too and you wanna like have a little more time on these, then we're slated to meet December 2nd. And I can't remember, Zach or Merrick, do you remember? Was it three to four? I think it's three to four p.m. But I will be putting out. Anna will be warning us in. Anna. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, let's go home, everybody.