 Welcome everybody we're gonna call our meeting to order at 619. Thank you for being here with us tonight. I want to start by just saying that you know we all know that we had an incident at U32 last week. Symbols of hate are not tolerated at our school district so let's all pause for a minute and remind ourselves of what our values are who we want to be who we are and mostly think about who we want to be and I'm going to do that by reading our humanity and justice statement so we can remind ourselves of what we want to be and I know that all of you are familiar with it but the Washington Central Unified Union School District is dedicated to taking concrete actions that provide a safer and more supportive learning environment that is free of barriers one that affirms the identity of each of us and acknowledges and celebrates the difference to create a sense of belonging for each person connected to our schools. The school district is committed to creating inclusive educational opportunities that are relevant both historically and culturally addressing the impacts of bias, prejudice and discrimination while building more opportunity for us to thrive rather than merely survive. This statement represents a commitment within our school district to acknowledge and end oppression and oppressive systems to center our full humanity of all in our community and to keep broadening our perspective. These identities including and not limited to race, color, religion, creed, nation, national origin, ethnicity, murder status, family, composition, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, varying physical and mental abilities and socioeconomic status carry as socially constructed meaning and value. Our commitment is to the development of cultural humility and personal growth that is best supported in a climate that respects differences and provides a sense of belonging and inclusion. So with that I wanted to welcome all of you here and just make us think and pause for a minute but also allow us to introduce ourselves today because we have a couple of new members and then we'll do the adjustments to the agenda, etc. So I'm going to start with our students and then we can go from Jonathan all the way down. Okay. Okay. Oh, I'm the I'm the senior representative and then my name is Lamea and I'm the junior representative. Welcome. Amelia Mendes Contrata, board member from East Montpelier. Healy Sloan, board member from Berlin. I'm Megan Roy, superintendent. Claudia's nip chair of the board, East Montpelier. Joshua Sevitz. Joshua Sevitz, board member, middle sex. I'm Cary Bradley, board member from Calis. Ursula Stanley, board member from Middlesex. Jonas Eavan-Fleet and I live just over the middle sex town line in Worcester. Zach Sullivan, board member from East Montpelier. Diane Nichols Fleming, board member from Berlin. Great. Thank you, everybody. And Natasha, do you want to introduce yourself? Sorry, Natasha Eckhardt, board member from Worcester. Okay. Yeah. So that was Natasha. It was hard to hear but we'll figure that out. And we have so welcome. We have some people on Zoom and we have some of our administrators and Mark with us tonight. Thank you for being here with us. Are there any adjustments to the agenda? Hearing none, we're going to move on. Any public comments on the Zoom? Any public comments? Please raise your hand. Seeing none, I'm going to move on. And just, yeah. Despite the adjustments, do I think these two have a report to make? Oh, you're absolutely right. Wow. Sorry, Willow. So should we start with that? Yeah, why don't we start with that? Since we have, can you? Last week we had a talk, though. There was great student participation. Every varsity team did a dance. And the juniors, which is my class, we won the class of all the wars. So our sports have been pretty consistent, especially with the girls soccer team. We're at an 8-0 streak right now where we haven't lost a lot of wood. The boys just won their PA game, a 1-0 game. Field hockey is also undefeated. Football, during our homecoming, just the MMU. And there's just a lot more excitement around pep squad, especially as we really tried to bring everyone into the sports and also everyone into the community more, to bring in more participation with, like Linnea said, the pep squad, but also to show up for each other and support each other. During last week, the N-word was ran on the lockers by some of the students at U32. This incident sparked conversation throughout the student body and faculty. And these conversations consisted of, like, discussion on how to better deal with these issues among our community. So our school had Orange Shirt Day, where it was last Friday. And Blam did a schedule to walk out addressing the Indian residential school system in Canada. And they did this through the Friday morning of last week. And they talked about the residential school system. And we did a moment of silence. Some students talked about their history, their family's history, about these schools. And it was very inspiring. And it's great that our Blam is really taking action and bringing all of these issues forward, rustics, like experience. There's a new cell phone policy that prevents students from using their phones, joining classes, and throughout the day. Seniors are figuring out future plans. So next week, if you have any seniors that you know, the 11 is going to be with our counselors. And they have a meeting that will go over college applications and just kind of future outside of high school and what life is going to look like and what it can look like for these individuals. That's all we have right now. Thank you. Any questions for students? Go ahead. I'm curious about this reaction to the new cell phone policy. I think it was a necessary step, especially with just how much advantage students took with just the non-policy. I think it's definitely an adjustment. But the school is really hitting us hard with this one. I'm really enjoying it. So if we get caught using our phones during class or like around the hallways, you have three strikes. So the first time, well, they take your phone every time, but each time they take it, you have like a strike on IC and then they send out an email to your parents and it's... And the other teachers. Yeah, and all the teachers. It's a big change. But I think so far, I think in my classes, I'm sure with yours, it's, but they're responding well and they're actually in class and focusing. Obviously, there's a slip up here and there, but I think that's an overall positive experience. I think it was definitely something that needed to be implemented because it's just kind of crazy. Go ahead, Diane. Busy. I know for me personally, it's just been... There's so many things to do in such a little time, so 24 hours is not that many hours. But just I think the support I personally get from the faculty in our school is just so... There's such a community that I know Stephen and Jess really enforce is because we are each other's family and we help each other out. And I think the teachers especially really want students to succeed. So they have been taking a lot of steps to support, to enforce and all of you. I totally agree, though. I feel like, well, if I've ever had difficulty in classes, it's just really easy to get help from me in free bands or callback or whatever. And just the way a bunch of the teachers just communicate with students, it's just really helpful and it's really supportive. So overall, good. Yeah. I mean, you just talked about that. I think the parking lots are a lot nicer. The traffic for... As long as you don't get to school late, like it's not bad. Also just the... No. I try very hard not to. I think the traffic outside of school right now, like at least in the beginning, it was really hard because there was just a lot of fixing with the roads. It started out better. This would be the first couple of weeks it was tough. The first week of school, there wasn't a back parking lot. So we only had the front parking. So I would get there like 15 minutes early so I could find a parking spot. So that was... But otherwise, it's good. It's gone a lot better. It's nicer for sure. Okay. Great. Thank you. It's great to have you both now with us. So let's move on into our next item with this presentation of social-emotional learning. So I'm turning it over to Caroline, but just sort of framing for the board. We did rotate last year, and this year we're adding the addition of hearing a little bit about what's happening within our individual schools. Caroline gets to go first, which is great. She gets set the tone. If I don't use the microphone and the people have to be here, we can use that. Okay. For social-emotional learning, it always starts... It's similar to all systems that we do that are multi-layered. And so for layer one, that is available to all students. And the layer one supports, we have our classroom teachers, school counselors, and our student support specialists. And some of the things that we've done at layer one is we have a consistent person that is at both recesses five days a week and a consistent person who is at both of our lunches five days a week. And having one person, they're not the only ones who are there. The others rotate. But having one person really has consistency around expectations and students very easily know what to expect each time they go in. And that helps kids because then there's no surprises, both for the students and for the adults. And our school counselor leads weekly developmental guidance lessons in each classroom. At remedy, we call them guidance class. And they are focused on exploring typical challenges and skills for students that are appropriate for their level of development. Some of the topics include what are not limited to emotions, coping skills, stress management, conflict resolution. One of the things that she uses is, this is a poster that will be a little hard to see for where you are, but it's called Kelso's Choice. And if it's a small problem, students are taught to pick one of these strategies. So a strategy might be to go to another game to talk it out, to wait and cool off. And then they also are taught that if it's a big problem, then they need to go to an adult. And so all of those lessons are considered. Layer one, they're for all students, and they are consistent throughout the school year. We have a student support specialist that knows, you know, students. So our student support specialist is out at every recess, greets the buses each morning. So if students ever have an issue on the bus, they know exactly who to go to. It's somebody who's accessible and visible. And that has made a really big difference in ensuring safe bus rides with fewer bus behaviors than we did compared to three to five years ago. So then, so those are all layer one supports. Then as we move on to layer two, it's all the supports that are in layer one are also available in layer two. And we have a student advocacy team that meets each week. And the team includes our school nurse, myself as principal, the student support specialist and the school counselor. And when we meet, we have in depth conversations around issues that we're seeing bubble up around school. Sometimes it's around specific students that we want to check in about. And it's great because we all come with a different lens. We're a little bit of a diverse group in terms of our thinking style or communication style. And so it really helps to make plans that have lots of different perspectives. And we have a lot of trust on that team. And so we can be honest and we can go deep in terms of the discussions of the problem solving that the problem solving that we do. So then layer two and three, this really focuses more on the adults that are involved in those layers are the behavior support specialist, myself as principal and the special educators. So for this, I have a little handout. I was really trying not to have to rely on technology. But for students who really need the layer two and layer three, it's really about these are students who have a lot of in terms of emotion. And if you look, this is the picture I'm passing out, it's an emotion. It's a behavior iceberg. And the behaviors are what we see. And the emotions are what they feel and what we can't see. And so what we do with layers one and two utilizing the staff that I mentioned, is we try to catch kids when we see some of these behaviors, we try to get to the root of it what could be, you know, some of the emotions that they're experiencing. So if one of you wants to pick an emotion and a behavior that might go with that emotion, I could give you some examples of things we would do. Any volunteers to pick one of the emotions that's under the iceberg? Yeah. Yeah. So and often with kids, it's more than one, right? So it might be embarrassed and then quickly go to overwhelmed. So some of the things we see from certain students who are struggling is that they might run or flee. They might have aggression or raging. So for those students, some of the things we have is we have a reset room, which is actually right there. And I have some bins. These are bins that usually are not in my cart. They're usually in the room. So each bin, we have, there's actually more than this. But I grabbed just a couple. They're stretchy, bubbly, heavy and Lego. All right. So I'm going to pass some of these out. You get stretchy. All right. So pull out what's in it. And I'll tell you what we would do. Not the bubbles. Could you pass them all the way down to Josh? Okay. The heavy one goes here. Oh, you're lucky. You get the light. Just be careful with the lights. Okay. So in the reset room, they get to pick the bins. And if you look, so this bin would help they stretch and then it helps the students with sensory. They give some pressure while students are utilizing these bins. Anybody who's assisting them is assessing. Is this getting them more calm or is it elevating them? If it's starting to elevate them, we would quickly switch the bins. But anybody who responds, we have lots of tools. So that's, so the reset room is one space. There's also a calm office. The calm office you pass on your way in, it's a room that has pillows, stuffies, and other than that, it's basically empty. That's a space for kids to go if they either flee or if they maybe scream. They would go to that space and that way they can do those things safely and get de-escalated and check in with a staff member. One of the things that's really important in both spaces is that they have big windows because intervention should not be private or secret. And even kids who are meeting intervention for big emotions, it's okay for other kids to see what interventions we use. Sometimes kids do ask for privacy. And obviously, if they're crying or they have an emotional thing, it's not safe to share. We would give them that privacy. So this is our response folder. There's a sheet on one side that's for the adults. We use the three C's, which is calm. As the adult, take a deep breath and remember, a dysregulated adult cannot help regulate a dysregulated child. Prompt, calm down activity. Connect, praise for taking the necessary steps to calm body. Validate feelings, make a reflective statement. I can see you're really upset and I'm here to help you. Consequence, talk through what happened, what would be done differently, and how it affected others. If a repair is needed, decide what it will be. So those three things are really important because students need to have a consistent follow-up to any behavior that goes beyond the classroom. They need to know what to expect, do the same thing each time, make a repair so they can continue to be and feel like part of their classroom community. Let's see, I want to pull out one more. Okay, so tell me about what you picked. Anybody have one that they felt calmed them? Anybody have one that they felt they gave them more energy? Anybody not play with the toys at all? I feel like it gave me a little bit more energy. Yeah. Time that we would want somebody to have more energy is if they were feeling really low and sometimes when kids have big feelings they go very low and what we have found and we implemented probably now two years ago was whether the kid who's low and wanting to talk in process with adult, anytime we can get them to move and process is better and anytime we can get them you know whether it's a stretching, whether it's one of the bands, it really helps get them even just one step closer to I don't know, to be like happier, more able to access their learning than if they were to sit and talk. Some kids that makes them go actually lower and so knowing what makes somebody have more energy there would be a time when we'd use that and it could be the same student also needs times when their energy level comes down. So but the behavior I spoke has been really helpful in terms of talking with staff when we're talking about students. We start here in terms of conversation because these are the behaviors we see and then as we're problem solving we need to identify and this is really a best guess when we're in the early stages is what is the emotion and what are the things we can do to go along with the emotion especially one like embarrassment so students you know who struggle if they're being asked to read aloud could be a reason you might feel embarrassed in a classroom. So yeah willa I think with this one especially you can even look at what happened in our school last week is some kids wrote the n-word on our walkers and where what we see is obviously this part but what we don't see is how they're actually feeling and I think if this can go into more schools and this idea of what's actually happening to a student the adults that they turn into will be overall more supportive. Good job. Thanks Willa. Any other questions? Thank you for sharing with us. You're welcome. I hope everybody has some food. We're going to move now into our board learnings. If you're really excited when I'm back maybe introduce Mark but I think you know that's a board one of the things that are committed to learning together so we have some feedback after our retreat and we shall look forward to the manual so this is a response to that. We want to introduce Mark. I would just pin you back on it and we were fortunate to have space in our agenda frankly we weren't sure coming out of that retreat and we did so introduce Mark Victor and I'll tell you a little bit about himself he's an attorney with Lydland Blackman and he's got some things to share and is welcoming a conversation so plenty of discussion and we sort of talked a little bit share what we discussed at the retreat so that's what he's bringing this presentation around but obviously it'll go where you need it to go. Hi I'm doing the worst part fooling with technology it's very self-conscious I'd rather you ask very professional questions than watch me do this. Hi my name is Mark Victor. I'm an attorney in the law firm of Lydland Blackman University. I'm new to the firm. I prior in my prior life I worked at the Shanford College School District as their director of HR personnel policy and legal services and prior to that I was board chair in Charlottes. I was on the board in Charlottes. I served on the board at the Shanford College School District at the Shanford College Council. I was a union and on the Act 46 committee that made that all necessary and come hear you. A lot of what you're hearing here tonight both the meeting laws will touch on public records requests. The public is involved in the business of the school through you and therefore they have a right to know what's going on and that's what he's all pointing to. Sorry just the zoom grows. Yeah it's not showing the presentation. All right so I take back everything I said about technology. Yeah it's a kind of heck was it? I never used PowerPoint. Oh just how about now? Yeah that's good. I can get I can get to where I need to look. I think it's just zoom and PowerPoint hating each other. They put me on the seven second delay that they have for live you know just in case. Yeah I'm gonna say if I have one if we do this. Sure. I can give you a wireless one if you want. No it's fine I'll stand I'll stand here probably better. Is this okay? I just can't stand in front of that. Maybe I'll take that. You gave me a microphone. That was dangerous. Yeah zoom. Yeah it's showing this. Oh is it? That's all right. That's fine. Do you have any dirty secrets? No no no it's just the it's just showing if we get calls tomorrow we'll discuss it. So when are you having a meeting that needs to conform to open meeting loss? We talked about a little bit. We have a quorum. You have a big board but you know if half of you get together you're in a meeting. You're in a meeting if you're talking about the business or taking action of what you do. So if you're talking about school business if you're taking action regarding school business in a quorum. Not a meeting. Social gatherings conventions trainings which is big. Technically if it was just me tonight and you weren't doing other business you could have called this not a meeting and not warned it and that sort of thing just a training. And again not discussing your other business. Okay so here's me asking you questions. Sally Super the superintendent organizes a board retreat. After a treat the members listen to and participate a session put on by VSBA includes roles and responsibilities and goal planning for the board. Tom Troublemaker sends an email to Sally stating you didn't warn your meeting I wanted to be there you're going to OML jail. Is he are you really in trouble? No it's a training. Speak up. You can go. You're all right. There are no wrong answers here unless you said yes you're in trouble. One more time. The entire board attends a conference. They're excited by what they hear and over lunch the board sits together and discusses the topic and how it would be excellent to make it onto an agenda for the next meeting. One member suggests that it be specific to professional development training for teachers. The rest of the members not in agreement and the board chair says we'll put it on the agenda and then move for a vote at next meeting. Did you just have a meeting? There are no wrong answers. That's the wrong answer. You went through one step too far. You can discuss what you during the training but you've just made a decision about how that's going to look without public input or without the public having the chance for input. Does that make sense? Yes you were all set even when you discussed putting it on the next agenda. You're okay. It's when you took it from putting it on the next agenda to let's put on the next agenda formulated this way. You've made a decision. Yes yes yes you've made a decision that should be a teacher's public development professional development class. Is that squarely? Yes not so easy. If you didn't if then that discussion then happens at the next board meeting then you're okay. Again are the OML police going to drop out of helicopters? No but it's the public being able to comment on what you're doing having the chance right? Sorry there was a hint. Yeah so that's not a quorum. Yep yep. Good question. Yep. Well the descript but they're not PTAB. So if we end up having this discussion after the public comment meeting the public doesn't have a chance to weigh in or comment on what we're talking about. Is that a problem? If I get your question yes. If you're discussing business or making decisions in a group that's larger than half the board you're having a meeting. So my question going more to the public comment part that you referenced. We have public comment before the meeting starts. Yeah at the very beginning of the meeting started other comments at the beginning they can comment on anything I think in the agenda. Yes. Is that sufficient to meet that criteria? So also as you're going along and there's discussion topics the public should be able to weigh in when you're discussing at that time. As we go along. As you go along but only but only you know so the public typically the public comment at the top of the agenda is sort of for the public to comment on things that aren't necessarily on the agenda. So they're bringing things to you you don't have to answer their questions back where we're going to talk about this a little bit. Then as you go through the agenda you have the budget on there and somebody wants to discuss the budget at that time. There's usually a chance there for the public to comment. Okay. But there's a little leeway on how that operates. Yeah. Oh I must have pushed the button as I was going along here. How to protect the public's right to attend. So again the public has a right to attend your meetings. That's why we born them. That's why you took a vote on a regular meeting schedule. Decisions of the board are made an open session. That means people get to see what you're doing. You must have an agenda that's made available prior to the meeting if it's requested. Meetings must be warned if they're right. This is what we're having today is a regular meeting. I'm guessing you have a meeting the second. What is it the first Tuesday of the month? I don't know what today is. First Wednesday. That's a regular meeting that doesn't need to get a separate warning. This is when you normally meet. We're going to talk about special meetings and emergency meetings in just a little bit. Look right there. So there's two other types of meetings. A special meeting is for things that can't wait or things that happen along the way towards a regular meeting. You want to hire a superintendent. Those can get warned in 24 hours and then you can have a meeting. Emergency meetings are different. That's when there can't be any delay. A building burns down and the kids need to know where to go tomorrow. And the board needs to get together to fund it or figure that out. That can be an emergency meeting. That can be done without a warning. It can be done almost immediately in less than 24 hours. So this little situation here is the superintendent has developed a drinking habit. He's been calling employees in the middle of the night and using foul language. The board chair finds out on Sunday she's shocked and decides this can't go on, which is probably the right call. She calls an emergency meeting for Monday evening. Is that proper? Sunday Monday. It's a good question. I would say if you can wait to Monday evening and you found out on Sunday, that's a special meeting. There should be a warning. And you can go on now. In this case, it would be personnel decision discussion. So it might be an executive session, which is a whole other question, which we'll get to in a minute. Is it complicated a little bit? Yes. Yeah, I would just say that I mean, while that's a pretty dire situation, I wouldn't think of that as an emergency as in a similar vein as a building burning down or some other serious life safety issue that comes up that has to be, that requires an immediate meeting. Yes, I'm agreeing with that. Yes. This special meeting warned of 24 hours. Emergency meetings, I'd say, are pretty rare. Pretty rare. Of course. The reason I have a job is because we can roll that one. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Could you, and there's a whole host of things that go along with that. Could the employee be put on leave until that meeting happens? Yes. Yep. Who gets to say what? This is what we're just talking about. The public is given a reasonable opportunity to express its opinion on matters considered by the public body. That's you. So matters you're considering, not stuff outside. So that's what's on the agenda. There can be restrictions on who gets to comment to people who actually live in the district. And you can have sort of reasonable rules around public comment and we'll look at a couple of what that could look like. I noticed you have some on your agenda, which is great because that's where they should be. People should be aware that they exist, reasonable rules for public participation. The rules can't be based on what you're about to talk about. You can't have something on the agenda and come up with rules so that the public, if their comments are funneled in some way. You can look into a reasonable amount of time. You can require some stability. I'm actually going to go into the next slide because here are some sample public comment rules. These are things that you can come up with. I noticed you come up with at least a few of them, a reasonable timeframe. Speakers have to remain civil. If you're, if there's a public comment period and they're talking about things not on the agenda, you don't have to comment back to the public in that instant. You don't have the information to comment back. You can cut them short if they're saying the same thing as everybody else has just said within reason and everybody should be expected to identify them. So the way the public knows what's going to happen here is the agenda. The agenda gets posted. It gets sent out. And that's how people know if they're interested enough to come and talk or watch or send an email to the board about something that's going on. And this is just a quick run through. You have an agenda setting procedure for the board. It gets set by the chair. You have a chance to modify the agenda at the beginning of this meeting. And it talks about how to modify or requires an majority of the board just take quick vote if you're modifying. Now, if we're just adding the report from the students and you don't take a quick vote, again, there's no OML police, but that, you know, just procedure wise. And here, again, the public gets to know what you're doing. Best practices. And include a description of what you're talking about that's fairly specific on the agenda enough so people know what's happening. Climbing on your agenda. School boards never stick to the timing on the agenda, but it's nice to have. And it's nice to look at. And it's because some people can't come for the whole meeting. And maybe they only want to come for a piece of it. Get time and location for the meeting and recognize the adjustments. I'm not going to spend too much too long on this, but minutes are required. There are certain form and they get posted. I've seen them on your website. The quasi-judicial function. So sometimes a board will sit in what's called a quasi-judicial function. This usually happens for boards and student disciplinary hearings. Someone comes in to be expelled. They are required to have a certain procedure for their due process rights in that setting. And I'd say that's a training out to itself. A board that's getting to that piece should spend 15 minutes beforehand learning what's going on. So you're acting as a mini court in that setting. The person who's bought before you has rights. You have rights to be, you have rights to know what's wrong. You have rights to present witnesses in testimony. And they have rights to hear your decision. Most of these will take place outside of public view in executive session for personnel reasons or student disciplinary reasons. Those are exceptions to open meeting laws. Again, we're going to talk a little bit more about that. We're just talking about this, the due process rights that a person has afforded in a quasi-judicial proceeding. I won't belabor the point. Yes? In a quasi-judicial proceeding? Well, it should be. If you don't know who the parties are, you're probably not in a quasi-judicial proceeding. It is usually the district or administration and a student, the school district and an employee. That's why you're in that setting. I can't think of one off the top of my head because it's usually a personnel or a student issue. It's an interesting question. So as a board, you negotiate in public, you discuss things in public, and that's a requirement. There are exceptions to that rule, and that's when you go into executive session. There are lots of exceptions. These are some where you talk about whether there's a specific finding that Supreme Restore general public knowledge would clearly place the public body at a disadvantage. And there's contracts, labor negotiations, those are the big ones. And then there's a whole list where that finding isn't necessary, where you're talking about buying real estate, you don't need to find a disadvantage first. The most important one for you all is students. Anytime you're disciplining a student, you're in an executive session knowing you have to see that. More other executive sessions, usually around contract negotiations with the union or planning for those negotiations. Personnel, if you're discussing personnel in any way, you're in executive session. Some rules for going into executive session. You have to take a vote to go into executive sessions. People have to agree. I don't even know why I put this on here. In certain settings, you need two thirds, but for you all, it's a majority. And when you go in, you have to indicate why you're doing it. I move we go into executive session for the purpose of discussing contracts or negotiations. Your agendas will say something like that. Executive sessions for personnel, executive sessions for negotiations. The public doesn't get to be in the meeting, but they get to know that you're meeting and sort of what it's about. Yes. Yes. All right. So let's see. This is another, I want to make sure people are awake slide. John Smith wishes to challenge the superintendent's residency determination and present sensitive information about his daughter's emotional condition to the board. Should you go into executive session? I'd say this, I'm seeing yes and no. I'm saying it's a little close, but because you're discussing a student's status, you would go into executive session. But as a student minor, that information is protected by FERPA. Well, that's different. Yeah. No, if he does it voluntarily, you're not going to get in trouble. But I would say this is a board item that's being brought to you as a discussion. See what I'm saying? It's on your agenda. Executive session. Maybe that one's a little too cute. Sorry. I'm sorry. I welcome questions and suggestions. The board is preparing for negotiations and has asked a lawyer to explain how the current contract works in application. Yes. Yes. That conversation is going to range into, that is strategy for negotiations. Yes, the current contract works this way. Do you like it? All right. Here's everybody's favorite topic. All right. No, it's my favorite topic. Robert rules of order. According to statute, you're a public body that should operate by Robert's rules of order. And this is so that there's a way to operate to keep things moving in a civil direction. All right. So these are the basics. And I've watched you do them. How to make a motion. I move in a large body. And I know it says it on here. In a large body, you're supposed to stand up, but we'll call you small so you can stay in your seats. Another member has to second that motion. And there's discussion. And the chair calls the question at some point. So here's a quick cheat sheet. This is sort of going on. How do you finish a meeting? You have to adjourn. You're really supposed to take a vote to adjourn. You aren't supposed to say I adjourn and everybody run out of the room. You can take a break the same way. You can end debate by saying I move the question. And then there's a second and a vote. On whether there should be whether debate should end. You can do the same with suspending consideration of the matter. That's basically tabling a motion. You can take up a table to issue that's already been out there. The Roberts rules book is this thing. I'm not joking. It's in my bag. The basics are I make a motion. I second the motion discussion action. I have no idea. Hang on. We're actually going to talk about that again. Under Robert's rule, the chair has a bunch of duties that they're supposed to take care of. I'll sign this slide just here. Opening the meeting and asking the proper order of business, recognizing members who are entitled to the floor. Sort of the act is the MC of the meeting to make sure that it all goes quickly and efficiently. This talks about how to amend a motion. So if a motion is made and you want to change it, you can't just say, let's strike the second sentence. You have to move to amend the motion and then have another discussion. It's almost like having a second motion on the table. And then you adopt the motion as amended or reject the first motion and make a new motion. This happens a lot around budget time when we're discussing numbers and numbers change during the course of the meeting. You should be amending or presenting new, not just changing on the fly. This is, I don't know if you call points of order here, but someone can ask for a point of order in this scenario. Someone who's rambled on a little too long and someone has asked the chair to call a point of order. And the chair has the authority to say, okay, that's enough. And then the person who was chastised can say that's unfair and take it to a vote. I'd say that doesn't happen very often on school boards, but it is something that's out there. You can suspend the Roberts rules by vote, two-thirds. You can operate in a different way. I don't suggest it, but it's an option. You can move. So there's been a long debate about a particular motion and you're sick of it and you can call the question. And you say, I call the question, there's a quote, and then there's a vote. And if two-thirds of the people agree with you that it's time to vote, you move on to voting. All right, that was the boring stuff. I'm sorry. Yes. So conflicts of interest for school board members. This is not from your policy. This is just what a conflict should be looked at as. It's where an appearance of benefit for you, or even harm, in your duties. So conflict and interest means a situation when a board member's private interests as distinguished from their interests as a member of the public would benefit or be harmed by their actions as a board member. So you're taking votes all the time that benefit you because you have children at the school, the amount of money that the school raises or doesn't raise. That's all part of it. But when it crosses a line, when you have a business interest in something that's before the board, or we had on our board, we had spouses of teachers during negotiations who would recuse themselves because there was a financial benefit in that area. Okay. So I have looked at your policy A1 today. You have a very nice procedure set out for conflicts. I would say that's actually very well developed compared to other schools. In general, if you think there's a conflict of interest, it should be raised in public. Explain why it's thought to be a conflict and the person gets to defend themselves. A conflicted board member shouldn't participate in any discussions about what they're conflicted out of. I think that's pretty simple. I would say your baseline should be the appearance of a conflict. That's not written down anywhere. It's just a way that boards, I think it's an obligation of boards to look clean. I could have done a lot of these, but I didn't because I knew it was going to be towards the end. People would be falling asleep. Bob Driver owns a bus company. He's on the board. He always recuses himself when awarding the bus contract. That's the right thing to do. This time he votes to let the business manager decide, is that a problem? I think there's an appearance. This is one where I'd say there's not a wrong answer, but yes, the appearance, it'd be really difficult to explain to somebody why you didn't take all those votes and then all of a sudden you're taking a vote on bus contracts, even if it's a vote to let somebody else decide. In the state of Vermont, this happens a lot. Lots of board members, not bus companies. I don't mean that, but selling food to cafeterias or copiers or so it's just something to keep an eye on as you're going through. It probably comes up more than you think, if you really thought it through. Keep an eye out for it. This is best practice stuff now. We're outside. I have no laws to cite. I have no Robert's rules to throw at you. Board member interactions with school. I used to walk into the principal's office, not because my kids were in trouble because I was in trouble. The principal would look up and go, Mark, are you here as a parent or a board member? The administrator in your school shouldn't really have to ask that question. Your contact with the administration should be funneled probably through the board chair or through some procedure that the board agrees with. So there's a delineation between your role on the board and your role as a parent or a community member and sometimes it's hard to remember that and you will have folks, people that have been on the board for a while, who will ask you, you're on the board, can you do something about X and you can't do something about X because you are a member of the board. You're not the board. The board can operate as a group, as an individual, you have the power to talk to the board, not to act for the board. Board members should understand the perceptions of their authority. I think I just talked about that. Board members should limit their interactions with the administration. That doesn't mean that you don't go talk to your principal if your child's in trouble or needs help with something. It means that you have a role as a board member and it should stay outside of that person's office. There's a different way to contact them. Okay. Any questions about that or any comments on that? This is, you have a duty of confidentiality. This gets boards in trouble a lot. Personnel matters, you're going to learn a lot about people who work for you, should stay in your head. Students and anything you learn in an executive session. I just want a couple of school districts have gotten in trouble where school board members have spoken out of turn to the press about an employee who works for them or was about not to work for them and it hasn't gone well for them. I would say one, if the press is calling you, I don't know if you have a procedure for how to handle that on this board, but there should probably be one person on the board that's talking to the press. Just don't comment. It's really not worth it in the end. Let's see. I've written a couple of things down. I'm at the end of my slideshow. You can clap. I just wanted to mention the public record document. The public has the right to request documents from this board and they include everything, including your emails. If you email as a group, you're having a meeting if you're discussing things. Okay. I know you've probably heard that before. I strongly encourage you to use whatever email has been given to you as a board member for that purpose only and keep it separate. I would strongly urge you not to do things via text because that's another bundle of fish, kettle of fish that can get you into trouble. Use that email to set up board meetings to do the ministerial work of the board, but don't have discussions about matters that are going on and don't do it among yourselves either. It's just another way to get in trouble. Do your work here at meetings after it's been warned? Do you have any questions for me? Yes. You don't do it again. I would bring it to the board chair's attention. Again, there are penalties built into the law. Who's enforcing those penalties is unclear. If it has been broken, you would talk to the board chair. You could go back and correct it. If it's an agenda mistake, you fix the agenda. If it's something that happened at a board meeting that should have happened outside of an executive session, you have that discussion at the next board meeting, something like that. There is not. If you have something in mind, we should talk. Yes. Features are, administrators are, support staff is not quite as clear. Thank you for your attention. I appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mark, again. I don't know if you could hear us before. We appreciate your time. Let's move on into our last item on the agenda, and that one is to authorize the chair to sign the Red Cross Building Use Agreement. We included in the packet, this was an agreement that we had previously just with Collis, and we're, oh, that's true. I'm going to let Megan update us. This is pro forma, mostly, but you are the owners of our building. So this, you need to authorize floor to do this. Prior to consolidation, two of our buildings were identified as Red Cross Sites. So this agreement would have been signed by those boards. Now we need to re-up the agreement. And it was previously, Collis and Berlin. It came up through the request to re-up Collis' and the recommendation is to sign this for all five, all of the elementary schools. They didn't ask to list you 32. We're not really sure why, but that is what you are authorizing because you are the owners of the building. It is the same as before. The basics, you can read it in there, but we give them access. If they were to damage the building, they are liable. And we are also allowed to say, for example, hey, we really need school to be back in session. So we can impose some things to make sure that we can operate the buildings. And we did consult, they would make our lawyer too. So we went through a series of questions and that's how we came to this. There's not much that we can do to amend, so we can't really get creative. We did ask that question and it has to go back to DC. This is Red Cross document. And I, you know, I don't know how we save now to the Red Cross and we've been doing it. So we just wanted to bring to everybody's attention, not sign a document, even if it's performer without having you guys ability to read it. This is the document that we're going to sign. Oh, it has to do with the site coordinator. We talked about it, so because we have a site coordinator in the, I have to have to open that email again, but it's right at the beginning. Hold on a minute. The use of the facility. Yeah, the owner will designate a facility coordinator to coordinate with the Red Cross manager regarding the use of the facility by the Red Cross. So he said, because we asked that question and that's what our lawyer said. We just lost another lawyer, Mark is not here, but that that gave us stability because they still have to coordinate with our person on the site. Yes, SAC. I believe it's a week or two off and errors. I can use the follow-ups here for the Red Cross. I'm pretty sure they will use the shelter. Do we have a day of authorizing you to sign for a week or two? Yeah, that's okay. It's already, it's not a, it's a shelter, but it's considered, I'm looking at you, Steven, because that's where we had all the fraud stuff, but it's already considered. We can actually ask them and they didn't ask to put it on. I do think you could probably, when you make your motion, say, sign agreement as is and sign agreement for U32, should it be, right? Because I think that would be an intention. I mean, the other thing to remember, we didn't have an agreement for U32 and we had personnel using it as a site. So we do use our buildings, but yeah, so it is a good point. We're not sure why they left them off. Because the easement that the emergency shelter gives the emergency shelter of the school and I think there's potential conflict there in terms of the Red Cross superseding with the town may want and time has its own emergency management committee and group. So both Callis and Middlesex have similar easements and they and Nick reviewed those easements. In fact, the Red Cross themselves produced, they gave us a copy of those easements as a reason why you need to sign this because we have access to these buildings as shelters. So our attorney has looked at both easements and are comfortable with it. In fact, there's a conflict. No, what they're saying is this is actually in a way, this is backing up the easement because the easement is saying the town can come and tell us, hey, we got to use your building as a shelter. This is what allows the Red Cross to do that. So what it doesn't do, and I would scope to which the Red Cross would better need a place for as a shelter and how broad the invitation would go. I'm assuming it would be all of Washington County if we need a rose. And I don't, I personally don't see in here where the town itself can just invoke the, where the town invoked their easement rights that the Red Cross could not. Yeah, I guess what I would say is the attorney who reviewed it is aware of both and is comfortable with it. That it is still the board who needs to vote to authorize the signature. And yeah, I don't think I can do a more sophisticated answer than our attorney was comfortable with it. What this allows folks to do. Chris, is your question, is the scenario that you're thinking of that the town would like to use that needs to use the school as an emergency shelter? But the Red Cross says, no, sorry, we're using it as emergency shelter. And you've got two organizations that don't know who's in charge? No, just because we're coming in charge of different months of authority too. And this document gives a lot of the line of authority to the Red Cross to just come in and control it. But it's exactly that conflict that can come into play between the town, which has an easement, use the school as an emergency shelter and the Red Cross. That's what that is. So, do you know if towns do or do not have a relationship with the Red Cross, right? Each town has probably an emergency committee, right? But it's a safety committee. It is a separate emergency committee that is not associated with the Red Cross as far as I know. Not associated with the Red Cross with the Red Cross, but I would imagine would be coordinating with the Red Cross in any emergency scenario. I just don't know that. And I can't help with something that would supersede what I think is the town's easement rights here. Maybe I'll throw a note. That'd be great. But I just think you can ask, and I ask, and for, have you spoken to the towns? We haven't spoken to the towns, so we haven't spoken to the emergency management folks at each town. We can do that before we sign the document. But I think what is most important is what Nick, just one minute, Chris. What Nick would say is that under the agreement at Washington Center, we only have to make buildings available to use as a shelter. If visible, this gives Washington Central some discretion regarding when or whether to allow the Red Cross to occupy a facility. So that would involve us coordinating with the town people, right? So, and then anyways, if the Red Cross was to be providing services, it would be to the community. Like if they would be setting a site in that place, just like what happened right now with the flood, let's for example, bury, right? Like they would be serving the population there and having to coordinate with the local folks. And they might have more resources than even our own local emergency management people, right? So it is all for help. And so I'm just not trying to dismiss the question. I think it's important. So why don't we write in then that Can I let me ask the question while you're thinking of yours? Will you just read them for feasibility part? This is from the coordinator. Yeah. Yeah. And this is what in paragraph one, I'm reading you what Nick said to us. I would also want to point out a note for the board that under paragraph one, under the agreement, Washington Center will only have to make the building available to use as a shelter if feasible. This gives you some discretion regarding when and whether to allow the Red Cross to use or occupy the facility, which means if your your town management group, you know, needed it first, we would have that conversation and say, well, I mean, we're not going to include that. We can change anything. We wanted to put that sauce. We can't change anything. So what he said is fine to send agreement without adding any language about state law and controlling. If we want to change any language into this document, it has to go back to DC. This is not a document that we produce in Vermont. It's a federal document. So when we talk to the lawyer that sent us this federally, that's what he said. We wanted to add a couple of little things that said under Vermont law and, you know, like, we were also creative like you, but it's not that simple. Oh, and then you go. It's maybe a bit of a dumb question, but I just want there. There's no dumb questions. You can ask any question you want. If we do sign this agreement for Red Cross, does that give them priority to use the building over us? Is that what you're talking about? And that's what I was going to say about that. We still get to call the shots. And I shouldn't use that word anyways. A sack and then McKellen and then Josela. This is to speak to one of Chris's concern. In practice, the Red Cross does always coordinate with local emergency management. The other piece of this is in terms of who you want running your shelter. The Red Cross does take a lot of authority over the shelter. They also take responsibility for damage done to the shelter. And stuff does get damaged in shelters. So it's, it is a, it is a very nice thing to have the American National Red Cross financially responsive for the building when they have it. We also recognize that there's a clause talks about FEMA and if FEMA is available, then you have to go to a community of reimbursed to REM and not from the Red Cross. It's a convoluted reimbursement process at times. It's a repo that's on print at the end. I hope that can you hold this up for just a minute, because I think it was, it was and then, and then you can have a second. We already have that in the works. Yeah. I would make that connection. We voluntarily move forward with a generator for Doty for lots of reasons because we need them and we are also would benefit from also calling it a Red Cross site because they may share in the costs. We moved it forward so we didn't have to wait. But yes, this would be advantageous. I'm going to ask for it. Yeah, sir. It's not my favorite. It's just a matter of who is the right to do what's mine and under our easement, the town has the right to use this building as an emergency shelter. And the last thing we need in terms of an emergency is having two entities conflict over who can use them as emergency shelter. Which is why it's really important to say it's not a mandate. Doesn't say that the Red Cross is going to come in and take control of it. And our facility is coordinated, wherever we decide is going to make that decision. We as the owners of the facility are going to be in charge of the person who makes the decision to use the charge. So if the Red Cross comes in and we don't like to look at that, we can tell them about sand and we can get it done and it'll sense. That is perfectly within our rights. So we can just raise your hands and just for me. Daniel. This is a great way. I thought it was going to be like 10 minutes. I was trying to do that because I think as the owner of the easement, the town would have the rights of an owner to determine that feasibility. And if our coordinator also runs whether it's feasible to allow the American National Red Cross into the space by the town, they could exercise that discretion and that doesn't fall. That's all in that first term. So Chris, unless you have your hand up, I'm going to give it to Jonas. I will say this without having the easement in front of us, but having kind of looked at by the lawyers, I would imagine that it's not a concern, right? That the town makes sense. Also doesn't have the right to come to us and say whenever they want to, we're using this as an emergency shelter. There are terms and conditions and clauses and we probably have a right to coordinate that if it's feasible. Yeah. So. Will it. I guess one question to all of you is if there's an emergency that is present, will you guys be the people that bring in people that need help? Both people that push one. That's a good question. Well, if we don't like to work with the Red Cross, like I said. That's a good one. We don't like the good, but thank you, Will, for bringing us back. Just keep in mind we're all people. This is supposed to be a community. And if we don't bring in each other when we desperately need it, and I understand both of you, I truly do, but when there is conflict and when there is like problems, which side are you going to be on? The side where you take in the people that you consider your community, or you're going to take in what you think is the problem? What is that? I want a two-day or three-day below-comment, and I would like to follow the question. I think we need to vote on calling the question. We need a second. Jonah, second? Okay, call the question to call the question. Please stay aye. Any opposed? No. So the motion carries, so we can call the question. So all of those, we need to have a motion because we didn't have a motion. Yeah, I usually start with the motion, but I started with that. I move we authorize the chair to sign the American Red Cross Chapter agreement on behalf of the five schools listed, and to also sign agreement on behalf of U32 if requested. Thank you, Zach. Second by Jonas. This is right there. You got all that. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. And I'm going to oppose it, not because people shouldn't vote for me, but because they threw a question, but just to clarify while you're at the party. Thank you. Okay, any abstains? Seeing none, the motion carries. Thank you, everybody. We can look at our future agenda items. We don't have a smart board out. Our next meeting is the 18th. It will be our board budget training. Oh boy. And sort of kicking off that process. Yeah, the budget, the budget process. Yes, equality. We have a report and discussion too. Natasha, could you hear us? I'm assuming you're still with us. Okay. That's that's all we have. Yeah. Okay. Good. That's all we had for tonight. Public comment. And then I don't know if there's any reflection on the board before we do public comment. Ursula. I would welcome our new student member, but also just have appreciation for the involvement of our student members. I don't have a question for all of you is Stephen talked to us about going into the elementary schools to talk to the elementary school students and bringing their perspective. But also if I invite any of the board members to come to our high school and talk to the students themselves. And really you can hear our reflections on everything, but going into certain classrooms and just starting a conversation on what they want to do better and what they think our school needs to do better. You're going to get a way bigger range of perspective than just two people. So I invite you and definitely we can talk more about this, but I genuinely think that that would be a great way to bring more involvement of the students in the school board. Thank you. Well, any other board reflections? Oh, sure. I want to ask you to have a spot on the screen. Chris, did you hear Chris did you? Everyone, everyone did it and it was good. It's all needed. Yes, go ahead Diane. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so there's no public comment. There's a couple of people online. I wonder if you have any comments seeing no hands up. Could I have a motion to adjourn? Jonas and a second by McCallan. All right. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Thank you everybody. And thank you again Caroline for being a great host.