 All right, I'm going to go ahead and call the meetings at order at 534, and I think that we are nine, if I can count right, with Will on the phone, and that means that we're just shy of a corn for the SE board. But we don't know if everyone's voting member for Well, I don't actually know, but I see everyone. Yeah, everyone that's stay around the table is. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I'm calling just to be clear, the executive committee to order. Since we have a form of that body. And let's start off with agenda revisions. And I just want to note that for the folks that are here that aren't normally, don't normally participate in the executive committee, that we want to try to front load the agendas so that we can discuss those items and set you free basically as soon as we can. So that would be 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 for goals as you board retreat and building the agenda for the June Supervisor and Union meeting. Is there any public comments and correspondence? Matt, I'm sorry? Yeah. I'm sorry, yeah. The policy beliefs. Start the agenda. Could you move that out? Okay. So this is. 2.7. Okay. So I'd be here for that. The diversity. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Sure. Thank you very much, Stephen. I'm thinking 2.5 and 4.4 might make sense to combine them because 4.4 informs 2.5. Okay. So we could either wait on 2.5 or do 4.4 or whatever. Sure. All right. Any other revisions to the agenda? Is there any public comments and correspondence? Any executive comments? We'll come back and approve the minutes later. So we'll go to 2.1, which is discussion of board goals. I think at this point, everyone in the room should have a sense of what we're trying to do and have had a chance to discuss with your own district boards the goals that you appear on page six of this packet. And I had an opportunity to participate in some of those conversations. But basically just as a reminder, my hope is that next week's carousel meeting that all the district boards and the SU board would vote to adopt these as our goals for the coming academic year. Noting that as some people have mentioned that obviously district boards may have other things that they wish to pursue that are specific to their own systems or for their own board work. So that's where we are and we wanted to invite the non-executive committee board chairs to participate in this meeting so that we could hopefully finalize the language in these goals and move forward as a group to bring you into the SU board next week. So with that, let me open it up for comment and discussion. We actually got a quorum here. We discussed it in our board meeting and I think for Ruben to chime in, I don't think there was any substantive changes. People seem to be in agreement. Let's move forward to the floor. Okay, thanks. We have the same response just to move forward and deal with these goals and any others that may come up. Can I get some clarification? Sure. With the for goal number one, which says who the executive committee with all board chairs and appropriate and what is the as appropriate language meaning in terms of? That's a good question. I mean it should be an open invitation for all board chairs. It just, as they appear or as they want to appear, as they desire to appear, just as it's in. I'm open on that. I wasn't, I had the word appropriate. It kind of begs the question of what's appropriate and what's not. I didn't mean to beg that question, but. My recollection of our discussion was more along the lines of what you're seeing, Chris, is that it would be appropriate to extend an invitation and they could accept the invitation or not accept it. Right. With all board chairs invited? Or again, maybe just open invitation to all board chairs. Does it have to be just board chairs? I think that the thinking there was that the intent of the goal is essentially to assess the way that our boards operate and possible and to investigate different ways that boards can operate. And I think that the board chair seemed particularly relevant to that discussion. I don't think we want it necessarily closed off. I mean, if people really have it. Well, I was just thinking, you know, someone like Chani has a lot of knowledge about board governance and might be interested. You know, or there might be somebody else to. I'd be hesitant to open it wide up because it's a working committee. If you get 12, 13, 14 people participating, concerned about how effective a group at large could be. What about a, you know, one board member from each board or something? Instead of the board chair. You know, it could be the board chair, but it doesn't have to be the board chair. I wonder if maybe we just ought to put executive committee here. And if the SU board wants to and the boards want to charge the executive committee with leading this and the executive committee can figure out along the way. Do we want to have a larger meeting when we invite everybody to come and talk? Do we want to invite the board chairs to this? But basically. That was a good idea. I mean, we have a better sense of what we're actually talking about. It makes sense. Steering a little bit there. We'll make that clear, I guess, in the discussion that, you know, we don't see this as being some closed room conversation. So my expertise will when it's appropriate. Let's share with everyone on this appropriate. So the E3G board was generally supportive of these. Scott Thompson sent some comments earlier this afternoon, which I'll get to in just a moment. But with regards to goal number two, the school quality committee has met a couple of times and we're generally prepared to help lead this on this goal. We thought that our role would be to sort of design some of the process for reviewing the learning outcomes and then maybe working on the findings, summarizing things, helping with communications, just doing the work in between meetings. That seemed to make sense to us. A couple of concerns we had was around timing. It just seems like a tight timeline, getting the report in October and then turning around and developing a goal plan. And so on. It is what it is. And then the one question that came up was the last bullet about the implementation plan. We just weren't clear on what that means. The implementation plan is the five-year strategic plan, right? And is the expectation that that will change from year to year? Or is this more referring to the continuous improvement plans? For me, when I see that, it's looking at the alignment between kind of the, there's three levels. There's the student learning outcomes and mission which we set back in 2016. There's the implementation plan, which 2017 was put together. Got it. And then so every two years or so, continuous improvement plans are done to say kind of a further rewind. So if you just kind of think of macro, somewhere between macro and micro and more of a micro two-year piece. So how does that align? And I think it's good for the monitoring group to look at the, is the implementation plan getting us towards the goals in which the board is set out for the supervisor union? Not just the goals, but the student learning outcomes. I shouldn't say, sorry, I said that wrong. Should the student learning outcomes and mission? That was adopted. Okay. And I think those have been the conversations in the school of all of you, I think. Okay. Do you want to add, we talked about changing the timing with Brian and everybody where we're concerned about the timing. If we moved it up to November or would that be conversation for later? Well, that's why you had to remind me of the specific. Yeah, so what we were saying is that all the boards start set, at least our budgeting and stuff in November now, right? We have all followed you to the example. So we were all, I think we have consensus that we were all thinking that if we moved what is listed now as January to November, we understood that we wouldn't have the data from that October, but what we were saying is that we would use what we had from June of the previous year, right? And then half the October data. And that would move us along so that that the individual boards, they'll start setting goals without the knowledge. So that we're all both working at the same time, the same sense? Yeah. Because otherwise we might be doing things differently. And then in November, we wanna align with the full. Yeah, the challenge is we don't get the October report until it's early October, I believe. And then we have time for some discussions, a bad meeting, follow-up with, I don't know exactly, we basically have October and November to really dig into it and then summarize all that and turn around and create a goal, it's an aggressive timeline. Yeah, and then the leaders struggling with that. That's how we would design the process just to move it along as quickly as possible. Yeah, I mean the language here is by January 2019, which implies that many steps could be taken before then, but the way you just said sounds fine to me. Yeah, I think it is what it is, we'll do the best we can. I'd be willing to really be comfortable deferring to the School Quality Committee on revising a timeline. If that's, I mean, my intent of letting the School Quality Committee have this goal is they're the experts, they're the most knowledgeable we've got. So if there's a recommendation to alter the timeline, I would be very comfortable supporting that based on their experience. I don't want to see it really now. I'd just be hesitant for us to have set up an arbitrary timeline that worked for us, it doesn't work. We don't have an alternative early in mind right now. I think the challenge is if we want to translate something into next year's budgets. January 2018, January still late? Yeah. But it's not necessarily budgetary, it's... Well, I want to think about this more. I don't think you need to put it in this statement, but I think it's something, Kari, that we should have the discussion before the end of this school year because it may mean moving up data reports because to have it basically instead of, we already have an 18 month lag into when budget effects changes for kids. So to do it almost, you know, a 30 month lag, that's too much, it's adding another year, that's too much in my mind. That's too much of lag in the system. If it's possible to get the report in September. Yeah, and I would also push, push maybe the wrong word, maybe encourage the boards to think about developing that goal as they're working on the budget. Because budgets, I think we spent a lot of time on budgets that I wonder if there's a way we could do it and so have had people say at the same comfort level with knowing the budget and be able to develop the goal at the same time. I'm wondering if there's a way we can do that. I don't have a patented solution right this second, but we spent a lot of time on budget from November to December to January and if we say we're waiting, we're almost putting another year off to impact kids. And so I wanna say, is there a way we can kind of do both with pushing both timetables, but we're not gonna solve that here tonight. They're both really, I mean, they're integral pieces. I mean, the budget would be impacted by your student and your driving, sometimes, yes, sometimes, no. So I don't wanna be thinking about it, I think during that time. So we don't prescribe how our executives might handle the budget. The only thing that we do is move the slider from, oh, I get it, right? So I don't feel the need I think what you're saying is possible. I think that unless something comes out in that data set that blows our mind and reveals that we're spending entirely too much or entirely not enough, then the budgetary, the board's budgetary work is not particularly effective. It's gonna affect our administrators a lot based on what we set for goals, how they allocate the money inside of the budget, but we don't do that. And I would agree with that, especially with the work we saw last week. Chris and you and I saw it, Chris Winters. It's how we allocate it. It's not really what the bottom line is. I think I wasn't talking about micro-managing that at all, that's not what, we're at 10,000 foot instead of eyeballs on this and our goals in that budget do align. I mean, they impact each other, so we have to be thinking about that and what we do. That's why that discussion to be, personally, that's, I mean, maybe that's the wrong word we're going to talk about anyway, but I would be interested. I think just as a meta comment on the sort of timelines that are laid out here, the objective in doing that was kind of twofold. One was to kind of just provide the outline of a shape of maybe what we might be trying to do, and then also, again, the outline of an overall calendar for the year, since we try to do everything in the same month, obviously, we're going to stumble in doing that. But the intent was never to like have the board's vote on this and then just be locked into those dates and sure, darn it, we're going to, September 2018, where's our, you know, I mean, it's going to, we're going to have to revisit it periodically and I assume just about at every meeting, at least touch on it. And certainly the folks who are meeting these efforts here are going to be weighing in heavily, obviously, on that. So I just wanted to make that comment that, you know, don't look at these dates and sort of feel like, you know, we're locked into those, I guess. And maybe we're saying that DSC board, too, when we are discussing it. Fair enough. Yeah. Sure, Scott's comments. Yeah, sure. So he was generally fine with goal one. He didn't raise these, by the way, when we had the board discussion, but he did email them individually. With goal two, he's concerned that the focus is too much on qualitative. So he proposes dropping the database. He'd like to see, I think, more balance with sort of qualitative and a focus on climate, maybe. I'm not exactly sure. But he feels like the numbers don't tell the full story. So yeah, I'd love to weigh in on that one. Since I was also partied to this, Scott's comment on this. So he actually suggested two changes to the wording of this goal. One was to strike database. And then the other one was to say student life and learning as opposed to just student learning. Because I think his comment was along the lines that, you know, students don't learn in a vacuum. And everything that's happening with them is important and qualitative data and understanding where people are at is as important as the quantitative measurements that we're making and so on. So that's where I'm standing correctly where Scott's coming from. I sort of take the point, obviously. And I actually kind of like the idea of making it student life and learning. And I certainly do think qualitative data is as important for the quantitative. And thinking creatively about data is important. I don't like losing the term data-based because I feel like we really... The opposite of data-based, I think, is sort of gut-feeling-based. Well, is it qualitative data? Right, that's what data is now going to do. It sounds like Scott's restricted it to all. Chris knows where I'm going to go, which is I'm writing my second or third of three classes around qualitative methods. And it is data-based. There are protocols to use, and when you don't use those protocols, you actually make the data you gather sound and subjective. So it's really important to use the word database and maybe that parentheses and you see qualitative and quantitative piece on that. I have a problem with the life because our mission as educators, we're not funded to take care of all the life problems of all the children in the five towns. While we do, and we do a lot of that, more and more has been put on the educational form without the funding. So this really just, really amps up the responsibility of schools that I would say we're not funded or staffed to do. I expected to do. Well, that... Take it apart anyway. I would actually argue no, not from state or federal piece. I would say you might in people here, but no, did we do that work? Yes, because we know it's important and supportive. But if we have to take on all the social services agencies, because that's what that means to me, then we've got a lot more, I'm gonna talk to you about a lot bigger system than we need that we currently have. And so I see a real turning of the mission. And that's not what your mission says that you voted in 2016 for us. That has all this behind me. So that's okay, the war can do that, but it's not what I heard from you. I think a lot hinges on sort of how these words feel to you and sort of what their real definitions are. But I think... You're qualitative. Go. Yeah, I guess so, in a way. I mean, no, it's worth being rigorous about it. So I would actually say... Worth being rigorous about it. I'm gonna be technical about this education. It's not a qualitative, it's just a gut. Yeah, yeah. It's just a gut. A qualitative methodology you say you use to gather data for the space. Well, I guess when I heard the term, I thought about some of the aspects of our student learning outcomes that deal with. For example, and I'm looking at them on the wall. Behaviors, transferable behaviors, self-awareness and self-direction. We talked quite a bit about how the issues that students bring to class impact there. So if you want to say anything about transferable skills, I'll be with you 110%. But I can tell you, and I haven't asked the leadership team this, but I would bet quite a bit of money on it. They'd be in the same place. Transferable skills, fine. But if you're gonna put all the life responsibilities of children on us, I need to go get a lot more resources to take that on. No, I mean, it makes a student learning as we've defined it already in our... It doesn't like quality's impact student learning. And it's not... I'm not saying it doesn't, Chris. It's that if I have to take over the responsibilities of Washington County Mental Health, do I have to take over the responsibilities of the Department of Children and Families? Because that's what you just said there. No, no, that's not what I mean. I'd like that to be aware of it, but that's your interpretation. You're taking it to the extreme of the whole. Yeah, and someone could do that. So if you want to bring, and I think what's got, and I don't know, because I haven't had the conversation with them, this is the problem with email. You can't have the conversation. You only get about, remember, eight to 10% of the communication. I think the intent is that there's other things besides core academics. I'm all willing to go right there with you. I'm just not willing to go there with you when I've got to take up, when you've got to build a system that's gonna take care of all the mental, physical health and responsibilities that come with that that are out there when you talk about life. So what's in that? The nut of that is that you want to, you have to really define that scope and you limit that to that, that's discipline, and then you have to have measurements that are. The data, I agree with you. I mean, that can go subjective really fast. So having it, what can you objectively measure? Well, I think if we're talking about student learning, then it's on the wall. We've already defined it. This is what we mean by student learning, so. But then if you start walking into that, I mean, I've had many conversations with Scott, too. We talk about this whole masses of school and human services and there isn't, the schools are bearing increasingly in an ornament loaded without the resources to back that. So you have to be careful not to go too far in this world. And without the authority. And without the authority, right? Because the authority is in the agency of human services, not the agency of education. They're seeing that problem right now as one program, pre-K, is governed by two separate agencies. And then it turns into a coordination right here and there in the house, too. So you're, I get that. I mean, I know where you're concerned is on that, but. I was gonna ask the library. I'd like to hold off on this discussion. This isn't set in stone. This will be what's presented at the full board. Scott or anyone else who have an opportunity to say, I'd like to see these changes. And everyone that wants to make a recommendation will be heard and we'll make their pitch. And whatever alterations that are gonna be made are gonna be made by the full board. I don't think we're making them. Oh, I agree with that concern. But I think that what we're preparing for that conversation is best we can. So that it's expeditious and profitable for everyone concerned, right? So I think all I would suggest is that it's worth taking some time to summarize maybe what we've just discussed. So that when we say database and student learning, like some of the nuance of that is ours. But I agree with you. People are gonna bring what they're gonna bring. You know, maybe, you know, I hate to say this. It might sound dumb, but it might be. It's just a game of a little bit of semantics here. Instead of using database, which is like, there might be another synonym for that. You know, what we want is to have a very objective process and a measurable process, right? And that's essentially what the data, and data can mislead you, too, if it depends on what data you're gathering. So to me, it's the idea that we've got a kind of a definable and consistent measurement system. But you wanted to ensure that certain things were in there. That's right. And data covers a category. You could take information-based, and that would be blow the doors open. But everything is information- So you want to at least have certain categories that define. I agree with you. I mean, I want it, it needs to be, you know, you clearly have to define what you're measuring and what your goals are, and that's what data can be measured or progress towards some objective. I think, Matt, you actually, or maybe you said it, I think if you want a wordsmith, if you put in the words quantitative and qualitative after the word data, then- And I think part of this, when we look at most of the data to give us is where you literally have science. And I, maybe Scott's thinking, you know, you think of the drama and you think of the arts and you think of the music. We don't see a lot of data in that area. And that is clearly up there. But we don't take it, you know, kids don't take a test and we don't get the means of data that are then sent out to us to evaluate. And, you know, I agree with you about life, but I do think there's more to school than those standardized test scores that we're getting. And we're not seeing a lot of that yet. But I think that, you know, what was on, one thing that's on our agenda tonight, for example, is this, you know, teacher survey of the progress of the implementation plan, you know, which is not a standardized test by any means. It's a survey of, you know, how people are perceiving and viewing and executing and measuring what they're doing with regard to the implementation plan. I think that would fit, and I don't want to speak for Scott or try to, but I think that would kind of fit his broader sense of, you know, the more qualitative and understanding systemically and organically what's happening in the schools as opposed to just looking at digits and, you know. This is what I think, with qualitative research, there's many different methodologies that can be used. There will be times with qualitative research, you look it down to the numbers, because you're going to look for themes. And you start just in there, and I'm just doing one of this next week for a project I have due. I'm going to reduce a whole bunch of, like 20 pages of narrative interviews down to a theme analysis that's going to get into, there's going to be some weights behind it because the number of times that the themes are, the people come back to the themes. It's part of, to me it's really important, the thing I've gained a lot of importance for this year was with qualitative. If you want qualitative to meet the rigor and validity, you need to stay with the protocols. So it can't just be an ad hoc questioning. And I agree, anything that you do as a supervisor in the union fits somewhere in here. So we've already got the goals, at least, if we don't have the metrics. I mean, I would argue, I think we probably have most of the metrics. The metrics will be, you'll see your first report on next fall, because we've got the report card going on pre-K through 10 right now this year on all of this. So we have, so I'm going to go ahead and move on because we're burning up some time. His other comment was scrapping goal three altogether. I guess, from what you said, he just doesn't see the value in spending more time on learning and focusing our efforts around engagement. He thinks that's sort of what we do. And if we just choose the right topics to talk about with the community, they'll come for it. I don't agree with that, but that's the point of view. Well, I would say he had an opportunity to express that in the voting, and he's in the minority. He also didn't say it. We hear what he has to say. I know. We had a whole discussion about these goals. Anyway, he can voice the next meeting. Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, what he said kind of really illustrated for me what we already discussed, which is that we don't really have a working definition of community engagement at the board level, which is why we have this meeting on the first place. So I would think that's kind of where the conversation would go. So is there anything else about, so I've gotten a couple of really one change to goal one and a couple of things to mind when the topic comes up at the SU board. Is there anything else, any other comments or any other suggestions or? Okay. Well, I really appreciate everybody's attention to these. And I know I've been, you know, trying to drive it a little bit, but I really appreciate the way everyone is sort of, you know, stuck up to engage. So for the retreat, the, we did the poll. We got responses from 80% of board members, I think, and 80% of those of the day was works for them. And then I had another handful of pretty solid ladies just depending on certain scheduling issues and such. So the day itself seems workable enough to get a large group of people I think for it. So what's the final date? August 2nd. And there really was only one choice. Yeah. It was either whether I worked or not to do it then. So what I'd like to do is suggest or bring to the SU board that we would pursue that date. And I'd ask the SU board to, if they'd be willing to designate two or three volunteers, basically to work on programming and agenda and securing to the extent that it's necessary speakers or trainers for the day. So that's my, that would be my suggestion. There are, as per our last discussion, there are, there's one person that I reached out to, one of the people that did the community engagement training for VSBA that three of our board members attended in April and spoke highly of. I haven't, she's responded, but I haven't had a chance to touch base with her about whether she's actually available or any other details. And then there is, so that's, and that's relating to goal three. And then for goal two, there was this gentleman who spoke at the board chair training last week that did a study for this state of Vermont a couple of years ago. I found this presentation very compelling. It speaks directly to several aspects of goal two. So the thinking was that we might try to see if he might give them what's well, what's close enough by, I think, to go. But that's as far as we, you know. And the other part, but that doesn't work out, who's the superintendent who talked to us? Brad? He's brought it all in through. Brad lives in Canada now. He's brought back to Canada. No. So I really just wanted to get a sense of the group about whether what I just said is sensible. There are other thoughts or suggestions about it. That's what we're looking forward in. We need a small group to steer it because there's no other choice. Yeah, just for transparency, I would volunteer. Florida's already expressed interest. You've got, I responded very well. Yeah. I did. And then I guess we, you know, but it's at the SU board's discretion. Where's the location? Have we decided that? That is a good question. I haven't got that far yet. Right now, do you have that thing unless it would be disruptive to have it outside? With the covering? It might be a little hard for those two topics. Yeah, we're going to need some work space. We're just going to take work in space. But I think the, you know, I have been a part of it even in plan summer treats. So the idea would be certainly not to be like, hold up with a white board, you know, working the whole time. Yeah. We might be able to get somewhere a little off of this. Yeah, maybe so. I can think of a couple of ideas. That would get a lot of us to do both. You have to see their availability. All right, see you then. Enjoy. Okay, building an agenda for the SU board meeting. We have a draft agenda. We have 90 minutes allotted for the SU board meeting next week, Wednesday. And that was just kind of like we put something down. Yeah, sure. How I think draft. I think all things being equal, we'd like to keep it to 90 minutes whenever we can. So this is on page eight of the packet, if anyone is looking at it. Obviously the two topics we've already discussed, goals are on here. Goals can easily take I think 45 minutes of discussion. There's no question about that. The retreat hopefully would be somewhat quicker. Re-adopting norms. This is something that had come up at the last SU board meeting. There's a set of norms that was adopted last year. I don't know if it's in this packet. It's using on the back of the agenda, so it's not in this packet. There, and I want to explain. Keep going. No, no, it's on the next page as well. So it's basically just reviewing those and I think formally stating that we would like to abide by those norms still. There's the policy committee chart, which we're going to discuss a bit later. Question that Steven brought to the executive committee. The rest of the thing is sort of procedural and I wouldn't anticipate a ton of time or discussion needed. Yeah, as many of you remember, June is a month where we do a lot of work to get done for the next year. The boards need to authorize different things, whether it's the blank authorization for checks in case you miss a meeting as in hell. You'll see most of these on the next page. We're not doing anything with lunch prices we usually do, but we're recommending no change. Then there's the loans and the investment awards and then all the fuel oils, wood pellets, things like that. Reserving monies for technology, which will definitely need to be done in the individual's boards. If you remember every year, we keep a baseline, we keep the same rate and then we capitalize it. So most years, some years we take out more but we have to reserve so much for technology if there's a reserve. And Lori had her review and earlier today and every board is putting money away this year. Next year is actually a big Chromebook replenishment because we're almost at five, we were four years and they're ready to end their life. And then the authority for the superintendent to sign for the organizations. Lori and I are still researching this a little bit. We think it can just be done at the SU but when we talk we had a meeting at four this afternoon. So we needed to check and see if all the individual boards needed that. The auditor had said that when he was here in February that you should authorize the superintendent to sign for the boards. When I signed, just because I signed authority with documents. So we're gonna check that, that may appear on everyone's but what we did last June was we did, and Stephen maybe you recall as well from last year but we tried to discuss these in the full board. You tried to do it at the end but so everyone knows and then you just go right away voting when you're in your local boards. So Lori and I don't have to do that. Which we're all in the same conversation six times but it's usually easier to do it faster. So that's why I wanted to show you that chart there on page nine. So I think that the, sorry, is that? That's it, yeah. I think the agenda is drafted. It seems like theoretically possible we could do that in 90 minutes but there are three things that are not on this agenda. Anyone of which would threaten that time constraint for sure. So one thing I wanted to ask Bill is, I assume because it's not on here that you did not want or had not planned to discuss the implementation plan survey. I wasn't planning to do that. That was something that the executive committee had asked for as a report. And we were just, you probably weren't sure we were doing my evaluation. We said we'll use an implementation plan because that's a lot of the goals. And we- Where did you get feedback from teachers? Teachers about how we're moving that down. And I am able to give you some of the questions. I couldn't give you all the questions of the survey because it would have just been pages and pages out of comments. So I gave you the analysis that the leadership team did to try to cover the other questions. It's an FYI. Yeah. So there's more towards that. I don't think that needs to go. Oh, we lost one. I know he had his kids. Yeah. He doesn't have a concert. Yeah. So, the other Chris, yeah. Chris Winters has a concert. So that was really for the executive committee. Sorry, that was a little long, but it gives you a little- No problem. I just wanted to be sure. And then a second one is this diversity. Right. We're gonna talk about it in a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I don't think we had a definite opinion about whether it be dealt with or discussed this week or next week, but sooner than later. I think it'd be nice to put it out there and say, here it is, if we could, and think about it, and here's where these third teams are going. It's gone with it so far. Right. So it's informational on that. Mm-hmm. Maybe- And then put it in the next meeting. Have people consider, do we want the SU board to take it up at our next meeting or something like that? So just an informational report out on what's happening and what you've done so far, which we're gonna get into a little bit. And have that statement in the packet. Maybe that, maybe I would be- Okay. But not to get up for discussion, which I think is wise. Yeah. So. I think that's it. It makes a lot of sense. I think so too. And then the last thing- I think that becomes a report to the board instead of a discussion agenda. Yeah, that's a good idea, actually. Because typically, that's the information is provided. Does anyone have any questions on this? I'd like Adrian to get up and speak for one to two minutes on what's happened. So under reports to the board, we could put U32 and we could use whatever language that you could use. Yeah. It's actually a great idea, because I haven't been proud of it. There's no expectation out of it. Yeah, it's smart. Well, and that will have been a done deal by then. Well, it's not a done deal, the flag part was a little bad. Yes. Yeah, but it's way better than that. Yeah. And then the last, the third one is, I can't believe I'm about to utter these words, but at 46, the theory, I suppose, is that the draft plan from the agency of education is supposed to be finished by June 1st. I don't think anybody really knows if they intend to release it or not. I don't know. No one knows of a class Friday. So I think I am just bringing this up because although I am low to do it, is there some rationale for leaving time on the agenda to discuss that? Well, the only thing that comes to mind is, how do we want to react to whatever information we get? Yeah. It might make sense to put on here, Act 46 update, and if there is none, we move on, but if there is and we want to do something over the summer, then we at least can talk about it. Yeah, we've got it. Otherwise, we wait, right? Yeah, I mean, we do have the retreat and part of the thinking, I don't know, it's not the longest of a second, so it's a ways away. The part I think was to set aside a larger block of time because we know that. How could we? We know we'll have the permission right now. So maybe it's the same thing, but it's kind of a report to the board Act 46. I think that'd be a good idea. It's not really a discussion, it's just a check-in. Yeah, and here we either have this information or we don't, and what are we gonna do with it? I mean, the honest thing is people are gonna do what they need. So I would say this. I think that people are gonna want to talk about 46 if something comes out. I believe by then, something will come out. Either we're behind or we release something. And I think that if we should be prepared to not shortcut other pieces, but that the executive SU board may need to be lengthened from 90 minutes to longer. Because I think if it isn't discussed, there will be members that feel like, hey, I didn't get a chance to discuss this with everyone. That's never worked well with us. So I'd rather have us say, we're gonna put it at the end. That would be my setup for the agenda. Put it at the end of the discussion. The last item. And then, Matthew, as we're getting closer to that day, kind of see what we know and be willing to, and maybe even put up top. This may be expanded to a two-hour SU agenda. How do we warn? It's a carousel meeting, though. I don't see that as a big problem. I think you just, we warn the other ones for seven, and we say, if the SU board meeting may go long, we don't have a lot of people that show up for... No, I understand. For others. So I think we can properly warn it with a title. And then just, if it happens, it happens. Because I think trying to short change or not be in a discussion just won't work for our membership. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of realistic that we're gonna talk about it. I guess my question is to what end? What can we possibly accomplish? I think you might be saying, so how do we... What's next? What's next? And do we need to have time? Because what would go to me is like, when you ask me that question, Kurt, I'd be like, we need some time to digest this and then come together again. And I hate to feel that. I don't want me to want to save this, but I almost feel like you might need another as you board me in the month of June. Well, that's what I was going to say. If there's something substantive, it's not gonna be, it won't be addressed. People will leave that meeting, not set, what do we call it, a special event. To me, this is just to me, it's informational, with a brief, and the brief discussion might be, this is pretty substantive. We need to come together again to have adequate time to deal with this. I would agree with that. When would that be? Yes, I agree with that. Yeah, it's a good idea. Yeah, I like that. Because if we don't, that's 45 minutes. Yeah, yeah. And we won't get it, we won't have done anything there. You don't have to have another meeting because nobody's had time to process what's being done. All right. This actually comes out on time. Even so, first. That'll be a little bit my job then, but I will appreciate any assistance what can offer. Of course you will. I'm sure. Let's see if it's like, all right. I think that's everything for the SUM-Gindex. So it's still under discussion, the Act 46. We'll put it under discussion. And I think, as you said, we'll just sort of say, we may need to extend the meeting at Thursday. Right, but I like Stephen's act. I like Stephen's act, but I miss the where to put it. I mean, as a report to the board, or? Well, yeah. Yeah, another report, and it's just, here's what we found out two days ago. Yeah. And if it's, we didn't find out anything, they're going to tell us in three more weeks, then do we, the discussion is, do we want to schedule in case something substantive comes out of the meeting, or if there's something in it, is what we've received back concerning enough or interesting enough that we need to call a meeting, an additional meeting, to deal with this topic. And people can look at it and say, no, let a small work group do it, or people can do whatever they want. But it's just, the only purpose would be, see what's there, and determine what we're going to do next. And we're not, what we're going to do next won't be going on in that meeting. If there's something else to happen, it will be, have a date specified. Yeah. That sounds good. Sure. Very well. Dave, can I have you pause on your reporter piece? Just for a minute, I've used David a few times because he sits in a whole bunch of different, you haven't heard anything different on what's going on? Yeah, I don't think you will. I've sent a couple emails and I've been back. I do, I'll give you a call. I'm good enough. Just because I know you, you said, you were just a bury this past week. I'm not in the dark too. Yeah, we all are. OK, so we had moved up 2.7, the U-32. OK, yeah. So real quickly, the memo kind of explains it. But we don't mean to pile on to the keyboard, but we did think it was timely to bring this to you. As we were focused in on the specific issue of what to do about a flag, we also realized that there is this much larger issue that goes to our values and our culture and addresses learning and a whole bunch of other things. And so we decided that we also have to think big about what do we want. And as we started to dig into that, it was such a big topic that we just decided to focus on a belief statement, just a series of statements about what do we believe about these topics of diversity and inclusion. So we had a really great discussion about it last week. We didn't approve this statement, but we are headed in that direction. And we thought that for us, a potential next step will be to develop policy. And since we have a policy committee and we're trying to create alignment amongst our policies. And because this is an issue in every school, come to a head and either to a certain extent. Anyway, we just decided to bring it to this group and see what you think the next step should be. And Kari drafted that with some help from Scott. I think they covered, was pretty comprehensive and thoughtful. And I think it really reflected our conversations over the past couple months of the idea that there are a group of children in our school students that don't feel safe and comfortable for reasons of racism and diversity. And that we need to figure out a way that everybody feel comfortable so that they can learn. And we can't really direct the administration to address this issue until we are clear amongst ourselves what we believe. And I would say that we were pretty much an unanimous agreement about this. We had a lot of conversations, but I think every time we kind of tried to draw a conclusion, we all were shaking our heads, yeah. So just to sum up that you're developing, the Unity Board is developing this policy and you're bringing it forward really to ask whether the SU as a whole wants to take it up. And we aren't calling this a policy. We're just not there yet. We're relating the foundation. Yeah, these are kind of our values. So can I just add, we had the discussion at the board that good policy comes from what your mission, what your school outcomes are that you want. And so the board talked, I think Kari and Scott took that and we're trying to remember back two or three meetings ago, but it was around, let's say, well, I know that at one point someone asked, what do we believe in? And that kind of started getting down this because your mission should come from your beliefs. If you think of the question that's spurned everything that's on the wall here is, what are your communities value and what are your children to know when they leave? So it's a value-belief value piece. I think I'm summing that up. So then we can. Yeah, so I think our next step was the policy. You know, if we want to develop policy, we're trying to be true to the policy for the whole supervisor union. And so if we're gonna develop that policy, the whole supervisor union hopefully would stand behind these values and beliefs before we try to develop policy for them. Seems like this is, I mean, this is clearly a policy issue and it's clearly one that would be unified. I'm gonna cross that. That's what we think, yeah. And that's sort of why we brought it here. Can I sort of going up in what you said we have a mission statement which is sort of a 10,000-foot view, but intentionally, and it says things like all students. I'm wondering if it is valuable to skip a bonus statement and just go straight to a diversity policy or whatever, I'm probably using the wrong word, but belongs more in policy. I almost see this as, I guess we have, is it called a mission or a mission? Maybe this is part of a vision, a more specific vision of that mission. You know, it almost comes underneath. The only piece that I, I may just be reacting to it, but I'm mindful of trying to be inclusive by putting something off to the side, right? I think if we're not, if we're handling this in a different way, then we handle everything else. It sort of begs the question of why. Because it's an issue. But every other issue we're coming from, right? So, I guess what I'm saying is by in a well-intentioned effort to sort of call out our good intentions, we could actually do exactly the opposite. What's the concern, though? How could it backfire? I don't think it would backfire. I think that a policy that falls under the umbrella of how we govern as a board and a supervisor even makes complete sense to me, right? That's what we do. A mission statement or a vision or a value statement sort of off to the side is an outlier to everything else that we do. So, in trying to address an issue of children who feel like they're outliers, we could unintentionally. You mean if we don't have a policy, if we've treated it as something that we don't have. So, you're setting, just by setting a statement off to the side, rather than following our normal process of governing by policy, right? We have policies for rather than that. And I feel completing the conversation too much, but it's just, it sort of popped out to me that if there's a group who feels like they're not part of the whole, perhaps the best way to make them feel like more part of the whole is to have a policy that says we're going to treat everybody as part of the whole. My sense is that the U32 board is on the road to developing that policy. That is the goal. And this is the germ of it or a statement. This is a statement. And I don't see this as off to the side. I see this as directly underneath. It's just an expansion of our mission statement. It's just giving it some more detail and some more. I can see that too. I mean, it's fundamental to our democracy. This is something that, you know, it really is, to some extent, it is about a mission. I can't know where you're going. You don't want to create all these special, I mean, we're doing a couple of things in this education. We're educating our kids, giving them knowledge, but we're educating them also in the process of democracy and fairness. And we're putting them down. That's not really why this is here, but I think that's that reminder of what everything about what it is. To me, that's my perspective. So I think somehow that's pretty fine. I mean, fleshing out the mission statement with some, I'm not opposed to it at all. No, I think you're giving everything a pause. Well, the practical way I think about it is where, ultimately, would this police statement live? Would it be in the policy manual? I don't know. I personally actually don't know that this will be here forever. Ultimately needs to translate to policy, but when we started looking at the policy, it's such a big, sprawling thing that we really felt like, let's have a basis. Let's create a basis for this policy. That's where this came from. So I think you asked a really good question, Ruben. I'm recalling a piece that I've read in the past couple of weeks by Joe, and I'm gonna forget his last name correct, but Jerome, it's either Hamley or Hadley. He's a person who writes a lot, he's a professor, he does a lot of studying on cultural competence. And cultural competence has evolved over time of what we think is cultural competence and inclusion. So in the 90s or late 2000, we would have thought colored blindness, like treat everyone equal, was high, was the definition of cultural competence that has shifted now to where actually advocating for folks that are in the minority, that are at risk, that that's now the culture. And to understand the differences are good and celebrate the differences in the diversity. So that's what was going through my head as you were asking that question. How do we, I think the Blee State actually helps us do that work of the diversity, celebrate the diversity, and make sure that we're empowering those who feel unsafe to use the words we've used already and how do we provide that safety? So it's more about the difference between, for me it's about the equity piece of it and equity doesn't mean the same for all, it means what you need to reach in this space. Everyone's included in everybody. It's equity is not important. Right, so I think we have to have a separate statement to show that it's not, yeah, it is an equal. For folks that are feeling not safe or feeling in the minority, we have to do something different and that's okay. That's just what's going through my head right now. And I do, I spend all day today at the equity conference and a couple of different people from the state talk about how they approach the Black Lives Matter. Cause I think part of the reason you guys came up with this statement is to try to make sure that, you know, in that policy, not other flat, what are our values for that other flat, but we all came back around what you were saying, I mean that, you know, this is our mission statement and that should be the driver for equity and this is just the work to get to this policy. And I think that it would be nice if we were able, cause we're just so close to, when there's so many people that are doing this work that is struggling to come up with the policy, you know, even when they have to find the flag, they're still in the middle of that work, right? Cause we are not. So that, and also what Bill was saying about celebrating our differences and I come from a different point, I don't always want to celebrate the differences. I don't have that conversation, so more of what they talk about that literacy. So like, like totally bring it in, you know what I mean? Like not to separate, kind of separate, like this being one separate event, but it's that equity literacy framework that they talked a lot about, of course, the editor that you guys might be familiar with that. I'm not super familiar with it, but it's like it's embedded. So if it's embedded, it's part of our, it's part of our mission statement. There's no question. This helps us create the policy and I felt like it's a little bit about covering, you know, thinking about how do we not, how do we set precedence and not leave an open ended for other flags to be flung? That's sort of my conversation that went on and for me it's more simple than that. You know, this is kind of a civil rights issue. It's not a political issue, so there's not much conversation about flying a different flag to me, but they, I'm going on and on, but you know what I mean? The conversation, having those conversations and actually getting deep into it is what, I didn't know this is, so that was what was pushing. So this would be like one of like goals so that we can create. So I have a couple of questions about what the specific, just practically speaking like what this would look like. And I think, you know, anyone that knows me or has heard me at the U32 board meetings that I've attended knows that this is an issue that's very dear to me and an important one. So, you know, there's a part of me that would very much like to, I plan to engage actually in the conversation whether it becomes a part of the SU's business or not. I guess that the question I have is, we're basically talking almost like about a fourth goal, which hasn't been on this table yet up to this point. And it really, I think would require that, or could at least easily require that level of engagement. And I think it already is for the U32 board in a sense. Right. So what I'm trying to figure out is, you know, would you be looking for the policy committee to take this on or for the SU board as a whole or does it make sense in a way because the board is in the thick of it too, it goes for you to bring this and sort of get a consensus of the group that yes, we're just in this topic and we want to engage on it at some point, but we're looking to the U32 board to lead it if that's something we want to do, or I mean, I consider U32 board drafting a policy for this supervisory unit that then went to the whole policy committee. Just because we are in the thick of it right now and we, you know, to put it on other schools when it maybe it should be a goal, but it is, you know, it hasn't come up. I definitely see this as kind of above the policy committee in a sense, because this is, again, I'm going to use that mission. I mean, we are under an umbrella, even if I have an umbrella here, and we want to have this cross-cultural literacy, I'm going to be the letter of the four choice of words here, but this, you know, that's where we kind of celebrate that we, you know, we create. I mean, there are differences in all these groups and the ideas, how do we make that, that's got to be socially acceptable and we all should be learning from it, you know, that. We are under this umbrella. We're under this unified umbrella that enables that, so how, that's what I call, you know, our mission. Our mission is part of that umbrella. I don't know how we, this is a very typical one, but I'm not going to navigate it, there's no question. I'm not sure the policy committee is the right place to start it. I wouldn't, this kind of starts here, I think, with us. And that's how it, we first actually got to how it relates to our big picture. Ruben, sorry. So this has come to the U32 board, right? You guys are dealing with this right now. What has come to the board? What are you thinking has come to the board? This issue has come to a head before the U32 board. Because we had a request from a group to fly with Black Lives Matter. Right, and we had to kind of back up, yeah. Which I think is fantastic. I think it's fantastic that a group of students feels enfranchised enough that they can come to the board and I think it's fantastic that the board is being responsive to that. And I think it speaks of the board that I already think incredibly highly of, that you have sort of unpacked it to this degree. Personally, I have great confidence that whatever work you do and bring to the rest of us will be an incredible jumping off point and probably won't need a lot if it needs anything to become policy. So I guess it's an overly wordy way of saying thank you for sort of spearheading this work. And I do actually think that the policy committee is the right place, it's the right entry point for the SU board. And because the policy committee, their job is to evaluate policies that come before them and say, okay, this one looks like it's pretty good or what we really need to gain some input from the greater board, or we're not sure where it fits in here and we'd like to get it. But I completely trust not just the 32 board to sort of do the leadership that you've already done, but I also completely trust the policy committee to do that evaluation. And I think we all know that if something comes before us and it's half-baked or it doesn't come before us and we feel like it should, then it's... We can try to do that, I don't know that many, but I think, again, I think we're gonna end up coming back to you. Oh, I have my... Because we are an arm, essentially, of this, right? We policies support our... Absolutely. What we are, you know, that umbrella I was talking about and that's where, I mean, in all these issues, I mean, like flying a Black Lives Matter flag, I see the conflict with that. There's even a kind of a... It shows a kind of that itself as a bias. We're supposed to be a safe umbrella for all ideas. We espouse what they believe and we enable that. But we don't have to... Taking sides is the wrong word. I see this as the picture where the place where that conversation can happen safely. And we don't necessarily jump in with any one group. I mean, is that making any sense to anybody? Well, can I... What is a totally... I don't think I typically do different things. You're back so fast, Steven, so... Well, it reflects some of what we're doing at the university. But I would say this has nothing to do with policy. This is a norm. And the norm is we treat people with respect. And if the norm is you treat people with respect, what's not covered? You talk, and so the learning is how do you treat people with respect? I suppose it has nothing to do with anything. You treat people with respect. So I respect you. What do you do, though, if you discover that a group of people feels that the system disrespects them? How is that covered by the norm? That we have to do. Like, that's sort of what the... That's where we have to have policy. That's where a procedure comes in. Yeah, a procedure below the law. Okay, but then to go back to what Ruben... So I just bring my experience, and it's not at the public school level, it's at post-secondary. When you create, you have to protect groups. But when you identify the group that you're protecting and who's in that group, you then, as Ruben suggested, the group can become... No, I'll just be quiet, because I'll suggest this is a way bigger topic. It needs a lot to be done. Yeah, I have a suggestion. I have a suggestion. So I believe that this is an SUI conversation. I would even hazard to say that I know that there is. Yeah, that being said, I don't think it necessarily is beneficial always for conversations to be SUI. I think in this case, it seems to me like we stand to reach the best possible outcome if the U32 Board is willing to lead in terms of developing what does the policy look like in this? I think we are. And then, so what I would say, it's already on the agenda for the SU Board, meaning it's a report out to that Board. This is what's happening, this is what we're doing. And I think the question, if you wanna ask one, is, or perhaps it's a statement, we want this to be a topic of conversation in the SU, and we intend to bring something to spur that conversation at some point when we have our own thoughts collected and defined. Hearing no objection, that's how we're planning to receive something when there's a lot to it. I agree with you, I do think that we need policy as an end, but I think that none of us, or even the U32 Board, is prepared to create that policy until we are able to do the work. And there's that implicit bias, privilege. All these things that we as a group are striving to work for getting to equity. So before we're able to reach, so this, the statement that was developed is great because it gets started, but then there's work that I feel if the U32 Board was gonna take it, that they would need to take on a bias training and work with others so that it's meaningful, right? Because we can't, we all think that we don't have a license for we all do. So in order to develop a good policy, we would have to do that work. That would be my only request. Might also be that individual boards wanna discuss this too in a smaller group and that might be an effective way to start. Or you can invite people to participate, I think, also. I like this idea a lot and we'll have to confirm that the U32 Board wants to do this, but my sense is if we were sort of took on the lead on the process for developing this policy, then we'll try to be as inclusive as people want to be included. That our goal would be to design a process that gets us to something that's really helpful. What I like, what I like about what Steven was saying too and everyone is that it really, this probably can manifest itself out of a lot of different ways that, and so I really like having a very broad, but clear statement that this and I don't know if that's in the mission or if I think that sometimes we have to have something that really covers all of that basic right. I don't know if it seems to me that comes above policy, but we can. Is it something you guys wanna, our policy committee can do address right now, just to help open this up if the U32s were down? I mean, that's something we should probably bring at the next policy meeting, maybe. Yeah, you guys wanna think about it as well. Let's get through the question of, we have a policy. It's on the agenda right now, so let's talk about it. So we, we go ahead, yeah. I'm trying not to, hopefully I'm not talking right now. I mean, I'm trying to pull things together and tie things together and allow some, a way forward on this. Our third goal is community engagement, understanding and doing it. In my mind, this might be a perfect topic that's not a school board topic at this level. It would be something to engage the community and outside of school board, outside of open meeting model. I'm not trying to make things secret, but trying to make things flexible where communities can have groups that gather, that are involved and begin to, I don't know, that might be a perfect community engagement that's taught on. There's a group at U32 that might, you know, group of students that is doing that at the school. I mean, I think President Simpson, I don't wanna get ahead, but it might be a way to make it relevant to start work on it and still fit within the goals that we currently have. I mean, I agree with you, it's possible. I just think that's a very large conversation. That's not one to have to know at our next meeting. We grow into this, yeah, right? So the only caution that this is an extremely important topic, it will take a lot more time than any of us at this table will realize. It's extremely important, I think. So realize what I'm saying. So it may need some of your other goals might have to go in the background, yeah. Well, I mean, I think what Bill's saying is this could easily overtake. Everything else, yeah. We can't achieve equity with that. You, that's where, I mean, Floor was trying to say that to you. If you're gonna do this, you gotta jump in into the deep end, and it's, our experience already is that it is putting almost everything else aside right now. I don't, I'm not deeply, but enough. I would be glad to talk to you. I'd like to do it out here, yeah. Can we just, I mean, you kind of set some of you and apply some discipline to it. I mean, we can't just drop everything, obviously. We have to. I mean, it is, for better or for worse, it's just as the nature of the topic. It's just as, I feel like, I feel like you, there's you's already in the deep end, and I guess sort of my trying to approach the question you're bringing is, does the entire SU wanna be there right now in the deep end with you? I don't know the answer to that question. I don't, I think that there's some. I think that maybe the question, if it comes up at the full board, that maybe the question, how much time and energy are we willing, and to the detriment of what? To put to this question, or are we willing to defer some of this initial work, to the U32 work? Yeah, I guess I would say I am not settled in my own head on this, but I feel like we have a way forward, at least for next week's meeting. I'm sure. I guess that's what I'm saying, sure. Just mindful of the fact that we've kept our special guests now for 80 minutes of this meeting. Thank you for addressing that, I really appreciate that. No, thank you for bringing it. Thank you for addressing it. Well, we've all, over, you're welcome to stay, we'll stay as long as you like. We'll probably be here for a while longer, but feel free to go. So we don't have to call. Yeah, you don't need to be called. I'll be called. We should be back up until nine o'clock. Don't forget it. I'm gonna wrap that up in the action that was with the boarders. That's okay. Yep. Yeah, we could take a two minute break, I guess. I guess we, it seems like we aren't. Yeah, it is. I've been in the know for the past six weeks, so I've been, I've had to. Oh. As I've been going around the board with me, I'm just getting. I'm feeling all right. Just get to the end of the enterprise, the practice. So, that's good. Well, I thought I'd hope it would be a conversation. Yeah. Sure, of course. The two topics of the retreat that you were talking about getting. I see exactly. Oh, well, this is, it's really just goals two and three. So it's one, they're on community engagement, a trainer, and then the other one is basically some aspects of data and student learning. So, yeah, let's go ahead and hope that we can wrap up sooner rather than later. Well, obviously giving everything it's due diligence. So 2.4. Don't forget the minutes. I'm gonna move that down. Thank you for reminding us. I'm gonna move that down to the action levels with the board orders. So we'll come back to that at the end. Bill? So I'm page 18 in my report. You'll see a summary from the, really from the leadership team. This really is, really taking that, this is taking our minutes from late April, early May. When we, we had about a 12 to 14 question survey that went to all staff. And you'll see some of the quantitative pieces that are in there. I just showed you a couple about clear learning targets and can the students identify the learning target? There are some other questions that were in there, but I thought, then I added a bunch of comments from what teachers said. But I wanted to make sure that you had really these two page summary, 18 and 19, from what the leadership team concluded from going through all that data. And I thought that was a better way of doing anything giving you all the raw data. Cause there was a lot of qualitative data that we had in there. I just gave you one question and I gave you quite a bit. But the, you know, what's working well, what do we need to do in focusing our in-service where we're getting to the point and some of this is it's having to make sure we can get more times during the year when we can get everyone together because when we have everyone together we can have more of a menu of choice. To say, if you're working on learning targets or you're working on assessment or you're working on effective instruction or universal design, you can choose which pieces. And that helps motivation with teachers to say, hey, I kind of know I need to work in this area. That's the workshop I want to go do. So we're already posed for some of that at the beginning of August in service for a day to two days worth of work. We're trying to get as much out of that. And that's really been since we did this data analysis that's been the main thrust of our leadership team for the past month of like, so how are we going to deliver on that? And how do we still have choice? But there's also within that menu there might be a couple things everyone must do because we think we all need to do this. You don't have to do the same workshop but there's different things that you've got to have. These five workshops might fill this one learning target. We're saying we want everyone to make sure that they include it in service. So that's a brief summary. I think it really confirmed for us that we're doing really well on learning targets, at least getting them posted. Which is a big step forward from two years ago. I can say there's very few classrooms I walk in where I don't see an ICANN statement if I'm in the elementary school and then if I'm in U32, the learning target today is. And it's really about not so much like the learning target is I can multiply three by four. It's more about I understand, what am I trying to understand from that? Not just a skill or a fact. So that's what posting means is that they're in the classroom. They're in the classroom and when I go and ask, I'll walk in when I go in the classroom and say, so what are you guys trying to learn today? And if a kid can tell me and I see it somewhere, I'm like okay. And then my next question is, so how do you know if you've learned it? And then once you've learned it, what do you gotta do next? Those are the, if I walked into every, those are like three of the most powerful, easy questions to kids to know how well a classroom is running. Because if they know what they need to learn, how they're gonna judge if they've learned it and what they need to do next. That's self-directed learning right there. That's one of the most powerful ways to improve learning. Do anything surprise you? It surprises how much we need to go back to training we conducted in the past year. And the principal say that, they're like, where were you running the same workshop again? Because it's like, oh, yeah, there's a lot of good information in there on how to do it as a teacher, but you just did, and I understand it happens to me. I sometimes don't get everything the first time I go through it. So that's really the big thing is some of our menu of opportunities are things we've done in the past year. People need multiple times, that's fine. They need a different way of learning the same thing. That's fine too. We all have those. Changing, it's changing things. So I think the thing that we've really, the other big piece is the support that teachers need with using infinite campus and really using that tool well to communicate to parents and to students. How about the comments around multi-tier support? We weren't surprised that people don't feel that system isn't working. We would like that system isn't working. That is system isn't working. There's not a high belief in the efficacy of that system yet. It's different at each school because some schools have been working on that longer than others, but that's until, the other thing when we look at this is thinking about adult learning development and values get set for adults somewhere in their 20s. So the only way to change someone's values is to have them have an experience which challenges their values. And it doesn't mean like a learning experience. It means they need to go do something and say, wait a minute, this data's not what I would expect it to be, whether it's qualitative or quantitative. Why is that? I start to question that themselves. So we have to help give that experience that the MTSS's can work. But I wouldn't say that we have a lot of work on our fidelity that it's implemented well first and we're not there yet. It's getting better, but it's just not there. So I was really fascinated by this and had a bunch of questions about it, but I don't want to bleed time. And there's, I guess one thing I wanted to ask is, is it possible and is it useful? There's about 30 bullets on here. Is there like three headlines? Because it was hard, I was trying to sort of figure out what are the, some of the really critical takeaways or I can spot some of the things that I would point to, but in this, I think one of the big ones is that I like where Stephen asked me about the MTSS system. The second one is that data can help us change. There's still not a belief that data will help improve instruction. So we need to still work on that culture. And that's in many bullets here. And that's throughout the system. We just had that discussion. And it's about what do you mean by data? And it's not, I think you could all, Jen and I were having this discussion in the past two days. I said, we can sit here and argue about any individual test by itself, whether it's valid or reliable. But it's not about the individual test, it's about the patterns you see across multiple different pieces of data. It's pattern analysis, it's not individual point time. It's interesting that the board is trying to change its culture around use of data while doing it on a step level. Well, that's what I wanted. We need to do it in both places at the same time. We can't do one or the other. It has to be both. So data can help improve instruction and learning. I pulled out math, because that was a start bullet for me. And then at the end, when you said the teachers were seeing like a positive thing to me, you know, for Pete, vocal about wanting more time to collaborate to study student work and design. Yeah, we're hearing that all over. If you can give us more time to come, we're just having a hard time operationalizing that. Yeah, they want more time together and more time across in grade level groups or at the elementary schools in grade level groups or content area groups. It's easy to do what you're doing every Wednesday. And it happens and the growth has been much faster. And it's as short, those short lots of frequencies of hour or two hours to it is much better than in service, but any way that we can make that happen. And we're going to change, we're going to start calling teachers next year again. We stopped for a couple of years pulling people out of the classroom, but it's great to have the teacher saying that to us. We need more time together to help work together. So what can the boards do to support? Wams things. You'll hear when folks are, we're trying to say going out more than three days during the year total, but there will be some people who say, well, why are you doing that? Shouldn't they be in front of the kids? Well, actually, if we can improve their quality and the impact that they can have as teachers, that little bit less of time will actually be better overall. And that positive. Yeah, it's in that positive. So just supporting that in principle. Because there will be parents and community members that say, wait a minute. And you'll hear, I would say something contrary to that is I believe that having a highly qualified person with the kids all the time is the best thing we can do. But I think three, four days of professional development of the year, during the year, it's not all of them, but say, hey, let's bring all the fourth grade teachers together for a couple of times for half days. That's a good thing. And they can help each other because they can help. They wanna start building curricula together and lesson plans and unit plans and saying, why are we all doing this? And that's when I just think of, I'll just give you an example from over at U32. Like the folks who teach algebra over there now, there's, look at it, they have common assessments, they look at it, say what worked, what didn't. That's all that needs to be done with professionals that say, how do we measure? And then just say, so what'd you do, Steve? Because your kids are doing a lot better than my kids in this year. How'd you make that happen? Can I come in and see it for a little bit? You're after we talked about it? You okay? I missed, yeah. I'm good too. I mean, I had support doing that. But I'm just, in my experience, I see that as a team building, that it just takes effort to do that. I guess if you're talking about a path forward, I mean, I think we're not gonna display this at the SU Board, but we could encourage the Executive Committee members to bring this information back to the local boards to. Well, that's what I was thinking about. The local board to work with. So at least this. The question is, how do we make sure that all board members hear this and understand it? And maybe there's even a larger sort of, something we can refer to that sort of makes all this clear, and so I'm not asking you to do this, Bill, but I'm just wondering if some kind of memo that says, here's the three takeaways or things that are prioritizing around instruction, here's three things we're gonna do about it. So that the rationale's there. And then if somebody comes to a board member and says, well, I don't understand why the teacher's getting pulled out, the board member would be like, well, here, this is why. This is the reason why this is happening. And so I don't know if that's helpful or not, but I'm just wondering. For me, that's part of this drives the continuous improvement plan process. And those continuous improvement plans should reflect, these are the strategies that we're using. That was gonna be my suggestion, is somehow roll this into the next plan or report on the implementation plan. Here's where we are now, based on this, we're gonna go. And that's exactly where it should be, because that's, I mean, the principals are saying to, they said to Jen, I said, thank you, because we had to write a continuous improvement plan for the state, the agency right now, for grants. And they were all thanking her, she was like, you just took all of our work and just put it, because it's the same, we're doing the same thing. So there might be a change in the approach a little bit at the different schools, but pretty much. And that's where you'll see that. And eventually those plans will come to the board, but we wanna shape them for our implementation plan, which like 70 to 80% of it is in there for the agency, but it's also, that's not, that was to get a regulatory piece done. So. Okay. I guess I'm just saying, I think there's commitment on the executive committee, I'm feeling to trying to be helpful and making sure this message is heard by the boards. So, any way that we can help in doing that. It would help if you could just like, put a brief memo together, I like that idea. You know, just something. But it sounds like that's gonna come in the form of the CIP when that, as that comes together. Yeah, but we might be able to do something. Let me talk to my colleagues then. Okay, so we can address 2.5 and 4.4 together, report from the policy committee, and then Stephen wanted to bring a specific question about the charge. Oh, so maybe, I don't know. I think it's somewhat addressed in the policy committee report of 4.4. Okay. That's why I thought it made sense to bring together kind of, so our rep from the policy committee came back. Yeah. And there was a sense that the reconfigured policy committee had questions on what's supposed to be happening and how things are gonna operate and what they're supposed to do. And I think you can see it in the policy committee report. There seem to be some. You mean the minutes from the meeting? Yeah, the minutes. I'll be sure I'll be on some potential direction forward. When I can talk to that, I'm just wondering if you want me to, I mean, essentially we'd really address, Bill told us, we've got our mandatory policies in place and that the kind of what we were thinking the next logical step to do was jump into the next band of 20 or so policies that are recommended and then try to address those in some order. As far as we can do it, make them consistent across the supervisory and where we can, if there's, we'll look at templates, we'll look at if there are differences, we can embrace that, we'll look at that. And beyond that, we can get what other policies, you know, our bill has the big book of policies that are essentially out there and they're inconsistent across the supervisory. And once we get the recommended in place, we'll just start working our way through those. And then simultaneously, coming up with a consistent numbering system so that there is consistency among these throughout the, which doesn't exist now, apparently. So we need to make sure that happens. But I mean, is that a directive that you and the board would agree with? I mean, that seemed to be logical to us. So I think our concern was on how flexible do we want to be on differences and policies from board to board? The last two or three years, it's been moving towards totally consistent. I don't know, I haven't seen one yet that doesn't warrant that, but we're not, you know, we're different schools and I can see one school may want something that others don't care about, or I can even see possibly differences. Say we cross out and we get to it. I don't see us as a completely non-union unit or not. We're different communities. We're very different, so our challenges are different. So I wouldn't, I mean, personally, and I know at least two other people are about where we're kind of feeling the same way. You know, that we didn't really see that as, you know, a fixed end game and we're gonna have all the same policies everywhere. We are a sum of schools. We are in different schools. You want to go do that as far as we can? Let's address those. And if we have areas of difference, let's close. I think that's the crux of the discussion. I don't know who makes that decision. Well, because that's the way we used to do it. So I'll confess, I don't know what the policy committee's charge is. Well, I think that's part of it. I don't think there ever probably was a good coherent charge. So even though there's, we're not totally in agreement on what the charge should be, I think there's complete agreement on there should be a charge. Right. I tell you, I was on that when we was first started way back. And the charge then, it was really, you know, we didn't, we were really exposed because we didn't have all these policies in a place that really mandated. So we started doing that. We're wondering with, I don't know if that was back in the early 2000s. Yes, and we haven't revisited the charge in a dozen years or more. Well, I don't know what's happened in the interim. I've been awful out of years, so. So just the history of the interim was when I first started as a superintendent, so I don't speak for the past six years, that there was, we kind of, we kind of were in a place of not getting much done for two years. And then after those, my first two years, the third year, what Stephen had said was, no, we're gonna try to get as close as we can. And it's even closer, we are gonna use, we're gonna get to the same place. I can only remember with one policy in the required where that didn't, and it was on the weapons policy. And it was all around guns, being in a car around the parking lot. Okay. But every other one. You want to do the entire one? All of the required. Now there's only 28 required. We have a lot more than that, as it says here, there's literally a five inch binder like this. And we have, I mean, in my opinion, we have way too many policies, a lot that you go into practices. But what I asked for this discussion was, okay, so we've done the required, what does this group want to do? And I came out of that discussion, the way I interpreted it, it was like, well, we'll start, we're kind of going back to a little bit of, we'll look at the policies we want to, but we're not gonna say that we're necessarily gonna go. Well, we'll be consistent when we want to be. That wasn't the tenor of the policy committee before. And so I think in asking what the charge is, because there isn't a charge, there hasn't been one, is a good thing to ask the SU board, so what are we trying to do here? And where's our agreement? Well, I mean, it's funny, because I mean, let me tell you that the meeting was very different. I mean, first of all, because you remember, we need to go at this in an organized way. We said, let's go, we're gonna break out the recommended policies. They're kind of the next group in that hierarchy of importance. Well, let's address them. You remember, we said, let's look at templates. If we could make that consistent, I'm good with that. I guess that sends a consistent message across the supervisory and it makes it easy for all of us to enforce by then, yeah, I mean, the whole idea, I think people are open to doing just that, but they're not going to like it. I mean, I can take a policy to my board, you may mandate it, but I guarantee you, they might not adopt it, but I would adopt it if it was something I didn't like. I wouldn't vote for it. Wouldn't be something that I would support. So we have to address that. I don't think that's gonna happen much. I think that's gonna be the extremely rare circumstance, but the reality is there, we need to have a little bit of flexibility. It's where I see it, but I don't see that as being anything that's gonna slow us down. So you're down in the doing of what? In terms of updating, what he's doing saying is let's get rid of the garbage in here. He's right. There is a huge amount of extraneous stuff in there, but let's prioritize, what is important to us, but actually things like we were talking about earlier with essentially the discrimination type. It's a big deal to me. That's gonna trouble a lot of other, some dog policy or French Poodle policy. I don't know what that, we have a lot of policies that we're gonna have to look at some of them. I guess the question I would ask is, is it the policy committee's job to prioritize those things or is it the SU board's job to prioritize those things? What's the spread of our times? You tell me, I've only been, I've been off of this for a while, but I mean, we were going on the bill set, we know we've got state board of education, we've got our mandatory policies that we have to meet and we've got our recommended. Let's grab the recommended first, because there's something that obviously has been identified as a problem area and that we should be pro or potentially. That's a problem area. That's a problem area, it was just a suggestion for how to tackle this. If we've done the required, let's look at the BSBA recommended amendment to be considered policies. And that has been the policy compared to those. Why the bill? I've heard like, when this has come up for discussion on the Berlin school board, for example, I've heard a suggestion which actually sounded very attractive to me, which is we have no idea what policies, unless we go back and do an exhaustive search of past board meeting minutes, we don't know actually which policies are actually in force across all boards where there's little differences in tweaks of opinion, these kinds of things. So one way to address that is just if the policies are mandatory, we just rescind them. And then we go ahead and do what, whatever's necessary. Maybe we should ask that at a carousel meeting because maybe that's okay. I can't imagine, I haven't seen all the policies. I don't know what drove them. They usually make a policy for a reason. They ran into a problem at some point, right? They know you just don't pure out the thin air. So that's for looking at these, I think it probably is worth time to look. I'm not taking about exhaustive searches. Comes down to that board, those particular town boards, I think we're sending those. They would need to do that, correct? I mean, if Cal has had a policy that Berlin or East Montpelier didn't have, we're the ones that have to vote on it. But still, I mean, that committee, I think that's a job we can do. I mean, I see what you're saying. I just, we may not want to, I mean, we should look at what we've got because we may be thrown a baby out with a bathwater in that, like I said, that policy, those policies were there for a reason. Maybe that's antiquated and gone, but we don't know without looking just to take a blanket, resend them in kind of a blanket way. I'm not sure that would be... I guess what I'd like to do is, this is my suggestion. What I would like to do is talk to Lindy, who's still the chair of the policy committee. Well, there's no chair. There is no chair. It hasn't been a chair. Oh, a policy committee. Okay, well, that's interesting. Yeah, it is kind of an interesting, it's frankly because the work to keep the policy committee running is the work of myself and Krista, mainly Krista. This is the piece and it's, to do policy work, it takes a lot of time and a lot of personnel power behind it. And we have one board member of the 32 that I know that is passionate about this and is willing to put in the time. But in the, what has happened with all good intentions of wanting to do the work through volunteer boards, so for the board work to actually get done, it just didn't. And then that's why we got to the BSBA ones, those templates to start from there because they were pretty much, and then little tweaks could happen. So what I, that made us our biggest step forward when that decision was made. That really sped things up. Oh, it took some time. To get people on board to say, Oh, I mean, and to do it. Yeah, and to do it. And just that alone, just to do that. I think that's a great, I mean, we agree that that's a really good way to start remembering, say, let's take those templates if we've got them, you know, then use those and look at them and it may be, I'll bet in most cases, we're gonna be able to say, Yeah, that makes sense. That works. I have to confess for you, I'm uncomfortable with the policy committee having really sort of choosing its own direction on this. Well, we'll take care of it. We just weren't getting at it. Yeah, I guess what I'm saying, I think that's the issue. Yeah, I mean, give it to us. We were being asked, where do you want to go? Right, right, right. To me, it said, okay, let's go in a logical way. Let's try to take the things that are most important first and let's look at them in an objective way. I mean, obviously we're, I mean, Bill was talking about the templates that are out there. Let's, you know, I said, even in that meeting, let's look at that. The schools are all represented there. Would it make sense for us to, at the SE Board meeting to ask that the policy committee meet and discuss and come back with suggestions on a direction that they want to take going forward since the main work has been completed? Like it's basically a tell us what you think is next. And then we put that on the agenda for our August meeting. We couldn't do that. I mean, we kind of did that at this meeting. I thought that was really going to be talked about a little bit here, you know, that was the idea of kind of going in. We know we have 20 or so policies that are recommended. We'll suggest those and leave the rest off for right now. I guess I would like rather than, yeah, I don't know, the, rather than have it just come in the form of minutes and it be assumed that like, okay, that's the way it's going to go. I'd rather have it come formally to the SE Board and have it be a subject of conversation. Do that. That's good. Feel that guidance we can, let's do that in fact. And I realize, you know, as you said, you weren't getting any sort of guidance to go forward. So I'm not sort of expecting that this would have happened or be done or something like that. But I'm just saying like, I guess I don't really feel like I understand well where the impetus is coming from and sort of what the, you know, what the work of the next year is going to be. So. Kind of astounds me when I saw, I feel for you, you're buying your policies, that was kind of there back when we started. That was one of the big problems. None of these policies, they couldn't find them, you know, the amount of homework it took to go back. And find this. I feel like that's a major problem for us. Yeah, we can't. I've never been unprovoked with a whole policy situation. Yeah. It's kind of a black hole to me, you know. There's so much there that I don't feel like these are my policies. That's something, welcome to my world. Yeah. So. I feel like I'm there. My suggestion would be to, one chunk of work is the recommended, that makes total sense to me. The other would be with an eye towards some big culling of these policies, so we get them down to a manageable level. And if we get through required recommended, we're left with a bunch of other stuff and, and I don't know how much work it is to go through that, but I don't think we need to be exhausted either. I agree. We need to feel comfortable that, okay, we've done some due diligence here and we're ready to say this is our policy set. Well, I think we had talked about taking, let's say, Friday meeting. I'll just look at, you know, are these even worth time if they're not? Don't we send those back to the towns to kind of be resent? And maybe off the books, we're not going to replace them. We're going to, you know, that's a waste of our time. If there's something that's important, this time we can look at that with more, you know, I don't know, I still, I still would go for the recommended policies next. I would, I would not get down into those weeds and things because those are the things that have been identified as potential problems by the, so I would say from the history that I've been told, so I can say it's correct, but there are some policies in there that were reaction to a one-time issue. Oh, I agree, I'll bet there were. So we can, and I can read some of those. I would bet, and I read them. I'm sure you're right. Let's get rid of them if they're not an issue now and it's not. I agree. It comes back to where, what I would think of is the governance and how we govern and what are those overall governance because those go a lot can be solved by understanding roles, responsibilities and authorities. Yeah, no, I get it. I'm very open to that. Well, I think, yeah, I think you, I forget we need something about the difference between policies and practices, right? Sort of like one is a board policy like necessary or one is it just something that the administration that we commissioned to do the work like it's perfectly positioned and capable of handling. And I guess my sense of it, and I haven't done an exhaustive review, but my sense of it is that we've sort of used policy as practice historically and so now what we have is this binder. So it may be worth sort of thinking about that question and sort of how we want to address it. So this is a topic that I think the executive committee should handle. We should recommend it. Anything it has to do with policy. So maybe I'm kind of pessimistic. Our boards have never been particularly interested in policy. That's why the policies weren't such a dismal sheet. Just don't even, I think in this instance, we, the executive committee making a recommendation that this become whatever this is. This become the charge to the SU policy committee. I think becomes a very brief conversation. Hose in favor, aye, and that's what happens. So I mean I'm kind of in agreement with Carly that what we say is move now to the recommended policies and work through them and my understanding of the policy committee is that's a completely understandable charge to the policy committee. They know what that means if other board members know. And that also they review, they start to look at the policies that aren't recommended or required at all, just some of those policies that are clumped there and also look at them to make recommendations specifically on what policies should be eliminated. So then what happens from the policy committee, the recommended policy. So the way they come to the SU now, here's the policy that the policy committee recommends. It gets the readings in front of the full board. Everyone, all the boards all at once agree. Yeah, so those move on. And in the same instance that policy committee could bring, here's three policies that we found, I'm gonna make it up, from 1945 that dealt with McCarthyism and you know what I mean, that there's just no need for them. The policy committee recommends that these be eliminated. There's a brief discussion in front of the full board. Everyone's there, said, yep, make sense, looks a little bit. Would they be, now in that case I need some instruction here because it strikes me that those ultimately have to go back to the boards to be, they were adopted, many of these were probably adopted by local boards. Like you said, they won't exist across the whole supervisor. You said it strikes me that if they were sent, they're gonna have to be, it's probably, we would make that recommendation and send them back to the boards, am I wrong in that? I'm not a lawyer of this, I don't know. It would just depend if all the boards had that, if they had a policy around that and there doesn't need to be a policy around that anymore. Well we just have to know because all those boards voted on those policies individually, right? So now that, to me that- Well we vote all now collectively against you. Yeah, I'm just, I'm used to- That's the fundamental, that's the fundamental issue. Difference. Well I'm good with going- What is the fundamental difference, I'm sorry. I apologize. It's all at the, it's at the local board level. It's not, so we wouldn't vote on policies at the SU level anymore. Okay. Would that be the case, I don't- I know because they still have to be adopted by the local board. This is part of the, and we could stay here for the night talking about this issue. I've been actually quieted down to try to- Right, I know. Let us move on. I'm not going to beat it to death. But this is one of the parts of, I have no other word but just, I'm going to use issue. That's the word I was thinking. So issue is that we have some policies that are SU-wide and they fall under the WCSU policy and that has happened and we've moved more there as we've moved to common policies. There are sometimes for, there have been some instances when we couldn't determine if there was a policy to be replaced by a local board that needed to be rescinded when, in some of those mandatory. So we did most try to move all that to the SU to get that going faster. The, we, you know, I don't know, because I literally don't know without doing a lot of digging. You know, as we get further into policies that aren't mandatory, the mandatory ones were the easiest ones. So as we get passed to the recommended to be concerned in the individual ones, like I can look at the date on when it was adopted. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, then we're going to get into those who individual rescindings and not, and I think we're just going to. It's not going to be that hard. I honestly, the way I see that going, I mean, I certainly don't know where I don't know the other boards, but, you know, once we've covered ourselves with our mandatory and recommended, and we've filtered through these other policies in there, you know, we can just send a group of them to the local boards to say rescind them. Strikes, I mean, I don't know the legality of this, but I'm guessing that they have to be rescinded there. That's where they were passed, originally. They were, well, I may be wrong. That's a question for the lawyer, but, you know, they're not doing a big deal out of it. They're not, no one's going to sit there and, you know, keep a bunch of paperwork that's of. I guess so, just to be, I was kind of dodging this a little bit, to be honest with you, but just to be explicit, you know, I have a different point of view about, you know, the sort of issue that you brought up earlier about, you know, we're all different schools, you know, and we should all be able to have, like, you know, different policies if we want them. You know, I really don't subscribe to that point of view. You know, I think there were one school system trying to address education for a group of young people that we all collect a responsibility for. And that every time that we have schools that pass discrepant policies, it creates points of friction and obstacles to the sort of effective execution of that objective. And that those, you know, points of friction accumulate over time and really sort of, I guess for lack of a better phrase, gum things up. So that I think there, and I understand that my point of view is not shared by everyone. Obviously there's a difference of opinion there. And I think that what flows from that is also a difference of opinion about how should we approach policies? Should we approach them all together as an SU? Or do we need to go back and have all the local boards take each step that every other board takes to resend X policy or to approve this policy or? So I think there's some, it seems to me that there's some fundamental questions. I'd call them meta questions, if you will, about how we approach policies that we're not gonna resolve tonight. And that seemed to me like may require some conversation within the SU. And so I was trying to sort of tee that up by saying, like let's engage the policy committee and sort of asking some of these questions like how are we approaching this work? How are we prioritizing what we do? How are we going to do that work? And then bring that back to the SU board in August when we have time to discuss it so that we can do that again. I mean, I do think that where you have a beard, I don't, we have difference if we're working toward the same net. I'm with you. I'd like to see these systems as we can. I think that part of, you know, we can start writing policies right here in this room, you know, if we want to control that here. But the more familiarity our schools have with that, the more, I mean, they still should have to vote on it. That's an easy thing for them to do. I've done enough of it. They take, they read them for their board meetings and they've been vetted by the superintendent's office by the committee. They're going to adopt them. That doesn't happen in every case. I mean, maybe not back when you were there, but that's not what was happening. It would go to the local boards. Each local board would word Smith the document then it would come back to the policy committee. And the policy committee would try to say, you know, okay, Doty wants the word student. And we actually have two cases right now. And then it would go back, okay, policy committee came up with this recommendation. It goes back to all the local boards. Two of the local boards, so you know. I hear you. And all it did was. I know that. I know that. And this is literally, you know, we're going to take policies that are under consideration with as we sit here and speak. So it's not sort of like a thing that hasn't been a problem in the past and won't be a problem in the future. It is a problem. And so it's one that sort of deserves, you know, being I think addressed as one. So, you know, my suggestion again would be that we find a way, I guess I am surprised to hear that the policy committee doesn't have a chair. I've probably heard that before. But so I don't know who to address a question or a sort of, sort of, you could tackle them to a point of chair. Yeah, we can do that. Yeah, but I guess the sort of request again that I have in mind is simply to put some of these questions to the policy committee and ask them to come back with some thinking or recommendations that we could then discuss, you know, at a future meeting. That's cool. And I think, you know, we have this summer so it's not like a lot's going to happen anyway, between July and August. Well, this isn't the end of the world and then in either one of these scenarios, I mean, I'm like, I know, I can see the sense in what you're saying. I also do see, I can see places possibly where that makes sense to have that latitude. And I actually do think that it's important. You know, there's a different place here. You're trying to keep these local communities and boards engaged as a whole. So involving them enough in that adoption process and not just ignoring, you know, that you make them irrelevant. That's what this boils down to. I agree with you. The wordsmithing is an issue and how we would get around that. I mean, where Merlin and then East Montpelier all re-write something. Not once at a time between lack of consistency, that becomes... Yeah, and it's also, I can play, I mean, still talking about this and I'm doing it now. You can talk me out of this at a certain time. No, but it is curious to me that, you know, the, each board has representatives on the SU board. The majority of the board is actually served on the SU board. So it's, I don't really understand how a conversation at the SU board would be different from the conversation. Well, because a town might, that roughly could be voted down on the SU board by the herd, you know, whereas if, and they can't on their local board, that's where, but, you know, I do remember how painful some of those policies where they come back and forth five times and re-write it before, and I'm sure that's what you're all ready to do. That did happen sometimes. Not always, but. So I think, I think we're agreed that we're going to punt. Yeah, let's go ahead and ask them. We're going to charge the policy committee with coming up with questions to bring to the next full board. That's correct. These are things that need to be discussed and, you know, we want direction on these areas. What's the full boards? What's the SU's direction they're providing to their committee? Is that what you heard it? Yeah, I mean, I, and we'd like to know in that conversations, let's get this, you know, what you expect of us. I mean, there was even talk of people disbanding that since we had the mandatory projects. It does not doing it, you know, but I don't think we're there. We don't, we have a lot of work to do before that. And you guys come up with what you want. I'll take the responsibility of trying to communicate out to the policy committee and we'll be able to discuss it on one. Right. Yeah. No, I'm just saying, like, and then. It's a kind of layout. What we think a path would be, you know, I think what we're talking from you is knowing ultimately, I mean, what are we going toward just a consolidated policy, you know, policies that are adopted at the SU level never touched the local level. And then if, I mean, I don't know if there's an option. I mean, I don't know how you would do that. It's the economy, they're one or the other, but, you know, I definitely see there of many policies that have got to be consistent across all of the schools, all six schools, but. Yes. And those, and not wordsmithed and not, you know, but I can all, you know, I couldn't see the potential for some policy that, you know, was only even really needed at one school. So, you know, and I don't want to eliminate that ability. Now, I mean, we have to, I don't know. What I would like to do is tee up a later discussion about the charge and nature of the policy committee's work. Yeah, that sounds good. And I would, what I want to ask for is the policy committee's input on that, on those questions. So just at a very broad level, that's really on, on talking about these points. Let's do it. I'll bring it up to the next meeting, too. If you can. I will. I'll summarize that and send it out. So for 2.6, special education hiring process, this came up at the last meeting. We asked it to be on the agenda. You know, Chris is in here. We have two other speakers. Yes, right. So we'll table that. The annual fiscal management questionnaire. Yep, most of you have seen this at your local boards. We need to do one here for the supervisory. We've got here instead of the SU board, it's page 11. This is the requirement that the State Auditor's Department every year for a discussion of the fiscal management questionnaire that's sent into the state. I mean, to our Auditor's thesis. Laura, actually, Matthew Pat points something out on them to make sure that we need to change. I forgot to tell you. That says, does each town and school district have official copies of these policies and procedures? And the website link is the old website, link at 71. Oh, okay. But that's the, I'm sorry, I forgot to tell you that a few times, since Matthew pointed that out to me three weeks ago, I just remembered it now. But you just need to have a chance to look this over and ask any questions you do. And then Matthew will certify that we had the discussion. That's the chair. I gave you the very short version. Any questions or discussion? I know everyone's seeing this as part of their path. Very familiar. We need to authorize Matthew's. No. I'm certifying that the board has reviewed this questionnaire. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. That's all you're doing. Okay, that's done. Okay. Sorry. And Lori, I'm sorry, I should have asked you a long time ago. I assume you're here for the financial report. We've kept you for hours. We couldn't move that. Should we, do we want to do the financial report and now so that Lori can go? Sure. Let's do that. All right, let's do that. So it's on page 33. And last month we had updated this report in great detail, particularly with special education as the reports were due to be state. Bill has been having me for next week's meeting project for every entity, how we're doing for the end of the year, because it'll be at a one board meeting every board has next week. And for this report, it's very close. So I felt pretty good about that. Right now, it appeared in the year with about a 2.6% fund balance compared to the entire budget of 8.4 million. It's right, there's like dotted lines in the middle of the page. So that's $223,500 or an eight dollars. We will have some reservations, as Bill mentioned in the June meeting, for technology as well as for job coaching. We'll be bringing that together and also case management. We won't have any final numbers for that until toward the end of June, because that's one of those things that the state closes their books around June 15th. So we'll get that number then. That's all I have on this particular page that I was thinking about. And on the next page, Bill's report talked about the fiscal software, which we've been saving and by June we'll know if the state is going to give us access to a system that is fully paid work by the state. But for right now, you'll see we've been saving that $100,000 this year. And we also have 144,000 projected in our technology fund, which is primarily equipment. So that's- That's a good question. Good software, reserve, are all the local boards making, reserving, they are two? Or no, this is something that we do a lot for- So this is- So this is- Different than that plan, $300,000 software. This is the- Yeah, it is. $100 this year and $100 next year. And we anticipated $100 the year after. So my next year, that'll be $200,000. Yeah, but I knew we were- And it's not on the local budget. It was at the- That's all I needed. I just wanted to- Yeah. That's what it was. This is new fiscal software. Absolutely, yeah. And we'll talk a lot more in June because some things went through the legislative session that we don't know if they'll make it through the special session right now. So we have a number of requirements for fiscal software. And as far as the building capital fund, I just put the notes there that we talked about this year. We put money into carpet replacement and painting. And at this time, we have about $78,000 to carry into the future budgets. As far as the fiscal agent, P-fund balance, which is getting diminished as we speak, it's down to about $5,000 by the time we close the books. $5,000, 3.7 is current projection. So that was my highlight. Again, I'm working rigorously on closing down. And when we schedule the June meeting, we'll have a few more weeks in there about to do that. Any other questions? Do we need to put more funding in the build up? Should we start trying to build up that capital fund budget for this building? I think we're in a pretty good place right now. I think the total cost of this building was, I want to say, around $700,000 more than what I've already thought about. With all the landscaping and everything. It's not even 10%. Yeah, right now. And this building's in pretty good shape. We've had to do, as you know, a couple of things that didn't come in with the initial construction. You're old, isn't it? 2009. Yeah. It's amazing. For the software transfer, is the balance in that fund, is that sufficient to what's in the law that was built? So that's what we're going to talk about in June. It depends on where it comes back. If we're all mandated to go with the state software, then we'll need some of that because Lauren and I don't feel it's sufficient with the supports that comes to transfer into the new. If we go with the new, if we're able to choose what software we want, we want something different and meet the state requirements. We'd like to have something different than what the state purchased because we don't think it will do what we need to integrate all our systems. We feel like we'll be again with another piece of software that's not integrated across multiple operational pieces that we need. So. Do you have a sense of the timeline on that transition? Yeah. So let me go. That's 20, 20, 20. That's why we need you. We really don't want to get too much into it. We know a lot of kind of what's been talked about, but until things get a little more concrete, we get a lot of speculation right now with you. That's fine. And we felt that it wasn't something that had to be done tonight. And there are schools that are signing on. So we'll have more information about who's in, who's out, state one. That's what we're going in right now. And the projected balance is this, at this point, yeah, we're pretty far. I mean, it's not allowed. It's pretty close. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's pretty good. Thanks. It's always. That was good. Thanks. Yeah. Did you name me here for anything else to go? I haven't seen boarders yet. I don't know. Was we emailed out? I haven't done. Well, I have seen them. Or I've seen the various part of them. I didn't see. I didn't see. You don't see where they're at. In terms of, I thought they were some binders. I just grabbed this. I didn't grab my binder. It might be there. They might be in her stand-up folder scheme. Yeah. So I added Matthew 2.9 to this. I get a chance to talk about it. But we have one day for leadership team, which is June 27th, which is our scheduled executive committee for me. We have a colleague who's hiring Carol Amos. And we'd all like to take her out to dinner. And they all includes me. So I was asking, I wanted to ask if there was a way. We could do it through a doodle poll. We don't do it here tonight. But in the last two weeks of June, that we could find possibly another night. Yeah. I'm sure. I'd like to honor her. I'm not as sure as Matthew, but I would like to try. I'm absolutely bound. So I will make sure we get a doodle poll out here by the end of the week. That has the other nights for the week before end that week to say, well, that's really the only. Lori has a problem with the 20th of July. But I want to meet, we need to meet before then, but it's also, I would like to really honor Carol. It's the only night we can get all of us in the same room. Have a fun last time. So I will do that through a doodle poll. And I do have a question about the board orders, I guess it doesn't need to be answered tonight. I'm really interested in the Green Mountain behavior consulting. Because it's like 10% of the total boarders for the month of April. And I didn't go back to look at previous months, but, and I know we've talked about this before about hiring versus hiring out and sort of just. We would love to, we would love to be our own position. We can't, we've tried to hire for three years in a row. We can't, I haven't been able to find a candidate. So we have to contract out. And what I couldn't tell us is it's a typical monthly expense to them. This is, that's the total for, for April. That looks like they're gonna pay, that's about half their contract. I see it yearly. So that's like a, okay. It's just showing up this month. Yeah. That's about half their yearly. Okay. I'm gonna provide BI's as well. So remember all special education. So if a student that's on an IP needs a driver, you're gonna have to mention this on top of their contract. I don't see that. So would we like to just hit print? Yeah, that'd be great. Okay. Maybe just a minute. Thanks. So we're spending roughly double that a year. Yeah. I mean, some of those are behavior interventions. I understand. It also has the behavior. The PBIS. The, I gotta just say the initials so I can get it right for you guys. Behavior consultant analyst that does the analysis of when a student that not quite sure how to approach it, work with a student. Can you give us a plan? That person comes in and helps out. And they have, we have two part-time individuals that equal over a full-time position to do that work across our elementary schools. Gotcha. Okay. We would, I mean, I want someone to be our client. I hear you. Yeah, I just said you would just not find them. And it is, it's more expensive to contract out. It's not the fiscal way to do it. It's not the way that they're actually good for our schools and our principals. And we've had this discussion many times around this table as a leadership team. We want our own person to do it. Why is it, why can't it, can't you find somebody? Do we not offer enough salary or do we not? So it falls into the teacher salary, but you can get more outside of private consultant and there aren't a lot of them around. That's it. That's it. We've been trying to grow our own. And two of them left us. For the private state. One for private, one for their, and then assistant principalship. So while we are waiting, maybe we can move on some of these other action items. So I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes of April 25th. We'll move. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor of approving the minutes are April 25th. Say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? I'm gonna do a do a do a do. There we go. 3.2 approving new hires. Page 13. 13, 14. Yes, I think there's two there. So I would move that we approve a hiring of Mary Creighton and Rachel Claire Hernandez. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Say aye. Aye. Aye. Approved non-barmaning minutes. So you may want to go into executive session. That's up to you. But I would tell you that my recommendation for non-barmaning contracts has been standard across almost the whole SU that it's 2.6 for administrators. So that would be the five central office administrators. And then 3.4, actually four. I'm not including myself, so I should say four. And 3.5 for all the other non-barmaning, which we have almost all the positions in central office outside of special education. So most people you've seen this office are non-barmaning positions. And that would be equivalent with the ESP and the teachers agreement there. And at some point it can be tonight or it can be June and I'd like to talk to you about my current situation. But I would ask to do that in executive session but that's up to you. Sure, okay. We can obviously do that at the end, I think. Yeah, okay. I'll make a motion to accept that recommendation. Do you have a second? Sure, a second. Do you want me to get the specifics of that? You just say that it's up to you how you want to do it. I said 2.6 for an agency. Yeah, well usually we make a motion as recommended by the superintendent and it's reflected that way in the minutes. Okay. So the details aren't necessary. Okay. Before we vote on it, so we're in discussion. We are, indeed. So this item that's on page 15. Yeah. So I needed to thank you, Stephen. I needed to come back to that. I want, there's a, I'm 15 on my vote. My only question is, is that separate from what we're voting on now? Well, it may be and it may not be and I think that's up to you. I would like to say one of the things that I've been learning, I've been learning quite a bit about our human resources with our new human resource person. And one of the things that this board did back in 2000, 2010, 11, instead of getting salary increases gave benefit increases for retirement. And what that has done is made more one individualized contracts and made it harder to systemize the renewal of contracts. So we could change, we could actually help the employee because they'd have more money in their salary which would elevate their retirement benefit because they're most, all these people are either municipal retirement or in teacher's retirement. So they could, we can increase their salary and the total increase across Washington Central for that to switch the benefit from a retirement contribution to a salary is $519. I will tell you, I mis-wrote it in my report and just call it this afternoon that I said it was for each. It's actually a total of $519. It's not $519 for each employee. It's a total of $519. So it's not even relevant. It's not that much relevant. But the thing we'd like to do is take everyone and say, we're gonna give you that little bit of retirement. We're gonna put it into your salary because that was a salary increase you had. There's maybe like three or four. Lori's one of them. Jen Miller, so now there's a couple others. Michelle's up. The people that were here at that point. And as you see, it's six employees. That's for a year? That's the cost per year. It's definitely a material. So it is a material, but I need a look. Lori asked me, she said, I think you should inform the board that you wanna do this. We try to talk to each of the six employees so they know what's going on ahead of time. They're like, well, if I'm gonna get a higher retirement, why am I, you know, it's just, we're trying to standardize things because one of the things we've found is we have a lot of individualized contracts. So can I amend my motion to accept this recommendation and in addition? You may. I'll do that. And would you like to re-second it? I'll do that. Whether re-seconded or friendly amendment, whatever is your friendly amendment, I think that would be right for me. Thank you, Steven. I had totally... So the reality of our vote is that, I believe these are all six people who are in the 2.6% group. It doesn't matter to me. Those six employees would get 2.6% plus whatever their share of the 5,500 ones. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm okay with that. I just wanna make sure I understand what you're saying. I appreciate it. Yeah, the clarity is good. Yeah. Is there any further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Is that for the amendment or is that for the motion? As a matter of fact, as a matter of fact. Okay. Any questions about the reports to the board, the superintendent's report, or anything you'd like to say, Bill, about what's in that report? I don't think any questions. I will tell you the insurance came in today and we got more coverage for less money for next year, so that was a cheery day. Yeah. Yeah, when Brian walked in and told me, I said, you don't need me in the meeting. I just gave him my word. Right. Right. Yeah. He said again, for me, can we provide you guys two things like that all the time? Yeah. You can prove the performance for less, about a month, or if you want extra money, $519 is two months. We could award it now. Any questions about the director's report? Thank you. Thank you, Laurie. You're welcome. I don't know how we reflected some of the sentiments that we're in there. So maybe we'll wait. We have minutes from the School Quality Committee, Kari, but is there anything else? I have questions. Yeah. So I see, there's a level of dissatisfaction. So this is around the math. Oh, oh, okay, so, you know, we gave ourselves an assignment to practice delving into data. And we chose to start with math because it's a bit of a red flag. You don't have to be an expert to see that it's an area where we're not where we probably want to be. So that's why we chose to focus there. And, you know, we had a pre-discussion about that and it led us to think what we should really involve the full SU board. But the reason I asked the question was the word disappointment, or disappointment. I forget what it was. Because we've already had a local board discussion. And I would agree, so there's just me, disappointment, but I'm not sure all board members sense that. It's more like, only on the math isn't as good as the literature. Literacy. Literation. So, they just wanted to see if I was reading the minutes. Yeah, I don't know that disappointment's actually the right word, concern, is the word on issues. That here's an area where the data is telling us we're falling short of what we think our expectations ought to be. And we want to know more. You know, we want more data. We want more perhaps guidance from the SU board to the administration. We want more planning and effort. Because at least from what I saw on the things that seemed like it wasn't where we would want it to be, that wasn't necessarily trending in the right direction either. And there's achievement gaps in the rest, so, yeah. The only reason I bring it up, and this is a very delicate topic to broach, but I'll try to do the best I can, that I feel we're all in the habit of saying we have great schools, we have great staff. And I don't disagree with that. But I think we also need to be able to say we have great schools, we have great staff, we have a lot of confidence. But this is an area where we're not satisfied with what our schools and our staff are doing. And we want to see improvement and be able to say that without, you know, being judgmental on the whole system to be able to say that and have it received properly. So that's why I'm vetting this in front of the group. So hopefully I can make sure I do a good job saying that whenever I'm gonna talk about it in front of the group. But to me, that was an honest reality to say the schools aren't doing a good enough job in our professions. It's a performance issue. Yeah, we have to find, it's direct. There isn't any way to really, plus you put around that, I think that we have to find a way to improve it because you're right, it's hurting. It's hurting us too. I'll be quiet. No, no, I think it's an important point. And one I agree with, I mean, I think it's the, I kind of have, I see it coalescing under the second goal that we're discussing around data-driven student learning and the work that the school quality committee is already doing. And so I would see, you know, a probably a needed outcome of that work would be some kind of target or, you know, you know, goal that we would ask the administration and leadership team, you know, to come back to us with a strategy to address something, I'm being a little bit fuzzy in my language too, but to improve in these areas. So yeah, that's just to say that I agree with what you're saying. Hopefully there's sort of a process in place, if not explicitly stated yet, to that point, to do that. That's sort of that question I got, that's Bill. Where do you guys see this, you know, where do you see that, you know, very objectively? Where do you see those failures? What a wick, what can we do? First thing is you can say we are going to use data to judge how you perform. We use both quantitative and qualitative. Right. And that is the cult we need, that's what Kari and I were talking about. We have to shift this culture together because it needs to be shifted. And there's a belief in our communities that data and education is not a good thing. And it's, you know, we can, and it's been, it's come from the reactions of no child left behind. I'm not a believer in no child left behind. I think assessment data used the wrong way is very damaging. Assessment data used the right quick correctly and looking for patterns is very powerful because education, there's art and science to education, to the profession of education. And we need to use both. I hope they're moving in that direction. That's where I feel, I know the, you know where I am. I know you, yes. But that's part of what we, as boarders can do. Yeah. We can not say, I hope, we can say that's right. This is what we expect, we can say it very clearly. And I would sit, my impression is this is more systemic across the entire issue. So it would be an example of all the words saying, this is an area that we're not satisfied in. You know, and maybe for one school, it wouldn't be the exact, you know, for Doty, maybe it's just moving at five points on whatever we measure. And maybe three small pillars move at a time. But, you know, it's an agreement for administrators. It's a common problem, you know. So it's suggesting this might be a topic for professional development where they get all the elementary school math teachers together and, or not elementary math teachers, but get the teachers together to, that's what it is. But we're, then we're helping our administrators by saying, this is what we want. And when they come back to us and say, this is what we need, then we in turn have to say, okay. No, I agree completely. Oh yeah. I mean, I think we're, we are on that path. I think the school quality committee, you know, happily has already been on that path for some time. I think this goal, which I hope will be adopted by the boards around student learning and our commitment to doing that, as well as the commitment that's within that goal, which is to be, come up with something specific, you know, that we're going to commit to by no later than January, that would include possibly budget implications. And, you know, so I hope that that is the, I hope it's the path I'm on. The only question I can answer is whether it's the path the board's on, because I don't speak for the, the board as a whole. We'll find that out soon. I think if you know the key to that is, is just clarity of direction, you know, what, you know, we clear it, we identify what we see that this problem or the leadership team does that, and then any clarity of our path, however we predict those solutions to be. And I think people will follow. It's usually when they don't follow it's because there isn't clarity. I agree with that. I mean, and our role in that is setting and defining the outcome. Here's what's right. This is what we want. And then allocating resources that are needed. And we don't micromanage, we don't know how to make that work. That's building the leadership. Okay, friends. We have board orders on the table. It's partially signed. Yes, your majesty. Would anyone like to move that we approve the board orders? So maybe someone has got the money. I have the money, I can, somebody moves it, I can get the, I'll so move, you get 50% of the, so it's $583,084 and 69 cents. Second. All in favor? All right. All right. All right. And the last thing that's on our agenda is school start time committee. All I will say is that really that it's been conducting a survey which is the results we're supposed to be at tomorrow's meeting. Right. I spent much of that. Committee members at about five o'clock tonight. I will say there was, I was one, but there were others. The structure of the survey created some confusion that we shared at our board meeting. Okay. I'll look forward to hearing more about that. All right. If there's nothing else, then we will adjourn at 817. We're not going into. Sorry. I apologize for all that. Yes, we are. I would make a motion and we go into executive session to discuss. Personal matter. Personal matter. At 817. That's the second. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? All right. All right.