 Perfect, so it's probably in order 7.06 p.m., sort of public comment, it's like they're public, so we will go to Action Items. First is the Consent Agenda. I do want to note that three items were added to the Consent Agenda regarding superintendent's evaluation of the Andrews plan, the job description, and a revised law. I think it's actually the same thing that we've done last time, but without this formal approval. So if anybody wants to discuss those, they can make a motion to it. I'll move that we approve the Consent Agenda. Second? Second. I'll second. Any discussion? Could you review what items are on the Consent Agenda that are not in front of me, perhaps, just to be sure? Just those three. The job description. The job description. The job description. The committee charge. The committee charge. Which is the same as last week. Yeah. Nicely written. Yes. But fully edited. And that's superintendent. Oh, okay. Electron. I'm okay. I just wanted to make sure I knew what was going on. All in favor of the Consent Agenda. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. which I would say was very informative. Got a lot of data ahead and see before the front. So, Livia, do you want to? Yeah, I'm going to start and talk about kind of a broad overview of plans for the future and how Mike and I have been thinking about growing our capacity to reach all children. So that, I wanted you to have this structure first and showing it to Jan. We thought it was a pretty good idea for you all to have this structure and head to your head first and then move into Mike's discussion around why we had to revise and continue to implement what it now has in it. So we want to put some context behind it before that. So, let's see over here what we're going to do. One of the things that we're going to talk a lot about in the leadership team in particular is direction, alignment, and commitment. This is work out of the Center for Creative Leadership and this is their structure and format for effective leadership. So when we're thinking about the direction piece of that Venn diagram, when we have strong direction, we have wide spread agreement on overall goals. We have a shared understanding of success and agreed upon objectives to accomplish. When we have weak, we're uncertain and we're feeling pulled in different directions. So as you're thinking about it, think about it in terms of the board structure, your board's work, as well as what you hear from the community about our schools in general. So obviously we're going to be working towards that strong direction and making it crystal clear exactly where we're going as a school system. In terms of alignment, we want some coordination of work and tasks. Weak alignment means there's work that's in isolation, that there's a lack of clarity of tasks, that people are working with duplicate purposes and cross purposes. So right now, if you look at the entry plan that I gave you, I'm doing a lot of this work right now, doing a lot of assessments where we are in terms of our systems alignment. That's primarily the work I have in front of me at the moment. And just gathering a lot of data and assessments around that. So that's where we are with alignment right now. And then commitment. I think this is actually where Montpelier is showing us the greatest strength is our commitment together. So when we have strong commitment, there's this mutual responsibility for the group's success as a whole. Members feel responsible for the well-being of the group and we know everybody else feels the same way we do. There's a strong sense of trust and we stick to the group and what we believe in in really difficult times. I think there are plenty of opportunities that we could point to to say that Montpelier-Roxbury has certainly done that over the last couple of years. We commitment that members put their own interest ahead of the group, members contribute to the group only when it's easy to do so or when there's something to gain. So I wanted to show you this over, this is the big umbrella. We're gonna be talking about this directional alignment of commitment a lot with our leadership team, meeting our building principles, Mike, myself, Mary, Andrew, and Grant to ensure that we have strong direction commitment and alignment. We even have some surveys that we can get some data to see how we're growing in those things, where we're weak and where we need to move forward to. So that will all be coming at you in the summary of, that's part of the entry plan later on. Go ahead, see you. When we did a survey probably less than a year ago of faculty and staff around some of their assessment of how things are going, we found things were generally okay, but one of the areas that really stood out as a, especially a concern among them was sort of the initiative fatigue, right? So we saw that as rising to the top almost of the initiative du jour. And I think that this third one commitment obviously addresses that, and there's a little bit of a sense of time, but really the idea being, I hope, is that we'll have a sustained commitment to things rather than having 27 initiatives. You've brought that down to your focus and concentrated, but really the idea of sustained over time is what I think I'm sensitive to when I think about leadership and who's following. You gave me such a good segue. Okay. It's almost like I planted you. Good. Cause when we're thinking about model for growth, this is based on the high reliability framework which comes out of Marzano's research, but Marzano is a huge researcher in education. I think he comes out with a book a week, but he's like the big name, he's the big dog. So here's a framework and I apologize for the black, I'm sorry about that, we'll fix that. Turn it a little light on, Phil. Might, you know where to light it a little. Particularly for the people at home. Oh there you go, yeah that's perfect. So getting at what Steve just mentioned around initiative fatigue and trying to do a lot and we're not unique in that situation. I think many school systems specifically successful school systems fall into this line because they think they can do everything. This we'll get at that. So what Marzano has found with his research around very successful schools is that in order to build growth, we have to figure out what the right work is. And this idea around collective efficacy that we're all in it together and we all believe the same thing, that commitment is what can really move us forward. So at the bottom of the pyramid here is this safe and collaborative culture. This is talking about do all of our kids, all of our parents feel that our schools are safe and healthy places for them to be in. That's where a lot of equity work and what the Black Lives Matter flag came out of last year. Do we have that feeling? Do we have evidence of that? It's also though looking at professional learning committees where teachers come together and they're collaborating over common formative assessments they've done. So are all of us knowing the same thing? Are all of us teaching to the same ideas? It's all within that space of safe and collaborative culture. For me, I need to have evidence that we have that in. That we have that in place because nothing else is going to be able to work unless we have that there. So this school year, for me and possibly next school year, depending on what the evidence is showing, we're working here. We're working within the culture. This is where all the equity work lives. All the equity work that Montpelier-Roxbury has already done, this is where that lives. And this is also where it's, what actions have we taken to ensure that this equity lens works for our students? What evidence do we have? So we're gonna do a lot of work within there, which is gonna decrease the amount of initiatives that we're really pushing in other areas. And not to say we're gonna let them go because we won't, we can't, under the educational quality standards, but we need to ensure that happens first so that our other things we're working on work better. So we'll take some time to slow it down now. Is that gonna seem radical to people? You know, are people gonna feel you've abandoned what we've been working on for the last few years? Not if I frame it well. Okay. And if we get that feedback, then I need to rethink how I'm communicating that with people, because I need to tie it well for them in order to make this work, right? So then the next piece is effective teaching in every classroom. One of the things that, we're not there yet. We're not there in the sense of we don't have a shared common understanding of what effective teaching is. So teachers in, teachers being the royal teachers, teachers all over, say the words best practices all the time. If I were to ask five different teachers what best practices are, I'd get five different answers. So what we really wanna say is this in Montpelier-Roxford, this is what we believe best practices and get everybody on that page and have assessment and evidence that shows us we're there. We're not there yet. We have to get this in place first. Because in order to get here, some people have to let go of things. Some people have to build a whole lot of capacity in other areas. And that's where that equity work is tied as well. So the idea of equitable literacy practices, equitable, everything falls into that. Then we go into guarantee and viable curriculum. What's our guaranteed and viable curriculum? And what is our actual curriculum? Because those things are often very different. And if you've had a kid who's been a third grader and had two different teachers in third grade and they learned two different things, then you know what I'm talking about, right? So that's Mike Berry's work right there. If he's gonna start some background work on that this year. Then if you see this, the next step is proficiency based grading. So when we got the educational quality standards that talked about from the agency of education that talked about proficiencies and all that kind of stuff, they missed all of this. And the AOES is to start here. So we're really gonna look at those proficiencies to say I had a great conversation with Michelle about it yesterday. Around are we really there? Does what we're doing really work for proficiency in the intent of the law? An intent of what this theory of action is. And then finally, way up at the top here is personalized learning. So I feel like he's been doing it a long time. I feel like he's in high school anyway. He's been doing it a long time with their program in the community, which is fantastic. So then questions around that I'm already asking is how many, what kids are accessing it? Are certain kids accessing it? Are all kids accessing it? And what's our success rate on that? So again, just looking at some of these ideas. These are some questions that we're gonna be asking. Faculty, staff, students, parents, and community feel the school safe. Do we maximize collaboration? Or are we more collegial? Yeah, long, we have good time, but do we actually collaborate on the right work? Does everyone take responsibility for high levels of learning for all students? That's the biggest and the hardest question in the bottom of the pyramid. Effective teaching in every classroom, is there variability? Do we work within the shared belief system? Are we systematically collecting data to ensure that that is happening? Those are some of the questions I'm asking there. The guaranteed and viable curriculum, obviously, is clarity on the what? Do all teachers know the standards and teach to them? Does every child have the opportunity to learn at grade level? So even if kids struggling academically, are we not teaching them in the standards that they should be taught at? Because that's an equitable thing. Is content teachable and available for instruction? And do we know what our priorities are? And then proficiencies, this is a lot of the work that the high school's doing. I think we can really tighten it up across the board. Are teachers clear on the learning progressions? That's what Michelle and I were talking about just the other day. So differentiation is possible. Is data analyzed, interpreted, and used to monitor how we're doing? And are we clear about what the targets are? And then of course, personalized learning. Do we have the system in place to truly personalize learning? And are all students taking advantage of it? Do we know which ones aren't? And how can we target that population? And here's my big one. It's not just the program, the community-based program, but personalized learning has to happen in every classroom. So that's a paradigm shift for pedagogy. Do teachers know how to do that? That's a huge paradigm shift. So that's probably where we need to go next here, I'm thinking, anyway. So this is the baseline. This is like the building blocks of where we're gonna go. Which helps Mike talk about the continuous improvement plan. Any questions about this part of it? This is multi-years. This is not this year, multi-years. Well, I guess that's kind of my question is, it's multi-years, but for the student next year, we want all five of these things to be working as well as possible for students next year and the year after. So from, obviously, think we'll improve over time, but how do you ensure that next year you've got all five pieces working well for students next year? My answer to that would be, when you know more, you do better. So we have a lot of learning to do and we, lots of, everybody has a lot of learning to do. We have a lot of learning to do and as we continue to build knowledge, that's when change starts to happen in a different way. And I'd say that if we don't have a healthy culture at the bottom, that we don't have shared belief system that committed earlier from the DAC, then we're not gonna move forward. There's always gonna be that pocket of teachers that are different than other teaching and other learning and that kind of thing. So I think we have to go slow to go fast and that when you know better, you do better. And so we're gonna do a lot of learning around that with the basis of being a healthy culture. So I'm going to add to that, I guess. I absolutely agree with you and I'm gonna wait to see what Mike says about it was here. I just didn't see it later on in the how that we really do well here. Our kids in general do well, except for the low socioeconomic kids. So those are the kids I'm wishing in the next year till we've paid attention to, so those kids can have more attention. And that's looking at our systems and structures around multi-tiered system of supports that we need to strengthen and we need to rethink. So we have a lot of capacity building to do within those systems and structures. Just quickly, I think it's all great. The, I think again my concern about new leadership, abrupt shifts, leaving people feeling like what's gonna be continued, what's gonna be abandoned, what's gonna be layered on top. It might be helpful to, we spent a lot of time in the last few years learning the initiatives du jour ourselves in terms of what was coming out of the agency of ed and also sort of what are some of the modern best practices and some of the things that, some of the alphabet soup stuff that we've been learning about, it might be helpful to seed this presentation with a little bit of that. In other words, things like, you talked a little bit about personalized learning but the flexible pathways, that term or universal design and how you've built that in and just the PLP in general to the extent that you can recycle some of the old acronyms and use them and give them the context in this. I think it might help people stay with you at the very beginning when they see that, oh yeah, all that work, all that professional development I've done, all that shifts we've done in our team, it's all okay because it's still here and it's still moving forward. Yeah. And the next time, next board meeting that we have, not the retreat but in September, I can't believe I'm talking about September already, but the first board member at board meeting in September, one of the, the presentation I'm gonna do for you all in terms of this kind of focus on learning is the board's role on ESSA and EQS educational quality standards, which will bring a lot of that, those pieces in, it's gonna sound very familiar around a lot of them. It's great for us, but I'm thinking in terms of as you bring the whole school one with you. They put a lot of work in the last few years into one direction and if they feel like you're shifting it, that could be great as long as they understand it, you know, understand where you're going to lie and how all their investment is gonna pay off. And I think the shift is gonna be, we're gonna slow down. That's the shift, not get rid of but slow down so that we do it well. Make sure that everybody's caught up right now. Right, they're not caught up here. Yeah, we have pockets. Good one. I think the other thing I'm counting on you for because that's what you do is that for us and the faculty to hear about the why. So if the dad is there that says, by the way, even though we've been doing this, it's really not working for these people. And we're going to change it slightly because, and this is why, people are more apt to accept that than just guess what we're starting tomorrow. But with the dad, with the figures. We're gonna start today. I'm counting on you. We're not gonna do that at all, no way. No way. So I'm gonna turn this over to Mike who is one of the best tires you all have never made right here. Hi, so I just wanted to say, I haven't had a chance to say it. Thank you for this opportunity to be a part of Montpelier Rocksbury. I haven't had a chance to say it to you all. I'm very grateful. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about the continuous improvement plan and why we needed to revise it. And I'm hoping to make a long tail short, but stop me along the way. Now here you'll see our vision statement and then our theories of action that I took from the revised CIP. But what I'm really gonna talk about is why we revised it. So there were three main reasons that we revised it. One was time. So grant submissions and CIP submissions were due June 30th and we needed to get hopping. So that was one component. Component number two was that there are two houses that live in the agency of education that claim ownership of the continuous improvement plan. One is the school improvement team who wants a CIP to be very organic, go where you want to, talk about attendance, farm to school, whatever you think is valuable to your school community. And the other house is the consolidated federal grant team and they want a very prescribed, specific, structured, continuous improvement plan that speaks to federal funding in a particular way. Only one of those houses gives us money. So, and the agency of education would tell you this. They would say that these two houses are in conflict right now with this particular thing and working on how to reconcile that. And the third reason was that our funding structure changed. As a merged district, we are no longer school-wide, which basically means that your title funding came in a lump and you've had some flexibility in how you would spend it amongst the schools. Now you are targeted and ranked, which means you get money per school and it has to be spent in that school for a very particular thing. In that building? In that building, yep. And mainly that means for Title I interventionists and Title II coaches. And that's how that worked out. Professional learning. Professional learning, yes. So those were the three big reasons that we had to revise the CIP plan as it was written. Not because it was bad or to dismiss any of the hard work that went into that, but that as it was written would not align with our submissions for investments or positions or title funding at all. There was no way for us to make that work. And with the timing, you might be shocked to know this process doesn't move fast. So when we came in on July 2nd and recognized that we needed to get this in, we didn't have as much time as we would need to round up the whole team, go back in, discuss it, explain why we needed to change this. We needed to make some changes pretty darn quick. But we were able to do it and keep the spirit of the original continuous improvement plan. So we focused on three goals. We had literacy, mathematics, and then equity, personalization, and proficiency-based learning, which covered all of the broad topics that were written into the original continuous improvement plan. But we were able to rewrite it in a way that adhered to what particularly the CFG house of the AOE would want to see so that we could fund positions that we'd already committed to and good work with kids that need it right now. And just a little caveat, there were some changes that we need to kind of keep an eye on. So for example, in the new structure, UES did not qualify for Title I funds initially. We grandfathered them in, which we're allowed to do one year and one year only. But that's something that we'll keep an eye on for the following year. And that's because the way that you are funded for Title I now is based on your free and reduced rates per school. So they find the average free and reduced rate for the district. And then if you're at or above that rate, you get Title I. If you fall below that average, you don't. So that was a shift that also did align with the original CIP. So those are all the reasons that we had to revise it. Can I understand that now? So we take a district average, which is four buildings. Four buildings. And we figure out what our average free reduced is. Yes. For the four buildings. Yes. And then we find the one or two buildings that are above or that have less free reduced. And those people just, we just don't get funding for them. Correct. Well, that's nonsensical. Agreed. Okay. We don't get Title I funds. Title I, I know, just Title I. Yeah. It's a surprise. The merger caused us to have a wider range in the free and reduced than we had before. We had a very narrow range. Great. Yeah, but it's going to make that much of a difference. Is that what tripped it? Was it the? The merger. Increased range? What specifically? It was the increased range having two elementary schools. Okay. Was the other component? Yeah. Okay. When you have two elementary schools, regardless of your targeted Title I or school-wide programming, you have to target and rank. Yeah. It's just something you have to do. When you have two schools within the same, you know, same scope of grades span. Okay. So that's my story. We had a lot to build off of from the previous CIP. But both Libby and myself have had kind of a lot of experiences in submitting CIPs and working with grants. And we know what the agency is looking for. And we were able to honor the spirit of that original CIP with a much more honed in and zoned in continuous improvement plan that would align easily with our investments. I know that you had to do this quickly, but I also know you, the administrative team was all together recently. Yes. And so you went over this and the administrative team feels great about this. Yeah, they had the revised copy before we even submitted it, reviewed it. They understood what was going on. And administrative teams across the state, and I heard this from Mike, have been aware that for years, things were gonna change with grants. They're gonna get harder to administer. There's gonna be less allocations. We've been hearing it for years. So they were prepared for that. Their priority was to really secure those positions that work with kids and educators. So that's what we made a priority in the process. So this is kind of a little broader question. So in the pantheon of plans that a district creates and documents and submissions and which God is CIP and what are its powers and why should we respect it? Yes. That's a great question. That's exactly how I would have asked it too. So here's where I think I think the two houses would answer that differently. I think the continuous improvement folks hope to see it be a huge part of what drives us within the ESSA process. And Libby, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they sincerely wanted to be a meaningful process that moves our schools forward in the direction that we wanted to move forward in. What triggers the trip is the federal regulations around funding and the consolidated federal grants. And they're two kind of distinct perspectives on school improvement and they don't mesh. So for example, if we chose, and I'm just choosing these at random, we chose farm to school equity and bass fishing teams as our three priorities that would be fine with the continuous improvement team. And that would be something that would drive us in the direction we chose. And we could align that with ESSA and figure out how that works, how we're gonna measure all this stuff. For the consolidated federal grant team, that would be a non-starter. We can't fund any of that. We can't support any of that. That's not moving your schools forward. We want research-based interventions and programs. We want highly qualified educators, coaching teachers. That's how we're gonna move schools forward. So right now, the work that they're doing at the AOE is trying to figure out that meld. How do we do that? And I actually think the new laws around census-based funding and all of that are kind of moving towards the looser direction how we spend federal funds, how we work for kids, how we do a better job. But as a school board, we've talked about it, and I don't think we've ever really done much with sort of a district strategic plan, or a long-range plan, or whatever other kinds of plans we wanna create. We do our annual planning around what board priorities are. We do budget planning around what we're gonna be doing this year. The CIP has traditionally been really administrative-driven and kind of presented to us as this is the product of the administration. And as a board, I'm not sure how much I care about a CIP. Do I ignore the CIP? Thank you for the money, Feds, and we're gonna use that money now. It will be consistent, because you're a grant source. We're gonna be faithful to you, but it's not really our big plan for the year. I think, I don't wanna speak for Libby, but I think what she presented here, coming with what I know is coming from ESSA, eventually the CIP will be something that drives us and moves us. This CIP model has only been in place for two years. Okay. I think last year when they gave us the CIP, I asked that question, like, is this extra, or is this what you're really working on? And the principal said, this is what we're really working on. It's meant to be that driving thing, and eventually it will be. There's just a, and the AOE would tell you this, too. There's just this little hiccup that doesn't make it. It's not everything that they're working on. Right. That's where we got stuck. Yeah. Is that it's only a small piece of what we're working on. Especially as a board. Well, if you think about the three things that you named, Steve, one of them being budget planning, this is significant for budget planning, because we pay for 10 positions. Not that many. Well, yeah. 10 positions out of it. So if we were to say, whatever, we're just gonna ignore that federal grant funding, then we gotta come up with some money locally. You know, the fact that UES was grandfathered in this year, if they do not, if that free and reduced doesn't increase next year, they don't get money. Like, we can't give them title one money. So then we have how many interventions is paid with money from UES? We have one right now. So one full-time position is gonna have to be made out of local funds. Or just continue. Or just continue. Right, so it does affect influence budget quite a bit. You know, that's like seeing we have, I mean, I get that, but you know, if we have a funder who wants to do, you know, buy pizza ovens for us, we're gonna write the grant, we're gonna get the money, we're gonna do the pizza oven, right? And that's gonna be piece of our budget for the year, just as this is. But it's not, it doesn't encompass our holistic improvement plan for the district. It's more of satisfy a funder, and I'm not, this is positive, satisfy a funder and do what you say you're going to do for those 10 out of however many positions we have. But don't let it be the document that encompasses all planning for the district. Well, unless we wanted to use it and add other things. Which we can absolutely, we can do. Yeah. Because then we could have one plan that sort of starts with the things that we need to access that funding, but also. So the agency's having that struggle, and maybe we will have that struggle too, about where, how comprehensive we want this document to be for us. So the revision really took those big plans and those things that are driving us and just narrowed it down to appease one house. But it didn't get rid of that stuff. So if you look in the original CIP and you look for literacy components, they're all there. There were a lot of them. Industry structure. Right, exactly. Tina. I think the other thing to think about is, I worked at the agency for 10 years, and it's always been this struggle. Vermont thinks this way about doing things, but the federal government is thinking about the entire nation, and they have these rules they're thinking about. And the money comes from there. So you have to tend to the rules, you want the money, you have to meet the rules, and then see how it fits in your whole plan. But I think in fairness to the agency, it's always fighting to get what we need because we are different. We're little. And we don't compare to the rest of the country in lots of ways the country would like us to. So it's been a continual fight. So you're saying the agency vision for the CIP is that it is your plan for your district. It is the plan for your district. That's the agency vision. It's not a plan for your district. It is the plan for your district. And then they're not maybe there all the way. The other thing that I always found hard was that I wanted a plan that somebody could read. And the federal plan was never anything that you could pass out to the public and they could look at it and say, oh yeah, I get it. I know what you're doing. It had too many things about it. And the agency has always tried to say, is there a way to get a plan that meets the federal funding? Does everything it wants to do? What is what I'd call readable? And this is good. Yeah, I'm wondering why the two houses are necessarily in conflict if you're going to house one house within the other. I mean, obviously you have the federal funding and the positions should be part of your broader. Here's what I would say. The way you were wrong to do it. Last year when they rolled this out, Libyan kind of tested this. First they said they were just going to show it to us and we didn't really have to use it. And then about halfway through the process, yeah, we want you to use that. So really this is the first full year that schools in Vermont have been using this continuous improvement plan. And I think if you consider that year one last year, the pilot of a consolidated federal grant administrator is figuring out how to navigate this and schools how to navigate this. Year one, we're doing okay. Next year, going in with the big overview and what we know about ESSA and how we can structure this, we're going to do a much better job of tailoring a CIP to speak to both houses. As far as the agency of education and why those two houses aren't meshing, there's a lot of reasons. So get used to the CIP, its power is growing and we will be using it as a more comprehensive document for our district over time. Is that, Libby, would you say that's about right? And I'd say coming from my previous district where I was in charge of this process, our CIP was grander because I had the time to build it with my leadership teams and my agent-by-schools, whereas we just didn't have the time. We had to get that funding guarantee so that we could pay people salaries. So there's some, because of the timing, we couldn't necessarily make it the way we want to, but it's possible because I did it in the past and I'm sure Mike did it for his previous district as well so that it didn't just look like, we just think interventions and coaches are what's going to change everything. You know, or what's going to drive us. And that's kind of what it looks like right now, but that's because of the necessity. So Libby, when you were working with your grand plan in the previous district, was it solely the administration team that was working on it, or did you have more board input, more parents, public input, public inputs? We had not as much parent input as we probably would have built, but we had distributed leadership teams. So teams from each school, principal, assistant principal, if they had one, coaching staff, special education leaders, so teacher leadership teams as well all worked on this plan and it's a yearly process. We're looking at goals yearly and coming back every couple months saying, how are we doing? What's our evidence towards that? How do we need to revise and revamp now that we know more? So it's an organic process that nails it in the CIP at the end of the year. You can bring things together. Do you envision a board role? I can envision a board role in holding us accountable to what we say we're gonna do. I think that's the biggest board role in terms of the continuous improvement plan. These are our goals. This is what we're gonna say we're gonna do. So we have to show you that in good faith we're making some efforts and we're doing it. And if we haven't reached it, then we better give you some good reasons why we haven't. You know, that's the major board role. As community members and parents, then we have to figure out a way to get input there too because that is absolutely part of the SLO. Is that parents and community play a larger role in continuous improvement planning than they have in the past? If this is the big planning document for the district every year in the future, I wonder if the board needs to advocate for a big role? Because the board, one of the board's jobs is to bring the priorities of the community to the district. I think the board's role in that is for mission and vision and ends policies. Because that's for the priorities of the community. That should represent the priorities of the community. So what we present to you in continuous improvement planning, knowing, teaching, and learning really well should represent that thinking. And how does SNVision and community and parent? They just say do it. There's no action steps behind it. Mike, I would you say anything? Well, is it an action step or is there like kind of substantive things? The only thing I would say is that we've had stutter steps at both the CIP and ESSA. So they, I'm trying to say them very politically correct way. We hear about it almost halfway through the year. So that's when we get our first glance at it. And by then, your routine, your year long stride has already started. So it's hard to kind of start those up. So CIP last year, we found out about it in December. I can't remember. And by then, how do you thoughtfully involve people in your year long mission because people get into the school year zone? So with ESSA, one of the things that they showed us is that there is kind of a rhythm to it. There's a start, there's a period where we get a report card as a district in schools. There's a period of review, there's a survey period, there's all these things. So once we have a chance to get that rhythm to align with this overall structure, I think it'll feel really good to everybody. But ESSA does not say this is how we want parent involvement to look. It's just you have to do it. So once, for me, it's about rhythm and routine where people can feel comfortable knowing when things are gonna happen and how they're gonna happen. We haven't had a chance to really take that for a ride yet. Sure. So if the CIP has kind of technical education, here are our priority things that we're gonna work on for the next few years. It seems to be that our role is to make sure that we have you guys explaining to us why those are the priorities and how those move us toward our mission. And then it's our job to work with the community to kind of check that, like, okay, the administration is telling us they're doing X, Y, and Z for these reasons and it's gonna move us the direction we wanna go. Community, does that sound right to you? And kind of go, does that seem like? I was reading something the other day and it was about superintendent school board relations kind of thing. And one of the quotes that I loved in it was that it's my job to make you sound so smart about your education. So that you can go out and talk to the community. But also then make sure that when... Let's meet back. Yeah, so you make us sound smart by ensuring that we understand why you're doing what you're doing. But then we give that to the community and if they say back to us, that is totally not what we want. We don't see bass fishing moving us toward, you know, meeting every child's needs at all. And then we have to come back to you and say, can you either explain this again or maybe do something different? Absolutely, absolutely. That's Steve, what I would think our job is, is to look at the plan presented and see if there's something glaring missing that we know is of concern to the community to say to the administration, I don't see this here. So where is that and how might you handle that? It's their job in my view to write it, to present it to us and have us sort of review it. And I'm absolutely in agreement that the superintendent's job is to educate us. So we're really smart. Well, we don't have that. That's not what I'm hearing. I'm not hearing that we have the power to say it's not okay. It's not that it's not okay. I think if there were, for example, I said, I want to hear about the kids, the low socioeconomic kids and what are we going to do to make them? Well, that's something I've heard from the community and I want to make sure that somebody explains to me where it is in this plan. I'm not necessarily changing the plan unless Libby says to me, oh, no, no, I'm not at all concerned about the low socioeconomic kids. I don't want to. Which would never come out of my mouth. Which would never come out of my mouth, but the point is then we'd have to have a discussion, right, but she's more going to explain to me where it is. I guess I'll just admit that I don't understand this, but it seems to me that, and I like the way you retorted what I said, Libby, about what our role would be, which is to check it against the policies, effectively. But if we're checking it against the policies and we disagree, are we approving it before it's submitted? Or is this something that's continually revised? It's a living, breathing document. Does that mean the agency gets revisions regularly from us through the year? They would like to. They have it in phases right now. This is phase one. Somewhere in the grant software it says phase two. Nobody knows what that means yet. And it also says phase three and phase four. So we're waiting, and it goes back to how Mike so nicely put the routine and taking things for a test drive. They're taking us for a test drive right now with this particular move. And they're not telling us what those mean because they don't know what they know yet. I guess I don't understand why we have the major planning document for the district is not board approved. Oh, it is board approved before it gets started. It is, you will point to it. Just before it's submitted. Yes, before it's submitted. There's actually a box that says here's the date the board approved in, here's the minutes that we can attach to the, there's an actual spot for that in the grant software. Right, that's very reassuring. I mean, I think that the idea is, we will need to check it against some standard and policies is an excellent one. We'll have to very carefully craft our policies to make sure we're getting what we want. But that's a, you know, I think that, as it grows, as this God becomes more powerful, it's gonna control our budget more and it's gonna, instead of having a budget discussion about budget priorities in isolation, that will be part of a CIP, I imagine. And when that's happening, we have to really, as a board, stay on top of when is our opportunity to influence the direction of the district? And I think we've tried various entry points in the year to do that and they haven't always been smooth. And so, we have to figure out as a board is what is the least friction way to influence the annual, you know, the annual execution plan. And so, if the CIP is it, I just wanna make sure I get it in. It sounds like the CIP is it. And, or will be, maybe isn't there yet, but someday it will be, and kind of just focus where we should in terms of trying to assert our influence as board members. That's all. So, just trying to figure out how to do it without friction. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, because obviously it needs to meet certain requirements, but if we have a major document guiding our budget decisions and that document starts to be working where the community wants to go, that's gonna be a problem. Yeah. I'm gonna hold the bass fishing at bay. Mike's a little upset with that, but I'm gonna hold that. She's just a negotiating card. It's an official athletic team recognized by the BPA now. Yeah. It's not gonna be just you. Provides them just ounces of excitement. Thank you both for a really easy to understand presentation. Yeah, and just those, those are great and more of those, I mean, not a regular basis. I'm a board member. To the board and I think to the public as well. And the fewer acronyms always. And when we use them, because we use them daily. Yeah, now I know I know I know I know I know. You just gotta call us out and just say what that means. Great. So, policy reading number five discussion on action items. First is transportation. I have something to add to that, comment on that. As you know, this has been introduced. It's a required policy, which I think is right. That's something we kind of figured out recently that it was required a little more urgently than we thought. We had two required policies that the district had not yet to adopt. The transportation policy and the student self-explanatory policy. I just want to acknowledge this policy's kind of road policy to get something on the books. There has been a transportation committee that's looking holistically at that basically ways to get a policy and that is more equitable and serves some students who right now are not being well-served from transportation standpoint. So, while we're gonna move this forward tonight, I would love to put my sentence in there just that the board intends to revisit this policy as per the work of the transportation committee within the year. Now, Jen has decided to furnish slash has not, has decided not to furnish. We need to choose one. I think we have decided to furnish. Yeah. Yes. We still have both choices. Well, that sounds good. Well, there are lots of blinks in here, too, that have to be filled in. This is just a general first reading. Just as a thought, I don't think parents will be in this policy, but we do have parents that are... So, Sarah's favorite reading is both. Right. There are a couple who are very concerned about this and have come to our meetings, which is pretty unusual. Would it be made wise to add a little sliver should what you suggest and say, we recognize this current policy is not the median needs of the whole district, which is why we're going to come back to this when the transportation committee makes this recommendation. Something like that. So, we could, look, we should show this to some of those things. Like, look, we know this isn't complete. We're not just saying we're coming back. We know it's the median needs. We just, a couple more adjectives. Thank you. This is the minute to reflect on this. I mean, this policy is so bare bone. I'm not sure we can say it is or isn't median. I think if the minutes reflect that we'll readdress it, I think that'll take care of it. I'm just a little worried. I'm not sure if people... Committee action meeting. The answer is it's actually immediate. We passed a draft transportation policy onto the policy committee for review. And it's not this one, I assume. And it's not this one. This one kind of, because the one that we proposed, I think requires some discussion by both the policy committee and the board. It's long and it considers some of the challenges that we face in terms of... Well, I'm sure that addresses, and it's a subject that's been brought up in the community isn't here, a distance from the school, for example. That isn't even addressed here. That's a big deal. This, I think, is a shining box. Can you say it again? Distance from the school. We had a policy that, you know, you weren't picked up unless you were a certain distance from the school. Well, this gives the superintendent the ability to establish routes and to consider following these factors, including distance to be traveled. I don't know whether maybe he wants that kind of latitude under our current circumstances. Right, I was gonna say, I wouldn't if I were the superintendent, given the community right now about establishing, she might establish the routes. That's not it. To establish, I will pick up this person and not pick up that person has been the discussion in this district, and that's where we need to know how. And based on our current reality, the policy right now, as we stand right now at our current reality, shouldn't have a distance piece because we don't have the capacity at the moment budgetarily or in terms of just buses. If we were to put a mile radius, for instance, and a kid lives outside of that mile radius and we currently don't have a bus going there, we don't have it in our budget to put a bus in. So our current reality inhibits us a little bit. Yeah, we know that. Yeah, yeah. I just wanna make sure that we don't put something in tonight. I don't know if it's tomorrow. My concern is that given that this says that it's all up to you, that those demands may be made. We just wanna know, you didn't know you have support in doing this and how would we do that? Yeah, I'm not sure how to adjust. My sense is this is a real folk, real core operational issue and the board should stay out of it as much as possible. And I think that if the superintendent can accept the heat around this, which I think you probably can, I think that by creating a procedure that is based in some objective criteria and that is balanced by a budget, then I think that the board should, this is a perfect area for the board to stay out of. I mean, I think the board may wanna put in a transportation policies some values rather than some rules. For instance, one of our values might be that we encourage a walking district or that we encourage as little use of fossil fuels as possible or we understand the economic sacrifices that are required when a bus is not available or those sorts of, those are values. And if we insert those into transportation policy, we've given the superintendent some values that the community should live by. But I don't think that deciding whether it's a mile or 1.1 mile or whatever that is, I just don't understand why we would as a board want to be setting that kind of an operational rule. I partially agree. I mean, I think there are, and there have been some, there's some inequities in how we transport kids. That's how you define inequity. Well, seems very equitable to me. Well, it's equitable in some ways, but in inequity, you know, for instance, there's a lot of people, kids that can walk, there are a lot of kids that are in situations where walking is not practical, where they live on the far ends of some streets like Down Elm Street, up on Berlin Street. You have situations where, you know, I mean, a single parent who lives up the top of Berlin Street with a 10-year-old fifth grader on a negative five-degree day is gonna have to either find a way to have someone drive their child to school or send them on a 50-minute walk alone. So where are you gonna draw the line? I think you'd give the value to the superintendent. Say, here's the value we have. We understand the economic hardship, we understand that age is a determiner and what's appropriate for walking. I mean, I don't know, but where are you gonna start? You're gonna start drawing bus lines. Making sure that we give direction that those situations are taken account of for. Because, you know, we're a walking district. That's a lot of parents here who are in situations where, for them, it's not a walking district. You know, having their kid walk down Route 12 for three miles, you know, they're an 11-year-old down Route 12, you know, back and forth twice a day, three miles from middle school. Yeah. You know, it's walking for someone on Liberty Street, but for that family, it's not a walking district. That's not making a walking district. Let's make it a busing district. But, you know, my point is it has to be, I think we're talking about, we gotta be really careful about going into the details, and I think our previous policy maybe did too much of that. You know, it maybe had nothing about values and only about operational rules, and our middle school proclaims to be a walking school because we have no place for cause. But it's not really, right? So, it can't be for some kids. So, I don't know, I mean, I'm very sympathetic to all economic arguments, but I'm not really interested in having people come before us asking us to add their street. Being one of the people that lives at the top of Berlin Street, We understand this problem, and my kids walked, and I guess my thought just is that we just have to be equitable. I felt when my kids were there, it was okay that people, they walked, but so did the people out Elm Street or somewhere else. So, in thinking about it, to me, it's just a question of equitable. Are we, you know, not going to go out one street, and I agree with you, I can't know which of those streets and how far out to go, so I don't want to do that, but I'm giving it to the superintendent to say, just be equitable. So, that's a value. Yeah. So, I'm thinking about the context. So, again, the transportation committee has a rough graph policy right now, that's not in front of us. That's not in front of us. The policy committee had recommended we bring this cookie cutter template from BSBA to the board to essentially get us through, to have something in the books to allow us to go, but it almost sounds like, as much as we're deliberating this now, and if that could concern that some parents might not take this draft well, that we should just completely hold off on adopting this policy until we can. Well, I think it's fine to doubt this policy, so it's very clear that we're going to come back to. We're going to work on revising it, and there are some volunteer parents who spend a lot of time with the transportation committee who gave two hours, gives thoughts, there are some other parents who have any conversations. So, I mean, I think we need to have a conversation here for the public about the type of values and considerations that we want in transportation policy. And I just fear that, given that we've had conversations, we've had some involvement to kind of quickly pass the cut-and-paste policy and say, okay, we're done, it's not a rational thing, we're walking away, is not considerative of the involvement that some people have already given. I think they deserve it. A deeper discussion they deserve to have, I think some very valid considerations for it, and to get some assurances that those considerations are being taken to the California, so what we're actually doing. It's not very many weeks, however, before the start of school. So, do we have enough to start school? No, yeah, we're not gonna have a different, or radically different transportation system for this coming year. And we're okay with that, right now? We're okay with that, I don't think we have choice. Okay, okay, that's all, right now. Yeah, but I think we should try to find some ways to improve the transportation options for next year. Pam Arnoldt and I have been talking about that, and one of the contacts that Pam put it in, I thought very smartly was that we have so many changes happening at Main Street Middle School because of the addition of Roxbury students coming in and passing coming in, that let's take this opportunity this year to study what's happening, and then make some good decisions off of what we learn. I mean, this template is actually, you know, the one, two, three, four, you could just change those one, two, three, four to anything you want, and you've got a pretty workable format for this policy. You know, age and health of pupils, maybe you expound on that a little bit. Distance to be traveled, I mean, that just means nothing, but you could expound on that a little bit and speak to the economic or the whatever impacts of that. So I think that, you know, you could start, this is a great document, and then it just doesn't have as much meat in it maybe as we need to add to it. Well, we might only need to revise the policy, I mean, what we might be able to do is, as long as, I think as long as the work of the transportation committee comes back to the board to do, what we might decide to do is take the work of the transportation committee and maybe go develop procedures under this policy that reflect these values. And we might stay with that policy and then, you know, the administration could come up with more specific procedures that, you know, are reflected in, the budgeting are reflected in your relationships with GMT, et cetera. So, I don't think we necessarily have to, that policy thing which might be applied is very broad, but I just don't want this to be a, okay, we're done with transportation. Thank you folks for putting all that hard thought into it. But surely then- We're swiping it away in a five minute decision and calling it operational. Surely you can just have that conversation with members of your committee. I think they're going to take it this week. It's working the way out. I mean, why would they if you say we have to put this in place, it's a placeholder, obviously we're working on a new policy. Yeah, no, I think that's fine. Oh, but Jim's saying maybe we don't do new policy and I think that's still up in the air is whether it's a policy or, you know, a procedure or a plan. Well, I don't think we're going to decide that right this minute until we see the work that they've done. So I move without this. Second. We're not able to. It's first reading, right? It's the first reading. Oh, okay. Policy. You're right. I think you just have to first read it. Just read it. Yeah, you just read it. So no change changes, yeah. Well, now's the time that you can make changes and then it has to come back again to change it. Looks good. I suggest we put the name of the district in the blanks. Good suggestions. I want to show. That's a good idea. And choose the... Increase the discretion. Okay. And decide the decided... All districts. And choose the decided to or decided not to. Yes. This last line is kind of odd. Maybe it's always done and I've missed it. I don't think so. And shall include in his or her annual report to the board, information is to all pupils transported by the school district. Yeah. It's like really like we need a list or what? That whole sentence is weird because we have all these other policies about which contracts come to us. I think those, yeah, those contracts would probably have to come for us. Based on other policies. Based on the... It could be in the in an annual report to the board. Do you think that's a required sentence? A description of how, you know, this is, yeah, strike it, strike the paragraph. It doesn't make any sense, paragraph. Unless it's, we should check the statute. Because we think we keep striking things. Regent would tell us you can't do that without checking first. Because we can think how many details are on the boardings we have to present to the town, like there's... And this is a contract, some schools own buses. So it's a case of the superintendent has to ask you, can they buy a new bus? Well, that's included in his sentences to funds to maintain or operate equipment. Right. That's the whole other. But that's why I say that's why it's here. If we were operating our own transportation system, the superintendent might be coming to say, we need a new bus this year. And by the way, it's going to cause this. But again, that's covered under other policies. Anytime she buys something big, she has to. That's a capital. Right. I guess, is there any harm in leaving the sentence? Well, we are trying to streamline it with other policies. I think we should be told Bridgette's here too. Yes, it has to be read again anyway. So let's leave it until the next one. Thank you. Right. Transportation is not a required policy. You are not required to transport. You are not required to transport. Well, you are required to have policy. Yes. Got it. And we do transport. Are we OK? Yeah. Student expression, any comments or changes to that? This is our third meeting. That's what I was going to say. When have we been at least once? I spoke with Bridgette last week and went through some of these policies. She had mentioned that in the last reading for this, that she had said something to the board about she felt like it might not be a total alignment with the statute. She had said that she didn't go back and review. She didn't have a chance to. But she felt comfortable presenting this award for an option just to keep things moving into the future. She spent more time with the statute and the policy to see if there actually was maybe a little bit of a difference or conflict. But she said she felt comfortable presenting this to the board for an option tonight. So that means we have a, well, is there any further changes? Otherwise, we can entertain the motion to adopt. Motion to adopt. I'm able to adopt the policy. Student freedom of expression. So there is. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, it's her. Has it been awarded yet? Oh, OK. OK, that's good to know. So if we, so will it be awarded for the next? OK. For September yet. Because I think we've had the ballpark partner. Thank you for that, Heather. Heather, could you also make sure the minutes reflect that the board will take up the work of the transportation policy and inform any other revisions to the policy that was just read or guidance for seekers? You know what the transportation policy is? It's the legal reference. The other policies have their intersection of entities. Very great. So I think further on the policies. Agenda item number six, finance and operations. And we're hearing from Andrew LaRosa on the updates to the playgrounds and the projects occurring around the district. So we are having our kickoff meeting for the playground project tomorrow. Ryan, myself, the designers, the engineers, the contractors, as well as the contractor, the site contractors, as well as the contractor for the vestibule project are meeting up at ECI's office tomorrow. We'll have the priority of that meeting is coordination and getting a handle on the schedule for construction. They are the one date that we are hammering home and they've accepted. And then realize is the opening date of August 25th or whatever it is next fall. So that's really where we're building everything off of. With regards to specific dates of when they're going to start, I'll have a better handle on that after tomorrow's meeting. And it's going to be a great opportunity for Ryan to meet the folks and start that relationship. We're also, Ryan and I are also starting an internal weekly meeting just for coordinating, making sure that we're staying ahead of what's happening and what needs to happen as we go through the construction process. So after that meeting, if somebody says to me, what's the schedule for the playground progress, I might have something? What we are also doing with Mike and Ryan and myself is he is setting up a web page through the district website that will have the schedule and frequently asked questions. And we're going to really focus all the information to that one portal of information. So when someone asks you a specific question about the playground, what we would like to do is to be able for you to feel confident in saying, go to the web page. It's going to have the most up to date information, probably better information than I have. And if you don't get the answer you're looking for, there's going to be a link for you to email Andrew or Ryan and they'll get that information to you as quickly as possible. And I'm basing this question on past experience. When I go to the website, it'll be painfully clear for me to go where to find it. There will be a link that says Playground Update. Thank you very much. Yeah, we'll make sure that it's very clear and that will be up next week. Oh, thank you. And we're going to use Ryan's sort of weekly update to the parents as sort of the backbone of, because they're the ones who are going to want the most detail and the most information, so that's going to be a really good starting point for how we disseminate information. Yeah. I'm sorry. Three, three, go ahead. I'll let you to finish. So I heard you say, and I've been saying this, so I want to make sure we're right, that the end date is the same. We're going to open August 25th next year, and that's staying the same. That is. Thank you very much. It's yours. So one thing is if Ryan's doing a weekly email to parents, which is awesome, can you make sure that he sends it to the board? Oh, you don't get it yet? Absolutely. Make sure that that. The Y's on hold is now something else. Yes. The swoop, scoop, swoop, swoop, swoop, swoop. Yeah. Swoop, swoop, swoop, swoop, swoop, swoop, swoop. What those two words ordered in something? So yeah, if you can make sure that he subscribes all of the board members to that. Absolutely. That's something that we have, that the principals need a reminder every year to make sure that the board members are on that list, and not just the board members who happen to also be parents in that school. Yeah, and Mike McCraith has been a good person for him to talk to. I heard the two of them just talking yesterday about how Mike sends his soul, soul, I can never say that word correctly. Soul and sleep. You don't have to do that. So what is that? No, no, no. Saludes to the Times Argus, you know, and those are the kind of things that Ryan's just new to Vermont, new to ideas of doing that. So yeah, I will make sure that that gets sent to you. Do you get the mainstream household panel thing? No. Well, not in my mind, or I haven't had a middle schooler, so I don't know. But Steve, you don't have to. Actually, I do. It's just, it's a little less produced than the other ones. And so I get it, it's, yeah. It's part of the U.S. And last year, I think she did it weekly. Yeah, no, I got it. No, it's just, it's totally uninformative. Yeah, it's very much, it's necessary, but it's not as flashy as it is. And I was being free. She's so proud. It's Pam, you know, she's getting it done. And I'll speak for both Lisa and I if you have children in none of the schools. Right. We'd like to be on all the lists. So that was just question number one, and I'll probably forget all three, but, oh, comment instead of question is right now on the website. For people who are looking for information on the website, you have to click students. There's some choices, students, staff, families, something else. If you click students, there's a world of information there. If you click families or staff or anything else, it says content coming soon. But if you click students, there is a fact information. And there's a lot of great stuff. It's been, it's great. Yeah. But people have complained to me, there's nothing there. Yeah. You have to click students. It's a secret. And there's stuff there. All right, we'll make sure that that's clear throughout the week. Yeah, because it's a victory. You guys are doing a great job, but you just need to get it out there. Yeah. And then the last question is Jay Erickson. Is he continuing as the project manager? No. Jay's been immensely helpful over the last couple of months. And the transition from being a community liaison and doing some real legwork with permitting and all that, now that we've gotten over that hump and we're starting to focus on shoveling dirt, that's where this transition of communicating with the public and getting all that, that's where we're going to take that over. Because it's just too long of a lead time to get the information down the pipeline. So by the time he'll get it from me or Ryan or the contractor, it's going to be a week old and by then something will change. Right. Because I've been consistently referring people to Jay, but then you've been not mentioning Jay. So I just thought I should just now, just now you did that to me. Oh, yes, yes, yes. I thought I should just double check that. Yeah, ideally we're transitioning, giving him a break from having to field all those questions. Okay, so send folks A to the webpage, but then if they still have questions. We'll have a link for our, if we don't answer your question, there's going to be a link for Ryan and I. And I think what we're going to do is we're going to figure out a way that the question will go to both of us, because I'm sure that's not going to be just a technical question, but it's going to be an operational question. And we're going to say, hey, this is how I think we're going to handle this. And he's going to say, oh, this is how I think we ought to handle it. And we'll make sure that we're on the same page. We'll communicate it back out. Steve. I just want to say great work on those. It was a CAX story. You got, I thought that, you know, there was a little news thing for the TV and I think celebrating the little victories is really important. And I'm glad you did that. And I think that if you can find other opportunities as the project goes on to keep some positive enthusiasm rather than people don't know my God, more mud, right? I think that, you know, celebrate little milestones. I think that it'll help, but very positive. It's good for the district when you do that. So thanks. Yeah. And there's Steve and the bridge and there. They're always looking for stories. And we've got, you know, a couple of days, you'll see the sheep herder out on the bike path, the poison ivy. Oh, that came out tonight. It was tonight. She was doing a soft opening machine, was concerned about separation anxiety. There's just one event by the newspaper people around. The newspaper story. I thought I did it on Facebook. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I posted some pictures of it too. I think don't touch the goats because they're covered with poison ivy. That's very smart. I liked it. So that's where we're at. We'll do our best to give the best information we have and try to. And if the system that we set up is you're finding community members saying that's not what they're asking for, just please let us know so that we can change what we're doing. And one of the things that for everyone, what we've, Jay and I communicated to the neighbors was when you talk to the public, encourage them to come with us with concerns before they become problems because we can manage concerns and we can help with concerns and problems just you spend the time dealing with the problem, not the actual problem. So that's... I will agree with Steve in that it was well done and what I heard is the work you spent with the community members directly on that street has been well worth your time because the comments from other people to me have been and they're not upset. No, that was okay. That's right. And I think that was really important and really good. There are bigger supporters. Say thank you, Andrew. Compliments come few and far between. Yes. The construction on the building itself is happening simultaneously or what's the schedule on that? It will as well. I spoke with that contractor. Steel, they're still at steel shops. So they won't even have steel available for that project for steel. Last summer was six, eight weeks out. So they're still in steel shops on that. So it's gonna be a little while before they get wrapped up. They'll be breaking ground on buildings and such this fall? Yes, absolutely. The goal is to get that one done as quickly as possible so that we can make sure we don't have to gain access to the back side. Will there be, is the preschool access on that, a preschool drop off, is it gonna be happening on the vestibule side or whatever you call that new? I think that what we're currently, it's on Loomis School, that corner. It will evolve. I fully believe that, even some conversations that we've had today regarding low handicapped parking. Once the vestibule's done and their sort of work zone collapses, we may have an opportunity to put some handicapped parking down there. Until someone says I need that for a bulldozer. So undefined not gonna be, at this point we don't have a firm idea how it's gonna be used or when? For the vestibule? Just the vestibule. As soon as it's available, we're gonna utilize it. Even though we're gonna be doing playground out there too at the same time. We'll keep a corridor clear to that. Yeah. Okay. And we'll- How long is the vestibule supposed to take? On paper, it will take four months. In reality, it'll be five. It takes five months to build anything. And how about the actual moving of the earth? Will it be done first? Again, that's contractor is, that's what they make their money is figuring out how to sequence these things the most efficient way they can. We'll have a better handle on that tomorrow. Exactly. How much scope they wanna take care of this fall? How much they're gonna leave for the spring? There, and I shouldn't speak for them. And I get myself in trouble because I say, don't say things you don't know about and then you start speculating about what they know about. All I can say is they wanna do it as efficiently as possible. So- I have to say what I'm thinking about is the start of school with large trucks outside my window if I'm a teacher. And it might be part of this year's education. I'm just thinking about it. Yeah, absolutely. The good thing is I do not foresee big trucks running around in the first couple weeks of school. So that at least people have a chance to understand traffic patterns, know where they're supposed to be, understand how things are laid out now, get used to that a little bit. And then, absolutely, the teachers are gonna be concerned, the kids are gonna love it. Yep, that's true. I also wanna say that Andrew's been putting in long hours in our offices to ensure that this gets better. So I thank him for his hard work on this project. It's been a great addition to the team. Another project I'd like to bring up is the mudlock out front. We met with Steve Avery from the Credit Union and Tom Bachman from Gossets Bachman. And they would like to sort of move this along. And they requested that we give them, at least give them the okay that they can start meeting with some officials with regards to fire lanes and access and city officials. We wanna just run it by you guys to make sure that people didn't come to you and say, hey, I hear you're building something and you guys didn't know about it. So if that's okay with you, we'll give them to go ahead and they'll start those conversations. Has the board already gone through this? Well, we have. Not with me, so that's why I'm bringing it back up. They did, they came. Yeah, they came. We talked about it. We sat here and we approved them. Two months ago? Yeah, it was. More than that. Well, we approved the contract with the Credit Union in June at the beginning of June. Right, and you weren't here. That's why I wanna ask rather than, okay, so you've gone through this. We approved the contract with them in June. We did. Okay. The Montpelier board. Three-year contract. I think this joint board, was it the joint? I think it was joint. It was the joint board, yeah. I don't think the Montpelier board was approving any contracts really at the end. So, in one sentence, what are we doing? Yeah, what are we doing? 35 parking spaces, I think. We have leased the mud lot to VCCU. They use it during business hours, nine to five Monday through Friday. We, district has access to it nights and weekends. And they want to improve it, which is great. Tom, they're going to pay to have the park to start completing it. I just need to take off my board for a moment because I have a conflict of interest here. But I tried to find you yesterday, but you weren't there. So, as the director of Friends of the Monewski River, I have a $20,000 grant to do stormwater design on that lot, which I would love to contribute to that process. But I need to talk to you about how that works. How long is our lease? Three years. Thank you. And the leasehold improvements are now on by us. Thank you. We need to work on that. Is this lease signed already? Excuse me. And I don't want to get too far out of my, there is a current lease, what now that it's going to be improved, Steve Avery wants to speak with Grant and eventually you guys, with regards to how do we structure it now that they're spending real money on this and sort of the exit clause, what the exit clause would be. Yeah, that's a big deal. Leasehold improvements are normally owned by us. Well, here, here. Unless negotiated otherwise. Here is the scoop that we discussed with the credit union previously. And I'll just kind of fill you in a smidge because I was working on this contract with Brian since June of 2017, took forever. And the big reason that it took forever is because Pietro Lynn does not like to obligate the district to long-term contracts, did not want us to get into a 20 year agreement with them. The credit union wants a 20 year agreement in order to make this investment. So I don't know where we are with that, but what we've learned, somehow very far into this conversation was that in order for us to do a contract that's longer than three years, it has to go to a vote, a city vote. I'm not sure why. And I'm not sure actually whether that's still the case now that with the merger, the city no longer owns the land, it's now owned by the merged district. I think that has changed since we are. So I don't, that rule may even be different now. So the terms of this contract are important because they could effectively, without a three year contract, lock us in to much longer than three years. If we had a big buyout of the leasehold improvements at the end of three, we would be obliged to continue until that was no longer a budgetary consideration. I have no idea what the value, do you know the value of the leasehold improvements? They, the construction value they put on, the number they sort of just tossed on the table without anything other than a colored pencil sketch was anywhere from 175 to $300,000. Okay, and are they counting on, does this go through city permitting? So there'll be, in addition to screening, there may be lighting requirements and things that aren't on here. So I just think 300,000 figure is a number, three to 400,000 by the time they're done. And if maybe we're like, at the end of three years, we're like, we'll buy it, we'll take it, we'll pay for it if we really need it. But I just want to say that I mean, approving a three year contract is fine, but that clause about what do you do with leasehold improvements is really what matters. So maybe since we're not very clear about the change from the Montpelier board to the Montpelier Roxbury board, the board should see the contract. Could we find the contract? The existing one. Right, the existing one. The one that we just improved in June. Yeah. And if maybe you guys could find out what, how, whether we are still subject to the requirement to hold a vote to sign a longer term contract, what? I'm going, yeah, I'm going to guess not because it used to be city property. Right. That's why that came about and it's no longer city property. Everything in the Montpelier schools through the city. Because if their interest in doing this is contingent on a longer term agreement, then we have more. Yeah, and Greg absolutely realizes that. And he realizes that it's bigger than just saying, okay, let's do it, so he's aware of that. And they want to get this wrapped up so they can make sure that they're making an investment in the right, that the deal is equitable for them as well. Are we statutory exempt from state permitting because we're an educational institution? No. No. So, okay, this might have to go through more permitting than we think. Yeah. But it wouldn't be on us necessarily to do that permitting if they're going to. I remember that discussion about they were going to do it up. They were going to do it up. That was my question. What is our obligation to doing that? They were going to do it up. That's my understanding, but normally four weeks. And pay for it all. Right. There's also a new law that schools that have three acres of impervious surface are subject to a stormwater permitting requirement and meeting standards. And I don't know. I asked the state whether this campus has three acres of impervious. It got pretty close. I think it probably does. I think it probably does. And so, ensuring that that is done properly. Did I say three in the important part? Well, we might even be over three acres above the absolute. Right. The tennis court that I've done with Ruth. Tennis court parking lot. Yeah. Yeah. But it'd be shocking to more of them. Although that's a great project. Yeah. And just there. No one's committed to any. They're just talking right now. They're going to actually show a dashed line to go up to 50 spots just for informational just to see. How many is that? How many is that? That's 40. Yeah. I think we talked in the, I think the contact refers to 25. Seems like a lower number. Yeah. Like the crisis topic that it was with the already the current footprint that it was not expanding on the current footprint of that block. But let's say that's going to be, that has to be a fire lane as well. So once they put in turning radiuses for fire trucks and things like that, we're going to wipe out a whole bunch. So it's. Yeah. So do we have another entry point on this decision where there'll be a contract modification a lot to come back to us? I foresee that I can see this as sort of two directions. One is design and it's sort of up to the owner inside how much they want to pursue and how much they want to pay their engineers to give them the uncertainty of the contact and then it's like the contract where that needs to go. We can find out more information about bringing it back September and maybe September. I think it's always been just an area that we obviously feel like needs something done to it. But I think there's been a tension about, do we really want to store cars at school more than we have? You know, why are we storing cars at school? And so it's just a, it's a kind of a, it has an emotional component to this project for some people and. But I think that's what we discussed last time. Yeah, we do. Yeah, so just, you know, just so that if it goes from 25 to 50, wait a minute, where are we going? So that's how 25 seems like we're just reusing the mud for some other useless purpose. We keep having this conversation and nothing keeps happening with the head. So. We've had it a long time. If we, if the district wants to do something better with that mud, but if they don't have a plan to do something better with the mud, if they want to do something better with the mud, they've got to stop people parking there and do something better with it. But you can't let people keep parking on that mud and not fix it because it's more of a mess as it is than it would be if it were. And I think that was the discussion we had when you weren't here and decided, let's let them do it. Right. Don't improve our mud. I think it's the mud. Well, sometimes nothing is the best solution. Maybe not this time. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. You want your drawing back? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's our agenda. May I say before you stop? No, I'm not going to do that until the retreat. But I think we'll be warned to be at the Historical Museum for our next meeting, not call the retreat, but a meeting on the 15th, correct? Yes, we have a day-long planning meeting at the Historical Society. Historical Society or the Humanities? It's at the Historical Museum. As you walk in the front door of the Historical Museum, it's the room on the left that we're in that room. Last catamount. Pardon me? Where the big clock is. Yeah. A lot of those are in the center of the school, which is the last one on the catamount. Which is a big room and air conditioner. And I haven't said I'm going to go, but I'll say verbally. Materials after the retreat send to Libby, Heather, and me by Friday morning. By this Friday morning? I'm sorry, Jim, say anything else? So we can get it out Friday afternoon or at least the electronics. Jim, I'm sorry, what? Any materials for your portion of the retreat? Or? Oh, did you tell these guys what their assignment is for the retreat? Oh, right. We did assign things. Ryan and Steve, you've been informed about the retreat, correct? I do. Right, Jim? Your budget execution stuff. Yeah, your budget. Because I won't be here. Over here? No, I'm sorry. Pre-shadow, pre-former and down a little bit, but I can't. I think then you have to talk to Bridget. Have to do what? Talk to Bridget. Talk up, that's fine. I've got a fan here, I'm sorry, I can't hear you. I'm thankful for the fan. OK, Bridget, yeah. I lose the answer because I got it. And your process, your part overlaps a little with the budget planning part, so maybe we can rethink a little on this. All right, anything else? Move to adjourn. Second? Second? In favor? All right.