 And welcome you guys, it's nice to see you, happy summer, end of summer, and agenda revisions? Yes, I'd like to talk about the RFP for the track design. It actually should be in action. That will need to talk about we have an RFP for selecting a firm to do the redesign of the track. So we'll add that as 5.7. That would be great. Under the action agenda. Anybody else? Public comments? Do you want to wait until we do our equity statement, or do you want to do it now? We'll wait for the Couples and Point Act. OK, a motion to approve the minutes of June 6th and August 2nd. I'll move it. Scott and a second. I'll second. Carl, any comments? Pari, do you have anything on them? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? I want to be in the minutes this time. Do you think there are more students coming? I think so, yes. So why don't we do more than those two? Maybe more. OK, so let's do the board goals first. Is that OK? So we'll just wait. It won't take us very long. So it feels like a very long process. But we now have three goals that were set by the executive committee and the full board. And then we talked last, actually it was in June, about adding a fourth goal around diversity and equity. And I think the first goal was pretty set. The second goal, we can talk about priorities if we want, based on our training on August 2nd, which you missed, which I had at least the initial thing. And Matthew said there was a video. A video? Yeah, let me check again, Scott, on that. And then the third goal, the executive committee wants us to do a little focus in on what's the purpose of community engagement and bring ideas back to the full board in September to kind of get a shared purpose from everybody. And then our diversity goal, which Kari had a statement for. We've got a draft of that. Yeah. A couple other updates. This is coming from the executive committee last week. We have some handy-dandy summaries of policy governance that have been circulated amongst the executive committee members, and that's sort of our first foray into this cold, understanding what that model is about a little bit more. Next time we meet, Bill is going to bring us some information about a second model, maybe, in a way. And so we're going to do a survey of some different governance models and go from there. That's the executive committee that's going to do that. So do you see that as kind of off our local plate until you've done it? Any action we need to take. If you're curious to learn more, you can certainly view these policy governance summaries. And I'd be happy to share information that we get about other models. We're good with the executive committee. At some point, we're going to be bringing you something, a recommendation, let's start. And some analysis, I believe. With goal two, this is really being driven by the school quality committee. We took the summer off, as many of these committees did. We're going to meet again at the end of September. I think we're going to be probably bringing the full board something to think about. Some either recommendation or a concept, because we're going to have to move pretty quickly in order to meet this timeline of identifying a goal based on data that we get in the monitoring report and from past monitoring reports in order to be able to build those into next year's budget and plan. So more coming pretty soon on that. As Adrian mentioned, we're being asked to spend a little bit of time at this meeting talking about the purpose of community engagement, board level community engagement. So the second bullet down, September 2018, that's where we're at basically now. And when we meet at the end of September, we're going to basically compile all of that input. The executive committee will take it and draft some kind of purpose statement. And then should I talk about the fourth goal now? Yeah. And then let's go back. And then we go back. Yeah. So one last time we met, Adrian and I had a homework assignment to talk about. Fourth goal, having to do with diversity inclusion. And after thinking about it, what I would suggest is that we adopt a goal, something like, pretty simple. Develop a school diversity policy consistent with our diversity, inclusion, and equity belief statement. So everybody remembers the belief statement. You've got an updated version. We haven't actually adopted it. Actually, we can talk about that a little bit tonight. But the idea is that we could use that statement to compare draft policies. The policy is what's going to be actually guidance for the administration and the rest of the school community to put into action. And really, the thinking with a belief statement was something that we could sort of evaluate. And if that's our starting point, our foundation, then I would be comfortable looking at some examples of other policies. Because I don't think we're experts in diversity policies. I'd really like to have some good sort of pragmatic, but also legal analysis about what works in school. And then if we have our belief statement, then we can compare it against that and then go from there. Does that make sense? Yeah. And that also gives us a chance to put some tactics below our fourth goal, right? At least a few things we would expect administration to achieve. Yeah. Well, I think that would be. Whether it's curriculum or whatever. Yeah. I mean, I think that we part of that policy discussion. What are our expectations around that whole topic? So Bill is on it. He's going to be bringing us not just policies and templates, but also some tools that have been developed by other systems to help us work through that process. But I would suggest that we spend a little bit of time looking back at that belief statement and making sure that we're good with it. Not that it can't change, but that basically that's going to be our working document to work from. So do you want to do that first and then do the? Yeah, why don't we do that? I sent out an updated version. Really, the only change was the one that Karen suggested last time. I think it was the first bullet. It talks about all of our students, staff, and other stakeholders can make a positive to think of before it says do make. And that's just can. But otherwise, it's the same as what we saw last time. People OK with that? OK with that? I think it's very comprehensive. Karen, that didn't make much sense. It didn't. I sent it out over the weekend when I saw the older version. I hadn't actually made the newer version, but looking at the minutes, there was that one change. So I will send it now that I have the, well, you have it if we don't make any changes to it. Yeah. The one date of August 28th, version three. The piece that I handed out to you tonight and I sent a card with a piece that comes from the two-way retreat I actually need to have. It's a piece of paper. Yeah, I put it on your table there, and it's from what the BSBA and the BSA has adopted as an equity statement for Vermont. And a lot of the leading research right now in equity talks about three big areas to look at. And it looks like it's understanding what you define as equity, which we're working on, as a board, making a commitment to high quality teaching and learning, and then leading with a vision to eliminate inequities across any grouping of humans that you'd like to, how you'd like to do it. And it's really about doing that positive school climate and engagement environment and safety of the three sub-periods under that. And then the first bullet does a really good job of letting out all the different considerations. Yeah, that took us a little while. And that group floor was part of that. That was part of that. There were about 50 or 60 years from around Vermont, not just in the pre-K, 12, but also from higher ed and other interested parties, business around the table. I want to give you that as a point of information. There are quite a few references and resources that through my doctoral work. I've probably had three classes now on social cultural issues and all and the equities and inequities and how you work on that in the school system and in the culture. It's been a great deal of good learning, but I was not even carrying all this research to find out what I had back then. There's been many things that many other states outside of Vermont have done for auditing equities, equities practices within schools and school districts, and by actual sample policies as well. So it's not a recreating the wheel. So I think it's really great. The board's thinking about how do you define it and how do we define it here and then use that as a metric to judge what's been required. Did the BSBA adopt this? Yes. And the BSA? Yes, we did. And the BSBA supposedly, and I haven't been able to get anything from them yet, I've developed any sample policy based on this statement. So I think we have a couple of options. We could look at some of the concepts in here and see if we want to incorporate them into our beliefs, either tonight or in a month, say, or we could say we're good with the belief statement and keep this in mind for the policy level. Either way, I don't feel strongly. Kind of like I got a little more time to see with us. Yeah, I don't think we want to try and meld them tonight. But I think we could look at them again in September, look at them both and see if there are things we want to add. Does that work for people? So that would be, if we adopt a fourth goal along this line, the first step will be finalizing this belief statement. Yep. This is something that I will under... Oh, and I guess the thing I left out in the discussion, it seems like we are the group to take the lead on this. If you were wondering if the policy committee of the SU would take the lead, it sounds like they would prefer us to be the driving force on this and bring a recommendation to the SU. Yeah, I think so. So it'll be our goal first. And then we'll see what happens and we'll bring it. Where it goes from there. Okay, you guys good with that? Sure. Communication goal, it says, where is it here? By November 2018, the Washington Central Boards will define a purpose and strategy for board level community engagement and identify training needs. So we're looking for the purpose of community engagement. Why do we think it's important to engage the community? What are we looking for when we engage the community? Do we want their opinion? Do we want their guidance? What are people, you know, what does community engagement mean to you? Did they create you? Or, yeah. There's some interesting stuff out there that's at fixed answers to the questions that you're asking, which are all very good. But there are, I think, other people who are thinking about them in sometimes in other contexts, such as in city planners and things like that, but the basic problems are pretty much always the same. How do you involve the community? How do you involve people in the both exercise of self-government in a way that honors their time and their energy and their effort to actually show up and be here, but that does not ask people to do things that are not within the realm of their competence which just leads to problems, misunderstandings, and breakdown in relationships instead of reinforcing in relationships. So I think it's a very interesting discussion to have, but I think it also maybe would benefit from having some background to it. I don't know, Bill, do you, in the course of your sort of voracious reading, do you read a lot about this? Yeah, I do. Yes. For me right now, for the board and that bullet, it's not the how, it's the why. Okay, you never get people to engage when it's about the what or the how. That's usually when you get the most attention in the way you leave that attention, it's like, why are you doing it? When people agree on why we're doing it. So if you know the why, and we talked about this as the executive committee last week, that if we get from the board the why we're doing it, we can figure out the how and the what pretty easily. So we're trying to answer the hard question first. And I think at the Cal's board, you were there for some of this, Scott, it was trying to get people off of thinking about how do you, everyone wanna talk about how do you do it? And it's not about, we can go talk, I mean, we can find plenty of places, for example, where it's done well in different ways to do it, and go to the different definitions, but why do you wanna do it? It's the why, the why to go firm is we want public support to support the schools, to why, because we want greater, we want more distributed decision making, I'm just making things up. And that's not necessarily, it's just, but you as a board, I think the five years and seven, if you need to talk about that, and that's what we're talking about the executive committee, it'd be great to start to think about why we're doing it, then we can go figure out the how's from either public access, or PQ, or the other organizations, there's only a few in the world that actually do this work to say, what are the best practices to help that why? Because as I've done for my bit review, the how really is terming out why you're doing it. And if the how is to sell a budget, it's much different than you want people in on the decision making of the direction where the organization's going. So you use different how's for different reasons. So we'll talk about the why. That's what we're being asked to do right now. So right now, why do we want community engagement? Why does the U32 board, leader? One thing I'm not clear on is when we say engagement, do we mean two-way flow of information or we talk, does it also include, here's a bunch of information, like our front porch forum posts. Is that what we mean by engagement? Is that included or is it when we're saying, here's a bunch of information, tell us what you think. So is it a conversation? Right, dialogue. As opposed to just putting stuff out there. And I don't know what's the answer. I think that's a piece of it. I think it's also having community members show up to help attract me. That's a type of community engagement as well. We certainly saw, coming out of the F-46 process, we certainly saw a lot of, particularly at the elementary school level, a lot of passion from the communities about the role that they're played as the schools play in their community. And the critical piece of it is in improving communication. Improving community engagement at that level is sort of a, to put on a play at Doty is very different than getting out of budget message, come vote time. But they all fall under each other. The whole spectrum falls under community engagement. I get the impression that not only us, but our larger community feels like better community engagement will build a better school and a better community and a better educational spirit. If I were just to sort of toss out one possible answer to the question why, it would be to make people's lives better, including, I guess, not just including, but first and foremost, our students, educational experience and life experience. But also, to the extent that that kind of ripples out to include families and other members, other townspeople, try to understand. I'm thinking of our start time committee survey. There's so much in those comments about where people are struggling and what they're having trouble with. And this is sort of what I had in mind very vaguely, Bill, at the callous meeting when we were talking about this. Just the idea, is there anything we can do to just even the smallest little thing that might make that better for people? So, it's kind of part of it, part of the why would just be to understand. And that's why, when students come here and talk about their experience at school and what they're struggling with and or struggling against and the kinds of things that might actually help make their lives better and the lives of other students better. This is, I think, a great example of, you know, at least a part of that lie could be more. For me, the part of the lie comes from wanting or needing people to be educated in the community about why we make the decisions we make. Because we can sit around this board, and we can have read hundreds of pages and seen videos and participated in workshops and feel like we're making a very good decision and now have the community support. So I think the why for us is we need to feel like the community supports our decisions because they're elected officials. At the same time, we feel frustration when we feel like they just don't know. They just don't understand. They haven't read what we've read. They don't know what we know. So to me, it's little bites of education for the community so that we can disseminate. So it's not a two-way street, but like a two-thirds us, one-thirds them. Something like that, because before we make the decision, they have, at least it's been put out there, the information in whatever vehicle I don't care. But so that there's a chance for educating people on the why behind so many of our decisions. Because that's what happens. Decision is made and people feel disenfranchised and they feel like they didn't have a voice. That's where we want communication is for people in the community who aren't at these tables to feel like they had input. I agree. I think our job is to why we want community engagements to educate the public. But I also think that the public needs to educate us about things that we may not be aware of or that we don't have a broad spectrum of information about. And it's absolutely a two-way street. And I think part of it is educating people that we might get a whole lot of information and then make a decision that not everybody agrees with. And why did we make that decision? Why do we feel we had to make that decision even though there were different points of view on that? But getting information from the public as well as pushing it out to them. I agree with that. I think about this a lot in my work at the co-op because we've got a community of 9,000 owners and it's a democratic organization. So it's easy to get pushback from different areas in terms of decisions we make. So we often will choose topics to bring to the owners to have discussions about and try to get by and by having people included. At least they have the opportunity to participate before the decision is made. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. But I think it's really important to go into those kind of decision-making processes with a real belief that the information that you get from the outside will lead to a better solution in the end, a better decision. If you're insincere about that, if you're just going through the motions and say give us input and then set it aside, people sniff that out and it makes it worse. So, but if you believe that we've got these thousands of people in the community with this variety of rich perspective and we can learn from it and it will help us in making the final decision, it can be pretty powerful. One thing I would ask you to think about and there is no right answer. Okay, so that's at least one thing that I've done in all the reading I've done. You need to think about, and Carl, you were going down this road and we had this discussion at Calis too. What's the difference between, or is there a difference between school engagement and community engagement? And I would tell you this, from what I tell my colleagues in Vermont, and now that I'm in New Hampshire a lot, at least once every month, that I feel like folks over there are super intense in numbers that we have for the size of the district there are. You have tremendous community engagement. Go to a school play, go to an athletic event, come when the parents night is, the number of parents that come to this high school, prepare to go to most high schools, a lot of percentage is really high for a parent night. September 6th. Yeah. Yeah. By the way. It's just those, and it's good, I think it's really good that we have a hybrid, we have a rigor standard for Vermont and we want more. That's awesome. We want to keep doing that stuff and we want better engagement. So I'm not saying to stop, but I'm just trying to be kind of creative about what I fear from other super intense in the state and outside. And that's very interesting. Thanks. Do you have enough, do you think? So. You can take what Bill said and change it. I'd rather be one of the why's is to maintain and increase community involvement in our schools. It's like parents coming, involvement, attendance, support. And why is that a good thing? I said the why. Why do I want to meet engagement? Because of that. I'll get it wrong. The research is extremely clear about family engagement in school. It does not matter the demographic of the student that's proven across all demographics, that the more the family is involved, the higher outcomes the child has. And. There's no question. There's no question. There's no question. I can take your right to Johns Hopkins or the Southeast lab and research is very, very quick. Right. And if that just sort of triggered a thought that an advantage of community engagement, if you consider it as non-school family or non-school connected community member engagement, is that they'll vote for our budget. Which I consider to be. And that's, Scott, most of us do not talk about this where I'm probably wrong with my research. There hasn't been any research on that, on non-family involvement in schools. They're not, I searched and searched and been searching for a year. There's not a research base on how that affects student learning. Interesting. That is interesting. Okay. That's great. Thank you. We're gonna formally adopt these goals. Yeah, I was gonna say, why don't we do it right now while you're here? So. Emotion to approve the board goals, there would be four of them. The three that we've talked about and then the fourth one being the diversity goal. Is there a motion? Sure. Yeah. Scott, in a second? Second. Carl, any more discussion on those? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. I have a quick question. Do we need a retreat or are we good? What I will do, it's gonna be a little bit trickier because some of these goals are so mixed in with the full board but try and put a calendar together and actually the three of them are pretty complete but write a complete fourth goal. Yeah, okay. With some bullets. I can do that. And then try to put a calendar together. Yeah, so when I read like goal one, each individual board has to work on the physical evaluation on how they operate. So how are we going to do that? Well, that's what I'm wondering about the how. When I read this, I'm like, yes. And then like half. I don't think we really talked about that last time. I don't think there's been enough of that from me. You see the crew at the bottom of that, Karen. It says executive committee is starting that. I don't think it'll be exclusive but they're taking out some of their own money about different governance. Okay. And so I'll remember the executive committee but then come back and say, here's how. I think we are gonna evaluate ourselves. I'll bring that up. Okay. Seems like we need to do some self-reflection analysis. It's been a couple of years since we did a self-evaluation. Yes, yeah, it has been a couple of years. Yeah, we should probably. There's resources. Board source. We had, we did one. Yeah. Probably four years ago. We should probably all read the same tool. Yeah. But if we also need to analyze how we do things, our processes and what about that is effective or ineffective. So that I'll bring that up next year. Because maybe all the boards will do that. Yeah. Yeah, last time we used the BSBA tool. Yeah, yeah. And I think that might even be in the handbook, right? It is. Isn't that where we got it from? Yeah. And it's kind of the same, you know, goal to goal to is being driven by the school quality committee. Try and kind of follow. Great. Okay. I can do that. Next on the agenda is the diversity, inclusion and equity belief statement, which we sort of just touched on. But do you guys want to say something about that? Is that why you're here? Yeah. We wanted the five to go back up on the first day of school. Okay. And. Tell us a little more about that. Yeah. To stay up, to come out of town, to go up and then stay up. Because you don't really see why there would be a reason to take it down. And also we've put all this effort in, like talking to you guys, and you guys have done a lot of work as well. And we've talked to the faculty about wanting to raise the flags. And then we finally got it up and now it's down for the summer. And I feel like all the effort that we've put into it will just be a waste if we just kept it down. And I feel like it wouldn't be, I guess, it would be like a true statement for our school. Like our school in the beginning said, yes, we do support you raising the flag. And then like not putting it up would be like, we support you, but like, we're gonna keep it down. Yeah. It would be a true statement. What would be true, and I'm just wondering, if it still like spends a couple of days up and then also then moves into the atrium work and people can see it all the time, all day? Or is that different? I think it's kind of easier to talk about that. Like, I don't have anything to talk about. I don't have anything to talk about. You don't need to. You don't need to. Just something to think about. I just want like why don't, why wouldn't we raise it? So one of the things that I know that I've, I'm talking to the other superintendents that have had schools that have passed us. And one of the things that we were all in support of what it means and the symbolism it has, it's one of the pieces of work we didn't do ahead of time was think about the next time someone comes to have Black race. And how does the board put together a policy? And this might sound like a lot of bureaucratic, but it's really for the board to think about how do we make those judgments? And one of the work that I've talked to Adrienne Chair about since she and I work a lot together on that is on agenda is the same. We need to have a conversation about how we make those judgments. Because there will be another approach from another group. And I don't know why. Yeah, I was good. It was. And so the board has to have a way to think about those things. It's not a question of whether they agree, and I know they agree wholeheartedly, I'm talking to everyone individually, and I've heard from them in a meeting, that they support what the flag stands for. It's how do we make those judgments in a good way? And we talked about coming up with some kind of policy to do that. Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, we didn't have a policy, we didn't really have a context for making the decision to raise the flag other than we strongly felt that we wanted to support you in what you were asking us. I think we were really moved in that particular moment, say we want to support this. But I feel like in some ways we did that, we made that powerful statement. And now we need to make that decision again. And I think I prefer to make that decision having thought through more of the policy implications. That's where I am right now. Can I say something? As from like a teacher's perspective, in addition to being part of this group, one, I want to say by the time we had it raised, it's been raised for a very short amount of time. So I think that that is actually one thing that feels bad about it being not kept up for longer. But I do want to say as a teacher, as we started these conversations, it did make a strong statement and we started huge conversations and conversations were happening and we had plans to move forward. And I feel like the flag being up would say we're still having these conversations and make that part of the school. And the kids were showing up. I mean, I think it was really powerful. There were difficult conversations that were really important. And I feel like that would set the stage for like this is where we are. I understand the flag idea of other groups asking being difficult, but I don't know. I find those flags to be different for multiple reasons. One, like this is a statement that like many of the Vermont high schools are making because of the lack of diversity in Vermont, whereas other flags aren't being flown at other schools that I know of. And it's not bad for other groups of students to show up to the school board and do what you're talking about as far as community engagement is and come and say how they feel about things, whether or not they get approved. But it just feels to me like there would be a statement without it up. May I ask, where's the Black Lives Matter flag now? Stephen's office. Stephen's office. Yeah. Is there any thought as to where it would go? Otherwise, if it's not on the flag pole, you mentioned the utrient. Wait, we've been trying to determine what would be best whether it's a space in the atrium or another flag pole that could be up outside looking into options. We really do believe it should be up at least the first few days because that statement is really important. It's being protected right now. It's not a statement to say that we don't support it. We just wanted to take care of it over the summer and people weren't here at all the time. So it's more about where can we express support of this group and other groups too that may come forward, maybe not all of them, but the ones that make sense to support the student boys. So yeah, I think it should be up the first two days of school for sure. And then we were hoping that we could figure out where to fly it. And part of my concern about it is I know you see it when you get here, but when do you see it the rest of the day? Unless you're in a classroom on this side and I feel like those discussions need to keep happening and maybe it needs to be, that's why I put forth that idea of the atrium. Maybe it needs to be in a space where people are all the time congregating and talking and it will help improve the dialogue and bring it even more to the forefront. But maybe that's not true. That's something I wonder about. I don't know what kind of two things. One is how come we did take it down over the summer? Because Montpelier, they had bears up during the summer, so I just don't know. I don't have the answer to that specifically. I know that we... I can get that to you. Okay, perfect. So I don't know if you've heard it's happened at People's Academy this past summer, but they've had Vanity Fair before. Montpelier, there's a lot more people by the Montpelier High School. Stephen and I talked, we made a decision that we couldn't protect it all the time. And we were taking it down late at night and putting it back up early in the morning for that same reason. And we didn't want it, it was a, that's, I'm giving this a straight reason we did it. It wasn't not wanting to have it up. We wanted to protect the fly. And then the second thing is, it's that, you said like we're worried about the people hurting it, harming it, and taking it down or whatever. But if we put it in the each room, I know a lot of kids that would try to jump up, even like for the other flies. Yeah, it's not gonna be when the other flies, it's gonna be somewhere else, more prominent. Like, like in the center, on the ceiling. Yeah, not accessible. I'm not accessible. I'm sorry. Even the good jumpers. You're not supposed to do that. I'm not meant to do that. But maybe that's not the answer. I just have a couple of things. I think having the flag up front can make the school care more strong and more welcoming, especially like if you're a new kid and you're coming in and you're coming to a super, super way area and you see that, that can be a comfort to a person. Also, I think this is missing a couple of things. Like, all students benefit from diverse and inclusive school classrooms. They should strive to be welcoming and supportive of all students, families and school staff. I think that's kind of the definition of equity. Yes, that's not the board's piece. That's a piece from BSA, the Vermont School Board's Association. Oh, okay. I think they're missing a few things. I think it's missing a few things like who you put race but not racial background, ability, special needs, cultural identity. You put family economics, but it's actually socioeconomic status, home language instead of language, country of... I'm gonna say just like, we don't have any power over this. Yeah, I just think it's missing a few things. It's been written and adopted by the VSBA. The one that Jody just handed you is the one that we can change and add to. Yeah. This was just kind of for our information about what's going on in his state. One of the things that I mean, I can't skip the board, but what's coming out of the national prominent is don't try to list everybody. Yeah. Say the differences. And that there are differences among all of us. And that it's hard because that feels kind of omitted and doesn't really explain it. I'm not saying that I'm totally with that yet. I'm still trying, but I think whenever you make a list, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Whether you try or not, there's going to be another added to that at some point. You know, a couple of years ago, we could have talked about transgender wouldn't be on that list. Right, leave and gender expression. Gender expression, right. So how do we make something for the board making this statement and with law of input on this that recognizes those. So there's that inclusion piece, but doesn't get to where where did you leave something out? And I don't have a solution right now this minute, but. I think there will always be something left out. Yeah. Well, that's, it's a trend. So how do you, I was talking with someone who's a real expert at this this summer. And she was saying to me, it's really about accepting differences. And she does this work internationally. And she said the same, we're working on the same issues as the five or six countries. She does research in U.S. being one of the first Stanford University. And she said, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the Commonwealth countries, we're all doing the same. So you would rather like not have any of them? I'm not, well I would hope. I'm saying I don't know. Yeah. I'm saying I don't have an answer for you, but when you make a list, Joey said it for me, help complete my sentence was you eventually leave someone out. Yeah. Because you're making the list. It has to be all inclusive. And then what happens when there's another item. And sometimes you can put a word like differences such as or but not exclusive to that type of thing. And I would implore anybody in this room and others that aren't right now this, how would you say that? I think some people don't even know what differences are sometimes. Right. One of the statements in our statement, all is where yeah, all students have the right to an education free of free of biases, explicit and implicit historical contemporary based on their identity. That's the third bullet down. Which we're hoping includes everybody. It is inclusive all of our students without trying to list them all. But let's go back to the flag. So we have a couple options. It sounds like there's actually put in the atrium. There's an option to build a new flagpole. There's an option to put it on the same flagpole as the US flag. There's an option to raise it at the beginning of school for a couple of days or a week. There's an option to wait and figure out a policy before we do anything. And all I can give you for information is that Brattleboro last time I talked with, I think it's Vicki, their superintendent since last, after they had gone through the race they were gonna have a second flagpole it was gonna be a student flagpole and have a policy to support how they did that. Did they do the second flagpole before they did the policy? No, they didn't do the policy. They had like to put the flag up and they did and they were working on the policy and they were working on it. So they're in the same place we are. Okay, yeah. And that was as of like the end of June. Probably in the same place we are right now. Did you mention the option of just sticking with our original decision? Which was? Just leave the flag up. Just leave the flag up. Well, you never gave us, you never gave us any emotion in time to take tonight, right? We didn't say anything. We didn't. But we just said something about February, didn't we? Nope. No, we didn't. No, we discussed it, but. In your motion never gave us, that's why we were at this issue today. Okay. So that we would not have to make a new formal decision in order to. Just have the flag up. In order to just have the flag up. Because that would involve having to be on a vote. Right, which is not born today. Yeah. So in a sense, what we could do is provide a kind of advisory opinion. Is that? For the interim? Well, sort of, say that something like we. So let me say something, Scott, because I think it's better to be direct than, and for the students in the audience to be more direct than have it, and not worry about our procedure so much. You were on the, the board runs under Robert's rules. Robert's rules allows you to adjust the agenda in any way, fashion, or form you want. Our practice is as high as I wanna go, so we don't have a procedure and we don't have a policy on this. So our practice has always been we try not to add action items that aren't already worn. I already asked for an agenda revision to do that tonight. So I would suggest that you be, I'm suggesting to the whole board that you'd be, if you wanna be direct, be direct. If you wanna say, leave it the way we left it, which means it's on the flight boat, tell us that. But not to, not to get into parliamentary or Robert's rules. Sure. Because that's just not clear of the folks in the audience. That's absolutely fine. What about just sort of concurring that we trust the administration's judgment on this? Is that? Our proposal is that it goes up for two days. I hope that moves into the Adrian. Yeah. That's our proposal. So would you need us to actually vote on that, or just to give you the latitude? I think that you're having a discussion right now and I think if you took the action, so I would prefer the board in the direction. And it is important to note that that's not what the students are hoping for, just as you're having to follow the dialogue. And has the administration thought seriously about an additional flagpole? Yes. And have you ruled that out? No. No. I don't have time to have the conversation with you about it and put a policy in place on it. You have time to explore the facts. You have had time to explore the facts, which is a reason. $5,000 to $6,000. So that budget couldn't absorb that. Yeah. What would be the point of raising the flag for two days on the flagpole and then taking it off and moving it to the Adrian? Because I think that's confusing for the students to walk into school first day of school and see it on the flagpole, like it was last year. And then a couple of days later, when they return back to school, they're like, oh wait, where's the flag? Is our school not supported? And then see in the atrium, they're like, why is it in the atrium? Why weren't we notified by this? Because so far it's only us that know of the students. Did the administration have some specific thinking around that idea? There are opening assemblies, so I'm one minute here and assuming that that's probably what Stephen was thinking, that it would be up and then he would explain what the next step was for that flag. For all the students. And then it was moved after he'd explained that. But I'm not 100% sure what that thing was, because we had not assessed it. You know, I feel like putting it up again is another powerful statement, which is different from flying a flag every day. The flag of the United States, the flag of the state of Vermont, these are symbols of our union, right? And they're not gonna change. 100 years from now, we'll still be flying those two flags. Black Lives Matter, I think, is, I don't know. We can imagine it evolving and there's something else that is a symbol of inclusion. So I feel like they are different things. And maybe that's the thinking behind having a separate flagpole, I'm not sure. But for me, the whole point of flying the flag was to make a statement of support. And I think we did that once, we could choose to do that again, but for me it's not necessarily indefinite. I kind of feel like, I'm not trying to see it for you guys, so I kind of feel like you guys think that when we put that up and have that big ceremony, it's like everything ended, like it was great, everyone was within it and it didn't end in that flag. Like your support from us when we put it up there was great and we would love to have that support continuing on with that there because things haven't changed that much. In our motion, I think we stated that it was gonna be the beginning of a whole process of understanding diversity. And so I believe we really meant that, you talked about initially how Montpelier had worked for three years and theirs was kind of a culmination of three years worth of work, whereas you guys were just getting organized and just getting going and it was kind of the beginning of a big long process. And I strongly believe in that and I think the administration started down that road and it's a huge hard road and we heard them say that in June or I can't remember that. And they've done, I know they've done a huge thing of thinking about what it's going to look like in the future and how students are gonna participate and what teachers are gonna do, what the TA is gonna do, what's gonna be different, how they're gonna use the resources they have, what other resources they need. So I believe and I think the board believes that this is the beginning step and we are not saying over done by any stretch of any, you know, we've got a diversity and equity statement that we're about to pass and a policy we're about to implement that most schools don't have. This is kind of cutting edge policy development. I just also wanted to say, if the flag being out there isn't just for the school community, it's a great benefit at starting new conversations and amazing things for the school community. But when it's also outside and on the atrium, people who come to school functions, they're coming to a play, they're coming to the soccer game, they're seeing it too and because somebody who's going to a soccer game isn't necessarily gonna come into the atrium and if it's in the atrium, they don't get to see that expression from the school. And sometimes saying nothing is just as strong as a statement that it's saying. Also to, you said like this is the beginning or something and that it's not finished. Well, I feel like when a statement not putting it up, like there was an offer not putting it up because you said you already gave your support and you don't know if you should, but that was already a statement. I feel like not putting it up would be saying the opposite statement and that like it'd be like kind of ending it and not continuing this beginning of a new movement. I have one more question too. If y'all were to put it on like a separate flagpole, where would that be? Somewhere out there. Like still in good view of people who come in. Okay. I mean, we have to call it a flag, protocol, set by the American Legion. It's usually a tradition. There's no real state, it's a campy higher than the American flag. It's a state flag, but we can figure that one out. Is the idea that it would be the only flag or a multiple flag? That's a good question, Christia. As I've talked to my fellow- Depends on the policy. That's where this policy is gonna support this. I know it sounds, it's hard for me sometimes to think about policy. I'm like, why do I wanna go with that because I have a statement of an expression that I wanna make. And it's the point of having that policy will help the board think about the other. And as Jody reminded me, I'd forgotten that we've had other questions to, we've had other petitions to raise other flags that represent students here. Like recently after. Yes, yes. So we have to be able to judge that in a fair and transparent way as we can have to do other things in school. And the board gives us, determines those policies and then us, that Jody, myself, Stephen as the administration, we have to figure that. We have to implement those. And right now it's hard to implement that in a way that some people, we've been accused of not being fair for that. To other people's requests. And it's not about fairness. It's about fairness, but it's not about we wanna do it in a thoughtful way. And the best thing the board, the board's really saying is not right by saying, what are the beliefs of the board? Just like we did with the mission about what we do for schooling. And Christy, you know it's from the student learning outcomes. That blue statement that's above the student outcome is what drives all the student outcomes. That's what this board started and the whole super rising is that that's what we believe we want our kids to have. I said yesterday, and Christy, you heard me say yesterday, I used the example of the Black Lives Matter fine as a great example of our students have shown that proficient in affecting their local and global communities. That's what you guys have taught me, that you know how to do that and you're courageous enough to do it. So that piece is really, really important and falls right in that mission. And I hope that this board will say in their policy, it's gotta be related to the mission of what they said is important. Somewhere, where did we write that? Was that in the motion? Was that in the motion? That was part of it. For me, I always understood that this was opening a door. And you guys, because you guys talk about that a lot and I was always comfortable with the fact that you entrusted your judgment with the fact that you were gonna have to decide what goes along with our policy. So does somebody have a suggestion of the next step? I think that it would be great to keep the flag raised. I don't like that. I was looking for a way. I was looking for a way. I was looking for a way because I have an idea but I like to. You know, nothing has changed in terms of our wanting that flag up in that message, I don't think. Other than a new school here, you know, it's August, not June. I guess my instinct here would be we put it up, we wanna keep it up until we've come to an agreement as a community about what we do with it next. And maybe that happens in the next couple weeks and we move it to the atrium or maybe it's something different. But certainly as the school year starts, I feel like we ought to have it up because I totally get the piece work. We put it up, had a press party, and then we put it away. And it's like, you know, we did it, now we're done. But we're not done. We're looking at hundreds of years of work, you know? And hopefully, positive work. But I guess I don't see a reason for it to have come down, or to have security and summer. To not stay out. Yeah, to not have to overreact it. And that's a legitimate thing, you know, vandalism, what it is. So my inclination would be put it back up until we come up with a next step. And that we stay involved in that conversation, you know? We don't let that conversation fall off the agenda. And would you say we come up with the next step in the community and the board? No, the community. The students, administration, and the board. And how would we figure that out? I'm not sure. The community engagement. Community engagement, yeah. Or would it be a policy until, you know, the flight stays up until we have a policy that either directs otherwise or supports what we're doing. And, you know, there may be some huge community engagement when we're thinking about that policy to hear where other people are coming from. Because we certainly heard from another part of the community. And I want to add to that that I recognize from the administration's perspective there may be some of the challenges to that. Like security, you know. And I wouldn't want, I wouldn't want any of us to ignore the realities of those practical challenges. But I was going to say in response to what you said, Carl. I implore the floor to come up. Because we really need a way to help. It is putting a lot of taxing efforts. And we told you about what didn't get done last spring. Good reason. I agree with the priorities. I wanted the priorities. But that we've got to come back and ask for additional resources. So how about a motion? May I just, before the motion? Sure. Or actually discuss how we should move. Then we can discuss after. Yeah. You guys okay with me making the motion or do you want to? I would move, we put the flag back up. But when? Give ourselves a couple months to come up with the next step. How about until a policy is written and passed? Sure. Sure. That works. Can I just clarify? Like so when you say written and passed, you mean that that would happen in the school board meeting? Yeah. Yep. And maybe, I mean there might be some preliminary work, you know, here within the walls of the school, you know. Yeah. The board, the board rights policy and pass, excuse me, passes it. And there's a procedure for passing it. Usually it takes a couple of meetings. You can't do it in one meeting. Scott, you got a discussion? Hey, do you have a second on that? I was just gonna say that. I'm just, Scott, we'll second that. Thank you. Go ahead, Scott. Thanks. For me, the best thing about this whole issue has been that you all have actually driven it. And I guess I have a vague concern that's kind of the flip side of your exchanger. When you said if you take down the flag, you know, it kind of grinds to a halt. My hope is that if the flag is up, it's not like, yeah, we won. Now, it's all set. I'm just curious as to what your strategy is going into the future to sustain these kinds of whatever kinds of action or contacts, encounters, discussions that have been generated by virtue of the flag having been raised. And just what your thoughts are about that? We're actually going, we're planning on going to visit elementary schools and talk to them more because that's where it really starts. And we talked about, what's the thing that we're doing? Also last year, we talked in some of the meetings about bringing in more community members or just outside people talking about diversity or just workshops, yeah. And was it, I think also bringing it into our curriculum. And actually, I received an email from a teacher at Randolph High School asking to come and observe us and talk to these students and talk because they're about to embark on this procedure. And so we talked about the idea of also creating an alliance through the schools and maybe creating a chance for schools to come together and talk about, it might have this like kind of unity as well as within the community. But I think a lot of like, I mean, the teachers are moving forward with the idea of keeping these conversations going, keeping these callbacks happening, keeping people coming into the building. And part of what we heard at another meeting was some students feeling disenfranchised by this. And so I think it's important for you guys to know that this has to be inclusive also. And there are people with other opinions or other feelings on this matter and they need to feel included and respected also. I'm pretty sure that they have been. We've been last time. I'm just telling you what we heard. Okay, I'm not, I'm just saying we heard it. I'm not putting any judgment on them, but they were here and they spoke to us and they were pretty clear about how they were feeling also. So it's just an awareness on everybody's part that they're different opinions, they're different feelings, and it's gonna take a lot of hard work and conversations and understanding of everybody's point of view. How do they feel excluded there? I'm not gonna get into it. You can actually go back and watch the board video. There is a video of it and you can watch it. Maybe together, not alone. What I wanna say is that we're starting next week with some, the opening days look different and the theme is belonging. And I would encourage you to think about how you can include that throughout because that's really part of what that flag means, right? That you belong here. And so how can we use that theme of belonging to support everyone to feel safe and secure in this building? This is really about belonging for all of our students. And so that's part of the discussion that the teachers are gonna kick off. Your TAs are going to kick off with you on Monday or Tuesday and Wednesday. And so continuing with that theme of belonging, how can we continue these conversations? And I think that callback workshops is great. Working with other schools is great. I think you might have to go back and watch that video and hear what the concerns were from your peers so that you know how to address it when it comes up again, if it comes up again. Not to be heard from it. It's not directed at any of you. Specifically, it's not personal. Does that make sense? It's coming from a place where someone's feeling like they're now not having the same voice. And so how do we make sure that we allow everyone to feel that belonging and that everyone's treated as they should be with respect and improve our entire school community and culture? I think we have stuff ready to go and we have lots of work to do. We're nowhere near the end of the work that needs to be done throughout the whole district. I'm really glad you brought that up because that's really my main concern with leading the flag up for an extended period of time. I think it's a powerful, I'm looking at the second bullet in our police statement. All of our students should feel valued and feel able along. And I think this flag is a powerful symbol for some people in terms of feeling that they belong. And it's, what we heard in the spring is, I'm worried that there are students who feel like they don't belong when they see that symbol. I don't know that for sure, but that's the sense I got that there were people that felt like this is not for me. I think this is why you've taken on such a huge and important responsibility. And I think it's admirable as well as being a very difficult test of how big your hearts are and how much you can kind of embrace people who are maybe not really wanting to be embraced but who need to be in order for all of this to work for everyone. So can we let Mia set her hand up for a while? Yeah. And then, Mia, why don't you speak up when I add something to what Scott said. Yeah. Yeah, I want to kind of help Jody speak like me. All right, thank you. Well, we heard a lot of these opinions last year. We had conversations with like structures. We built time, or it was callbacks so this time is already built. We had specific conversations where people could come and they voiced their opinions and we heard the opinions and the concern that you guys have been talking about right now. We already heard those and we want to hear them and the whole purpose of those conversations was so that everybody heard everybody's opinions and it's still what we're going to be working on. And we've been, I think our focus now is how we want to continue that because that's what the flag is bringing all of that. It's still going to bring all that and it's bringing everyone and everything and not just some people's. Our country's been around for 200 and some odd years and we've been having these discussions and they're still really difficult. So I don't expect you to solve it, but just know it's a huge, you're bitting off a big bite. That's kind of where I was going to go. Scott, I agree with you to applaud the students that are here tonight, but the educators hold more of that responsibility than you do and I want you to hear that from me as a superintendent. The teachers in this building, myself, the administration, we hold as much more of that responsibility that everybody feels belong and belong. The students can help it, can help it a ton, but it's not born on the students in my mind. It's born on us as the folks that help you from everyone that works in this building. And you've opened our eyes. Yeah. So that's what I wanted to replace. I know what your intent was and from your heart, but at least it means not a little bit of, hey, as students go to us, I don't believe the students are going to lead in. They've helped us and they're showing us and they're brought out, but it's our responsibility as the educators, the adults in the building to facilitate this conversation in a positive, proactive way, just as Jody said, what some of the plans have been for the big end school, which we've never, from what I know, had not ever done in U32 before. And continue to support the things that you want to try. Yeah. And let you be leaders. I'm not saying for you not to be leaders. I just don't want you to feel like, hey, we're getting all the responsibility of what are the adults doing. Are you guys ready to vote? I'm going to vote against, and I just want to explain that it's only because we don't have that, we haven't established that context. I would be in favor of putting it up for a shorter amount of time. I'd probably go over more than two days, but not having it be up indefinitely until we create this policy. The thing I like about it is it kind of lights a fire under us to get the policy done. I appreciate that part of it, but I'm just not comfortable with the, you know. I heard Bill say two months. If we had a firm deadline, can you feel more comfortable with it? Yeah, I mean, you're just saying we are committing to getting a policy done in two months. That's what I heard him say he wanted. I wrote it down here. Can we do it? I haven't even looked at it. I don't know. Any way we can do a single one. We can certainly give it our best effort. I'm not thinking about equity policy. No, I know. We're talking about two different policies. We're talking about a different policy. Well, I just want to be clear about that. Yes, yes, and I understood that too. I totally understood that. One, I don't know what those look like either, but it seems like that's a small policy compared to... Yeah, no, he was, I was just talking about the flag flying policy. Is there an amendment that would make it look okay? I think shortening, shortening the amount of time. So will you read the policy? Sorry, the motion. The motion. I just have Carl Whitkey move to put the Black Lives Matter flag back up until a policy is written and passed. What did you say, a flag policy? Yeah, flag policy. We can get that flag policy. And what would that, just give me a sample of the flavor. What is a flag policy? It means we will put up other flags. So dreaming out of the, out of the, and off the top of my head, and some of the conversations I've had with a couple of superintendents, it's something that the board will take petitions from students on raising flags that are aligned with the mission and goals of the school and or supervisor in our district. And I also see the possibility of adding a second flag pole. Yeah, yeah. Right in that. That could be that part of it. That could be there too, but that you have to have a decision matrix that says, I mean, what you do is you're linking it to The learning outcomes. Your goals and your mission that you've already adopted. And will you put up more than one flag at a time? Yeah, I mean, those are getting into procedures and we could get into that. I know that there's been some discussion about how long, what, and you know, what's the rubric or criteria. You know, one of the criteria is that it doesn't, it doesn't bring harm to another group of students. I don't know how you judge that perfectly. I mean, that's been something. That's really helpful, actually. That seems doable. It's been the debate back and forth amongst the super intense is like, so you really want to be the judge doing that, you know? Yeah. That's actually, that seems much more feasible. Were you thinking of equity policy? Oh, okay. That's what I know we're talking about. I'm sorry. That is a flagpole policy. Yeah, I would say there's a flagpole policy. There's a way to raise them and then there might even be a place of once they've been, I mean, what I think, and again, I'm talking, I'm brainstorming, so don't take this as it has to be. It might be, you know, after it's raised, it flies somewhere indoors or it doesn't do that, or, you know, you can think you could have. How long do you come back to the board? Does it have a, is there a calendar of your rotation? I mean, there's a whole bunch of things you could play with that. Yeah. And there are some examples we could look at. No. I don't think so. We searched last year a long time. We put probably two or three people in the search group. Everybody I asked about flagpole stuff last year, American Legion. Nationwide, people that shot stuff out too. The best anybody got me was the American Legion. The American Legion, one-page handout on the rules of how to handle, you know, don't let Instagram keep it lit at night or take it. Yeah, that's what I can. Just a simple campfire list about how to manage a flag. Okay, so I think now we're in a place I can support it. I would suggest that, I'm not part of the motion, but that we basically assign this to somebody to work between now and. Yeah. And I would be willing to do that with, I would be willing to do it. And then I'll pass it by whoever, you know, to at least take the first stab at it. Potentially we could adopt something next time. It's possible. Your policy allows you to do it. It does. Yep. And, I mean, as we work on that, Adrienne, we can talk about, and I think we'll have to wait to talk to the policies down to whether you want a single flag or a second flag, but we can't figure that out as we go. And that wouldn't be part of the policy. No, but it would be, you'd know whether we're having separate subplots. Yes, right. Yep. Okay. And forward to make a decision. Okay. Yeah. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion carries. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's a work in progress. We love seeing you guys here. I think you owe a lot. Yeah. It's okay. Okay. Thank you very much. These are hard discussions. Yeah. That was a great, great see of the policy though. That was nice. Yeah, I tried to get it all down. Yeah. It's still here. It's been here since. It's been here since. Oh, it's on there. It's not camera now too, so we got it. Okay. Reports to the board. Cari wants to leave. Is it your daughter? No, it's my wife. Your wife's birthday today. Is it a special birthday? It's hardly an excuse. They're all special. They're all special. I know, I don't know. It's not a round, big, round number. It's not like a 40, 30, no? Actually, we can do this really quickly. Sent from my career center. Next meeting is September 25th. Can you go? I think I can. I think you're going to have to introduce yourself to the board. We're just looking at that. Students, we have no students, so we'll go by that. Administration. Jerry's going to go first. All right. Stephen is on his way to Michigan to take his daughter to college. He left this afternoon, so that's why he's not here. That's my weekend plan. Do we have students lined up? Yes, we do. Lucy and we don't know the other one. Yes, we do. We don't. I don't think it's public yet. OK. Never mind then. Go ahead, Jody. Lucy did an email and said she wasn't coming because she hadn't been in school yet, so. There was nothing to her heart. Totally read talk. Thank you, Lucy. So I get to talk about some of the professional development. Our teachers have been involved in over the summer. They had a curriculum camp at the end of June, which was really exciting. And we've been sharing out some of the stuff, though, the good work that got done there. I was able to participate, or I shouldn't say participate, watch the World Peace Games take place at Eastmont Clear. Several of our teachers took part in that master class with that. And that was, like, the July 23rd week. Yeah, the other thing I was going to add, if you want to go on YouTube and search for World Peace Game, watch it. It's going to be a great addition to our middle school. Yes, so our three social studies teachers in the middle school were part of that master class and one of our science teachers in the middle school. And they are going to run this twice with their seventh graders, some of whom were actually in World Peace Game. And they're going to use some different scenarios. They're going to do a quarter two and then quarter four and see how students have improved on the transferable skills, especially through that process and moving kids in their roles. So it was a really exciting thing. On the Wednesday, when they first started playing the game, I was a little worried about them. But by Friday, when they achieved World Peace, it was really exciting. It was really fun. Three days they did it? They did, yes. They still saw 23 different crises. Oh, thank you so much, though. I heard they were very, you were there for the first day, so I heard that they were, it showed our educational system from what Jen Noirison told me. And they acted just, it showed the strengths of our system and it showed the flaws of our system. And it was fascinating, she said, then show something we've already known about our system. We're teaching too much technical, not enough holistic. And the board is second in the world. Dave Bezos actually made it and the teacher who's been teaching this for 40 years, so it was one of the best boards he's ever seen. So Dave's gonna make us two more because we're gonna have all three courses through this at once, so I'm just gonna be excited. I also took part in the project-based learning training that happened at the beginning of this month, the week after the board retreat. We had three days with the 9th and 10th grade teams, so the middle school took it in August of last year and then 9th and 10th grade teams and a couple of other teachers took that and they're excited about starting those projects. I helped train all of our new teachers in restorative practice, so they had their first two intro days, which was wonderful, it was a great, it's a great way to meet the new teachers. We have them for restorative practices on the Monday, Tuesday, and then they had three days of new teacher training this year. So they were here all last week, getting to know each other, and it was quite fascinating to see them yesterday when you were doing the presentation in the morning. All of our U32 new teachers were sitting together. They were learning. Yes, it's quite a career and they've been great. So we have a good year ahead of us. We've had a great couple of days of in-service so far. We can't wait for the kids to come next week and I actually will be running a training for students who are on our student restorative panel on Tuesday, so they are 10th, 11th, and 12th graders, so they'll be here on Monday for school and then they'll be here on Tuesday when they're not required, but they'll be here for our training and they will be joined by six graders who will also take part in the training. So that's really exciting. And I think it's a great example of the leadership team. Jody said, hey, we could have some fifth or sixth graders and did you get someone from every school? I never, I wasn't on that list. Yeah, so they're really trying to guess. Yes, Councilor Romney or no? Yes. Council Romney at the sixth grade and sixth grade. I think that would be more from the other schools is just figuring out further restorative practice and Jody's leadership on that is just tremendous for the whole super resident. She's the person we go to. I know because I've turned it over a few times and I said, hey, need your help. The other things I would add is yesterday we had Dave Melmick from Northeast. It's NFI, Northeast family, something. And he's worked with us last January on students with childhood adverse effects, otherwise known as trauma. He worked all day yesterday. We had last year, you may recall from youth 32, we had approximately 12 between the two different, somewhere that 12 to 15 between the two different We had exactly, they did some real intense training. They became our trainers. So Dave did a morning keynote and then not just you, there are two teachers, teachers from other buildings. We had a group of about 25 last year at the road with Dave that got some more in-depth training on trauma and adverse childhood effects. And they did breakout sessions on different things that you could do to help students that are feeling stressed and how do you work with that? And we want to say for optimal learning, we don't want kids to have, we don't want kids in the area of no stress. Actually learning doesn't really occur there. We want kids in mild to moderate stress. That's where learning occurs. So stress can be good. It's when we get to the high levels of stress or toxic that we have issues. And so teachers got a lot, I think a firsthand knowledge of how to use that training. As of this morning, we had, so we were doing another cohort of 20 for folks to get some in-depth training. I think there were like 37 or 38 on the feedback from the day before that said, hey, I want to do more of this. We're actually going to look and see if we can bring another cohort right to campus so they can get in and so they can drive. As well as all the PD that Jody talked about, as you may remember for our school, for emotional social learning, we also used responsive classroom at the elementary school. So we had, I think 12, all but two of our new teachers in the elementary schools went through our week-long intensive for that. As Jody, she told you about induction. We expanded that from two days to three days this year and they all, all the new teachers on Friday when I saw them Friday morning, they were pretty full at that point. So it's a lot, but we're doing a lot and so it's going to require more and more training that we provide. So that's just going to be part of what we're going to have to do. I would say that on the facilities front, everything's pretty well to go. You've seen Shapiro, if you didn't see it coming in, probably see it this summer. It's really gone through a renovation. Windows have been redone. The group is going to be finished this weekend, we're promised. You'll see it's had water and ice on it. So it's been plenty sealed but the shingles need to go on. And that's where the alternative program is going to be housed out there. So to have kids out there permanently, we had to do some things to meet fire coding. And so there's that. I know there's been some alarm work and I'm probably forgetting something else big in the building. There's a whole list on page 12. Oh yeah. So. Oh, Steve gave it to us. Steve gave it to you. Yeah. A facility improvements. So. Trail work, the trailer work. Yeah. The trails, they put down some gravel out there. And there's constant floor rotation throughout the building because these are boring. There's, you know, the VTC is just at that place. And the fire is kind of the old degree scheme of the living doors. I'm going to talk about the track. Let me talk a little bit about the elevators. Well, that's something that will come to you. That's in the capital project but there's an elevator that has some serious repair that some design work's being done on right now to get our RP out to be done this year. Questions for them? Thank you. It's really nice to hear all of the professionals about it. Yes. Great. And I didn't count what's in his. Yeah. He's working on specific courses this summer. The sense of that. Great. Finance committee has not met. So there is a summary. This is the final, right? This is the final. Oh, yes. I finished last week. So this is the final. And essentially what this is telling us is we did well on both of that. More revenue than expected and less expenses. So we ended up re-evaluating this. 1,000 machines, I don't know, about 2%. I kept it. So it's really very nice. And so we have some excess fund balance in excess of our 4% target to work with. And I'll be talking in a bit under the action item that I reserved for some ideas. I'm going to take care of that list right there. So I think it's that time we prepared. And the audits is happening. The audits done, the audits finished there. Supposed to have preliminary drafts to Laura and I in a couple weeks. And food service. It's doing well. Better than it was. Really? Yeah. It's relative. Okay. That didn't look better to me, but. I understand that. Okay. Take your word for it. Executive committee. Yeah, so we, our meeting last week, we talked a lot about the goals. The other thing I wanted to share with you was around Act 46 timing. So we don't know what the board's going to decide, obviously, but we do know that if the decision is to merge governance, then we're going to have to move quickly. And in that spirit, the executive committee talked about a couple different things. Well, first of all, building a calendar with the various considerations of budgeting, just we have to budget anyway, no matter what happens for next year. So we put that on and then we overlaid some of the timing of various Act 46 things that would have to happen. And from that, two things came up. First of all, we authorized Matthew, the chair of the committee to initiate some talks with a twin field chair to talk about a framework for how, how could we have more conversation? How could we explore potential since it's a, we're basically in a very unique situation right now. And the sense is, well, we at least need to know what our options are. So Matthew's going to be doing that over this next month and we'll hear from him. You'll likely get a report on that at the September full board meeting and there may be a recommendation from the executive committee about forming of exploratory committee in regards to twin field. The other thing was, we are likely going to form a committee in September to work on various governance issues, including, you know, this is in the scenario of, of, merge governance, articles and incorporation and specifically debt. So we are being asked to think about who we would like from this board to represent us on that committee to be working on those topics and do we have any priority topics that we would like that committee to start with? And do you want an answer tonight to that? So who would want to represent? Oh, there we go. Scott. I'm going to say George. Of course, honestly. Scott, you can do it. Anybody else want to do it? There's our man. Oh, you had a big smile. I care about governance very much. I'd be willing to, but, you know. And this is more than governance though. No, it's governance, merging and debt. So we changed that a little bit. Steven Look and Chris McVeigh have said they're going to put together a proposal to bring back to the executive committee. And I don't think it's one person. I think there'll be probably more than one person to quickly, because in the 706B committees who are working, there's lots of work done by no resolution on where to go with the different articles of agreement. Right. So they're thinking that there were even multiple committees working on separate different articles to come to a proposed resolution for forced merger problems because there is 90 days from whence the decision comes and there are proposed articles that will come from the state board for us to use, plus ours are adopted by the state board within those 90 days. Adopted by the state board. They have to approve them in 90 days. So you have to approve them in 90 days. So we have 90 days. So you want to have them ready because before, and if you don't need them. That was the talk of the technique. Rick was great about starting this. I think we should start having these discussions just in case so we're not, so we can determine versus having to accept it. And I have language on that anyway. So that would be certainly more, you know. Yeah, yeah too. How would a lawsuit affect this? Like if certain individuals filed a lawsuit to prevent the merger? If there's a question. I would say that the biggest, the best authority on that is our attorney. From what I know of the law, so I'm not going to say I'm an expert on this. I haven't gone and asked that question. But the way that laws that we deal with for students, with what is in law, we follow that until the suit overturns it. Okay, let's go ahead and open. Unless you instruct us otherwise. Okay. So you've got Scott as point person. We're not even actually mailing it down now. I don't know what that will happen. I think it's a September meeting. I'm going to start thinking about it. And the only other thing is I'm sure this will come up during negotiations, but it was kind of a surprise to me is that they're going to start working on health insurance, negotiating health insurance in the next month, next couple of weeks. Well, our agreement with the association says that we'll start before September 15th. So that's just the appetizer. We're negotiating both contracts, full contracts this year. And state law that was passed in Act 11. So it was either 11 or 18, I'm sorry. It was House Bill 11, Act 18. State said all contracts must sunset and stop on July 1, 2020. So this is a one year contract. So because intense as the past couple of years have been. This will be more intense than any other year. So in doing things, I said to the executive committee in September, I'll be looking for priorities because you have more work for just the board members. And I can tell you, you cannot staff it. Why will this be more intense this year's negotiations? Not just the negotiations. The work that we have to do with 46, either way it falls. Oh, okay. I thought it was the negotiations between all of us. Oh, I'm sorry. I misunderstood you. Okay, got it. Yep, that I understand. So if it's okay with you, I'll, I'm gonna scoot out. Yep, that is fine. Can I just ask one thing? I prefer not to own this. Is it available in PDF form? I wish you could give that feedback back to a, to your policy committee member to get that back to the board member to point it out that I must do that each year for you. Okay, but if I leave it there. So the policy in here says you have to give us this. I'm sorry, she's making me laugh. I'll get working on that one, by the way. Thanks, though. He'll take the other things. Would you like to hire someone? Sticker? Sticker, yeah. I'll take a sticker, but I don't know. What did he do to deserve stickers tonight? Say that to the individual, please. They're going out to all the seventh grade parents and Bill saw them and said, hey. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Cory. Okay, where are we? Policy committee. Scott, I'm sorry. Jonathan is not here. I am going to attend those meetings from now on. And if he's there too, that'd be great. But user two is not being represented. I feel like it needs to be represented. So I'm gonna get myself on that list and just go. Do you have anything to add about policy? There was a report in here about a bunch of different things. I think all in all, there's a willingness to move fast to merge policies across CSU. I will say that's not universal. But all in all. But I think that voice needs to come up. Okay, well, I think U32 has a powerful voice in that. And I think we need to move forward. We need to move many of these policies into procedures. Jodi and I have talked about that many times. There are many of these that need to be rescinded and it's just going to procedures. And are they, we just have to do that as U32 board, right? Yeah, for the ones that are in issue 30. I mean, we have it now. We know what is across the board is. So is that something that'll come to us at the next meeting? Is it, you analyze this and you propose that these policies be rescinded or do you need us to do it? So this is a piece that I have never really been sure on because of the way, if this board instructed me to do it, I would do it gladly. But I really, I think intuition or it's never been directly said to me, it must have been implied that the board does that work. Pardon me? So I'm gonna put that as a discussion item in our next board meeting. And maybe an action item also. To do that, so that we have that discussion and then we make a decision to move forward. So I guess if you need a motion, I would move that Bill come back to us with the list of what policies they have analyzed, I think should be rescinded and become procedural so that we can help with that decision. Decide whether you want to do it. Rather than us go through and analyze and make a proposal, if they've already done that, we take it. Yeah, we've done it, yeah. So I suggest we wait and have a discussion with everybody about whether that's the way we want to move forward on September 26th or whatever it is and then vote on September 26th. Is that okay with you? Yeah, so would that be where we have, we would just be blanking, giving the authority to do it? Yeah, okay. I like that. One of the things I like as your superintendent is when I actually like it when the board directs me. I think when things are implied or hopeful or one person asks me to do it. Well, it's nice for us to know when you need the authority. I don't need the authority, but to say, Bill, we would like you to go through and tell us. Give us a recommendation of what you think should be here and what it should be. Is that okay, Karen? To wait? Absolutely. School start time committee. Have you met this summer? No, you have the minutes from the last you have the forum in there. And I, if it's a very bad email from Krista, we are trying to meet next week on the 28th. 29? 29, yes. I don't know. She may have put it in my schedule, wasn't it? Karen knows I was trying to contact her. Yeah. I haven't been doing my part of the phone tag. And Scott's heard this from me, but Karen and I just said this is one of those priority items that is a heavy lift. So I'm not sure in everything we need to do. School Quality Committee is meeting in September and Negotiations Committee has it met. No, it hasn't. It's Carl, right? Are you still our negotiator? Yes. Okay. So there's, Carl, you don't need to be at the meeting I'm about to say, but there's a meeting of the presidents and Susanna and Charlie, just to start to set like what's the schedule on September 11th, how it's gonna work. Yeah. So we're just standing up preliminary to get everyone before we bring the whole negotiation teams together. Action agenda. We've approved the board goals, accept the letter of resignation from the school nurse. Is there a motion to accept that resignation? Under the? Second, let's hear me. Lisa Rice. Oh, Lisa Rice, sorry, I was thinking the one. Discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Approve the hire of the new school nurse. That's Mary Ann, somebody right? Yes. Crossman. Crossman. A motion to accept her nomination? So moved. Carl, a second. Scott, any discussion on that? She comes to us with many years of experience from her career. That's amazing, you found someone. So we're very lucky. Very lucky to find someone with this experience she has. So we're a good fortune. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Approve the hire of the alternative resource teacher, Katie Stanley. Stanley. Staley. There's no end in there. A motion to approve her hire? So moved. Karen, a second. Second. Carl, any discussion about her? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. A motion to approve the hire of Jessica Walker as the guidance counselor, school counselor. So moved. Karen, a second. And keep it up over there, Lisa. Second. Carl, any discussion on that one? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? May I just ask you a question? Yes, you certainly may. I know she's replacing Scott Harris, but she's not actually, excuse me, not actually doing what Scott did. No, she'll be in the middle school. Okay, great. How could you know that? Pardon me? How did you know that? Because Scott Harris was my kid's counselor. And he doesn't get her. That's my understanding. May I? May I? Okay, got it. No, and Jade, I should have said something about Katie as well, but Jade comes to us. She was here as a intern, and has done lots of work with Vermont's equity work. There's a lot of time restorative practices, so she's a wealthy resource for us. Great. You guys always hire really amazing people. We try, we try, we're doing good things here. A motion to authorize the superintendent, sorry, to sign the Cross Vermont Trail Association Agreement to grant public access and trail easement. And we, these guys came and spoke to us. Right, so let me just play a little bit for that. Let me get a motion first. Okay, I'll move it. In a second. Scott and Carl, okay, bye. So you had a discussion, but you didn't have a motion for me to authorize. I have the legal papers on my desk. We took us a little while with the attorneys to get everything right, and we went back and forth for a little while, but they're all ready to go. Our attorneys reviewed it and said, yeah, great, so protective. Super effective. All right, I'm off for it. I just wanted to make sure that you authorize. I try to have the boards always authorize if I'm doing something. Yeah, I appreciate that. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Because the Board of Orders made it around. Yeah, okay, right. A motion to authorize the superintendent to award the RFP for a civil engineer to look at. To redesign the track. To redesign the track. And start a big process. If you want to get a motion, then I'll explain it a little bit. Did you get all that? To authorize a request for proposals. Authorize the superintendent for the request for proposals to get a civil engineer to begin the redesign process of the track. Is that accurate? Yeah. Motion? I'll move it. Can I second? Scott, thank you, Karen. So as you know, we've been dealing with the past few years and frankly, as long as I think it's just this year seven. We resurfaced the track and then looked quickly that it wasn't the resurfacing of the track that was needed, but that actually the subsurface of the track down three feet needs to all be replaced. With the good management that you have to lead for us in our capital project, we have the funds to do this ourselves to not go out to bond. We don't know exactly what the cost, we have estimates anywhere from $700,000 to over a million dollars. If it's over a million dollars, we'll be waiting a year or two. But part of this, what you're voting on tonight authorized me to send is we sent out an RFP to, with the help of Black River Design, it helps us do all our facility work. They said, you don't need an architect, you'll be cheaper if you have a civil engineer in your firm that's done all this work. So we put out an RFP that came back a couple days ago and they're gonna look at it tomorrow with John Hamilton helping us to see who has the best proposal to do the design work and then go to a cost estimator. So we come back to you and talk to you about money management. And the options, if you go with a $650,000 or a million dollar option. So it's like anything you get what you pay for. But we've gotta go down three feet underneath that track because the core samples are very clear that the gravel is no longer gravel. And that's why we're being the frost heating out there that's impacting the track life. And when cross country and track, cross country running track combined have the highest numbers for any sports. That's our facility that needs some attention. So we're not sure that it's going to be next academic year until we get those cost estimates. But we need to have this firm help us do the design. The design will last. And then to go ahead and run through a cost estimator to get it in. What are the options? Don't have to implement the design immediately. If we say we need to still have a way to design in hand. Yeah. But the good management that you've helped us to establish as a board for the capital planning budget is what we're going to. So we're not going to a bond for the semest for the voters of Tulsa's, no more bonds to get us out. How many proposals do you know how many proposals? I know there's at least three in. It was publicly advertised and went out to firms who we knew that did it as well. So we're fine that way. Blackler Design, I just asked them to do the whole thing. It was easier than trying to do it in-house. I said, John, can you take one of your project people and have them put together what we're looking for? And they're going to start evaluating tomorrow and probably have that done by next week. So if you feel comfortable with authorizing myself, I said that Adrian has a backup if the board wanted to go where the board was prior to this. My next recommendation would be that of the clients and they'd come together once they did it. But Bill Ford has been our clerk of the works for last year for the bleachers and the lockers. And Bill's done everything we've done with the other elementary schools. It was part of the team, John Hemmelgaard and Lee Partner at Blackler Design, and then Amy Molina and Dave Handigan. And they know they have names and need me from what we've done at the elementary schools. So I think we have the team to look at the qualifications and give recommendations. Questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That motion carries. A motion to approve the board orders. So moved. Karen and her second. Carl, were there any questions on them? Lisa, I forgot to get these two, but they're numbers. Bill, there are a bunch of numbers. Do you just want me to hand them to you? Sure. It's not to afford it. A bunch of data numbers. A bunch of data numbers. There are a bunch of data numbers. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Future agenda items. I think we got a few. A little diversity, a little flag policy. Board communication. I will write a front porch forum unless someone else really wants to. I think Jonathan wants to. Hi. Come on, Merlin. Where are you filming? I don't know. You're not here. Come on, Merlin. We're missing over there. Okay. And anything else? Oh, and I just said we're going to hear a board member. Oh, okay. Thanks. If you want to get a really good feel for the state of play with the state board of education at the present or at the present moment, at least as of a week ago, you have to read David's article from, I guess last Thursday was when it was. Oh, right. Yeah. That was actually quite good. And the other thing is, look at the last seven or the last few minutes on retn.org of the state, this like triple marathon state board meeting. They have it indexed by sort of segmented by chapters. It's the very last chapter. And it's really fascinating that this is what David was writing about. Did you stay? No. In that conversation? But I will never bail out of the state board meeting early again. It was. Did you stay for the whole thing? Yeah. Okay. And it's fascinating to see. I have to say I was really surprised reading your article. It was not what I expected to read. I was not what I expected. Yeah. Maybe we've misjudged. Who knows? Who knows? I think you're so hot. Yeah. Who knows? People ask me all the time what I think I might even guess. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, yeah. When it happens, it will happen. All right, so I want to compliment our principal, even though he's not here. He and Jen Milner-Arseneaux wrote many of this new publication that just came out today on explaining proficiency based learning, which we're going to be giving to all the parents and our staff. We have lots of these. It's a pre-Kate graduation look at it. A lot of it is U32. Thank you. But we want, you know, in our, I'm going to say mine, actually. I'm the one who insists on this a lot is that we look at things in a pre-Kate graduation continuum. So this explains proficiency based learning. And it's really trying to help everyone be able to have the conversation. So they did an awesome job on this. And it literally came in the press today. Hot off the press. Again, Matt, you've been reminding me. And so if you've already had one while I'm leaving here, it's fine. I grabbed these off the office shelves. I had the implementation plan report. I think that was given out at the retreat. Yeah, so you might not have this. Yeah, right, definitely. So that's a great look. And we're going to do that. That's the change. We used to have an annual report for Washington Center. This is what we're going to change is that every end of it, each school year will give an update on where we are with the implementation plan. It's a great idea. So it's much easier in the audience, too. Yeah, it's really fun to read. We changed things. And I love the statistics. Yes. And being able to kind of compare them and the facts was fascinating. Working with Ben Neurl, who is working with four or five supervisory unions, districts, slash school districts around the central Vermont here, it's been, I mean, he worked for BTC. He's a professional publication person. And this is what he does. And he has a graphic, he has someone who works with him as a graphic layout. And it's just been such a help to help increase our communication. It looks great. So hopefully you notice at least a print in, we're going to try to get it to the website as well. I feel we're establishing a marketing feel for her as she is. Anything else? You adjourned? 8 o'clock? Yeah. Thanks.