 So thank you all for coming, my name is Brittany Volstil, for those of you who I don't know, I'm the superintendent of schools here, and I'm joined I'm going to let these fine gentlemen introduce themselves, starting with Andrew, since I forgot you last time. Andrew LaRausen, director of facilities for the school district. I'm Cam Featherston Hall, senior associate at Truex Cullens and project manager for the master planning project. And I'm Dave Epstein, one of the partners at Truex Cullens, working with Cam. Cam and I do a lot of work on K-12 schools around the state and region, so glad to be here. So this is kind of session two, I recognize some familiar faces from session one, which I'm sorry, you came back for more. The first session was setting the context for why we're doing this work and we're doing basically a facility's work plan, so we have something in our hands for the future of our school district facilities, in case we need that, well we do need that direction. And we've hired Cam and David, who like they said they have a lot of experience around the state to do that work. This is the session two where we're hoping to hear from you all around the vision and what you're thinking about for schooling for our children moving forward and how best to use our facilities. So this is going to be a lot of your talking and us listening and looking at ideas that are written down and prioritizing a little bit. The David and Cam's main responsibility is to pull that all together for us and into a document that we could use for patrons. So, with that being said, so we don't waste any more time? Take it away, David. Okay, great. Well thanks everybody for coming. As Libby said, this is a visioning workshop, so this is really a time to put away all your practical thinking about your day today and all the stresses that we have. You know, if we had time I'd do a centering practice just to get us in the right mood, but this is really a blue sky opportunity to think about like what do we want the experience to be at Montpelier schools. And before I we get into it, this is just where we are in the process. We're right at that dash line. Once we're through with this, we've done our information gathering. We've done this workshop and then we'll start putting together sort of design options for different ways the district might move forward with their planning. But this is a really critical piece of that puzzle. And what comes out of this discussion are what we call guiding principles. So the guiding principles talk about what are the really important qualities of the educational experience here in the district. Like what are the things we've got to get right? And what are the things, and conversely, what are the things we really have to avoid? But we're mostly going to focus on the positive today. And we do this through a framework that we've developed called the whole child framework. And the idea behind this is that just like the mission of our schools is to address the needs of the whole child, that should be true for the building as well. Because we're trying to support, as architects, we're trying to support the mission of the schools. And so what this framework allows us to do is look at the mission of the school design through this whole child lens. So we've broken this into three categories, wellness, engagement, and learning. You'll see that wellness is on the outside and that provides the foundation, right? Kids have to be safe, they have to be secure, they have to be in healthy environments that are non-toxic. And then the next ring is engagement. Kids have to be engaged with their community, both in the school and outside of the school. They have to feel like they're part of something. This is part of the readiness to learn. And then in the center is learning. You could call it self-discovery, right? Once you have wellness and engagement, you're ready to learn. And what we're going to do is we're going to talk about these three categories and what it means in school buildings, what aspects of school design and the actual environments that we put kids in contribute to these three categories. We're going to do them sequentially, give an opportunity for each table to discuss what that means for them, and then report out, we'll record it on these flip charts, and then we'll do that three times, one for each category, and then at the end we'll do a little dot-tocracy and people will get to vote on what... Because we'll have this whole laundry list of things, and not everything can be the most important, right? Some things are going to bubble up and be the really important stuff, and so we want to hear from you what you feel that is. So one of the interesting things about this, we developed this whole child framework independently and fairly recently, because we've been talking about this for years, we realized how closely it aligns with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Are people familiar with that at all? Yeah? I see some. So in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, at the bottom of the period, pyramid is safety and security, and physiologically it's like food, water, shelter, clothing, sleep. Very similar to wellness. Next, as you go up the pyramid, you have self-esteem and love and belonging. This whole idea about engagement, right? In community, feeling... We often say, with middle schoolers, it's all about finding their tribe. They're trying to figure out who they are, and you want to provide opportunities for them to feel connected. And then at the top of the pyramid, self-actualization, we're calling it learning, I mentioned we could call it self-discovery, but it was really exciting as we started to explore the connections between both that really reinforced the validity of the whole child framework. So I'm going to talk for a few minutes about wellness and talking about ways schools can create healthy environments. And then we're going to give you folks 10 to 15 minutes to kind of brainstorm what that means for you and what you feel is important about some of the wellness aspects that we're looking at for Montpelier schools. So let's get started. So location and access, walkability. We've heard several times in the context workshop that we did, how important that was to folks in Montpelier that kids have schools they can walk to because that's the experience now. Sometimes we're working in schools that are in suburban locations, rural locations, and it's not as applicable, but with the whole obesity epidemic in this country, one of the things that has been cited is that kids just don't walk to school anymore. They used to walk to school all the time. Now we've got these centralized schools, it means getting on a bus, getting in a car. Another aspect, this isn't really facility related, but my wife was a school-based clinician. She used to say if I could just get the kids to get a good night's sleep, I would be 50% of my way of my job would be done. So start times to schools can have a big effect. Some school districts have pushed high school start times later because that's what teenagers need. Others haven't because they need to go to their after-school jobs. Light, this is a huge one in terms of wellness. And learning. There's been studies that show that learning is a famous PPE and G study that with double blind study that shows that kids who have access to natural light have more effective learning. Two groups, same conditions, same subject matters taught. The kids who have access to natural light have a higher level of achievement in learning. And it's not just natural light too, it's the quality of the artificial light. One of the exciting things now is tunable spectrum lighting. Has anybody heard about that? So with the architect has heard of it of course. Basically with LEDs, you can get your artificial lighting system to mimic the pattern of the sun. And it really helps with circadian rhythms because it's a natural cycle. The sun starts off very bright in the mornings and then it gets yellower and yellower. And you can actually pattern the lighting in the school, any building to match that. This is a shot of the Winooski school's lobby. And you can see how much natural light is coming down from the skylights and how it's balanced with the artificial light. Obviously we're talking about all these basic needs, light, water, air, food, healthy, fresh, local. A lot of schools have farm to school programs. I don't know, do you have one here, farm to school program? We don't technically, no. Technically. Movement, not just classic athletic fields, playgrounds, but climbing walls, gardeners, personal fitness, yoga, movement. One of the things that you'll see in a lot of these schools built in this era and older is they address athletics and playgrounds and they address academics, but they don't really deal with the social emotional piece. And we'll talk about that as a common theme as we go through this. So we talked about natural light. Fresh air ventilation is another huge factor with wellness and that obviously has become much more to the forefront with COVID. You know, non-toxic materials and cleaning methods. And this one has really come to the forefront as both humidity control and climate control with global warming. It's getting hotter and hotter. These buildings are poorly insulated a lot of our schools. They're incredibly uncomfortable. More and more we're seeing air conditioning as not even just a discussion, but a requirement because the best analogy I've heard is somebody said, you know how artificial turf extends the athletic season? They said, well, air conditioning extends the learning season. And we were talking with folks, Winooski, they saying we're getting two weeks of more learning time on either end of the schedule. And that's a significant proportion. And of course, this is a huge one these days, unfortunately, but safety and security. And the real challenge is we know we can make buildings more secure, but how do we make them welcoming and secure? This was a project at Mount Abe where we renovated the lobby and we put in this glass vestibule and the transaction window, all the glass. It's not bulletproof, but it has blast protection and it's got film on it. So it's equivalent of laminated glass. But you know, there's the hardening of our buildings when at the same time we're talking about engagement and making buildings welcoming and kids feeling like they're connected. There's definite tension there. This is once again, this isn't really school design, but it's related is what are the ideal groupings of ages that are developmentally appropriate? Huge, we have conversations all the time with schools about middle school. Is it 670? Is it 780? Is it 5678? You could get this room full of middle school educators and you might get a very robust discussion about what's the right grouping. This is something to think about with wellness and engagement. I will say that a lot of these categories, a lot of these little mini topics, you could put in any one of the three buckets of the framework. So now we're going to turn it over to you. There's a piece of paper and a pen on each table and what we'd like you to do is take about 10, 15 minutes and talk about these different things in terms of wellness and what's really important in your minds for Montpelier Rocksbury schools and then what we're going to do is come back together and somebody from your team should be your spokesman and report out and Cam's going to report it on the paper and should be really interesting. So we'll give you about 10, 15 minutes and then we'll come back together. Let me know if you have any questions. Just raise your hand. You want to be in the brighter? You want to do it? I think walkability is huge for me. We've talked to neighbors and stuff and a lot of folks. It's Montpelier, it doesn't look through Rocksbury, but I've got a related comment for Rocksbury and a lot of us move here because we want to live in a walkable community and have our kids be able to walk to school and having grown up in a rural community like Rocksbury and been bused to a school. I never had that opportunity and I've seen the independence that my son's been able to gain far earlier than I did and just I see the benefits of that so I think walkability is key and then with the Rocksbury peace in mind as a kid who was bused from a rural school who went 20 minutes one way and an hour the other on the bus loop to get back the benefit I got from that for setting me up for being able to get to a good college and life was huge so I want that for those Rocksbury kids and you got to have a sports bus in my mind that there's got to be what I just put as a timely transit for the rural school because if I hadn't been able to do sports I don't know where I'd be today but it was key for me to stay interested in my academics to do sports because you can't do sports if you're not doing well in your academics and so for a lot of kids I think for them to be an engaged learner sometimes it's a care enough you get to play football you get to run track you get to do whatever so like so like transportation that ensures equitable access yeah because if you were a Rocksbury kid but you always had to go home with three and everybody else was staying and doing sports that would not make you feel like yeah I like that framing the transportation because folks that are maybe it's not walkable to live you know if you live on River Street the far end you're not necessarily walking you might be biking you might be having some other mode of transportation but just the accessible the accessibility and then the equitable access to transportation I think so we're reframing that from walkability to accessibility and connectivity through transportation because the bike ability was a great idea too I hadn't thought about because I'm thinking of my mindset right now but I think part of that too is also the location like if this the site's abandoned because of the you know the flood why just get some stilts I know it's like what's that it's Mont Saint-Michel in France that you can only get to it by yeah that's right by high tide wind low tide we'll be the Mont Saint-Michel but but where it's located like if it you know the the golf course would be a it's a beautiful site but it's really challenging for a lot of kids to get a lot of kids to get there so like integration with the community is I think is also really important right and you know if it you know contingent with that I guess is the thinking about like what you know what grades are located where like the one you know the the elementary school and the middle really great that's more residential the kind of close to business but I feel it's facing the residential but the high school I know I know a lot of kids do the outward I forget what the name is where the outward engage with the community community learning like an internship yeah and if it so if it was more like located you know if you can imagine I mean I don't know how this would happen but a connection with or the business environment or ways for it to integrate with that so it's walkable but also like easy connection to that those like you know the outside learning integrated with the community yeah that sort of locked in for me I think we are now on our second question I want to bring us back to what are the goals yeah because I don't think a goal is walkability or integration with the community I think that's how a person could achieve a goal so what are the actual what's the what's the why behind the integration of the community that has to do with wellness why is that not a not a goal because I think it's how you achieve the goal so well what what is what's the value of the integration what does it get us yeah what does it get us so it's uh I think what I think I'm hearing is that in Montpelier what we value is that our schools are like have a sense of place within the community right like our kids and in Roxbury as well our kids where they go to school feels very much like a part of the community and vice versa right they're connected to place like you said yeah right okay but it was it was evident from the recent school board meeting about the connection from Roxbury for place like that was the school and Roxbury are one yeah they are integrated and the separation of one from the other would be devastating for them but I think Montpelier is similar in Montpelier I'm with you like when we were deciding where to live in Vermont yeah this was like one of my number one criteria yeah we I grew up walking across the street to school in Cabot and so it was really it was really easy and we moved here three years ago for the same Jackson exactly this is a good conversation but you should make sure you take put a lot of it yeah and think about what your top items are going to be like and if someone else takes what your top items are going to be I like the idea to maybe kids being able to be here later because I think they're I worked in the school, not the school, and there are a lot of issues around kids who really didn't really flip it you know and so having stuff available like some kind of healthy substantial snack with kind of a place to be I mean there were kids who would at breakfast would take the days worth of food and stuff in their pockets so they would have something to eat the rest of them yeah yeah and I don't think that's necessarily not here I don't think there you know we certainly have students who are living in hotels who are but they don't come to school saying hey I don't have anything to eat I mean they're so oh right no they're not going to be public about that yeah yeah the dignity piece is huge yeah I mean it seems like you know the goals are obviously sort of being able to you know just educational goals but then also just like that sort of base you know like foundation of safety yeah exactly yeah the safety security the food the culture yeah so I mean that seems like that is obviously one goal I mean it seems like you know obviously the mobility and I think it's statewide too it's like the free lunches right yeah yeah you know so that's that's a step in the right direction but yeah it's providing those sort of foundational needs you know I don't know how like they would get over it day when it's like we didn't have a dental clinic in the school but but you know be able to if we had a space for it yeah it might be able to convince a doctor's office to put a PA here and you might be able to convince a dentist's office to put a dental hygienist in here yeah twice a week or once a week or you know if we could set up a facility so they just had to send the body over yeah and they would do all the billing you know whatever yeah totally and would that extend would that would we would that extend to families yeah I'm just asking because I think there's this uh it's like a dune and the edges of it you know where do we go yeah from there on right in the sand right yeah or yes we you know time and space permitting sure exactly and it's the kind of thing too or it's like you know if we did provide it for not just the students but also the families and that would then further like boost those family members of that sort of like pyramid and then be able to provide more for their children well we can start with the kids anyway yeah I miss it as it kind of keeps like the onion peels like you start at the core of the children in the school and then you get further out and eventually it's like all of the town the culture and the things that are and obviously if I'm in Libby's shoes it would it's helpful to have some parameters around which population I'm responsible for which I'm not it's why she walked over what she did even though sometimes we vote right doctor eye doctor eyes optician well we didn't nail it all I mean I think all right well moving forward yeah sure sure all right this this table here is going to go first and then we'll do that table and then here once we're in the lights on this yeah see what I wrote sir led right so what so a few things came up for us the first looking for spaces that are conducive to learning ad movement together and I think a thing that came up for us was flexibility of space the example of you know kind of the elementary school classroom where you've got small tables kids can move around depending on what's happening in the classroom second thing was kind of more integration of outside into the inside um connection to nature I think is the theme we're looking at there um how do you bring in more vegetation how do you bring in more natural light um to I guess kind of infuse the space with more of a natural kind of feeling um and then another idea that came out of that was just are there are there different or inexpensive structures a greenhouse for example um that allow for learning that's closer to the outdoor environment we talked a lot about I'm kind of traveled to from schools and and how you might stagger or delay start times depending on age depending on kind of family schedule um that was a little bit less defined but how does that I think contribute to overall wellness of students when how they're arriving I'm not yeah because we're supposed to be getting people's top three top three okay we only have one more top four all right and this is our this is our last one then others can go um last thing that came up was just maybe different different types of spaces different scales of spaces that accommodate sometimes individual more solitary kinds of things like manfulness reflection versus others that are more group or collaborative um focus we talked about a number of different ideas one of which was could be could the school be a site for medical dental optometrist you know let us not assume that everyone's getting those services elsewhere and if it's uh even if it's on an occasional basis could the school be a site for that in a partner with or with multiple community providers in that area um these are not in a in a ranked order uh the school is being a safe place to gather at many hours so especially if we're if we're willing to accept shifting starting times to later based on the crazy circadian rhythms of our teenagers you know would it also be nice for them to have a place where they can gather together connect and create community um in only safe ways um later in the day uh you know for some kids they may not they may not have a place to go during the day they're supervised they may not feel safe who knows what uh obvious um serving basic needs like breakfast lunch and dinner acknowledging that nutrition is not um universally secure for our community and I wrote to myself we didn't talk about this but you know providing food through the summer as well would be a wish of mine and then the first topic that came up was mental health and talking about the contributing factors and walkability as a walkability of the schools in our community for many students being a sort of built-in sort of counter to the issues of nutrition fitness etc in the U.S. and then a nod to sort of fitness broadly broadly conceived not not simply athletics which you already brought up um so we didn't really talk about that facilities we did be talking about yeah so mental health was I don't know if you got that on me you said it but I yeah thank you great about the stable here do you want us to say stuff that's already been said should we still put it out there yeah do I want to check okay um really broadly some goals that we named are that our schools feel connected to the community and vice versa that the community feels connected to the schools that there is a connection for our learners to the outdoors we didn't get it as specifics but except we talked more about constructing outdoor classrooms and less about bringing the outdoors in that was more of our focus um that all types of learners whether they're have they have mental health challenges or socioeconomic challenges or neurodiversity can access both the community of school and the learning that takes place in school and that there is healthy local food access to healthy local food those were the big goals we had and then we named a few of the house would be connectivity through transportation connectivity and accessibility through transportation and that the um buildings themselves are integrated with the community so when you talk about buildings integrated with the community does that mean um could you talk a little about what you meant to me about that for the the first thing that came up that I don't think will be as far as walkability that was it like I think the very very first thing that we all said so um whether that's a rock barrier walkability bike ability um but also the sense of like if you have high schools doing like community based and service learning can they access the community easily um and then also some of those ideas about like how does the community use the buildings and resource and vice versa there's a goal that I didn't catch was the second to the last one um connectivity and accessibility through transportation I really get to your walkability bike ability and then for Roxbury timely bus services so that folks can come here and not just do school and go back but interact in extra curriculars school clubs theater that kind of thing my apologies one more no problem connectivity and accessibility through transportation look it up with an everybody see this okay or should we dim the lights there's a portion don't dim the lights and then we'll turn them back on so now we're going to talk about engagement um helping students feel connected to their school to groups within their school to the community in the world um you know this this this has a multiple scales to it because sometimes in larger schools we're trying to create schools within schools you know we're trying to create smaller communities a very good example is middle school which is trying you know has usually teams concept is this team-based approach and we're trying to take the sense of community in the team um so here we go you know the different so in Vermont you know we talk about well in general we talk about small schools but in Vermont it's a little bit of a miss number because we have micro schools and small schools we don't really have there's very few large schools you know maybe Shelburne Milton there's a couple of big ones but you know I always try to point out that when people talk about the benefits of small schools they're not talking about 35 kids or 50 kids because there's almost no benefit to school that small other than you're maintaining maybe your school um you're really talking about schools that are you know more like 150 is considered a small school um we did a study for ascent central but what's the ideal elementary school size because they were like we desperately want to have a full-time nurse a full-time librarian you know it's two sections per grade it's actually more like 250 you know it's a big that for them when they talked about how you staff a school and how you deliver a robust set of program of course they have the only one school in there in ascent central that size which is Mary Hogan which is bigger than that all the other schools are the micro schools so um but when you get these big schools you often try to do schools within schools sometimes they're called cores houses um you can consider academies which are like theme-based groups um teams all these different social spaces help create community the sense of community um and you know like when we did gwanuski and other schools we worked on there's a lot of discussion about like well should we have two entrances one for buses one for um one for drop-off one for you know walkers and the answer was no because from a security standpoint you really like to have everybody coming in the same entry but it also helps create a sense of community when all ages all staff are coming through the same door mixing in a lobby having chance to say hi um and so how you design a building can really encourage that this was a school we did in well places so fia vulgaria and we created this really wonderful amphitheater which has a lot of historical precedent in vulgaria because it was a lot of there's roman amphitheaters everywhere believe it not vulgaria and they do a lot so this is a place for them to gather outdoors another way you can increase engagement is through engaging design design that speaks to kids you know we often talk about buildings um building speak and what do they say about like if you would drive up to this building and what what is this building saying to people uh in terms of its iconography um is it saying come on in there's a vibrant learning community inside maybe not i don't know um this was a early learning center in hindsburg and you see the colors are very age appropriate the lighting is a little bit of playfulness to it this is what connects kids to their environment and that's how a built one of the ways of building can help kids feel connected to community because they walk in and they say this is my place um transparency is another great way um like for example the library when you walk by you get a get a little bit of an inkling here of what's going on but you know we're often trying to get libraries closer to the entries with more glass because they're really exciting spaces with all the different learning that's going on in the books um and so you can create uh you can also you can enhance the sense of engagement with learning through transparency um another way of building connect now we're talking about a little bit a different community as in the environment how do kids feel connected um to their world through the environmental stewardship of the building you know when you create a building that's uh really firing all cylinders in terms of its sustainable practice through these materials you know recycled rainwater renewable energy this is a this is a picture of a project that has all that going on you can actually create buildings that teach you know the building itself becomes a pedagogical tool you can have dashboards you can use it for science experiments how much energy did we produce today um and it really starts to model you know we teach environmental stewardship in schools and now the building is a chance to model that and we all know as parents it's not what we say that our kids learn from that's what we do and how we act in the world and and I think this is a real opportunity this is one that as I was saying some of these fall into multiple categories but not just where does the food come from but using food as an opportunity to teach we're we're more and more trying to incorporate teaching kitchens into school so that you know if you're doing a unit on another country if you're doing a unit on measurement you can use food as a vehicle to teach and once again it connects kids back to their environment where does their food come from right how how do these things that we eat how are they made all more opportunities to engage and learn we talked about this last when we were reporting out of community accessibility this is a new lobby renovation at non-aid I don't know if anybody's seen it before but I wish I had the before picture because it's quite a transformation but you know does your school have an event entry so that you can the public feels welcome and but they can't wander through the building do you have meeting rooms that the public can use or conferencing ability even incorporating works of local artists or showcasing students you know when we walked into this lobby the very first the only thing were sports trophies I said to them I said you know if I didn't know better I would think all this building is about all the schools about this sports that's all you really care about they're like no no no we have a really vibrant performing arts program we have you know all this great stuff going I said well you know now's the opportunity when we renovate the lobby to make that manifest because what what people experience when they walk in a building speaks volumes about what that school values and so when you walk into any one of the schools in this district and think about what do you see and and what how does it reflect so we're going to do our another breakout session and so one of the promises what kind of school communities are you trying to nurture in the district at the grade team level is at the school level is that the entire district is that important that it feels like community because some so you know we work in a lot of districts where it's really fascinating you know they merge the districts and but there's no sense of community the communities are the towns the district is not a community and so they they try to think about the district as if it was one and you know at harwood right now the superintendent the new superintendent I think he's really onto something and we're going to every town to talk about the project we're not trying to have like big like we're not one meeting for the whole district because it doesn't work that way there every town is a unique community so that's one one of the questions the other one is you know this environmental leadership piece is a really important I think question to to to for us to understand from you folks what where should this district be is it a is it we're going to do the best we can we're going to do what we can afford do we want to be leaders when it comes to sustainability and environmental design and finally this is this is a fun one if you have time think about it it goes back to what I was saying if your buildings could speak what what should it say what should they say about your school culture so we'll give you guys 10 to 15 minutes once again and then we'll report back out and then we'll wrap up with the learning component of the program well the thing that comes up for me in the first one what kinds of school communities I'm kind of interested in the first bullet point what kinds of school communities are you trying to nurture one thing I'm really interested in is kids or organizing their own communities their own groups based on their interests their passions it's kind of like it just emerges from whatever kids are interested in and care about really so it's I guess in some way it's like how kids start clubs at the school but so one thing that this district lacks is after school care which is a great opportunity for those is a great place for those opportunities to emerge and that's not a value of this district no no I don't know I don't have kids in school you probably do right you do my kids are having kids in school there are limited spaces and they're not I think many folks want to participate in our don't get a space and then for those who do there are I don't know if there are subsidies or not I think they're hard to come by so the expense is significant and prohibit so is this primarily a space issue or is it a value issue? Okay got it I mean I'm from Rockstar okay got it we but the after school has always been essential because it's extremely working class people working working working there's a lot of folks here that aren't working quite as much or doing different things or have more flexibility I don't know exactly what the makeup is but yeah folks can't not work in Roxbury got it but it's it's we've been surprised to learn that it's not particularly strongly valued okay a lot of talk but no action right there's a lot of talk about equity too yeah that's a that's a good one equity yeah because that's I mean that came up for me about like what should our buildings say about our school culture and equity for me I mean the first place I went was class diversity so how do we create a welcoming space that does accommodate a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds I also think about that kind of equity in terms of you know racial background racial identity and I know there's a lot of work being done on that right but can our spaces and the things that we offer in our spaces like you were just saying the after-school care can it really like facilitate that yeah I mean I love the idea of there being spaces for events that are closed from the rest of the building so that people don't just have the free range of the building and then the idea of spaces being available to the public for whatever maybe it's your clay group or you know and those being integrated between adults and kids you know it could be that what the kids are interested maybe kids are into some kind of game or whatever that you know dungeons and dragons that there are adults totally into you know and that and there could be some cross-generational you know integration as well anything coming up for you Tom no this is a tough one for me this one I guess I don't know what a school is supposed to say you should say welcome without big dollar signs yeah are you you must be thinking of tax implications yes there's gotta be something you know yeah well that's an equity issue what we've just been talking about here the ramifications of taxation hit people differently depending on what their income level is yeah the capacity for this kind of development too it's like cost money to renovate not just not just rebuild but even to even to provide general maintenance is cost real money yeah oh yeah I mean it's definitely I mean the question is like you know I think there are places that don't want to spend money on education and there's less available it's it's more bare bones you know maybe they are just about their sports team maybe not even that because they can't support you know what I mean because they don't want to spend the money to support them and then there are spaces there are places that value all the pieces you know that that make a kid you know feel safe feel welcome feel like they belong and that does cost money yep you know and there's no way around the costs it's it's tough right it's hard it's it's always this is the tough one I don't know what it was on channel three news I saw it a couple times that they're saying that we're looking at 18 percent property tax increase for the schools 18 percent that's uh so it's cat if as long as I don't know how they're thinking of why or what right so as long as the per spending per I mean I'm on the school board so as long as per pending for the spending per pupil doesn't increase by 10 percent the tax increase will be capped at five percent so if we vote no I mean the school board whatever we're doing so it won't be 18 percent certainly not this budget cycle and better not no that would be and I think that the reason why that letter went out was because that the ramifications of recent changes in laws turned out to be pretty harmful more so than anyone expected I think there was great intention and it turned out to have a big a big impact that for the for this budget cycle the real hit to families can be avoided but potentially if something's not done to make adjustments in the law that just changed the way that we fund our schools then it could become a big a big increase and not not even because there's any new additions you know it's not like spending is although I will say we did give a pretty good raise to teachers following the pandemic and in response to the inflation and I'm not I stand by that yeah yeah that's that wasn't the main reason why numbers went up there's there's more reasons there's also healthcare costs the governor made it so that individual districts couldn't negotiate as individual districts it's a the whole statewide thing and they just are getting screwed right healthcare costs gone up a lot so it's it's also complicated yeah it's nauseating but there's some good stuff on there I mean I like it does all kind of seem to come out of this equity value so I like I like these issues what about the environmental leadership piece I'm torn on that one second board like how environmental leadership because I know and feel the crisis of our changing climate but does that mean that we're we're our small community and our school is leading the movement to address these really systems level issues I mean I think we should be we should be proceeding with net zero in mind right oh they're already got that plan they've got so many other things planned I mean it's kind of you know what just I think it's all right right but you know what I think just hold the pace you're at you don't have to jump up any higher just try to go a little you know what you're thinking of and at a good slow pace because I think you don't want to be putting out too much and then you don't have you're not going to be able to reach or just slow and steady and then try to get results and see what the truth is yeah yeah you know over say 10 15 years see you know because they're saying even for mine isn't reaching their goals we're spending lots and lots of money on this so it's just slow and steady you know and see what happens within 10 15 years you know and then if it isn't then maybe there's somewhere else you can adjust but if you just keep throwing out all these things it just gets harder and harder and more and more expensive well there's something too that I appreciate which is you know as as new technology becomes more mainstream the cost of it goes down you look at solar right cost of solar has come down like crazy um and so we should be incorporating those practices methods into our facilities but I think I agree with you I don't think we can be on the bleeding edge as they come before more affordable as we can fit them into reasonable budgets okay we're we're going to uh you know what we're uh solar panels like just 10 years ago compared to today I mean you know it's a lot you know now you know you do have a lot of fields full full of uh solar panels 10 years from now it could be one solar panel to get all the freaking energy that you're you know it's like try just at a good steady realistic pace you keep throwing in all these other so much it's just like you get it for me you can be idealistic you just can't suddenly fly yeah thank you story my life joe well there was a lot of excitement at our table for answering question number three first okay so um we want the buildings to reflect the different stages of life our learners are in we want the buildings to to convey that learning is exciting and dynamic I will slow down luckily it's all recorded so yeah it's where age-appropriate yeah yeah I swear I'm not being paid by trust cons I just a big admirer of what you guys did in Winooski and the example that I gave was Winooski is a pre-k through 12 school but when you're in the building when you're in the different schools within the school it very much reflects that age so when you're over in the high school section I felt like it felt like a community college campus there's lots of spaces where students older students can make their own decision about where they're going to be and what they're going to be doing and it's not directed by the school right it's not like this is a meeting space it's like oh there's this big area with these kind of giant stairs that very I mean I was a community college kid it very much reminded me of where I was school and then when you're over in the elementary school it feels cozy and it felt like an elementary school in that very nurturing environment and you also did it with color which was great as well yeah um so I again I swear I'm not being paid by trust cons but that was something that really stood out to me and I would love to see that in our building so there there were a couple more on what we want the school to say which is that you are welcome here and the you is anybody um and that we want the school to foster curiosity among our learners and staff um we've oh foster curiosity um we think the general consensus in our community is that we would like to see MRPSB an environmental leader and some ideas that we have are um or just sort of to back that up are the need for resiliency of our buildings um buildings can in the way that we um design or uh or redesign them can can help reinforce and teach that environmental leadership and reflect that value and then there are a few other specifics that I this one we got a lot talking at the same time so I could you point it out that this is a priority for our students yes students have been speaking about that but very specifically our community our students have said this is a priority for them what's a priority the environmental leadership were there any other specifics yeah I know I I think you named it yeah I we I think maybe it's reiterating what you said how how build the buildings can be um can be can talk about that and be didactic tools for that not just anything new but the existing buildings at the same time right right all right and then um to answer the community question it comes back to a little um one thing we think is important to foster is that sort of teaming approach based on what um sort of not just grade level but kind of um stage of life um our learners are at um we want the buildings to foster like a whole community within them that also um supports all needs do you want to give your example of how like big n sure like you know I have one kid who would love to be in a huge space with lots of people and I have other kids who would would hate you know that would be terrifying for them they want they need a smaller space to congregate in um and then just to specifically answer what kind of community are we trying to nurture um we do believe it's really important and valuable to nurture our district as a community and we acknowledge we're not there yet thinking of our entire district as a whole community I think there's a lot of school there's schools do a lot to foster community and pride within their schools like you know each school has their own actual mascot like literal person puts on a costume so there is definitely that happening and I do believe that there's a Roxbury community and a Montpelier community and we could do better to have a whole community so we we don't we I would say maybe don't have a consensus about the sort of uh age cohorts uh as they are we explored a little bit your idea that if you I think which is sort of an economic lens like if you want to be able to afford a full-time nurse you need 250 kids you know so okay what's that are we going to choose age groupers or um grade level cohorts based on finding that sweet spot of numbers probably not but anyway um we had a wonderful idea about a community of highly kinetic kids and sort of embracing kids as they are which I think dovetails or or is piggybacking on what you just articulated you know some some kids really need to learn and be active and others maybe not and then my own editorial on that would be and maybe we need to mix them sometimes so that they all learn some from the other right uh so this this is too reductive but yeah highly kinetic kids and then maybe there's a continuum of this is so dangerous quiet and cerebral is the yeah yeah it's fully stepped in it so I'm gonna trust that you take the spirit of that and not the uh precise language right because because that's uh the generalization does no justice to how dynamic kids are yeah right I didn't say couch potatoes it's about addressing different different modes and being and being yeah we talked about you know the pointing towards an ideal of a living building where uh the building does reinforce environmental you know stewardship and and those values acknowledging that that's a that that specific designation is probably aspirational but moving closer towards that is is helpful we were like the living building challenge you know as sort of the the high standard of goals yeah not necessarily like you know organically alive walls but just that yeah it'd be amazing the you know kitchens kitchens that are able to cook creative healthy meals uh and then in in the sort of through the lens of if a building could talk what do we wish it would say I'm not sure we I'm not sure we took that quite verbatim but we wish for the buildings in our district to promote the idea of global citizenship right that that uh students are not just products who will become part of an economic output but um citizens of their community citizens of the world might capturing that yeah just the broader ecological everything we all had a lot of excitement about our buildings being uh meetings meeting places for many things you know more than just school concerts in the school auditorium more than more than just school meetings in a school library for example um uh you know definitely wishing for inviting entrances to the buildings and then the well the idea of of the district buildings being resources resource centers in a crisis you know could you do we have solar panels and batteries and and therefore no matter what happens you can come charge your phone or we can provide food at you know to the community or we can provide shelter to the community uh resource uh our our facilities can be resource community resources in a crisis I would say I would say community resource centers in a crisis because emergent I think there are many things that are crises that are not emergencies I'm here splitting hairs would you like to see the two halves and I wrote accessible because I don't think we've heard that yet and we didn't actually talk about that but you somebody said you talked about I don't know your name Joe probably do know your name Nathan um you talked about Winooski and this space with a lot of stairs and I thought oh wouldn't it be great if all of our buildings were just designed so that no matter what your ableism level nothing was a barrier and that everybody else was just existing in a space like that but that was me not us so just to begin and we discussed a number of different things one word that came up um as we were thinking about what should the building say and that word was welcome which we we've heard that before um and that kind of captured a few different examples of things we were discussing really pertaining to the value of equity um in our district and in our facilities um and we had a few different examples of that of course I think we mean equity in all the ways you can mean it in terms of kind of identity um kind of class economic um Nathan you brought up the ability as an important equity issue as well um against specific examples um talked about uh the importance of after school care um as being an important value especially as it can be a such a huge support um to families who you know maybe the bit essentially a working family that maybe doesn't have a lot of flexibility in their lives um and so really need some additional support um throughout the course of a day um we talked about equity in terms of the facilities being really accessible to all members of the community um for events other kinds of things I think that have come up um and also in that being a multi-generational kind of space um where we can not segregate people based on age perhaps in the community but look for opportunities for um multi-generational um kinds of experiences um talked about equity in terms of kind of really valuing all different dimensions of learning and the child development experience which I think gets back to another point about um different learning styles different modes um so how do our facilities really accommodate those those different um ways of being in the world and then we did touch on lastly we did touch on the environmental leadership piece really at the end um and I think some things that came up around that were important to be kind of um going towards that goal of net zero which we've heard perhaps a lot talked about in the district and in the town um but also not putting undue burden on the district and on taxpayers in terms of adopting things that are maybe unproven or untested so as new technology becomes more mainstream it becomes more affordable um and we should absolutely be incorporating that so in some sense that is a kind of a leadership position where your school facilities become um really a beacon of this is what is possible when we're thinking about environmental sustainability I'm going to ask you to just drill down on that a little bit more within the context of saying that um kind of net zero energy buildings and even net zero carbon is at this point a fully proven and vetted approach um which I can't imagine you would find a scenario where it wouldn't pay back by financial sense the period of payback depends on the details I do but I don't think there's a I actually think that's probably a long term benefit to taxpayers specifically so I wouldn't shy away from you know putting a stake in I would say you know now's the time to put a stake in yeah you know as opposed to trying to the more you try to soft pedal and provide you can provide too much flexibility you can water down the impact because we just had this discussion the other day you can say we want it to be uh sustainable and healthy but what does that mean does that mean that we're going to use non-toxic materials that have been vetted through a third party we're going to achieve a certain level of rigor around the energy performance of the building and in order for the for the guiding principles to really have impact and have teeth it has to be a little bit more specific than just a platitude so I'm encouraging I guess here to say you know go ahead and say net zero energy or net zero carbon and if that's something that the community as assembled here today is yeah I think I think the the discussion was you know limited resources lots of priorities which maybe then aren't priorities and so how do you make decisions that take in again equity within our community and we talked about taxation and the tax rate and people's ability to really afford tax rates that maybe their income doesn't allow and so in the in the scope of all those different priorities we have you know what where do we start to make decisions about what we can do now versus what we do later so that I think that's where the discussion was around but the environmental leadership piece so add net zero to the list yeah yeah I mean it's what make it so one question I had about equity was what about equity across the buildings in other words take an example the middle school has no performing art space no this this is a nice auditorium so does the elementary school does that matter this should should every age group have the same access to opportunities or is it okay if the buildings some buildings have some stuff who don't other buildings don't know other stuff so I guess in terms of equity did that come up in your conversation yeah it didn't but I can't help thinking of the example in the news again I haven't visited that school but an all-inclusive facility there's an efficiency gain there I would think because you can consolidate all the different types of spaces that you might like for your academic programs your enrichment programs one kitchen not three yeah so I it didn't come out up in our discussion but yeah it's a great point I'm also wondering I mean I take your point but if we I mean we are a small community and things are pretty close together right and so if we thought about distribution of like key priorities across the schools and then we genuinely shared them as a community space that might include multi-generation and we have like super vibrant senior community that probably because of COVID we haven't really been able to welcome into our schools in a really long time but you know is it if we are like looking at main street middle hypothetical and we're sort of picking like what are the things really really want to see in that school and we said well we can we have a performing arts space here that the students can access we have a performing arts space at Union what if we invested in being able to team and teach you know uh it would be part of a bit of a political so I think there might be we don't have to say every building has to have the same no no and and it's more about like equity of opportunities for all schools right and so and I just use that as one example it could be science labs right it could be like do the elementary schools have access to not science labs but appropriate science experience middle school high school and looking at you know through that lens to make sure that things don't drop off I mean we have there are some districts we work in where like middle school they have a flight of kids because the middle school offerings are so weak that in middle school all the kids a lot of parents who have choices who are able to make choices send their kids to private school and then maybe they come back for high school maybe they don't but and so we're working on the in one district on a regional middle school concept because there there's like we're losing so many kids because our programs are showing because they're not getting equity of opportunities across the ages so anyway I just it's something to think about I don't you know this is this is your workshop so I just want to bring that up I do want to bring up the the color thing it's an interesting example at Winooski because I was talking about some of these things are in multiple categories well the way the color scheme started was they came to us when we were talking about it they said we have a lot of kids who are experienced trauma and we need colors that are soothing that help kids regulate we don't want a school of crazy like you know reds and being like you see we've all seen schools like that it's like you know the Crayola box got unleashed you know and so we did this research and we found a white paper that talked about that colors of nature are very regulated so at Winooski it's all blues and greens and grays the colors of nature so then we themed each school I think it was a forest river and mountains so we accentuated different color you know the elementary school was more playful it was more green because it was the forest middle school was the river so it was more blues because it's a transitional and then high school was the mountain because it was you know you're at the top and it was a darker more adult color so it both had a wellness component and an engagement it came out of their kind of just to circle back to what we're doing today it came out of their guiding principles yeah the things they said was we need a space that promotes calmness and tranquility to enable student readiness tomorrow because they had literally 30% of the kids refugees that's that's a it's a great point so just connecting it back to we're going to come up with these guiding principles they they can be very powerful in helping guide the design and of the master plan and and potentially future building projects so we're going to we're going to do one last element of the whole child framework which is learning and this is really you know about some people you probably heard the term 21st century learning you know this is the idea that about student centered learning whereas the old model you know they call this the sage on the stage right that this is more about the guide by your side right so in the old model this is very crude but students were empty vessels in which teachers poured knowledge into and in the new model students are active actively creating their learning by through hands-on projects through all kinds of modes and one of the things about 21st century learning is this idea and we touched about before is that every student not not every student is different but there are multiple paths pathways for learning some kids can sit and listen to a lecture other kids need to read the material other kids need to do hands-on learning and we need to provide all these different pathways so that kids can be successful in their own way so we just talked about equity about equal access opportunities for all consistency of delivery and messaging and this idea of depth versus breath you know across across the system the richness of offerings not just classes but also extracurriculars or co-curriculars sports you know in some schools where they're talking about consolidation um you know one of the main things is like can you offer world language can you offer chess club is there somebody is there enough kids to form so the size of the school and this is why I was saying like the micro schools that we have a lot of them in Vermont here if you talk to educators no nobody's like saying like these are the greatest things because they're a struggle to staff they're expensive and you don't have enough critical mass of either teachers or students to offer this rich variety so now we're just talking about some of the different way talking about different aspects of 21st century learning so one is team-based and this goes back to the engagement the idea of creating a sense of community this is a middle school team space at Winooski and what it is is there's a central common area and then all the classrooms surround it and so they have morning meeting here they have small group work they they have one-on-one counseling there's actually these corner rooms here these are small focus rooms on either side of the space where first service delivery so special ads speech and language so that the support staff can deliver services in the team space without having to remove the kids this is the space I think Jill was talking about this is the high school at Winooski this is a this is an existing 1956 57 there was just very similar we removed so what happened was we built a new middle school which allowed us to take out some classrooms so we took out four classrooms one two upstairs three and four we were able to create this dynamic learning center and and I call it that because even though it's a social space you know learning happens everywhere now we're not confined to a classroom you have your laptop you're doing group work and it's not just the students who use this space half the time we go there we see that there's staff there's adults sitting on the on the steps or in these comfy chairs collaborating because one of the key features it's probably a slide coming up is collaboration is a huge part of 21st century learning and to do that you have to have spaces that allow people to gather and here we go right on cue collaboration and part of it is physical but part of it is schedule wise is there a common planning time in the school this is a e-smart pillier this is a read aloud nook in their library that we designed you know in an existing building you know there are ways you can create these kind of teaming spaces but even just putting connecting doors between the classrooms allows teachers to easily and students go between classrooms and starts to build that collaboration because you know one of the things you know going back to engagement and getting kids engaged is and you'll see this coming up is this interdisciplinary learning so we were working with one school they had a whole unit on light so the English teachers language arts was talking about poetry of light physics was talking about the physics of light they they they they did it completely across all of the core subjects and including art and art was able to talk about how the effect of light on you know shadow and and so and that's that can be very exciting and that that could be very meaningful some schools are creating theme-based academies so you could have a performing arts academy within your school so you create a collection of classes and focus that really focuses on the performing arts you could have a STEM academy there you know all these are different ways to try and engage learners you know I used to be of the mind that you know we should give everybody a little bit of everything right it's like a Whitman sampler just try a little bit of everything and then eventually you'll find out what you like and I've really there's been a sea change at least this is just me now talking my personal thinking because what I've seen is that when kids go deep and and get really immersed passionate about something they can learn that you know that first of all they're engaged but that's a transferable skill having a relationship with a subject or a sport or an instrument having and getting to that level of mastery is a transferable skill that you can take with you in life and so I think some of these this idea of theming a school in different curriculum in the school to create tracks for kids could help with that project-based learning is also another way to get kids engaged this is a a maker space that the faced in elementary school here we did break out the crayola box as you can see the but these hands-on learning experiences you know there was Howard Gardner who really broke open this idea and he identified all these different learner profiles and that's what really started this this whole 21st century learning and and the idea that people learn in best in different ways and for some kids it's hands-on learning another another thing is the group work where you know what we see how many times have you walked down the hall of a high school or a medical school see kids working in the hallway sitting on the floor right we think we've all seen that and that's because there's you know a lot of there's a lot of focus on group work because guess what that's that's how we all work in in the work world right you've got to learn how to work with other people and collaborate and so what happens is a teacher will say okay we've got 20 kids we're going to have five groups of four and we're going to break into groups well guess what if you ever had five groups of four in your classroom so it's like well okay you go to the library you go in the hallway this there's literally no places in the schools for this kind of activity um and so 21st century learning uh incorporated to design provides those kind of spaces you need more space oh well you know one or two story depends on the side depends on what your priorities are i mean that's a different that's like a that's a different question it's it's an interesting one but maybe not yeah yeah yeah generally you know there's enough classroom space in schools these days it's just all these other spaces and you know my wife's a school-based clinician or was and you know she's been in copy rooms she's been in gymnasium closets she's been it's just unbelievable i every once in a while she calls me in and i'm like you have no ventilation one time she was in a closet with a copier with no ventilation in the room and i we we had to get her out of there and you know i was happy to be the bad guy in those situations individualized learning is another component so this idea that you know everybody learns differently and giving choice student choice student voice um to to what they want to learn as long as it meets the rubric of expectations learning community a lot of schools have programs where kids learn in the community which is very powerful so here are the the prompts what are the important elements of the approach to learning in this in the school district and how can the facilities best support those and some of the things we talked about are listed here i won't read all of them so we'll give you folks 10 more minutes and then we're going to get to the the fun part we're going to give out dots and we're after we report out we're going to do a little dotocracy and see what's really important so we'll come back together in about 10 minutes 15 minutes and see what you have to say i heard a lot of choice and it sounds like that's a theme based on the example so with choice those riches of opportunities right you can't you can't have choice if you don't have the resources to go back yeah so i was going back and forth and i kind of chuckle a little bit my kid who went to a Montessori school and a lot of the terminology he was using is Montessori based where you allow choice but you allow you encourage the kids to go deeper so it's a little bit for me it was yes and allowing choice and the opportunity to go deeper so you were thinking i see that's funny because i just came out from the opposite direction we got there so you were thinking of it as choices that individual kids can make and i was thinking of it as a variety of learning choices oh yeah available and then like in the middle is kids having really rich experiences yeah yeah i would say another important element is collaboration yeah our teachers are already doing a lot of that yeah and it's something that we want to make sure that our buildings can support the imposter going to the project based learning thing like i just wonder you know i think about like where does where does innovation where is innovation going to come from because it's not going to be someone toiling away or a group of like single-subject people it's not going to be just engineers working on one thing it's going to be the engineer and the economist and the business person working so like if if there are opportunities for multiple disciplines to come together around a project so it's not just collaboration for the teachers it's collaboration interdisciplinary interdisciplinary yeah those are good distinctions yeah that would seem neat um i've got a facility kind of yeah when they talked about theater here theater there but not at that school i thought about the same thing from a sports standpoint and so i think you know maybe the umbrella for that is just safe modern facilities that allow for that richness of opportunities whether it's theater whether it's sports whether it's clubs that just it's not like you're going into an asbestos leading poorly lit space to do your theater um the tracks are sports example of that it's it's not a safe facility um oh i see and this one goes back to her like our engagement thing where we talked about how the spaces should serve the outcomes right right so whether it's extra curricula right right um athletics or performing arts whatever it is or it's like you know like if you said to the library what are the actual curricula that you're trying to achieve right are you are you just a piece of that together in the space like what we do right right right right there's a social emotional learning seems to be this huge area where we did have loss during covid and we want to have gain right yeah and so if we know that all these other things i remember the principal speaking the high school principal in one of the many meetings about how if you have extra curricular things and you've got this richness and so people can find their tribe and everything you will have you know an increase in that social emotional learning because they fell in love with theater they fell in love with ultimate frisbee whatever it was but if you only have one offering it's like sorry if you're not in the chess club that's all we have yeah that's that's not ideal right or this or things like projects like the solar decathlon which is more of a college level thing but you you and you get all these different groups together to build a house that can be off the grid and right yeah have like a built something a hand yeah something i was thinking about that was a little a little bit different is is um you know the in learning in terms of hands you know both a little contradictory but like the hands-on stuff you know like well to support support kids in any kind of career like there's going to be kids here that are academics that are like you know business they're going to be entrepreneurs this people are going to go out into the trades right away from here like how i don't i don't have an answer for this but how do you support all of that okay so i think one thing that you're pointing at it's an element right it's an answer to that first one having hands-on learning yeah yeah and then also david and i were talking about this book what you're saying in montpellier roxbury we don't have a cte center but on the state level we need to address our cte centers because we're like 15 years old right so how do you go from having cool hands-on learning in maker spaces in like you know elementary middle school and then how do we have like really awesome robust cte centers that our high school kids can access right and plug in to yeah there's aerospace engineering too at the Burlington one is my understanding yeah yeah yeah which you know that that serves the needs of the businesses in that community it does and they did a private public partnership to help pay for getting that facility to be able to support aviation right yeah and i think but that also goes back to our idea of like community-sized schools schools that includes business community like we shouldn't not do that because they create really exciting opportunities for us but where are they going to do it right is it in like the 15 years cte attached to spalding i don't know like automotive but cars that were built 60 years ago right you know like how do we integrate technology i don't know if that's a problem for us p but the facilities somehow support that richness of offerings we want them to have and then they've got the choice right now but it's easy to see how our facilities especially if we defer a lot of maintenance on things if we you know it's easy to see how they wouldn't offer up a lot of richness and there's examples that i can think of just outside that that's an issue and so i see there's probably other things that i'm not even aware of where it's limiting i don't know i know that the the kids that are in theater and middle school are coming over to the high school um and because we've got that walkability facility right yeah i mean that was kind of my point is like if you ask me about traditional classes uh interesting to think of artist chef you know yeah residents right exactly more yeah people who are sort of like showcasing more sort of like alternative you know or just like yeah just and just obviously that's a way to learn too it's like oh you know cooking is so you can learn science you can learn math same thing with i mean obviously there's you know more clear healthy has a relationship with very tech center too for other more two hands on things yeah which is now called uh center for my career center yes exactly which i think yeah is a good rebrand yeah and so i'm just back to the you're saying we need help reconfiguring the building to make other learning styles possible i'm not sure that all these things i mean maybe those can all be accomplished i also not sure you get away with not having a science lab yeah so i don't i think there's some there's some sort of both ends um and i don't know how you know i i just come back to what you said it'd be great to have teachers here what is the literature teacher do they wish for i don't need a room with my bookshelves here in this configuration do they you know could they teach in the auditorium you know could it could be yeah or does the English teacher want to go sit like in a sort of cafe vibe place and you know comfortable chairs yeah you know well we have just just out here there's this courtyard yeah that's a that's a really all sort of semi-private kind of beautiful outdoor space where they do some community events they have like a you know like a pizza anyway they have they have some really wonderful things that happen for the high school and it's there's a courtyard through these doors yeah yeah yeah with the tree and some green is that right yeah it's terrific yeah and so it's um you know to your point about on a nice day can you go out and teach a class out there great obviously that's not a force these things yeah yeah but then you lose the yeah then you lose the the beauty of the spring day I mean I think ultimately it just comes down to like making sure that the the facilities have the spaces indoor outdoor that can support the sort of like software of multiple different you know pathways of learning you know we have some of that yeah I'm feeling a little bit caught because I don't know I'm not teaching exactly in school yeah I don't know like what works what doesn't work you know I mean part of me like even just being in this library I think there should be a lot more books maybe so or should there be tablets and communities yeah I got yeah many many contemporary libraries are incredibly multimedia yeah and I'm gonna show this is that yeah so I'm not sure we were as productive on this one I think speaking for myself that uh I think your preceding slides were intended to prime us it'd be great if there to me if there were uh so what you've presented there is sort of here's what's on the menu of how learning happens now and I I think the one wish that was strongest in this group is we wish there were more teachers in the room right now I'm not a teacher in the schools right now I don't have a burning I don't have a top five list of things that I really wish I could do differently and that I'm constrained by the space so I hope that that's incorporated into this process you know I think Lynn said it best you know we need help reconfiguring the buildings uh to make more learning styles possible and I'm not sure it's I'm not sure we had clarity on what that was we'd like some of the ideas of multi-generational mixing organically some of what you described in the sort of atomized Winooski space that now is a large open space um one idea was bringing the community into the school you know can you have can we have artists in residence or a chef in residence or you know sort of integrated learning in that way and then another idea was really doubling down on the community-based learning that already does happen which is individualized and we sort of are outside the box where students are learning in the community and and we're not as reliant on the structure of this building or another building um some discussion about the holistic aspect of mental health and healthy ways of living uh am I missing anything no I think we got a little bit off track outside of the actual building aspect but we sort of veered off track a little bit from the facilities we highlighted a few of these bullets on the right that seemed really important to to our group um so we talked about the importance of team-based teaching to create that kind of professional learning community for educators um creating those kind of smaller support systems for teachers aligning them around what they're doing in their their respective classes um also space for collaboration and you know kind of getting feedback bouncing ideas off each other um yeah sorry it's okay so yes team-based teaching good that's yeah support systems for teachers yeah yeah uh collaboration the alignment was a word that we used alignment of strategies strategies and approaches like learning education strategies yeah yeah sorry um okay talked about um the importance of community-based learning which can give students kind of a more real world view into how what they're doing applies in a number of different kind of professional um situations careers um I think related to that was um project-based learning as kind of giving students something really meaningful to like dig into um a sense of accomplishment kind of seeing something from start to finish um and again I think it's another application of kind of hands-on learning talked about um being able this gets back to the kind of differences of learning styles or those kind of gardeners intelligence is um you know having content presented in a lot of different media different formats to accommodate different learning styles um whether you're maybe a more visual learner or more textual learner or maybe a more kinesthetic learner just having those kinds of options really accessible and then just to sum up like how our facilities um could help support these approaches and this has come up in previous conversations but just flexibility within our spaces to accommodate all these different learning styles all these different approaches to education so some of the elements that we set our choice also referred to as the richness of offerings um collaboration project-based learning um particularly the idea of being able to bring together many different disciplines to work on a project together and hands-on learning operation something to start oh project-based got that okay multi-disciplinary oh yeah the project-based and the multi-disciplinary sort of went together but could be separated and then we'd be looking to the facilities to be able to have spaces that serve the outcomes we're going for and also celebrate the endeavors so um the example that was said here was like let's say we had an auditorium in the middle school but that it was like super teeny tiny or dark or like laden with asbestos would that actually be celebrating the arts in any way shape or form um so not just that there are wasn't my idea wasn't my example i'm just i'm just it was my elementary school experience so and that that let the spaces offer a richness of both educational and extracurricular offerings and then that the spaces can support our staff in the work that they want to and need to be doing together richness of educational and extracurricular offerings if can i make a note too just because it's come up a couple of times in the conversation i had this morning around learning and food um i don't know if we're connected with food connects before it's a regional organization in southern vermont new hampshire just might be a plug to connect with them related to food farming learning in particular they help kind of create farm to school and food based learning programs food connects and it kind of touches on a number of the things that have come up sorry that's an aside but we didn't talk about it as a group but i just wanted to name it rogue yeah i did go rogue a little bit sorry about that he's not following the rules no no it's very inspirational anything else i did make an individual chart anything else from that group or nope that's everything so uh so what we're gonna do is um let's put them on the tables yeah and uh three different colors so what colors do we have red green and blue yellow red green and yellow red and green so put so do red for learning green for engagement and yellow on the wellness one so what we're asking people to do is to vote for their top three in each category of what what's really the most important top three so i'm going to put any letter they match they match up with the letters they match up with the they match up with these except use yellow i'm a blue one because we didn't have you everybody for coming this is the end of our session we really appreciate all of your input um and it was safe drive home does anyone not have doubts but feels empowered to do this too it's not like any of these concepts go away but what this what this helps us because because we care about all these things all these things are in parts of our presentation what this is going to help us do is it's going to help us focus the guiding principles for the project so that the most important things don't get left behind at some point in the future so that and i'll give you an example as people are thinking and talking i'll give you an example on another project we had a very specific guiding principle that said all occupied spaces shall have natural light either directly or from an adjacent space and and at at some point in the project there was a budget shortfall and we had to decide what was going to stay and what was going to go and and the superintendent said we cannot violate these guiding principles so we have to keep among other things natural light in every occupied space so it was a way for us down the road to remember and for all of us on the project team administrators teachers architects to hold each other accountable for what was most important to the community your name is i ran by your house every day and then twice and then i and i would think about you know is it okay i'll pick that thread up because i signed up for that one session yeah couldn't make it okay i want to go back and watch the table without everything and i literally just yeah no no i'd love to grab coffee it's been kind of a reason to do something better focus away from jay street no to jay street painting