 35-ish. Yes. And for sort of business is public comment. And please introduce yourself. You're not going to hear it, Keon, because it's to the mic. Okay. My name is Kayla Brownlee and I'm a Montpair High School Drama Director. I've also directed the Main Street Middle School Crafters Edge eighth grade productions for the past two years. And I just finished the Main Street Middle School fifth through eighth grade musical. I'm also on the auditorium renovation teams for both the high school and the upcoming UES renovation. But during the school hours, I am a flexible pathways teacher for Montpair High School. Additionally, I'm here today as a Montpair resident and the mother of two upcoming school-aged children. And here specifically today to ask the board to seriously consider how our district can more formally support theater arts education in our schools. Over the past four years as the Montpair High School Drama Director, I've experienced a significant increase in students who seek me out to engage further in theater. They want to deepen their learning experience, get involved for the first time, or use their skills to contribute to a production. I'm constantly finding myself in a position where students want to engage more, and they need educational support. In short, they need me to design the learning experience to fit their needs. And this experience is exhilarating and inspiring to me as an educator, but it requires my expertise and a lot of well-spent time. For this reason, I feel it is important for me to share today and advocate for the work I've already started, but need financial and structural support to continue providing. My goal tonight is to, as quickly as I can, quickly highlight why this conversation is important, timely, and needed, and why it should not be overlooked as a part of the FY21 budgeting process. The added value and potential impact of this work will have important results that positively impact our schools. My first point is that theater arts as a curriculum is a missing pillar in our district's arts education. Theater arts is an important industry in our society, both as live theater and connected with film and television. The study of theater arts is rich in technical and transferable skills and is easily connected with very relevant project-based learning by connecting production programming with curriculum work. Productions are a cornerstone of a theater arts program, which are expanded with educational coursework. The complex deadline-based productions are host to many student-driven opportunities to plan, problem-solve, and create with their peers. The nature of a production team and ensemble require students to work together and develop a sense of community around shared goals. Working on a team requires communication, and telling stories require understanding interpretation. I can go on and on about the relevance of theater opportunities to learning and how engaging the process can be. Secondly, I'd like to talk about community. We in Montpelier and Roxbury believe strongly in community connections, and theater provides a tremendous opportunity to connect with the school community, where students work together on something that's created using our students' talents. Students share a sense of pride and ownership for the finished performance. There's a sense of family and community that comes from being involved in creating something unique. With strong theater arts programming, the school community and culture are positively impacted, and students learn an appreciation for the arts, and with that appreciation comes a more tolerant and supportive culture. One district phrase that sticks out to me is, all means all. I can't think of a better way to work towards this goal than exploring theater arts as an option. Theater, whether it's live or filmed, is society's mechanism for examining the human experience. It explores relationships and humanity as its content, and provides the opportunity to discuss and react. The process of putting together a production requires the work of a diverse set of people, from talented performers to tech wizards to builders and painters and cosmetic artists. They all work together to accomplish a common goal. This process requires there to be diversity. It requires acceptance, appreciation, and the ability to trust many people as a part of the team. The theater is a tremendous place for people of all identities to find a home and a space to contribute and learn important skills. All means all means having diversity in our opportunities and diversity in our arts offerings, providing diversity in the ways that students can express themselves and their learning. One thing that our current budget is trying to address is the need for additional social-emotional support. Theater is an incredible setting for social-emotional work and therapy. Role play work, character work, and working on the self is a huge component of theater, in addition to the plethora of opportunities to do hands-on projects and make meaningful contributions. I would like the district and staff to consider recognizing the potential use of theater arts as a strategic place to incorporate opportunities and experiences geared toward supporting students with significant social-emotional needs. These opportunities would be on campus, connecting with a school community, and work with peers in a positive and purposeful way. Last but not least, I must address human capital, which is me in this scenario. A large part of my request today and for the past six months is to bring recognition to the work I do as an educator and to recognize the work as being the work of a theater arts educator and not just a co-curricular. I'm a licensed educator that applies my knowledge of curriculum and student learning to the design of my theater arts program, and this work that I've done over the past four years has grown the program and inspired more students to engage with this work in meaningful ways. In a recognized theater arts educator position, my work would be more appropriately valued and I would be given more time to align the strategic opportunities within the district with the needs of our students. I have taught in many settings, but I am most inspired by the teaching I do within the theater. I believe in the work and I see its impact every day on the students and on the community. The work I've done within the Montpelier Schools has taught me that there is a real need for a dedicated, experienced point person for the theater in the district. Teachers and students in all of the Montpelier Town Schools have sought my help in the past couple years and I'd like to formally help them, as well as the Roxbury Village School, with their programming dreams, all in support of our very diverse and deeply wonderful students. As a community member, I continue to give my time, energy, and passion for growing theater in this community because I really want this community to have a strong theater program for my children. My daughter starts in kindergarten next year and she's very interested in theater already and I want her and her peers to have consistent theater opportunities as an option right next to athletic music and other academic opportunities, creating a more equal culture and social scene relating to interests and talents. My hope for the district is to have strategic and appropriate theater arts programming from K to 12 and for a flexible pathways 9 through 12 to connect the extensive amount of work done by our students to specific theater arts proficiency standards. Supporting more theater arts in this district with a licensed theater arts educator doing this strategic work will support in students having a stronger sense of school pride, self-confidence, and belonging that will have positive impacts on our school culture and behavior. My ask of the board and the budget is as follows. A point to theater arts flexible pathways teacher position at MHS, which provides the opportunity for students to complete those personalized learning studies in theater arts, and a point for theater arts program director position, which would absorb the co-curricular role to recognize the significant amount of teaching and curriculum-based planning and design that goes into running a theater program and using the productions as strategic learning environments for all students. Thank you very much for your time and commitment to this school district and our students, and I'd love to engage more in this conversation. And I do have with me, since my speech was so long and I'm very sorry, I do have that speech right now as well as I had multiple parents and students that couldn't make it tonight that I've been collecting evidence from and they have provided written copies of those for all of you. Great, thank you, just hasn't changed your question now. So, okay, thank you. No, that was that was excellent, thank you. I do see a fair amount of people, um, that was Yeah, that's restorative justice, I know, so I just want to be kind of mindful. I think a lot of them are regimes. Yeah, this seems to be around, well, I just want to see if there's a lot of other people who want to talk and, um, so raise your hand if you want to speak. I brought something up so I could just share it. Okay, you can share. My only thing is, if you're speaking on the same subject, I think she gave us a lot of information. If you just want to say me too, please try to make it short and just, you know, try not to be repetitive because we do want to move things along. But please speak. We usually try to keep the whole thing to five minutes and it's already been over. No, that's totally good. I just want to, I want people to speak, but just being mindful of time, you know, we've got a lot of great information here, so if there's anything additive, try to keep your comments to things that are additive, but feel free to say, I fully support this, thank you. If that's kind of legitimate of your comment. So go ahead. My name is Marnie Lakin, and I'm a resident here in Montpelier, and I fully support Kiana's proposal. But in addition, I would like to add, the middle school drama club is also completely not funded. Even after a year, more than a year now, but after a year of success, the idea was that they would be funded in the current year that we're in, and that never happened. And instead, or in spite of the production that just happened last week was phenomenal. But all of the adults were volunteers. And there were 42, I think, students involved that was four days a week after school from for the entire semester, you know, until last weekend, plus evenings. And yet, how does that compare to coaching? How does that compare to sports programs? And how many students are really involved? And I think that it's time for the Montpelier Roxbury School District to really step up and acknowledge what kids want to do and where they're spending their time and how they're spending their time. I mean, I'm an arts educator as well, so I could go on and on, as Kiana did, for the benefits. But I really just think you need to look at the numbers and look at what the kids are doing, and make it equitable, no matter, you know, no matter what the kids want to do. Okay, thank you. Others? Good evening. My name is James Nagel, and I'm the father of Juno Nagel, who is a senior now at Montpelier High School. And, but for the theater arts and the choral programming here, she would not be the person that she is today. And the fact that Kiana has worked specifically with Juno, but also with all the other mask club folks, and has really watched them from the time they were fifth grade on, it's been remarkable. And I just wanted to say that this is something you should be supporting. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Hi, I'm Ella Darcy. From Point of Motion, I'm student Sierra Eaga for speaking for Kiana. The mask theater program has taught us so much. Just over the past year, theater has drastically improved our comprehension skills, social abilities, public speaking, self-confidence, and our overall happiness. Without theater, we know we would not be as strong of learners as we are today. Theater keeps us more engaged and interested than most of our core classes. We really wish it was possible for us to get an art credit from theater, especially since it is a combination of all the arts the school offers, plus a few it doesn't. Kiana has made the transition to MHS so much easier, as she has kind of welcomed us and did us feel like we're part of a community. She makes every show special and unique. Just imagine what she could do if she could fully come into the theater. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Everybody, if I read then we'll go quicker so I'll feed you the paper and your desk. So I'm Joe Cal. I'm a Montalier resident and a teacher here in the high school and I'm emphatically supporting the proposal that Kiana mentioned. As you probably know, the high school unit design template, and I hope that's my ad here. I do appreciate that, but we're all here in support of it. My ad is about like the actual unit template that we use to design instruction here and it's based on this book called Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTie. And at the top of it, it highlights us most important what we call the enduring understanding or the Montalier high school language learning expectations. These are the transferable skills that rise above any one particular subject's content area. And for folks that don't speak teacher language, what that means is that students retain not specific pieces of content, but deep learning based on understanding how that learning applies across and within other disciplines and all aspects of life. And that's what I mean when I say transfer or transferable skill. And as someone who teaches a subject about which folks often ask why would somebody learn that, I relate to and understand and completely agree with the emphasis on transferable skills. In a certain sense, the question is no longer why would somebody learn something, but instead why what is the transfer and learning potential from that course of study. The potential amount of content information is so vast that the what is no longer as important as the how and the why. Sure, it may appear at base value that math, science, English, and social studies, and other required courses are sorry, I lost my place. I said I would read and do it quick. Those subjects would be the must-knows, but in reality the unit design of our school essentially rejects a hierarchy of content and instead emphasizes deep learning no matter what the course. But another way, making kids self-aware, purpose-driven, and in a sense whole. In the 21st century, knowledge of discreet content information is nowhere near as important as the ability to know how to learn and as the ancients said, know thyself. Theater under Kiana's expert camera management does that to a huge extent for the kids involved in it and could potentially do that for many more kids whom the current system and its current structure cannot serve. Kiana is proposing to expand that access and I say we support her to that end. All this is to say, among other reasons, as a resident and as an educator, I endorse wholeheartedly Kiana's theater of arts proposal. To me the question isn't really should we do this, but why would we not give this demonstrably powerful learning experience more support and why would we not further empower this highly effective educator to continue her excellent work. The learning potential is enormous and we owe it to our community and our kids to further develop this program. Thank you for your time. Thank you. I don't know how to read everything, I just want to read the last paragraph. So my name is Melanie Taylor, I'm a parent, I'm from the mom of Eve here, she's part of the theater program. So I just want to read about for the students and commitments that don't pass the chance. So having a class for theater art within school provides students with commitments after school and an opportunity to experience the benefits and positive aspects of theater. Currently students do not have an opportunity to gain credit for the hard work they put into the theater program after school. Having a class would allow students to pursue what they love in school while being exposed to the academic aspects of theater. So be nice to that part of the curriculum as a class. I'm Molly Clark, I'm the choral director here at the high school and at the middle school. I work very closely with Kiana and I just want to make it known that I'm in full support of everything I will not going because I too could ramble on and on and on about arts opportunities but I do think that we are currently not serving our students to our fullest potential by our current arts offerings. I think the the lack of diversity that we have right now is not, doesn't align with our values as a school in a district. So I think that we as as a community can be giving more for our students in terms of arts. Great, thank you. I'm Molly. I'm Melanie Meyer and I have two daughters at Main Street Middle School in the 7th grade. They were heavily involved in Spain a lot this season and it was a what I believe to be it was a life-changing experience for them. I'm going to read you just a snippet because I feel so passionately about a couple of the bullet points that I put down. After being involved in extracurricular productions in different capacities for the past two years our children have grown in both confidence and enthusiasm. Being involved in theatrical productions has taught them to work with others in an ensemble, help them to build their social skills, develop new friendships, and has encouraged them to take positive chances on themselves by opening up to the vulnerability and possibility that comes with auditioning for a role. I hope they consider inclusion of support for the theater program in the district going forward. My children will enthusiastically participate and I believe that this is a great opportunity for healthy self-expression and social and emotional development. Fantastic. Thanks. Hi, I'm Mark Laxer. I moved recently to Montpelier. My son is in the middle school, my daughter is in the high school. There are several reasons why we chose to move to Montpelier but a critical part of that was based on discussions before we moved here with Kiana. I concur with all that has thus far been spoken. Kiana is dynamic. She's on fire. Let's go. Not currently ignited. No, Sam is on fire too. I was a very theater-obsessed kid and there weren't any opportunities really for players or music schools in the elementary school or in the middle school until eighth grade. So I was always like traveling out of town like to like shove myself to problems on the bus and stuff like on some school days. So I could maintain my history. But once I got there, I was really excited to meet Kiana. I made that incredible, yeah, yeah, I was in the movies, that was really fun. Maddy Kastkar. Yeah, it was really cool. But I really wished during my middle school years leading up to that that there was like a whole school player or something and I'm really happy for the middle schoolers now that they have that and Kiana has implemented that and brought that there because the yeah that was something I really wish was part of my experience. So I think that's really cool. And yeah, that's the way to put it. I agree with everything that everybody said. My name is Julie and I have a son who's a sophomore. I think that the only thing I'll add is that my child was a confirmed introvert, comes home and couldn't be more excited when there's a play. And I thank so much for that. But he, it gives him an opportunity to take risks that he might not otherwise take. Like he sat out in musical wishing he could be part of it but didn't really dare to last year and this year he went out for it. And I don't think he ever would have done it if it weren't for Kiana's dynamic approach to theater and the amount of excitement that she brings to it. But also this one, I think that my kids definitely learning a lot from having this opportunity and I hope that it goes forward. Excellent. Anyone else? Okay, well thank you everyone. I love it when people come out nationally on a issue like this and I'm also, I could not see spam a lot this weekend but I heard everyone raving about it. So, you know, the contribution of theater to our education is definitely valued by the community and by the students. So thank you for coming and speaking. Next on our agenda, we have a bunch of fantastic students from high school to talk about restorative justice. Okay, let me get centered on that first. Oh, yeah. That we could do that first. I'll move you to approve the consent agenda. Also, I think Tina wants to take something off. Could we follow the superintendent's progress check because we're talking about it later on? Sure. So I think we need to revise the motion. Move that we approve the consent agenda minus the progress check. I'll second. Hold on to the paper. Hi. May I pose? Great. Now we have close folks to the second part of restorative justice. So, I would like to introduce Lindsay Hellman who, just to put everything out there, she is a good friend of mine. Our daughter is doing second grade, sorry, third grade. She's actually at my house this weekend. Exactly. So Lindsay is here. She works for or she works a lot with restorative justice. So when the board asked for training around this, she was the person I called. And she's worked with our fine students here, so she brought a bunch here. So Lindsay, take over. Yeah. So this is going to be a collaborative presentation because really the knowledge is right here and the list one's right here. And so we'll start with the subject, right? So just like Libby said, my name is Lindsay Hallman. I am currently the program director for learning moving into the executive director role in January. And I also am the coordinator of the Vermont restorative approaches collaborative, which is a group of 40 plus trainers, community justice center folks, educators who are working with schools across the state with the support from the AOE and contractor we have, the AOE, to support schools in moving towards our restorative approach. So I'm going to be learning more about that this evening. I'm Kelly Langston, 9th grade. I'm Ella Darcy, 9th grade. I'm Marianne Songhurst, and I'm in 12th grade. I'm Michael Bonberg, I'm also a senior. Hi, good evening. I'm Alyssa Noss, I'm one of the school counselors here at the high school. And I met Lindsay when I took her course last year. I got interested in restorative practices and learning most what I know about it through her course. And I'm Ellen Gullman, she here. I am the social worker at the mainstream middle school. Okay, so before we start this presentation, we just want to take a second to recognize that restorative practices has been around for centuries. In fact, we can't take full credit for it. It was actually developed from indigenous practices. So we just got to recognize and realize that first and then kind of honor that too. Restorative practices is kind of an alternative practice of discipline and we see it kind of as a transformative and repairing way to like deal with like repairing harm or damage to our school community. The approach is not just a program, but we must learn how to naturalize it into our system from foundation up and to incorporate justice in all forms and positive changes to institutions everywhere. And our quote is, restoring justice is a compass, not math. Okay, so when we think about restorative practices, we tend to say restorative practices when it comes to school communities, restorative justices oftentimes more refer to when we're talking about community justice, right? So in general, we're going to talk into the umbrella term of restorative practices. It really relies heavily upon relational kind of ecology. So how groups of people relate to one another within an environment. So in this case within our school environment. So schools that have a strong relational ecology have a primary focus on relationships and one of the things that we know about education, right, is that relationships build a really strong foundation for deep and real learning and experiences that stick with people as they grow through life. The strong trust between students teachers, administrators, community members is a foundational piece of restorative practices. And I would venture to say also a piece that Montpellier-Rochbury Public Schools really values. It offers time and space to be heard, right? So a community that values the things that restorative practices values really offers that which is something that I think oftentimes especially in places like schools where hierarchies are a natural thing that are formed. Time and space to be heard for youth is something that we don't always see in places like that. The shared power, especially allowing students the ability and the role in problem solving and change making is incredibly key to this. And you can see that you'll see as we continue on that the youth are going to speak a lot more than the adults here. And that's hugely important to us. And then last but certainly not least I think kind of the overarching thing to remember here tonight is that there's a strong focus on social justice and equity, right? When people especially youth get what they need, right? We see them grow and blossom a lot more than when we prescribe the same thing for every kid. So I'm going to turn the mic over. So when we talk about restorative practices we want to think about that there are three pillars and the first pillar is that we are building and maintaining healthy relationships both between students and students and teachers and students. The second one is to be sure that we have equitable learning programs, especially with the curriculum and the environment in the school. And the third one is repairing homes and transforming the conflict. And restorative practices brings better people to understand why conflict is so much here. Okay, so basically going off of that there's a couple of things that kind of need for restorative school to work. So the first being that people can develop a sensible um, I think that really speaks to the kind of community aspect of restorative practices. If everyone is kind of being engaged in the learning environment and circles, restorative practices will really be a lot more effective and kind of along with that is the culture that we have to develop where everyone is able to kind of appreciate others and their intrinsic worth. So that's also kind of off of the community thing. I think that everyone needs to be able to respect each other for this to the system to really take off. And also there's the part about the interpersonal relationships that kind of come with this. So to really have a good community for this to work in, you need to have a place where people are really able to connect with one another. And that's really important. And along with that, every with restorative practices, every student gets to add their voice. So there's another a lot of people who get kind of marginalized in high school. And this is just kind of their opportunity to have everyone on a level playing field and everyone can kind of say what they want to say and if they wouldn't get that opportunity otherwise. So at its core, it's really about paradigm shift and how we do things in schools. I think in like many of our systems in our society and organizations things are done two and four people but in a restorative practice or in a restorative approach, it's done with one another. And shouldn't that be the purpose of school to be in relationship with one another so that we can be deeply engaged and successful. So this might, I don't know how familiar you all are with the multi-tier system of support and TFS. So when you look at restorative practices and the restorative approach in school, it's like you can put this on top of that. And at the bottom, the foundation of that is the universal supports, what everyone receives in the school community. And without that, that strong community, time to build relationships and build that capacity through and you can see in that box on the side through a variety of different pieces that are already in place in your school system or you know are focused on many of our systems. If we don't have that foundation, then moving into the next tiers is not going to be as successful. So taking time to focus on the universal tier one support is essential and it really gets at the width of restorative practices. I heard mention earlier of social emotional learning and I know that's focused and for your district and so that's that's one of those pieces. So it's looking at the things that are already in place and recognizing hey we're already doing a lot of the restorative practice work. How do we just think about it in a different way? So the change of mental models. At the same time in tier one, there's a different way to respond when harm is done within a school system in regards to relationships and how relationships are repaired in a restorative approach. So that's, I think we're going to get into that a little bit further along, but that might be through a different way to think about when something occurs, what's the language of this year, the restorative language and questions and how are folks held accountable for their for their behavior in a way that is that allows them to not be shamed but re-enter into their community in a supportive way. As you move further up just like you know in a tier two support those are like when you have interventions. So this is maybe when there's been harm done. What does that look like in a restorative model? So that might be a restorative circle, a conference or peer mediation. So instead of, and we'll get to the why later on, but instead of pushing out and removing kids from a classroom, it's bringing them back in. And then finally if there is situations where harm is done and folks need to take time away from school, how do we welcome them back into a school community and have a process that truly re-integrates them and they understand what supports they have, but they're also held accountable for their actions. So same sort of, same structure as the MTSS structure, but without that foundational piece of I bet if you went down that list you could say check, check, we're doing a lot of that already in our school system without those pieces and spending more time and focus and energy on those. Arts integration could be one of those. You're not going to be able to really think about how to resolve conflict in a different way. I was an integrator, so last year I was an integrator and I was the oldest grade to take part in the MSMS, the middle schools approach on restorative circles. Last year we took part in like community based groups and our TAs are 20 minutes in the morning where we talked and the idea was to build a community, like a sense of community and each TA was given like a specific format for the circle and they didn't take any student input in making those questions or thinking about what maybe we'd like to talk about and I think that was kind of what ruined it for us and it would have been a better experience if they had taken our input. My TA did later in the year after we started came up with our own questions that interested us and that made it a lot more enjoyable and we wanted to participate in it. Yeah if it was done to us or if it was done with us instead of to us as like having our own questions being like taking our input I think it would have gone smoother because I remember when I would get done with these Friday circles I was like just lamenting it because I was we were given these questions that really had no there was no reason for us to want to care about them and if we did this correctly it would bring a sense of like caring about everyone everything around us. So I'll just quickly talk a little bit about the middle school's journey thus far from the adult perspective. Two summers ago a team from the middle school attended the Best Institute focusing specifically on restorative practices as I think many of you know the Best Institute has kind of a track for MTSS stuff and then a track for restorative practices stuff. We went to the restorative side and we essentially came up with a three to five year implementation plan where we were attempting to do some kind of community building first. One of the main things we really got from John Kina's presentation over the four days was that building the community building that tier one kind of part of the triangle is foundational obviously to to be able to really build a restorative practice within a within a school community. So some of the things that we had been planning to focus on over the first few years was implementing an extended TA on Fridays to do restorative circles. We continued to do that this year. There was a committee that met a committee of teachers and the plan was to include students this year. It's kind of fallen apart to be perfectly frank. That was they were meeting we were meeting every week last school year and the hope is to be able to kind of use some restorative conferencing the tier two and tier three within our discipline system. I think that right now that is kind of where the plan stands. I will just say and we'll get to this a little bit later that it becomes really difficult when it's it's just like a couple of a few teachers or a few a few people really interested in this and it's not kind of a a systems wide approach. So we'll get to that a little bit. And I'm going to explain what we've been doing at the high school with restorative practices. So last year I had a half sabbatical because I had a Roland Fellowship and I was researching and learning all about how to bring more wellness practice and intentional focus on that for our students. Both from a mental health perspective but also a community social relational perspective. And I came across through a workshop with John Kitta restorative practices knowing nothing about it and that's how I learned about Lindsay inside of her class. And the the big emphasis in her class is to use adult partnerships so that you're not doing too but you're doing with. That's how these students got involved. Simultaneously my colleague Elia Cohen who couldn't be here tonight because she's not feeling well but she also is getting interested and excited about this and she went in a different direction. We have since aligned our efforts but what she was doing was she contacted a woman named Bianca who works for it's a it's a collaboration between DCF and Washington County Diversion Program and they got a grant or something to go out to schools to educate them about how restorative practices work and what they are. And so Bianca came and she trained our faculty she came three times if I remember correctly once just to give a broad overview kind of like explaining this and what the different elements of restorative practices are and then the next two times she worked with faculty members who were particularly jazzed about the subject and trained us to lead circles and so in two separate faculty meetings two or three I can't remember we led circles with our faculty and the first two were the focus was on community building. The third one we actually used circle discussion to to deliberate about a pretty big question that we were all focused on it had to do with cell phone use and what direction were we going to take with that within the high school. So that was our experience with circles last year and that pretty much sums it up. So, Lisa invited me and a couple other students to come to four full day conferences with Lindsay where we learned about restorative practices and youth-old partnerships and then we presented to the NHS teachers who wanted to learn about restorative practices in a certain way to how we should implement them into our school. And then we added planning learning about effective language which is language that makes sure that when there is conflict it's not an accusative tone and no one feels like they have to be accused. So that was the what and now we're going to talk about the why. So this is not as you saw in that first slide that Mary Ann shared that it's not an initiative or a program and it's not like the next bad. I think that this surge of interest nationally globally and in Vermont is in response to what we're seeing in schools and the needs of our young people in regards to social-emotional health and well-being and learning and quite friendly the disciplinary data around suspensions and expulsions. So Vermont actually in 2016 passed H95 which asked the AOE to explore the use of restorative practices regarding school climate and culture, truancy, bullying, harassment, school discipline. So it's been recommended to all schools, school districts, SUs to consider a restorative approach before any kind of exclusionary discipline practice. With that there's been a huge amount of learning and interest and collaboration in Vermont. Like I said there's this Vermont restorative approach to collaborative for supporting schools across the entire state that are looking at how they're exploring restorative practices and a restorative approach and then looking at implementation which we know according to implementation science and lessons learned along the way that takes a good three to five years to truly be a restorative school and to shift practices, its practices and procedures. It's also curriculum and pedagogy and every level. So it's not just about discipline, it's about really exploring what it means to be a restorative school and environment. And so this really came out of this response to the zero tolerance policies which we know have not really helped our young people at all. In fact as Marianne will share in just a moment created what I'm sure you've heard the School to Prison pipeline. And so maybe that's all I'll turn it over to you now. So last February I got a chance to go attend a workshop with Lindsey. It was in Holyoke, Massachusetts and we got the chance to learn from the Polante Restorative Justice Program and it's basically a youth-led program that was really awesome and they had a lot of community support and it was primarily made up of students of color specifically like the Hispanic students who may have majority of the school district. It was also founded on youth power and youth voice. So it was completely led. I'll reiterate that again and again. And it was really awesome to see that they had completely changed how the institution handles systemic discipline and had basically transformed and reformed the system altogether. And their School to Prison pipeline system like with suspensions and expulsions before this program became like full-on implemented it was pretty high and they managed to increase the amount of students who get stuck in that cycling system. And it was really cool because these students are paid to be part of this program group and they undergo extensive training and they organize events like this where they get a lot of people from all throughout northern states to come see and observe their workshops and how they're able to do this. So I thought that was pretty cool because it showed it wasn't just Vermont who was interested in this. It was also another state, pretty close to us Massachusetts. And it's also a national thing too. And then finally just to give you a little more reason why we think it's a good idea. Restorated approaches have been linked in amongst other schools that are using them too. Then Mary touched on this at her experience at Calante but reduced suspensions and expulsions, behavior referrals, racial disparities and exclusionary discipline. It's been linked to teacher satisfaction and reduced turnover in their jobs. Students have identified increased academic performance and social emotional capacity. And that's a big focus in the district right now. Generally improved climate and culture reduced absenteeism and tardiness and overall parental satisfaction increases. Future direction. So one of the things this group discussed a lot in our course that we took last year together as well as in our meetings this year is just integrating our sort of practices into staff development district-wide. Something that we all feel really strongly about and kind of the research shows is that when an effort is made K-12 students know what to expect. They feel a part of the community from beginning to end. If we can find a way to train staff in a really meaningful way we also believe that they will feel a lot more comfortable and like really diving into this with students. Part of the struggle right now I think we've found is that it's hard to put yourself out there and to feel a little bit vulnerable in these moments. And that's what's so important for adults to model how to do for expecting kids to be able to increase their kind of social emotional literacy. So K-12, please. I just want to resave, reiterate that I think the most important thing is having the students and the teachers together with this. A biggest thing was last year is that wasn't there. It was just something that they were doing to us. This needs to be something that is like a whole school. Every person who steps in the door each day needs to be a part of it. And again what Allie said, if the staff isn't on board with it it's going to reflect back on the students view of it and that's really important. Also we need to focus on tier one which is building community and connections before we can move on to anything else because having a good foundation is the most important part of this whole sort of practices. And so the point we really want to make sure and resonate with you is that this is not just some phase that the school is going through. This is something that will true the last and really will be homemade for kids to get out of this. And we welcome any questions you may have. Yeah, thank you very much. That was excellent questions. Bridget? A couple of you talked a little bit about your experience at the middle school but what's the experience like for students at the high school? Restorative practices. Sam is more like at the faculty is working on things but I was wondering what the students are for anything. Do you want to answer that and then I should try to. I'm going to do a lot to be honest. We try to have some time since we have something but it's really we don't have anything that's what's wrong and except in the planning room it's more parent you know gen and necessary and that has to do a really good job of being caring and making sure they are not. There's just many kids but as a well-being there's not much of a change. I hope you agree with that and add that it's just in the infancy stages of we the faculty are just learning about it and so we have not fully implemented it into the students regular day but that's why we're getting students involved to get their input on where they can imagine that happening you know I have my ideas but I don't know what they think it would fit. So we're just getting started with that. I think there was one instance last year of a Q2 circle that happened when there was a disciplinary issue in that health room. I don't remember the specifics but it what I'm trying to say is that it hasn't existed here before and I think that could definitely take off. You reminded me of another thing. So earlier in the year we were asked to address our students plp goals so everybody has a TA of some faculty and are you all familiar with what TA is? The teacher advisory group. Okay so within TA we were given an array of options of how we wanted to check in with our students about how they were the progress they were making toward their goals and one of the options was you could do it as a circle and different faculty members had different levels of comfort with that and just anecdotally in my TA surprise we do a circle and I will tell you the difference we already had a pretty tight knit TA but the difference between the feel of my TA from the day before we did a circle to the day after and even they commented on it saying like wow that was really cool and I wasn't so sure I wanted to share my goal with everybody but I did and it was fine and it really was a moving TA session at least in my oh and then the one that I just mentioned. Yeah well yeah so um yeah I think I had stated before that of course it takes time to completely change you know because it is a paradigm change for for a system and I was thinking just from my own personal experience I was an educator in Essex for 15 years and we went through our whole school we're sort of a college but it was very grassroots and we know that when there's a few people that are really passionate about something and then those few people might leave to go elsewhere what happens is it's not systemic so you haven't really created that foundation there's only pockets and what I'm hearing and what I know from working with this team is that there's pockets because there are people that have interest in it um what I would say is that as Lissa stated that maybe was Allie saying what's next in the future is that it's really important that everyone has a foundation the what and the why what are restored and once I realize that there's already so many things in their toolbox that that are restorative like so in our work we always start with like well what are the strengths what are the things that are already happening those are restorative approaches but how are we going to be more intentional about making sure that happens not just in TA but that is a place to do it sitting in a circle but how are we going to look at curriculum choices like where do you have a voice in the in their curriculum in their learning in school discipline approaches um it has to be done in partnership and with the use of the table um and all people need to be involved in the work so I've done a lot of trainings this year with um which is not really um the work of our organization up for learning is use it all partnership but I have done some work with some schools that are whole every adult that works in that system being um trained in what it is and why so that's at the everyone from the cafeteria staff to the custodial staff to the administrative staff to teaching staff to support staff coming together it really needs to be systemic and then it does take time so we always look at year one as an exploration year of really getting our feet wet learning about it digging in a little bit trying things out and then the next couple years are around like partial implementation and then really three to five like any change can occur in our organization takes a good three to five years so um it does take time and it um I think it's a worthwhile investment I know it's a worthwhile investment I've seen the success in many places um there there's schools that are close by there's many schools in Vermont that are um digging into this work um all over the state and then nationally as well but it does take time and it and it really does take buy and I mean that's a huge piece of it is that there needs to be buy in and to build capacity. Just wanted to give a couple more things that are happening at the Main Street Middle School. There are a number of teachers who do feel really interested and invested in this kind of way of being as an educator and so a good number of teachers have used circles in academic settings I think it's really important to note that the idea of student voice obviously we know can be used in more places than just disciplinary settings or community building settings so academic circles are something that a lot of teachers use I know that Lindsay used them when she was a teacher um there have been teachers from five to eight in the Main Street Middle School who use them um as like reflective kind of exercises um after a unit um a warm-up during a unit um there's there's a number of academic ways to use them um I can tell you that just as a social worker shock of shocks I've used a lot of circles in my work um but also there have been a few kind of bigger kind of group harm situations that have occurred in the middle school and we've come together and in this circle to kind of address it and the feedback I get from students is that that's the first time that anyone's like asked me to share with a group of people how I felt after something terrible happened to me rather than just sharing it with the assistant principal or with the teacher or you know with one person with one adult being students being heard when they've been harmed is incredibly empowering. The other thing that I'll just mention quickly is that I kind of put together and helped to facilitate this county-wide restorative practices plc so professional learning community so it's district-wide so we have a number we've got like five or six schools that come together once a month and we've discussed kind of like where we are in the journey and we problem solve together so there are a number of schools in in Washington County in all over Vermont but specifically in Washington County who are really working hard towards this and I think we have a much larger community that we can draw from and learn from. I have a question first of all thank you all really dynamic and effective and collaborative way to convey a message very powerful um question is for you Libby so not to put you on the spot but to put you on the spot so are there any plans in place at the administrative level to help facilitate the expansion of these practices? Yeah so Mary touched on it when she presented to y'all one month ago to board meeting zero in the sense of we have to get our ducks in a row first in terms of we need a SEL district-wide group so we can get our administrative team just last week to put together who we want on that team and principals are now touching people's shoulders to say hey you're going to be on this these that we've had meeting dates set and that kind of thing now we're gathering the team run by Mary that that team will be responsible for coming up with a common data system coming up with a common understanding of what we mean when we say SEL learning common understanding of what our K-12 vertical or articulated curriculum is around that and then working towards this is the recommendation we're making district-wide for the work to be done so we have some we have some pieces to put in place prior to jumping coal hog I think the Alyssa and Allie and certainly Lindsay from her statewide perspective hit on the part that we have we have some adults in our system who are interested in this work we do not have all adults who are interested in this work and so we have a lot of work to do around what is it that we truly need what does tier one look like what are we expecting all kids to know and be able to do prior to some of this which connects to exactly what Linda was saying you know she says what are you doing now that's that's restorative work it's just naming it thanks thank you I don't think so I don't think so no I don't think he is he just says you know did this consume a bunch of time so we have with you with us tonight too to student representatives we're going to be with us for this school year you all know hope we just got into Columbia yes thank you it's like deja vu I like to welcome you Taylor and he was a junior in high school and so the idea we wanted to try to get the beginning but this hope is a little busy is to have a senior and a junior on the board so then the senior can mention the junior the junior can mention the senior switching up actually you know what I mean yes so I'm not sure did you all plan something to talk about or we met the other day but I wasn't sure okay yeah all right so I understand that the consent agenda and public comment and first part of learning focus is taken up sometimes so I don't want to take up much more time but we do have a pretty short just structure student celebrations and then student concerns needs and perspectives so it's similar to last year and then in terms of student celebrations which is what we'll start off with the marking period has just begun but we're about to go off for break and so there's sort of a little bit of a lull and some seniors me are hearing back about college some are applying and the juniors are prepping for second semester junior year which is a busy time with standardized testing and AP AP classes in general so that's happening and in preparation for winter holiday breaks student councils holding an ugly sweater contest this Friday winter sports have started uh yeah so grease auditions have happened for our spring musical and it's one of the largest ensembles that the mask theater program has had in the high school so it's great to see that more students are getting interested in being involved in the arts program um club interact is holding a toy joy drive in order to get more connected with the community it's basically just we have shoe boxes and we're filling it with items for heat and woods westview meadows and families involved with the meals on wheels program and yeah yeah um so just to add on to celebrations um winter ball just happened and that raises money for project grad uh the french class is fundraising for their uh spring uh trip to montreal and kebec and they did so by selling making and selling crepes at the garage cultural center which is this new cool spot in town and uh other mhs faculty and staff were part of the um i think it was centered around bees there was this kind of craft fair so it was a whole community effort uh and then the middle school play just happened and as we've heard from some parents it was this huge success uh and then in terms of student concerns and needs and student perspectives this continues from last year just the idea of like what are the what are our continued efforts to support diversity and inclusion in mr ps school mr ps schools um and i think that it relates to what we've heard tonight about restorative practices and that's something that emma and i bumped a lot last year just in terms of uh knowing that we already have some tenets of restorative practices in our community already and i think that's what makes it so dynamic and special and i think that is as a relatively smaller set of schools we have the privilege of having the opportunity to have a sense of community that large schools especially in big cities don't necessarily have and it's an opportunity that we can make the most of and part of the reason why restorative practices haven't been as developed in the high school is because when uh when presenting a sort of initiative that changes the way that schools work and changes the way that relationships are formed and held between students and teachers it's often good to get first good first impressions otherwise community members will sort of withdraw and then not want to re-engage so i think that it's it's especially in other communities like u32 stride it and what's what experience has shown is that spending time developing and working on tiers for the first year in the second year in the third year and so on and so forth is really really pivotal to ensuring that restorative practices are successful but i think that like part of what has helped me feel so dedicated to my community and part of like why i serve on the board and why i'm so involved in the community is because i feel i just feel connected to it essentially um and i think that that that restorative practices can help ensure that more students feel connected to their school environments because we spend like six hours a day here and some less some more but we spend a huge amount of our time at school and so a huge it's a huge part of our lives and so it would it would be a really positive force if students felt even more connected and even more happy here and didn't view their teachers just as authority figures or distant people trying to like impose something on them but as as friends and confidants and supporters and um let's see with the equity policy and the equity specialist and the district wide equity committee i am a member of the racial justice alliance and we are happy that there's an open position for a student member on that committee just because it's it's important to get student voice and all all areas of decision making and it'll help make better policy and i think especially with something like equity it's really important to hear student perspective so it's it's also just a chance to uphold a sense of transparency with students and the student body about what the committee is working on and how the policy is being implemented and um earth group is in the process of meeting with administration and i know they're going to be in touch with the school board and liby in the coming weeks especially after we get back from break for this project that i can say we because i'm part of earth group um that we've developed and it is the idea of a food forest in the mud lot because something that it's basically an initiative to mitigate storm water runoff into the winewski which is a problem and it's already a problem because of agriculture um near the river and near the river valley and it would be basically um shrubbery and berry bushes and fruit and nut trees as well as a place for students to hang out there would be pathways and benches and there's also obviously the concern about keeping the fire lane open and obviously we would that would be in the design of it but it's essentially to make sure that um storm water runoff doesn't go into the winewski river along with um a lot of the um like i don't know how to explain it but like from cars and a lot of the like debris and pollution and litter doesn't go into the river and also just a chance to have a beautiful space for students and a chance to grow food for the cafeteria so i know that students are meeting with rene de vor and they're going to hope to present to the school board in the next few weeks about it that's pretty much it um but we're here to answer questions you may have and obviously in um the next few months about proficiency based learning and behavior and class sizes and anything like that so we're here we're here for you yeah we're glad you're back yeah thanks so many of our excited to have you for the rest of the year thank you we appreciate the commitment to questions for helping you great thanks budget well this might actually have a chance to get it right back on standard because there's not much to figure out there it's good if you could just take one pass them to the middle please so um instead of showing slides i just wanted to put something together real quick to serve as a quick update the first bullet talks about follow-up items so the last budget presentation i was asked to compare actual tax rates to the tax rates we showed during informational hearings to see what the differences are and i was also asked to look at the enrollment projection for fy20 versus what the enrollment actually was for fy20 so if you turn to the second page that's the follow-up piece so that first section is talking about i didn't read rock spray off for any other reason other than there was no change between the tax rate that was presented on information hearing and the vote because of the five percent limitations so i just focused on it on montpelier so what you see is last year the actual tax rate was actually about 0.3 cents higher than the informational hearing but that was an anomaly the year before that the voters basically passed a budget that was six and a half cents higher in the tax rate than what the actual tax rate ended up the year before that was 4.7 cents higher than what the actual rate was so that's just a little bit of a snapshot of how things go because there's a commission tax commissioner recommendation on things like dollar yield early in the process and by the time everything sugars off and the legislature sets the the dollar yield it can be dramatically different then the enrollment projection versus actuals so you can see that going the columns across k through 12 and then the projection what it was the actual enrollment the difference and then i did the difference by grade cluster and so what jumped out of me obviously was the kindergarten number being so dramatically off and then i realized what i went back to the formulas and realized it was pulling from four years ago's birth data instead of five years ago if i had done it correctly that number would have been 66 instead of 88 huge difference in birth data from one year to the next the other thing that jumps out is grade 12 looks like that was off dramatically but as i looked at the formulas there for the past at least four years we've dropped kids from 11th to 12th grade every year if there were 80 kids the next year in 11th grade the next year they'd only be 76 in 12th grade not sure what that out migration is but we usually drop kids from 11th to 12th this past year we actually picked up six so instead of a typical loss of six or seven we picked up six so that's why that was there so the kind of good news is the only place i found any kind of error in the formula was in kindergarten so if you turn the page again this is the new enrollment projection slide so you can compare this to the budget presentation on the fourth to see the difference what you really see is in the 2021 column for kindergarten that number was 73 now it's 71 and then you'll see that kind of water flow waterfall down in FY 21-22 it's kindergarten and first it's a little bit different and then it's kindergarten first second kindergarten first second third so those first that first kind of triangle in the upper right hand corner are the numbers that are a little bit lower on this chart than they were the bottom line totals we still are seeing increasing enrollment all the way through 2022-23 but it's just not as high like the number i think used to be in in 2022-23 the total k-12 i think was 1165 now it's 1150 so it's not as high but it is still increasing so that slide will now be part of the budget presentation it's updated enrollment slide but if you go back to the first page now changes since December 4th what i usually tell you is anything that i changed in the budget from one budget presentation to the next there's not a lot tax factors the only thing we know now is the the non-residential basery and that's got to still be set by law but at least we have a good guess we do have the dollar yield recommendation that i'm not using it yet because of that that swing that we sometimes see through the legislative process enrollment projections obviously i changed those and we just talked about that no changes on revenues no significant changes in revenues but on the expense side you'll see there it's highlighted there was a zero dollar net change there were several places where i could collect in some savings but mary londine let liby and i know that she's now got some new information about some kids that are coming into district that we're going to have to worry about for potential outside placement costs so instead of reducing the budget i put that money in the last line for special ed outside placements to make sure that we don't end up with a deficit i also had to cover the lacrosse coach that we added and then personnel changes it's hard to explain this but um this year if we had somebody shift positions it may have led to a difference in what i budgeted they come in as like for example bless you i had a custodian it was part time that's now filling a full-time job i may have budgeted less money for that full-time job and now i'm having to pay that higher rate so because of the future changes like that and personnel uh in fy20 that kind of pushes over into y21 so i had to create a little bit of extra money there a through e or just places where i was able to reduce the budget some the school resource officers you know we have a new one so there's a new higher savings in essence that gets passed along to us from the city dental vision i had assumed that we were going to have a small rate increase for dental vision turns out both rates are level so unlike health both rates were level so whenever i rolled that in we had a little bit of savings there statewide health negotiations i know in some districts it's a big expense for us whenever we actually roll it in it actually is a reduction from what we originally budgeted uh grandparent intuition for roxbury high school students i had a placeholder for about a half of a student in case we had like somebody who was a tech student switch from tech to a regular high school because then i would have to pay regular high school tuition but we just don't have the flexibility to the budget for a bunch of contingencies so i just took that out um high school testing materials this was actually kind of an oversight on my part we increased that to allow for ap tests to be paid for by the district we intended for that only to be for us to pay for ap tests for kids on free and reduced lunch because we don't have a high percentage of fRO kids taking these tests so this was kind of a to help alleviate that that amount of money is way less than if we were paying for all ap tests so that's why that reduction is there so there's a reduction of about 52 000 but i realigned it into those other areas for now um the next section still unknowns equalized pupil count we did get a first draft of equalized pupils but our numbers are definitely not right so we still are on hold for that um common level of appraisal i think living mentioned last year we got it December 24th i haven't seen it yet but it should be soon um special ed revenues should be out should have been out on the 15th of students and but those are big things that hopefully will get between now and January 8th when we have a full um full-fledged budget update so i guess my question is as i learn some of these unknowns and roll them in my question to the board is listed under discussion do you have any kind of target you want me to try to hit or you want us to try to hit right now spending for pupil is an increase of 4.36 percent our education spending is an increase of 4.77 now i think the residential tax rate from Montpelio is going up 5.34 percent which is 8.8 cents i think so if there's any of these those kinds of any targets that you have in mind for any of those areas i can try to keep that in mind promise because if the factors go the wrong direction there's just no way to hit them but if there is an idea that hey we want spending for pupil only an increase of 4 percent something like that then we can keep that in mind whenever we crunch through it between now and January 8th my thoughts my general thought is that these outstanding items are really very large unknowns that could sway things pretty drastically one way or another and i feel like my own this is just me speaking the way that i see it is if we make a decision now and then it swings in a positive direction and we've made you know a decision we're trying to stick to a certain line it's kind of arbitrary at that point whereas when we have more information and we know what the liability will look like for Montpelio taxpayers i feel like we'll be able to make more informed decisions we know what's being added and i don't think you know we necessarily will need well i mean unfortunately we're kind of persistently in this position of you know there's three big factors from the state don't come in in time so yeah we're generally we're generally stuck with the situation we have to make guesstimates and you know grant i think does a very good job of being conservative on those estimates so that we don't have we've generally been surprised not too wildly and and more often than not positively so the aoe in the by statute is required to give us the equalized people number by december 1st i believe it is december 1st and that hasn't been happening um no but they would be quick to say there's there's fingers pointing every direction here yeah it's in last year was the first year with that new Vermont statewide data management system sdvms or something like that s lbs s lbs minus s s s lbs um so there was a lot of problems with the aoe being able to get data from all the districts and supervisor so we would say it's because the system is bad aoe would say it's because we didn't get the data in time i would say that same argument pertains this year we would still say there's problems with the system that makes it very difficult to get our information in but the aoe would say we can't give you data unless we have your data so we're still in the same place we were last year what's the aoe doing to fix it um we'll talk about that off camera okay then i ask because you may remember that i'm now representing our region on the bsba board and someone from a different district has raised this complaint and so i'm we're sort of weighing out i am there with you michelle this year um i'm gonna try to say this in a good way um yes thank you um this year is not necessarily the aoe's fault from our perspective and other districts yes it is i'm playing the aoe um but we were we Montpelio Roxbury was not speaking because of a change in the data management position and because of um some decisions that were made prior to the new data management and technology director being in their position that was unbeknownst to us um we our power school wasn't updated and because of and when we tried our new data manager when he tried to update it it would look like it was updated and then it would revert back to like power school three um and because it had been told to do that five or more in place so um we could bearable why so we've hired we had our own technology problems yes so we hired an outside consultant to fix that for us however he just uncovered this because it was so deep in power school um and so we he is we're paying a lot of money for him to fix our system um and so this one is on us but yes the rollout was awful no there's not a lot of support at the aoe for this rollout the entire system kind of stakes however this one's on us completely so we're in a little bit of a weird predicament around that right yeah but said revenues i think you're supposed to also be provided by i don't know the statutory but by december 15th i know that one of the reasons why you weren't voting on announced tuition is because one of the factors i use is the allowable tuition from last year to kind of gauge where we are we don't have the allowable tuition from last year yet once again that should that is by statute i think that we're supposed to have that by now and that would be another one of the people appointed in both directions i'm pointing at the aoe because my data is in why can't i get my my allowable tuition the aoe's pointing back saying yeah we yours is but not everybody else's it is him so we can't crunch the numbers so there's a few things like that um but yeah i would say last year that the equalized pupil thing is probably more on them this year it's probably more on us specifically us not that's not just the general grid there's a few that have issues but we're in the minority then i've got no problem with you know not having a target i just wanted to make sure that i was sensitive to that if you had one i know that this year it is a big ask i mean there are positions that aren't that aren't nice to have their must-haves you know classroom teacher at the middle school we have to based on the class sizes the fact that we don't have a behavior person at the middle school we have to do that there's lots of things we'd love to do but there are unfortunately a lot of things that you have to do which is already putting us at a higher rate of increase than we typically have anyway i was just going to say well you know that i might say i certainly don't want it to go up but i'm with andrew that i don't i don't know how you could say anything yet too much unknown you know i thought that the first presentation in the budget was was excellent and we had a good discussion of the things that we really love to have and are not in the budget so it's clear that the budget that you presented was designed to address really significant needs in the district and in fact is not addressing everything that we could probably address so i certainly don't i'm certainly not suggesting that anyone would go back and try to cut the budget at this point because we just have to wait and see how the numbers come in well january hopefully we have all the pieces we need to be able to make some good decisions i forget the date when we need to have everything finalized by what's that when do we have to have everything finalized by for the voters um so january it's the 24th yeah it's late january yeah there's like a 30-day window and i i've been well it's the before the city council meeting the second city council meeting january is that still a case or are we so separate from them now that we're separate well we're separate and our work plan is that the next meeting is the public forum so grand will do a larger presentation then the 15th is i have budget approval in our work plan so is there a the window there on when it has to be uh yeah actually i think you may have put that in there budget info meeting parentheses this needs to be done or this needs to be before town meeting day on three three 20 probably three two that's not when it's you have to get it in the book you have to get on the no you don't have that i don't have it okay there is a there is a window of time that the um annual reports have to be out and i know that Montpelier's already asked me about hey do you have your audit report for us to put the segment in there about the audit so i i can get back to you on what what that period is but it's it's not it's so much a period for us because we're dependent on roxbury having our articles in there uh in amongst their articles and our information being in the Montpelier annual report so we're hitting their windows within that window but um i can send you something under that window of time this could be helpful for us if we have our face with difficult decisions and michelle's right it's a good question i don't think we need to need to report to the city but whether we didn't last year yeah we didn't last year so it's just a matter of getting it before the book's published yeah we get our articles to them so they put it in there and have the bill in their name but yeah it would be just our own information here thanks for all your work on this yeah any other questions for graham thank you graham great thank you have a good night be safe thanks graham jar safe superintendent uh so um is rsv support staff or is that uh um rvs support staff strike that from the agenda i did not get the information i needed from the building leader there so we're going to strike that current now if they come back on the different agenda the mhs data coordinator position you saw that in the budget for next year it's the point five position for guidance support um and talking to the guidance department and vernay here um they have asked if we could put that into the budget now from my balance because of the slbs challenges that the person who is doing that role is focusing solely on state data wide systems and the guidance team needs somebody helping them with scheduling and needs to learn that process from somebody who knows how to do it which matt could help with that so they've asked if we could put that into the budget now so that or we could have money for it now for the remainder of the school year so they could get somebody in place train them through the spring and scheduling for next year or that's going to be a huge task that i'm not positive right now who would do it and who has the knowledge base to do it so if we got them in early matt could take some of his time to try to help train somebody in power school and how to do that piece um and then that person could do the scheduling for the following year for our students i'm the nuts and bolts front do we have any idea what the cost of that is and what what that is in relation to the fund balance of president i believe it's like 15 to 20 thousand dollars and the grant grant is well aware i should have him stay i'm sorry he's well aware of this and is is believes we have the fund balance to do that okay right are we looking to hire a new person or is this filling having another person who's currently on staff take on this it's to hire a new person to hire the point five early essentially that is in next year's budget okay so are we planning to vote on that next time or when what are we what's the plan for that um the budget is all five well we don't we don't have it up now so we can't approve the fund now yeah i know we can't do it right now we need more information great come back if you don't you don't want to care about that sorry you might as you're running tell them we need that number yeah well a couple numbers yeah we can do this super bad super original evaluation oh there's great oh he's just telling me the window to post the budget warning is january 23rd February 2nd come back wait did you say it's january 23rd to february 2nd yeah okay so February 2nd is when we have until yes okay but the municipalities are usually looking for info at the beginning of the period yeah it's okay everything printed and every other town is asking the printer to get their stuff printed actually an interesting thing that i learned from others rule districts is that they finalize their contracts prior to finalizing their budgets such pressure i've never heard of such a thing but other people are really stressed about it so do we want to do that i just want to know what we need all right um yeah let's go to the super kind of evaluation and we'll have to interrupt that program for a second yeah okay um i don't really have a presentation for you around the mid-year progress update i put it i put it together and give you a chance to ask any questions you want to ask um i'm open to anything questions about the evaluation i have a question about the content my first kind of title of the learning focuses so i learned something every time so thank you for that i think it's a good good part of the budget and i think it's i've always thought it's part of the superintendents job that you came for and my other thing has to do with next step so trying to figure out what section this is in community public relations section and i was looking at your next steps and um looking at two to say yep i'm concerned too about how you get people here but i think it's important to do so i don't know what the rest of the board thinks and we've talked before about how do we develop a gauge for what parents i don't have any answer just i don't know if i would do it by monthly i think that might be really discouraging right to you given them did your mentor suggest that strategy where there are other superintendents doing that it was just an idea that no just an idea we we did have a series called soup with the super and um i think it might have been and parents could come in and meet with the superintendent and i went to one and i was one of two parents and i walked the board so i don't know well part of what i was thinking is sometimes principles have like principle t's or something the same thing super the principle to get people in and i know it always takes time it's a build-up it's like you have to persist but i agree not by monthly yeah and principles have a different end there's a different desire for parents to see a principle then see a superintendent but and that's hard for principles so that's what i that's why i was saying it would take i think yeah food's always good healthy events at bar hill yeah go for every event i've been there and i used to work for them so i used to work for them so i got an i'm afraid i get some some feedback thank you some feedback around um alcohol and education so grant estimated 60 percent for the rest of the school year which is that 10 5 okay so he's he's so going back to the previous conversation it would be 10 500 by 10 500 from our fund balance for the part time guys data support that's like which is 60 percent of the guys which is 60 percent point five it's a point five oh okay it's going to say that's how you're going to go grant our current fund balance is what i think i have no i think i think i have one of our last ones i'm thinking it was like just about one point one between one point one one one two million yeah like four point nine five percent of the budget right now that we can finally handle this we know that we have proved fund balance expenditure of ten thousand five hundred dollars higher than point five data person to staff the guidance department do you understand that all the better hi you both great so we won't commit the money like officially committing it like i've come back before but was this huge one balance to cover thanks for having me thank you for having me excellent book i highly recommend for sure i will thank you buddy he's busy thanks so much system for your email inbox it's through it's through the hell like 800 things in my inbox it's the book david allen right now my inbox has like 15 things in it and it's stressing me out so it's like it's like totally changed my end up inbox productivity my tassel is in the way and i work together you need to consolidate i'm seeing i'm telling you but you need the book which book do you rely on this one the five is pretty short oh yeah yeah i use david allen getting things done his uh oh i have that one too his email system that's on me well maybe that's a good thing to just ask you to comment on because it's one of the hardest things to do it is so one of the big changes i've made this year is moving things to a task list my calendar so when you have those like 15 you know oftentimes things don't work out exactly you know you finish a task and you have like 15 minutes before meeting and you know you know like you have that time and so it's it's either going facebook right or it drives me straight to what's the what's on the task list that i can accomplish in this period of time right and so it helps me check things off where it's like even if it's just something i need to read that the a we sent out i put on a task list and then i know you know like so my task list is a whole lot longer than it used to be but that's okay because i know that the things i'm going to accomplish when i have the snippets of time to do it like today the i8 or the support staff meeting got canceled from three to four so it was immediate now i can immediately say what's on the task list to get because i have an hour now right that i can accomplish so if that that has definitely changed i've color coded my calendar although i was better at meeting you than i am now so anna knows that and she's just getting better too but she knows me more when somebody comes in and says does liby have a free moment today and i have a booked calendar she knows that some of it is like prep time it's board meeting prep or it's you know it's prep time built in there and she knows like yeah she can probably take 15 minutes from that piece based on colors and and just what what it says in my calendar so it helps her help me be more productive which is good anyway it's been a great it's been a different it's been definitely changed for me this year so i guess since it's on here i'll go back and ask about public relations to say i've heard nothing i think that's a good thing i wonder what the rest of the board is about i mean the main thing i heard about is the gym as of late from a certain individual more than him there's a number of certain there's there's yeah there's there's a group that's more than yeah and they have been calling or when i run into them places like talking to me about it they're people i know so i mean i feel like that's a budget issue and that's a board issue and not it's probably a superintendent issue i mean we couldn't put as much money in the budget that we wanted to no no i'm dying about to have the gym be open but we didn't we didn't well also when people complained about the gym last year the schedule was unreal as you've ever gone in and met with tracy and looked at the schedule everything is like super you were scheduled cross scheduled over scheduled yeah it's basically tracy's full-time managing all of our facilities yeah and all of the community groups that are trying to reserve the facilities yeah and i could probably speak to that because i don't want to put you on the spot but she tracy was just on vacation and anna took took that over so she had for that week yeah she's working with the school admins all the school's calendars are personal but differently it's gyms it's classrooms there's many many calendars multiple people within our district coming in and asking for time and then continue to and there's a lot of time they are they're completely marked that's a lot of shuffle prior on the staff every you know every day will come and ask a tracy in person because it's a bunch of a shuffle daily well thank you Libby this is with her own and very informative um i think we are the executive session time we want to wait wait i'll make a motion to accept this uh oh that's right thank you second paper hi my post executive sessions and we want to have one more of the executives of the girl with the exact name was red discussion of public official please uh so in addition to contract negotiations we have a little thinking for contract negotiations to be called out um also add uh discussions of evaluation of local um that doesn't need a finding right no okay so move that we find that discussing contract negotiations in open session would put the board on a substantial disadvantage second hold the timer hi and then uh motion to move into executive session for those two please so the temporary contract negotiations and evaluation of this second second hold the timer