 Yeah, let's start the meeting at eight or 633. I'll play yours for a board of school commissioners and we need to take attendance. So acknowledging Emma has stepped out. Why don't we start with Jill, Jerry, Mara. Here. Bridget, Madikette. Here. Andrew. Here. And we will get Emma's acknowledgement when she comes back. Public comment. Do we have any members of the public who wish to make comments? Let's see. Okay. On to the next item, which is consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Do I have a second? I'll second it. Okay, let's take a vote. Jill. Hi. Jerry. Hi. Mara. Hi. Bridget. Annikette. Hi. Andrew. On to board discussion, policy monitoring reports and COVID-19. And policy monitoring reports, unless there's anything you want to say, Libby, any questions? I just want to chime in here because Ryan sent an email on this. Actually, Ryan, maybe you should kick things off and then I'll chime in. Does that make sense? No, that'd be fine. I could just send out kind of a summary of what I noticed this morning. There had been, I guess, something dropped in the last year with these two fiscal policies. Libby had highlighted essentially the same comments in regards to what needed to be updated on the policies. Back in, it was probably May 2019, the policy committee had made those changes and it just never made it back to the board for approval and adoption again. So I think, Andrew, do you remember? Yeah, it was referred, they were referred to the finance committee and it was around the time of the retreat and then the building committee got off the ground and we were heading back into another round of negotiations and it was very similar people. So we dropped the ball on it. It really should come to the finance committee and we should review it with Grant. That was the plan and that never happened. And then what's the step after that? Then the finance committee brings it back to the board, I think, with any proposed changes and we go from there. And so I suggest, I put a note down when I was going through things. I suggest that we have a new finance committee and I think we should pick this back up next month after the retreat and after school is out of session and probably get something on the calendar sooner rather than later so that we can have those discussions and go through those policies. So are those, the draft policies, where are those located right now? The ones that had been updated but that were never actually adopted, I can probably track down and dig up. Ryan, would you mind sending those? And I can look, I think you sent those to... Some last summer when we were talking to the finance committee about these policies, I bet they did make it to you. Yeah, I think you sent them out then when we were beginning to talk about this in July or something. Yeah, we should verify that we do have what would be the most up-to-date drafts to go over. Yeah, and so if you wouldn't mind sending that to the... Who else on the finance committee right now? It's me, Anna Kitt and Jill, is that right? I think that's right. If you wouldn't mind sending those to the three of us and then we can get a finance committee meeting on the calendar for late June, mid to late June, somewhere in there. Okay, excellent. Talking about committees too, we need to assign Emma to a committee or committees. And we had some back and forth about that. We can probably do that in the next meeting, but that's definitely it to do. And Emma, remind us which committees we're interested in or doesn't? I'm open to where there is a need. Yeah, perfect. We can give us a thought and we can address it at our next meeting. Any other comments about the monitoring reports and policy monitoring reports? Libby, anything you want to say? No, we can just get all those changes made in the policy. I think there may have been others throughout this year. We'll want to look at the monitoring reports throughout the school year to see if there's any others that needed changing. I think there are a couple other suggestions from a couple of them, but we can look through the monitoring reports to find those policy committee. Maybe that might be good summer work to do. Does it make sense for the policy committee on an annual basis or on some kind of routine basis? I don't know if more frequent or on some kind of routine basis to consider these proposed changes from the administration so that they don't just hang out there. I think we might want to have a process just for what happens when there's a monitoring document with suggested changes to language. The policies that we're working off of right now where the policy, I can imagine Bridget and Ryan can speak up to this, but I can imagine we're the best guests from a newly-mergered district, right? So we have a couple of years under our belt now and we can look at those a little differently maybe. I mean, it might make sense if as the monitoring report is considered by the board and suggest changes if the board then decides to kick it at that point to the policy committee to consider the changes instead of waiting for another scheduled look at it. Yeah, another round. Andrew, the old policy committee had considered giving ourselves a schedule to make sure that we were addressing and monitoring all the policies each year, but it felt in the end that that would just be, not necessarily cumbersome, but maybe not effective just reviewing things, just reducing what's necessarily in need of any updates or modifications, but yes, we should be monitoring constantly the policy monitor reports that we put forward and any suggestions that she makes or any opinions and laws that we need to update would definitely need to address quickly. The other piece to consider is that we're now, we're moving into year three for most of these policies because like I said, they were redone right at the merger. So we'll be putting some thought into which ones we wanna bring up first in a cycle of review so that we're not doing all policy all the time, but maybe we might wanna start this year on reviewing some of these policies that the policy monitoring group could maybe look at first. Does that make sense? No, that seems sort of reasonable and maybe the policy committee could talk with you about prioritizing where you would expect to see the policies that would need the most attention immediately, not immediately, but first. There may be a few. Knowing what's coming up. The policy committee has been talking about getting a meeting scheduled, so. So we wanna, I mean, there are just reports we wanna approve the report to the idea that we need some follow up actions. The reports need to be amended. And fine with that. The reports are really a feedback mechanism for the board, correct Libby? Yeah. Jim? So I mean, I think they've accomplished, I think they've accomplished their goal here, which is reminding the board that we drop the ball on something. Fortunately, it's not the most important of things but it is important nonetheless and we should pick it back up sooner rather than later. So I think picking it up soon after the retreat makes sense, and I guess I would make a motion that we approve the policy monitoring reports with a plan, we don't even need the plan as part of the motion. So I'll just make a motion that we approve the policy monitoring reports. We could definitely put looking at the policy into policies into our board retreat as well. That might be a nice agenda item. Okay. Second to Andrew's motion. Yeah. Jill, Gary and A. I hear you, Jim. Jim, you're seasoned a little bit. Why don't you turn your video off? Oh, second. Okay. Jill, Jerry. Bridget. Hi. Anakit. Hi. Andrew. Okay, next on the agenda is COVID-19. So Libby, I think that's you and whoever from your team. Yep. We have our central office leadership team with us with Bill also in case there's any special education questions, which is great that he'll try to answer the best he can be in the newbie. And we also have Mike Berry, director curriculum instruction, Grant Geisler from finance and Andrew LaRosa from buildings and grounds just to make sure if anybody has any questions that we can answer them. Our plan tonight is to share what is going forward. So often we're kind of in this place of, what are we doing right now? And we're still in crisis mode, but there are plenty of really exciting things around curriculum and learning and professional capacity building for our staff. So I've asked Mike to share that with you all. These plans were in place well before COVID and they still fit. And one thing we're coming to realize regardless of what environment we're teaching and learning in, good teaching is good teaching. And we need to keep remembering that. So I wanted to show that to the community of what we're really focusing in on and what we're spending some well-earned tax dollars on in terms of professional learning. And then Grant Andrew and I will go through what is happening with the finances in the sense of what are we thinking where do we think our savings are for both fiscal year 20 and fiscal year 21 in this current moment? So I will share my screen. So everybody can, oh, hold on. Anna, you gotta let me share my screen there, bud. She disabled me. She took my power. Okay, we're back. All right, so let's get off my email. You don't need to see that. You don't need to see that. Hold on. The one tab I need is covered by Zoom right now. Hold on one second, I moved that. Oh, there we go. There we go. My screen clear for everybody. All right, I see Anna gets shaking his head. So we're good. So here's just a board update. I'm gonna hand the mic over to Mike Barry to talk about what's being done with curriculum and professional development. If I freeze up or drop off, just assume whatever I said was brilliant. And we'll just go from there. So I have two slides in the presentation and there's a lot of text, just sharing a lot of the work that as Libby said, we already had planned. But now we are continuing that work and it's even more essential. It's kind of exciting actually. So by the end of this year, we'll have a lot of prioritize standards identified K through 12. And that's gonna help us launch in the fall to really hit that essential learning for students. And the staff has done an amazing job of really digging in on that work and doing some fantastic stuff. We have K through 12 math conversations going right now that are just fantastic. And we're really excited about that work. And entering the 2021 school year, we're really gonna look at that prioritization that we have a necessity to prioritize the learning. And that's really driving that work. We're gonna work towards a literacy audit K through 12. We have, as I said, a lot of math work going on right now that's very exciting. And we're gonna continue that discussion between the middle school and the high school about compacted traditional curriculum and an integrated pathway. And then a lot of work around proficiency scales, common assessments and vertical alignment. And it's all pretty exciting. And that's kind of where we are with curriculum development. And then the next slide, if you wanna go to that next slide. And then I can take questions about both. Can I ask what literacy audit means? Sure, so a literacy audit is when we have someone come in and look at our existing literacy practices, K through 12, and kind of go through our data, go through our instructional models, go through all of those things and tie them together to help us develop an action plan of how we proceed with some K through 12 work. We've noticed a lot of need for vertical alignment and vertical discussion, particularly between buildings. So that kind of work really helps us hone in on that. Okay, thank you. Welcome. And on professional learning, there's a lot of stuff on here. I apologize for that, but I'm really excited about the work that's happening. We are gonna continue our work with math menu at the kindergarten through fourth grade. And we're actually adding fifth and sixth grade to that next year. So that work has been fantastic in individualizing mathematics instruction for students. And then seven through 12 educators are gonna continue some work with the teacher's development group who we're working with right now around mathematical principles of instruction. And that has been fantastic. So those folks will come and work with us and do embedded coaching cycles in grades seven through 12. So we're really excited about that. We've had a lot of learning opportunities through this COVID events, amazing access to presenters and to speakers and to thought partners around the world really. And staff have been taking full advantage of that. So that's been great. And the interventions and special educators have been meeting on a regular basis to work out what we call micro progressions. So those little steps between notches for students to move along towards proficiency or success. And then next year, all of that stuff's kicking into overdrive even more. And we've got all sorts of coordinated professional development happening next year that we're really excited about. And what's nice is we're in a place where we're planning for that kind of regardless of whether we're in-person or remote. And we've been able to do quite well in that planning and we're excited. So it's going to happen regardless is kind of what I'm saying. And I did a lot of talking. So I'll just answer some questions if anyone has them. Questions for Mike? What is math menu? So math menu is a time in a mathematics classroom where students may be moving around the room and interacting with different challenging mathematics exercises. And it's also a way to ensure that students are getting a chance to work with their teacher every time. So that they're getting some of the best instruction that they can from the most qualified person in the room. And it's a way for us to align data and assessment and instructional needs of students in a way that's manageable for teachers. RK through four teachers, both at Roxbury and at UES have absolutely loved this method and we implemented it this year. And now the next layer is to come back and really dig into that data analysis and how are we assessing students' needs through formative assessment and some of the assessment and how does that change in informed instruction? So it's really exciting. Any other questions for Mike? Could you talk a little bit about data collection and how that's going and informing some of it? Sure, I can talk about what we've been doing. So we've been, the first step is really identifying those prioritize standards. So what are the big things that we're promising students are going to succeed and learn? And then the proficiency scales which kind of guide us along that path of where a student isn't achieving that prioritize standard. So that's the kind of data that we're looking to collect and really gain some assessment literacy as a district around how do we assess that? There's everything from a quick check-in that can really inform your instruction. Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs sideways. How are you on this? All the way up to maybe individual check-ins or the regular summative types of assessments that we give at the end of units or things like that. But it's tying that all together to really inform instruction in a timely manner so that we can change our approach. And math menu is a way that provides an opportunity for teachers to do that. I have a couple of questions, Mike. This is Andrew here. I'm just curious to know what are some of the silver lightings that you see coming out of this that can improve education at large? Yeah. Simple question, really simple. Really easy. I think there's a lot of silver linings. It's interesting as a curriculum director, I talked to my colleagues and we've all kind of whispered this thing where we say some of the work is easier now. A silver lining is that it's allowed us to emphasize and display the importance of the work that we're doing. So prioritizing standards has become essential work and everybody's on board. The work that we had already completed prior to this came in super handy. So people were super on board with that. I think the ability to provide professional development in very flexible ways has opened up a whole world for people. We were able to do some very high quality professional development early on around technology and curriculum and instruction and we saw big returns on that. So I think that in the future, you're gonna see a lot more maybe online opportunities or a hybrid of you can do this in person or you can do this online. And that kind of opens up accessibility for people in ways that I don't think we recognized before. I think our default was let's get everybody in a room, let's figure out how we can do something in two hours and what that's how we'll do professional learning. And now we've discovered ways to provide menus of learning for teachers that are more effective and more appreciated I think in a lot of ways. I think we've learned a lot about what works for student learning and what works for family support that we didn't know before. I think this experience has also shown us exactly where we need to shore up our systems so that it's given us an opportunity to recognize some gaps that we need to address right away that we would have discovered eventually but probably not in such a succinct and compact way. And I'll think of something else later but I'll send it to you. Thank you. Great, thanks Mike. Other questions for Mike? I have a question, Mike. I just wanted to get sort of the update on the health curriculum if you were moving forward with one, if you had chosen a different one. Yeah, so we had for everybody just the update, we had a pretty extensive committee and process planned for the spring around health curriculum and it involved using the HECAP process which is the very in-depth curriculum review process and we had purchased various curriculum to look at the kits and everything and it involved a lot of in-person time and of course we can't do that now. So what we're trying to do is there are two curriculum based products that the agency of education has endorsed. One is ETR and one is the Planned Parenthood Curriculum and I'm planning to use the auditing tools within the HECAP process to kind of vet those for different strengths and different weaknesses and things that we have as a group really articulated a need for and then reach back out to that group for feedback so that we can hopefully implement something new in the fall. Thanks, Mike. Other questions, Emma? I have another one, sorry. I'm wondering what, or do you have any sort of plans or push for like social, emotional, professional development around, how the kids have been away from school for so long and that they may be coming into an environment that they're not familiar with and what kind of professional learning are you doing around that or what are the plans? We have very extensive plans, extremely extensive plans. Mary Bechtel, our SEL coordinator has it. What I can best describe is one of the most complete plans I've ever seen to really address a lot of things starting, thinking about it developmentally but also thinking about procedurally and social norms and our social norms are gonna be different in this environment and how do we address that with students K through 12? How do we have consistency from space to space and how do we have consistency from school to school? And she has a very detailed plan and has already started a lot of the SEL professional development. So we had a session last week that a lot of staff attended around SEL coordination. She's also working with all the social workers, some guidance counselors and I feel very confident in saying that we are completely addressing that for the fall. We also just hired a BCBA to replace a position that a person who is retiring which is a highly skilled, I mean, master's level degree and behavior management and things like that. So we have a really good hire coming in to be Mary Bechtel's partner, which is exciting as well. Great, no, that was all very good stuff. Other questions for Mike? Is that we're back to Libby or Libby, who's next? Thanks, Mike. Okay, so now is a financial update. One of what we wanted to do just like last board meeting is we wanted to show you all the places that we're thinking about for savings, potential savings both this fiscal year and next fiscal year, as we're still living in the land of unknown of how we're gonna fill the Ed fund as a state to get it back to being solvent. So we've taken considerable a time, Grant, Andrew, myself to think about where are we? So for fiscal year 20 and Grant is on the line as well. So Grant, I encourage you to speak up and Andrew as well whenever you see something here. Fiscal year 20 anticipated savings. This year we had two on the field instructional assistant positions at Main Street Middle School, one because of retirement mid-year and the other because of an unfortunate death. Unfortunately, we were never able to fill them. We posted them, but we were never able to fill them. So we know what that savings amount is. It's $50,000 for a half a year. We received a daily busing credit from our busing company, STA, because they recognized that we weren't using their services anymore, and that is $50,000. Without spring sports, that was like 30,000 of savings. Our school resource officer, Matt Nisley, who was our school resource officer got a promotion to detective at Montpelier Police Department. And his replacement right when she was coming on to be a replacement had significant jaw surgery. And so for most of, for the half of the year that she was supposed to be with us, she was actually recovering from jaw surgery and not actually allowed to be in the field. So the Montpelier Police Department were great and responded whenever we needed them. However, we didn't have a school resource officer and we typically split that cost with the Montpelier Police Department. So we reached out to them and said, hey, we didn't have a school resource for most of the year. We still don't need one now in this situation. So that's a savings of about $27,000. In terms of books that weren't bought because of our situation, we had savings about $25,000 adding on the same for supplies, for field trips for the spring. Spring is a huge time for field trips, understandably. And those aren't being taken, which saves about 20,000. And then we also talked about last time the RVS 0.5 FT Custodian. We had that filled, that person went to a full-time position that we had in Montpelier. So we posted for the half-time position and that was never able to be filled and our custodial staff was able to fill that need at Roxbury without filling the position. So overall for this year, these are real savings that we know that is about $241,000 that we'll be going into our fund balance. We do have some expenditures for COVID-19 expenses, but we also have savings in things like electricity and heat and water and paper towels and that kind of thing that we don't know the exact number for that, but we're making the prediction that it somewhat evens out for fiscal year 20 in regards to our expenditures and our savings in other areas and buildings and grounds. Grant, do you wanna add on to anything about that? No, I would, I think you've got that perfect, there, as you said, there are some expenses that aren't on here that we know about that we think are gonna be offset. I think maybe the biggest wildcard in those expenses that we don't show here is food service. We're really not sure what kind of impact this is having on food service. We've lost a lot of revenues, but we are getting a lot of revenue in for the meals that we're providing which more than covers that and some of our expenses are down because we don't have as much fresh fruit and vegetables, that kind of thing. So that one's still kind of a wildcard that I'm not sure is gonna kind of balance out or not. But I think these numbers are pretty conservative. So I think FY20 we are going to be adding to the fund balance. I have a question for you, Grant. So should we assume as the board that we're going to have roughly a $240,000 increase to the fund balance that we discussed at last meeting? I am hopeful that it's around that area, yes. If you were to budget an amount, would you budget it at $240,000 or do you think that the ups might be more than that and it might be prudent to budget it closer to $200,000? Well, you know me, I'm conservative by nature. So I probably would say 200, but that's how we ended up with a million dollar fund balance. So I would say honestly, right now, I would probably budget an increase of about $240, and that's on top of I believe what we were showing as an available fund balance with like 888 is what we had been projecting. Yeah, that's right. So just so the board's aware that what that does, our fund balance as a percentage of our FY21 budget because we're talking about this heading in the next fiscal year is three point, we were talking about it last time as 3.5%. This would increase it to 4.5%, which would add to our ability to respond to financial difficulties next year and the year after. I just wanna say, I don't think that, this isn't the time that you wanna add to your fund balance to really pad your reserves, but we know heading into next year and the year after that we're going to have some very difficult financial waters to navigate and so we can use this then to navigate those circumstances. That is exactly the story we wanted to have. And I would also add that there was this guidance that 2% of the budget is what we wanted to maintain as a fund balance. I would kind of argue that the reason why we wanted to have at least 2% was for something like this that we're experiencing. I wouldn't even be worried if we dropped a little below 2% because this is why we build a fund balance for something dramatic like this and we're fortunate to have it. So I'm feeling really good about where we are compared to where other districts are. Grant, one other question for you on this. And Libby, I don't know where we are in terms of CRF. What is it? Yeah, exactly. The Coronavirus Relief Fund dollars. Yeah, where are we in terms of that, in terms of amounts, when we might get it, what we might be able to use it for? Last information that we got on that, Andrew. Sorry, can you hear the motorcycle's in the background? The last information we got back, right now it's being held up. It's being held up for two reasons and I'm not positive if we talked about this in the last board meeting. The first reason is that it was going to be sent to the states and the states were going, at least our state, I can't speak for others, but our state was going to use our Title I allotment percentages for deciding how much each school district was going to get. So they're going to look at our free and reduced lunches, lunch numbers to determine what number of the CARES funds we were gonna be able to access. The feds, after that decision was made, the feds, so the Department of Education at the federal level decided that for private schools, schools that lay in Montpelier-Roxford boundaries, but are not part of our school system, they're private, they would get an amount of CARES funding that was equal to how Title II dollars are allotted, which Title II is for the entire population. So there's a disconnect and an inequity as to how funds, according to the feds, were gonna be allotted between private and public schools. As a result, the nationwide, you know, superintendent's association and all kinds of different associations were using political pressure to change that decision because that's a significant inequity. In essence, what would happen is we would get probably around $245,000 based on our Title I dollars, and then we'd have to take some of that $245,000 and give it to private schools based on their entire enrollment rather than their SES population. So our allotment is based on SES, their allotment would be on their entire school population, which is unfair, it's inequitable and it's unfair. So national organizations are fighting against that, so it was held up for that reason first. The second reason I'm told it's being held up is because the state is truly trying to figure out the best way to fill this fund balance or this, I'm sorry, Ed fund deficit. And they're trying, and I think they're trying to look at all the different ways that they can use that money. So we haven't seen it, we haven't seen an application for it. We have a weekly talk with Dan French, the secretary of education on Thursday, so he always gives us an update as to where that stands, and I'm assuming we're gonna hear about it tomorrow. That was a long-winded answer, but- No, I appreciate it. I had heard something about the private schools, but I didn't understand or know what the issue was, so that's extremely helpful. Thank you. Yeah, so it's a wait and see game right now. We don't know what we're going to get if we're going to get anything. I've got a question. Grant, you mentioned the biggest wild swing is the food services. In terms of the worst case scenario, what are we talking in terms of numbers or dollars? The worst case scenario, we don't get the reimbursement and all that. We don't? Grant, you want to give that a go? We were just talking about it about four hours ago. Go ahead, Grant. Yeah, that's a real tough question. The revenues we're losing are the adult sales and the students that pay full price and some catering. Those are the revenues we're losing. We're actually getting more reimbursement from the federal government for the meals that we are providing. My guess is maybe we're talking about an additional $50,000 above what we had budgeted as a deficit, but it's really hard to tell. I may be surprised it may not be that much because like I said, the amount of money it costs to put together a big salad bar with all the fresh fruits and vegetables every day, that's a huge cost and we're not seeing that. So it may not be, it's the thing that's probably the most uncertain to me, but it's not, we're not talking about something that's hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think so, thanks. There's no more questions. I'm happy to take any more questions about FY20, but we can move on to FY21 as well. Yep, go for it unless others have questions. Okay, and we can take questions on either slide going forward. So with FY21 anticipated savings, Grant, Andrew and I sat down last week sometime and really had headed out as to what construction projects fell under health and safety and what we really needed to have happen and what were the projects that we had budgeted for that are important, but not necessarily need to do next year. We also talked about which projects could we potentially move into a capital fund. And so we figured the savings amount here for construction projects next year was around $150,000 potential. Those two unfilled IA positions are again, the two unfilled that were from FY20 that we just didn't film it here and we were able to service students and do those duties without those two field positions. So I would recommend we lift those two IA positions that don't affect staff. They have no person in those positions right now. We had in our budget for FY21, the weekend custodian. If I were a betting girl, I would imagine that our buildings will be closed to community access on the weekends and in the evenings based on safety precautions. We don't have the authority to allow people into our buildings now or to use our space and I believe that will be continued. So not filling the weekend custodian that was already budgeted is approximately a $20,000 savings. Again, that 0.5 RVS custodian, we did it for half a year this year with the guys and Donna that we have on staff. So that would be a savings of $28,000 if we decided to continue to not fill that 0.5 custodian. And like I said, that was a, we couldn't fill it. We couldn't find somebody to do that work. And Andrew's here so he can answer any questions about construction or the custodial crew because he knows that best. Field trips, my again, my hunch is we're not gonna be allowed to do field trips next year. There won't be many things open. It will be hard to do the safety precautions that we need to do so that we budget for $60,000 in field trips every year. Our SRO is again, our safety resource officer with Montpelier police department. So that's just a portion of it when we're not in session here. And then fall sports is the big question. Oh, I'm sorry, the SRO, I'm sorry, I messed that up. That's actually a real savings because we got the invoice for the SRO for next year and it was $10,000 cheaper. So we actually know what that is. And then fall sports, we're not sure if those are gonna be a go or not. So we decided to put that on the slide. That's probably the weakest potential savings right now but it's still a potential savings. So these positions altogether would be $371,000 of savings out of what is already budgeted for FY21 that has passed the vote. So Grant, Andrew and I are happy to take any questions on this slide. I just wanna add something for that. It was something that I looked at after you sent this yesterday, Libby. And this is just for the board. If we even realized half of these FY21 savings and we realized the $241,000 that would have us at five point between the fund balance and these savings at 5.2% of our FY21 budget would really give us a lot of flexibility to help the community and respond to financial hardship while still ensuring that we provide high quality a high quality education for our students and our community. So thank you for your work on this. Should I wait to be called on or should I? This is Jill, can you guys hear me? Okay, Andrew can hear me. And I'm sorry, Jill, I was talking for those numbers. Okay. I just had two quick questions that I think I know the answers to. So the IA positions, is it possible that there are students that would be incoming in the fall that we're not aware of that might have an IEP that requires some sort of aid that we would be responsible for? In which case you guys probably have some sort of buffer built in or perhaps that's not how special ed funding works. I was just wondering. No, you're pretty on target. These particular IAs were more dedicated to small group work at MSMS. And so they weren't one-on-one IAs. We have an IA crew of 34 people and I'm sorry, that's my dog. And 13 of them are one-on-ones. So we have more people that could fill that need. Okay. And then my other question was just about the custodial piece. And again, this is delaying my ignorance, but I'm hoping, I'm assuming that it still means that the schools would get some sort of a deep clean, whether it's Friday evening or something like that so that when students come back on Monday, because I do have a feeling that, I've thought a lot about our conversation the last time we met and about what staff could be used for. And it seems like custodial staff will be really critical to sort of meeting those hygiene pieces. So I'm not in any way advocating to, consider changing this, but I'm just, I'm wondering if the regular Monday through Friday staff will also be doing some kind of cleaning Friday night so that Monday morning when the kids come in and the students and the staff come in, it's been pretty thoroughly cleaned. Maybe that's how it is now, I don't know, but just wanted to ask. I'm sure you want to take that. Yeah. I would say that Tom Allen, the head of civil services was here, he could go through and I would suggest that what schools start that we have to invite him to one of these meetings so he can't explain the process. But there's different layers of cleaning and levels and he has an anticipation of an elevated level. The biggest challenge that, and I don't need to speak out of schools, so to speak, but the biggest thing we're gonna have to do is that limiting of outside sort of resource or outside use of our buildings. The staff we have now is thoroughly capable of doing that level of cleaning that's necessary and can do it. It's when they get drawn away and it's in a conversation probably one in some of these conversations of there is, when we start having outside groups, that's where the strain really hits our staff. And the rock scary piece, we made it work. It was difficult, it wasn't efficient, but we made it work. The downside was that people had to work a lot of overtime. We had people who would literally work weeks and months without a day off. Those things that really pull up the staff. If we, if our custodial staff was focused merely on getting the needs of the education and the students, like the staff that he has, would work to a high standard that everybody expects. It really is gonna be that pull at the building that we need to be conscious of and make some hard decisions on. Tom's, Tom's, a lot of people don't remember what the buildings used to be like. The Tom's standard is Tom's expectation and he certainly has achieved it at the high school and we're heading there in the other buildings is that the buildings are not just super clean on Monday morning, they're super clean every day. And that Monday morning was no different than on Thursday morning. And again, at the high school, he's achieved that and we're heading that direction in the other buildings as well. But we can't use their time. We need to use their time efficiently. Okay, so I might, thank you. I might understand it correctly that, because I definitely wouldn't want people to have to work months without vacation. So you're saying if we are able to control the use of the building to just the essential staff and students that you do think that the staff we have will be able to manage, is that one here? Okay, good. I think that's the expectation. It's another challenge that we're gonna have as you guys move around the city and start to see longs that are growing a little longer than one would expect. Some of the services that we receive from the city with regard to the lawn care and field maintenance has been, it's going to be minimal this spring and I honestly don't know what it's gonna look like through the summer or for that matter into the fall. So we may end up having to take on some of those responsibilities as well. We haven't heard, we don't know exactly what it's gonna look like, but I think we should be prepared for that as well. Okay, thank you. Yeah, and I just wanna reiterate what Andrew said about the custodial staff. I've had the opportunity the last two months or so to really get to know them well, because there's not many of us in the building at the time and we're the people who have been in the buildings have really taken care of each other when we're there. And our custodial crew is top notch. They're fantastic and they truly view their job as essential in terms of keeping people safe. And so I have no doubt that they'll be able to do that. Not one doubt at all. They take their job so seriously and do a fantastic. Every time I walk into my office now, I kind of smile because it literally smells like disinfectant when I walk in. And it's just because they care and they want to take care of us and it's fantastic. Tom Allen, his previous position was with Fletcher Allen. So he takes this stuff seriously and he knows what we're talking about and he knows what he's supposed to do. I had a question related to custodial staff. Libby, at the last meeting you had mentioned and then Andrew mentioned again just now considerable overtime expenses with our custodial staff. And I'm wondering, is that a potential savings? Is that what I'm hearing or will they maybe have the same overtime? Will we still spend out about the same in overtime because they'll be cleaning? No, the overtime will be saved because if we limit access to community usage of the buildings, overtime comes into play when our buildings are rented out because somebody on staff needs to be there and it's a custodian who needs to be there. So if we were to be told by the state or the school board decides to limit access to our buildings from the community because of safety precautions and whatnot, then the overtime wouldn't happen. The way- And how much was that approximately? Do we have a number there? Grant, you wanna, I have a number in my head but I don't wanna get it wrong. Grant, do you wanna make sure that I'm right? I don't know that I would be right. So I'm not gonna get the number but I would say one thing is I don't know that we'll see a big savings in FY 21 because we don't budget a huge amount for overtime. What typically happens is we overspend considerably for overtime for custodians. And we cover that because a lot of times it's because we have a vacancy that we couldn't fill or that we're getting outside revenue for facility use. So we typically don't have nearly enough money budgeted for overtime custodial but we cover it with other savings for vacancies or revenues for facility use. So I don't know that I would put it on here. If we did put it on here, I would say maybe somewhere on the order of like 10 to 15,000 maybe is what we could save. I don't remember what the budget is but I'm thinking maybe around 35 to 40,000 is what we budget for overtime for custodians but I wouldn't swear to it. I had 45 budgeted in my head. So we're around the same. Well, that's the number I would throw out. So I have one more question related to the construction savings here. I'm just, I'd like to know what those projects are and are they going to be is the assumption that we're pushing it down the road? It's not that we're canceling those projects. So the way it typically works not that we've had a typical year yet but what it typically works is every year for the last probably 10 years or so we've gone through beyond the sort of identified projects of a playground or something of that nature. We go through and we take about three classrooms in each school and we go in and we put new carpets in them. We paint them and put new ceilings and new lights. And we typically do that to two to three classrooms in each of the buildings. Again, the last couple of years have been a little funky. So what we have done is we've taken those projects out. What we're gonna do is because we kind of got a little bit of a head start this year we're gonna ideally be able to take the time that we would have spent in the summer and get that work done earlier which allows us two things. It allows us to ideally give the crew a little bit lighter August. Every last couple of years that I've seen these guys they're working until midnight today where school opens and they start school frazzled. And I really want to change that model such that they get done in mid-August they can go take a couple of weeks with their families or early August. Take a couple of weeks with their families and that school year is refreshed as everyone else. So we may have that opportunity. But since we're gonna have since we're gonna be done with our normal maintenance we're gonna try to take on some of these projects ourselves that we otherwise wouldn't have time to do. Now we're gonna be limited by skill set and time but I think we will be making some improvements but we won't be typically typically do hiring a carpet or flooring contract or timing and do six rooms in the district and replace six rooms with the lights and things. We won't be able to do that. What we'll be able to do is say, okay we've got three weeks left. We got four guys that are available for us. Let's go and do these three or four rooms ourselves and we'll try to use our time the best we can that way. Grant, do you wanna talk about the sensory room project that ships? Sure, I was gonna jump in there about, so we have 150,000 as the potential savings. Two projects make up over half of that. There was in the capital plan we planned to redo some stairs at UES. We didn't think we would be able to fix them. Andrew was able to get a contractor in to see if we could just kind of do a patch that would work and lo and behold, it did work. And so that was like $40,000 that was in the capital plan that we don't need to spend now. And so there's a project at Union for this sensory room that is in desperate need of renovation that was for about $40,000. So what we did was we shifted that from the general fund as a requirement into the capital fund. So that saves us like $40,000 right there. Another thing is I think at Main Street we were gonna redo a stair tower. And I mean, these things cost a lot of money because of all the height that you're dealing with. So what we were thinking is we would do maybe just some work there and then push like $40,000 into the next year. So that's another $40,000. And so in one case you have $40,000 that we don't need to do at all. And then the other case you have $40,000 that we shifted a year. So right there, those two $40,000 each, that's 60. Or I'm sorry, that's 80 of the 150,000 right there. And then Andrew talked about a lot of the other ones which are just some of the more routine kind of upgrades we try to do in each school that we can just do a little less. It's a bit of a deferred maintenance issue but we're not causing some huge bow wave of deferred maintenance that a lot of other schools are dealing with. Thanks, Crash. Other questions? I just wanted to jump in one other thing. This is savings, we do have some unknowns on what expenses might be, what unanticipated expenses might be which is why we're trying to figure out where we can save money. I would say an FY21, the thing that causes Libby and I maybe the most concern on the expense side is what's busing gonna look like? We just don't have any idea. You know, with social distancing, how many kids can you put on a bus? How many buses are we gonna need? How many shifts of buses? So that's one of those kind of big unknowns which is why we're digging in and trying to find out where we can definitely save money. Could that be significantly more money if we have to, you know, significantly expand busing maybe both in terms of numbers so we can have proper distancing and then routes if we've got some sort of, you know, staggered school day. Absolutely, absolutely. That would be a huge, that would, we could potentially double what we pay in transportation. Is it too late for us to, as a board or as the superintendent to make some sort of executive decision about the busing in Montpelier? So we're just focusing on getting Roxbury students around? I think it certainly could be. I think it's also something that I'd like to wait and see what the guidance is coming from because we're talking about this now as what the guidance is now which could look significantly different by August. We might also, there also might be opportunities and obviously the board was in favor of expanding busing to the middle school but there might be opportunities as well to identify especially in this environment, you know, who, where the needs are more dire than others if we were in that type of situation. Yeah, I mean, it definitely seems like we could either, you know, look at distance or, you know, re-examine abilities of, you know, families to get kids there, you know, in other ways which may have changed if a lot more people are going to be working remotely, you know, through next year for, you know, social distancing for work policies too. You know, it may actually be easier for some families to provide transportation for their kids than, you know, if they had to be working on site. Yeah, there's many unknowns. I mean, there might be families who decide just I don't want to send my kid on a bus. You know, there's going to be, there's too many unknowns right now to make any decisions. But certainly once we start to get a little bit more solid with plans and guidelines and directives, then that will most likely be something the board will have to take up in the summer. Any other questions for fiscal year 21 or 20, for that matter? Okay, so the next slide just kind of adds things up. So the total potential savings between the two years is $612,000. Again, this goes into our fund balance to pad it further and for whatever is coming our way. So I'd like to make the pitch that we are in a very solid place going into a very uncertain future financially. And we probably have way more flexibility and we will have way more flexibility than many districts across the state. And so I'm feeling good about where we are financially, even with all the uncertainty. Grant figured out that if they ask us to, maybe the legislature asked us to claw back, if you will, 5% of our ad spending for fiscal year 21, which is well within the realm of possibility, that would be about $350,000. We will be able to do that, even without the savings, we'll be able to do that. So we're not sure, you know, those COVID expenditures, we talked about that earlier, that we're not actually sure what our actuals will be for electricity use and fuel costs over time, mileage, all that kind of good stuff. We just don't know what those actuals are just yet. One thing we are trying to do currently is to bulk up our tech hardware purchases. So we're looking at purchasing about $30,000 in Chromebooks for fiscal year 20 to get those in place so that we bulk up that. We sent out about 350 Chromebooks to kids for this remote learning and over 100 of them have already come back damaged. And so we're not really sure where we're gonna be in terms of Chromebooks and how many we have until we get all of those back after the end of the school year and they have to go in quarantine for a little while. And then we have to get our tech staff to take a look and find out exactly what's going on with all of our Chromebooks to find out exactly what we're gonna be. But we are going to try to make a big purchase by the end of this year in order to bulk up our hardware supply for kids and families. We will incur more COVID expenditures. We're positive, we're just not sure. And the other thing that's not in these slides for next year is that there's going to be savings for new hires. We replaced a lot of retiring teachers who are at the end of our pay scale with brand new teachers who are at the beginning of the pay scale. This is incredibly hard year for hiring because people just aren't moving from their districts which is understandable. And so it's a great, it's a boon of a year to hire new graduates that we can mold and shape into what we want. So we're hiring a lot of newer teachers this year more than we have in the past or in that mid range of step five through nine. And they're replacing people who are paid a lot more. So there will be savings for new hires which didn't happen last year but it will happen this year. We just don't know exactly what that's going to be yet until it all sugars out with our hiring. Any questions on this piece? Yeah, could Grant explain the 5% clawback math because that's a lot less than 5% of the budget. So I just want to understand the math. Yes, I certainly can. So you, I think in the budget we just have the education spending grant combined with all of the tax revenues we collect from the municipalities the amount that we actually get directly from the Ed spending grant that we get from the Ed fund is about $6.8 to $7 million. That's how much we get from the Ed fund each year. And so if you take 5% times $7 million you would get the 350,000. It's when they talk about a clawback they're talking about the Ed spending grant not 5% of your entire budget. So you have your total budget then you subtract out your local revenues and then you have your Ed spending. And then of that Ed spending a lot of that money comes directly from your communities in tax revenue. The piece that's not included there that we get from the Ed fund is about $6.8 to $7 million. And I would assume that that's where they would base their clawback from. And just one other thing on this slide we talk about unknowns that are negative the one unknown that might be positive here is that these COVID related expenses if it's something that we can directly say is because of COVID like purchasing a bunch of new hardware or childcare or things like that we are putting a project code on those to identify them as COVID expenses. And it is possible that we might actually get additional money to cover some of those expenses. And Grant, this is Jill how you explain that makes sense with what I've been hearing in the legislature because the way that our funding system works how we have the statewide Ed fund they can't just plop the CARES money into the statewide Ed fund they can't replace loss revenue. So they were trying to figure out a way that they could somehow allocate it to the school districts in FY 21 and then immediately basically claw it back. So that sort of makes this is helping me see that whole picture I think that's probably how they're gonna try to take advantage of using the CARES fund to try to keep the Ed fund whole. Certainly more desirable than rebotes. Great. Other questions for Grant or comments? Next. And thanks Grant was helpful as was. Though in other news I asked for and received as all of you should have gotten a letter an email for me today that our snow days were waived as student days. So our last official day for students is now July or June 11th, sorry June 11th certainly not July 11th. This will allow us for six full days of professional time with teachers. Mike and I met for a good couple hours today to talk about what that might look like and what decisions need to be made before that. We have a process in place with principals and central office administrators and teacher leaders around how decisions are gonna be made over the next three or four weeks and throughout the summer with some rapid feedback cycles that hopefully we'll put in place. We have a laundry list about a four page document now with decision points that need to be made. So those six professional days will be absolutely essential in giving our educators time to prepare and plan and go into the summer feeling confident about what they need to do over the summer and right before school. So that was a decision that I made by asking the agency of education to waive those and they agreed that that was a good thing to do. And then we've learned that RVS, I believe it was in the consent agenda this week, RVS, their nurse there retired. So it is a question for the board. Right now we have a 0.2 FTE nurse at Roxbury. It's a question for the board around that's gonna be hard to hire, just 0.2 FTE is hard always to hire. And going into the health situation that we are going into, is that what's needed at Roxbury or do we need something more? So that's just kind of something for the board to sit on for a bit. It doesn't necessarily need to be solved tonight in any way, but it's definitely something that's weighing on my mind a little bit. 0.2 equals out to one day of work across a week. So we're going into significant health needs and we wanna make sure our staff, families and students feel safe in Roxbury Village School. And I'm not sure 0.2 is gonna cut it. So that's just something for us to consider. But that's about it for this presentation. Any questions on those last two slides? Libby, what is your recommendation for the nurse? Would it be half time or something less than that? It's really tough because it's such a small school, but the work of the nurse overnight changed. It's not just, it's not band-aids, taking temperatures right now. It's taking temperatures of the entire school population when they come in. So it's tough. I think my recommendation is if we can find somebody to contract with to do that job full time for the first half of the year at least, we might wanna do that. Libby Grant. But it's just basically what the need may be right now to ensure that our families feel safe sending their kids to school. Our nurses are responsible for designing our safety precautions, for making sure they're implemented, for being that voice when somebody's anxious about health considerations and currently Roxbury's doesn't have one. And I point to is really hard to hire for. And even that, it's like only, you only can answer your health questions on Thursday. You know, like it's kind of a, it's a predicament. It really is. Right. Libby, do you know, and this is a question for Ryan and Gary too, do you know if there are any resources in the community like a volunteer EMT or some kind of resource like that? I know Roxbury is a much smaller community, but I'm wondering if there are any kind of existing resources there or even throughout the rest of our district that could be leveraged to provide enhanced surfaces without hiring a full-time nurse unless the recommendation is we absolutely need a full-time nurse there. And to note, we're not the only ones in this position. Most small schools the size of Roxbury don't have a full-time nurse. So I think a lot of schools are grappling with this right now. No, that's a great question, Ann. Do I know the administrative assistant who is in the building does a lot of first aid and a lot of nurse duties because she is there five days a week. And she's seen it and she's awesome. I remember a sixth grade graduation a couple of years ago the kids got up on the stage and thanked everybody in the building and Ms. Tina got a lot of thank yous for band-aids. Well, but that's a good example. Might we be able, if we have an employee who's interested and is already there serving in one capacity, might we be able to provide some additional education to that employee so that they're more well-versed? I know it's not the same as having, was the point to nurse, was that like a registered nurse or is that just, yeah? They're a registered nurse. We're not giving Tina more professional learning so that she can become like that just not, it's not gonna happen. I mean, I was having ideas before that we're kind of dreaming of just could we do some telether, tele-nursing with our three Montpelier nurses and just kind of give them an extra stipend and have them split it up. But really there's a trust that needs to be developed and there's a onsite piece that's essential I think or will be essential going forward. Libby, the Norwich University has a nursing program, I wonder if there is. I was about to say that. Yeah, any way to leverage that or, you know. I will have to reach out to them and see. Cause that's about seven minutes from Roxbury, so. And the number of hours they need to accumulate is astonishing, so like that might be a boon. The challenge of course being whether or not they are back on campus next year. But I was also just. Yeah, I think the plan is August, but I'm not sure. I was thinking in also the range of the, some of the kiddos that are in medical preparation professions at CVCC, I just know that actually some of them are employed right now as temperature takers various places. So I like the idea of looking a little bit outside of the box since it is an outside of the box problem. Yeah, it is. Those are good ideas that we can certainly look into. And just to continue with the ideas, is it possible that we could do a job share with the elementary school in Northfield? Obviously it's in another district, but they might also be having the additional needs. Yeah, I'm not sure what the FPE is over there. They needed to up their FTE and we needed to up ours. Yeah, I can certainly ask you that some questions about that, the superintendent over in Northfield. Great. Thanks everyone. So other questions for Libby? I think we can move into executive. Oops, are we ready to? Great, and thank you for doing this and let us know how we can help. Yeah, no, absolutely. We really, we appreciate it through the whole process. Your updates have been super helpful and very thorough. So we greatly appreciate it. Apologize to the Dell Corps who just joined the board meeting. They were at the waiting room and I didn't see it because I was screen sharing my screen or I was sharing my screen. So I apologize to Laura and David who just came on. Yeah, and unfortunately we're about to go into executive session. That's my fault. I should have been flipping back to see and I wasn't thinking about that. Libby, on that point though, this is recorded, correct? Yes, with Orca, yep. So we can share that video with Laura and David if they need it, correct? Yes, most definitely. And what is the turnaround time for providing that video if anybody else is interested? Anna, do you know that she's coming up? It's actually on live streams and at the link to the video currently on the site. Oh, I share it. Do I share the screen? To the state of the video, Laura. So it will always be up there. It's right now. So you can go to it. So can it be accessed pretty instantly? Yes, it's on the school board page currently and they can rewind today's live stream and then tomorrow it will be on the full good video. Yeah, excellent. So do I have, I think first need a motion that it would be contrary to the interests of the board or jeopardize the interests through the board's negotiating position or whatever the magic words are if we were to not go into executive session for the purposes of negotiations, Bridget. Anyone, anyone like to make that motion? Bridget, you can write it out and so we can take turns. Where are we going to have a tan and all that, too? I move that we find that discussing our contract negotiations in public session would put the board at a substantial disadvantage. By the second? By the second. Jill, Jerry. Hi. Bridget. Hi. Ryan. Hi. Ba. Hi. Andrew. Hi. Madiket. Hi. Mara. Now do you have a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing contracts? It says Mara and I move that we go into executive session for purposes of discussing negotiations. Joe, the second. I'll second that. Jill. Jerry. Hi. Bridget. Ryan. Hi. Emma. Hi. Andrew. Hi. Madiket. Hi. Mara. Okay, excellent. So I think Libby, do you need to make a room for us and shuttle us all over? Got it. Okay.