 May 16th meeting of the Montpelier-Roxbury Board of School Directors. Are we directors? Directors. OK. We used to be questions. We're directors. At 7.04, 7.03, for sort of a business public comment, hearing none, moved to second order for this consent agenda. Added a number of new teacher hires to the consent agenda. All of them are on blue sheets for the board's consideration. There you go. And some came in there. I'll tell you. So I can make them. Yeah, I'm looking to. Accept the consent agenda. I'll second. Any discussion? That was a favor. Aye. Aye. Are you opposed? Great. Moving on to the policy number four, which is the first reading of three new policies. I know we don't have Steve or Frigid here. No. So we're going to walk you through. Yes. OK. So a couple of things. First, before we start policy discussion, something I noticed today, going through some of the stuff, in general, I think some of our policies have inconsistent terms whether or not we're the Montpelier Rocksbury Public Schools or Montpelier Rocksbury School District. I think we'll need to make sure we're consistent as we're adopting these, if we are one or the other. I don't think Ryan Grant or somebody else would chip in there. I don't know if one is what we need to have in there, but we have been inconsistent so far like whether or not we're Montpelier Rocksbury School District or Montpelier Rocksbury Public Schools in the policies. OK. It's an advance to keep an eye on. When did we decide in the beginning that it was Montpelier Rocksbury Public Schools? Public Schools. Yes. But we're somehow legally required to call ourselves the Montpelier Rocksbury School District like in our district. Yeah, in official documents. In official documents. I think some of the stuff Grant's been doing. I feel like I overheard Grant telling somebody of it. Grant and I had a conversation about it at the board retreat, because there is this legal requirement that in some context we have to be referred to as the MRSD. But we had had a board conversation previously in which, and I think we voted. I think we took an action that we want to call ourselves publicly Montpelier Rocksbury Public Schools. So we kind of go along with the tuning system. So maybe it is a question for Brian as to whether it matters which name we use in the policy adoption. I doubt it. It would be good to know the answer to that, though, because, yeah, legally it would be good to know. And then whatever that answer is, we put in the policies. If it doesn't matter, then we call ourselves public schools, because that's what we want to call ourselves. And if we need to go with the school district term. And I would say if it matters for some and not for the other, we go with the one that it matters for. Done and done. Bless you. It was just a general question I had. But I know everything here under item number four is they're all the prior policies. So everything in the most part has been presented coming from the BSBA model policies, the exception of C. But that's first readings. And giving some context, too, for C, I had asked quite candidly with all the work that's been going on, forgotten that I had asked the Tech Committee to come up with something as one of their goals for this year. And so it just timed out that Mike Martin was able to present that to me just before. And so I'd given Bridget a heads up about that. So what you see for a letter C is homegrown from the Tech Committee here in Montpelier Public Schools. One thing I noticed about that is under the second section policy, the educational mission. It refers to, I believe, MPS, educational mission. And I'm not sure if it's. We can make that change? We don't have one yet. No, that's right. We could just have the MPS one as a placeholder. Right. Until it's up. Time to go down. Well, maybe just even, I was going to say, we're supposed to just cut out the words educational mission and set it as a policy of the district to provide robust and reliable IT resources in order to meet its student. You could just say, in order to meet its educational mission, period, and leave off the specifics. Yeah. That's good. That's good, I think. Can we review these in order, actually? Yeah. Student attendance, Google privacy. Could you tell me the second sentence on the student attendance policy begins, legal pupils between the ages of 6 and 16 define legal how? I don't think we do have heard of the students as legal pupils. So why is that different there? I was going to say it would have to do with residency, but then residency is stated later in the policy. So when I read that, I found it kind of confusing on what classifies a legal pupil. It's not residence, that's the rest of the statement. Compared to the illegal ones? Yeah, I wonder if that's what it's referring to. I can ask. Yeah, that's really uncomfortable. That is the only question and comment that I had on that policy. And as a sole policy committee person in attendance at night, the policy committee, the three policies that we're looking at right now, has not gone through. So I can't present anything to you based on feedback from the rest of the committee for these policies. The committee hasn't discussed these three policies. And do we know how much latitude we have to make changes over them, things like names and preferences to a specific commission? Somewhere I'd like to change for the others. I think someone with that stuff is coming up later. I think Brian had dropped off something here. But I think from what I understand from conversations with Laurie in the past, we can add things to required policies. But we'd be really getting a can of worms if we start taking things out of our required policies. Especially the BSBAs work with legal counsel. Everything that is in the model policies coming from BSBA should be there for the district to comply with federal and state law. Adding is reasonable, tweeting is reasonable, but pulling things out is going to take some legal counsel to verify that it is OK. And likely it's not. I don't see anything in the committee's policies I'm concerned about. Yeah, I don't either. There's some typos in the Pupil Privacy Rights Policy that needed to get fixed up. Is that thing, is it not referred to as FERPA anymore? It's now like DPRA. It says reference 20 USC tools. I'll see if we can pull that one up. Assume that BSBA would get that right. But just for my information. I mean, that's how it's listed here from February 2005, Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, 20 USC, 1232 H. And number one, it says this policy is required by the federal protection of people rights. That's the Pupil Privacy Rights Amendment. Jim. That's the number. Two more questions. OK, I'll speak to you, Joe. Under the Pupil Privacy Rights, number six. Yes. Under what scenario do folks envision collecting or disclosing or use of personal information collected from students for the purpose of marketing or selling that information? Why would we ever do that? I mean, I'm not saying no to it. I'm just asking what possible, what would that entail? Same question. So it is still called the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act. I don't know. Is that like that consent that comes from annual A where you sign off whether or not your child can be used and your photograph can be used in marketing materials? And you said yes or no. May I just want to ask that record? We're talking about the same question. Number six. Yeah. We're about selling that information. I'm talking about selling that information. Who we, why would, I'm just honestly asking for an example of where we would sell. It's like the last policy conversation we had at Roxbury where there was a question as to why there were four exemptions to the firearm statute. This is in federal law, literally listed as such. The collection disclosure or use of personal information. I mean, this is word for word. Number six is word for word. If you look at the footnote on reference number nine. I understand. So it's required to be listed in as such. But couldn't we just say as our policy that we will not be selling the information of students? The district's policy is not to sell information about students. I think this could, well, I don't. I'm just asking. You know, this says that these are, that after we've accepted these, you have to write procedures. I understand. A procedure could be we will not sell any information. Well, here's a situation in which that to come up that they have the kids use software all the time, right? And a lot of this like online software and they're using tons of different programs. And some of those programs do collect their information like how they perform in this game or whatever. Okay. But it wouldn't, but we have to make sure anytime that we're having kids engage in those things that if it is collecting information from them, it's not collecting their information. Okay. Where would we sell kids information? I mean, I can. Do it's the question is whether any of those companies potentially make money from the data that they collect on. Yeah, a lot gets sold and packaged these days in odd ways and unintentional ways. You could just imagine that a parent who's watching this or reading this online, then all of a sudden reads that we're selling, that we're acknowledging that we're gonna have to write a regulation that to allow the district to sell information about their kids. We have to be able to defend that. I think we defend it because it's what the federal law tells us. It tells us we have to allow the selling of... It doesn't say anything about allowing the selling. It's just saying that in case it happens. That's right. And we could have a policy saying, our policy is we don't allow the selling of kids information. Right. That might get us into a situation where we're not able to use software that teachers want to be able to use. Okay. Well, then that's a good justification of just trying to flesh out and not just voting on something. You might also, Peter, look at the under responsible technology use. If you look at the second stage in another policy. Mm-hmm. I was reading two and three at the bottom. We've noticed the relation to this just because Michelle used that for your demo. Well, we've actually had questions about it from parents in the past about how, because we use Google Classroom for what they'll help. What access does Google have to identifying information about their child and Google Classroom because it's created for classroom use is structured so that they don't have access to identifying information. But you know Google, right? Any information that they can get in the process of people using their stuff, they're gonna do stuff with. But we have to make sure that it's not identifying the students. My last comment, one of the reasons this is coming up as a concern for me is we have a federal, a US Secretary of Education who I'm not always convinced is looking out for students, right? Betsy DeVos has done things that I think are not on board. And so just because there's a regulation in the federal law, it doesn't mean we should maybe just check off on it. But thank you for listening, hearing me out. I think we do want to be careful in general though when we deviate from language that's straight out of the statute because sometimes we might think that we're compliant with it or think that we're even strengthening it, but it can confuse future boards. It can also perhaps unintentionally post out a compliance if we don't do it right. At least with the required policies. If there are other recommended ones that this board chooses to take on or certainly if there are policies that this board wants to consider that are not required, I think that's where you have a lot of room for flexibility and tailoring. But I think your point is well taken. So maybe this is one interesting thing now that we're a new district. What will be the process for procedures? It's not generally something, the administration does procedures, the board doesn't do procedures. But maybe, I'm thinking of what Peter asked. So maybe we need to ask to see the procedures from things we're worried about that would be handled in procedures. Well, I think we certainly need to flag them and ask questions. I think we should maybe be selective about it though because if we get stacks like this, you're not gonna be able to. We would normally see all the procedures, but maybe it's worth, if it's something we're worried about, we're worth it. Yeah. Yeah, and the procedure on number six can be that we're just not gonna do it. The easy one then before we get off of this policy, number three needs to be reworded to be correct. Arrangements of a protected suit of privacy is not appropriate. Yeah. Minor details there. Yeah, it's... The process, why is this a part of the commitment in the next one? It will, yes. It has to anyway, but this is only the first reading. I'm curious, maybe again, for a consistency question. So this policy only referred to parents, not guardians most of the time, if I remember correctly what you're saying. Is that consistent with most of the policies, that language regarding parents, guardians? Did anybody else catch that? Did it read? Yeah, no, I'm catching it too. Also, there's under all statutes, do parents and guardians have the same rights? Yeah, number four is one that caught my attention, the right of a parent to inspect any instructional material. And it's number one as well, too. Yeah. Yeah, educational records says parents, guardians. I think we should have parents, guardians, to be stood possible unless there's a legal reason I'm not sure I'm not the lawyer there, but it caught my attention. It seemed like we were using it a little bit differently than we normally do. Alcohol and drugs just says parents, doesn't say guardians. Well, it sounds like we need to add guardians. They don't have the same rights, but. For these purposes. For these purposes, maybe we wish to give them those rights. Well, then, can we? I don't know. I don't know. That goes into your question, Eric, please. So I'm not going to answer a question, I should know the answer to you, but in terms of second reading, how much change can occur on the policy committee between the first and second reading before we need to give it a first reading again before it becomes. All the first reading is, is the list that this is the first time it's been out. If there are no changes, it can be worn for adoption at the next meeting. As many readings as you want to get it right. So each reading is a change. Yeah. But as soon, because we talked about the number, right? Is this correct? As soon as we didn't make any changes, then we could adapt the policy. Correct. There's no required number of readings. There's just, it be read and be worn for adoption 10 days in advance of the warning. Are we on to responsible computers? You ready for, I don't have any more comments or things that I noticed from privacy policy. So yes, we are. I don't have, this one, I'll be honest, coming a little bit off guard this morning when I was reading it. It's different from the BSVA model policy. I think the content is all the same, but the structure has changed some. Quite a bit different than the policy Montpelier had in the books already. And I unfortunately didn't correctly track down ours for Rocks very WSSU to compare it. I said, yeah, Mike Martin and the admin team, I'm not sure who else was involved in the first betting of this policy and made some changes. I'm assuming everything is okay, but I don't have anything to report back on why or what or how it compares to the model policy straight from the BSVA. So the model policy is essentially a lot of do not, do not, do not. And so this was written in an attempt to express what we hope they would do. So essentially trying to shift the language to be more, this is how we expect that you're going to use our technology response. The usual policy governance, no, no, no. Right. I didn't really have time to go through in detail both of the policies, the BSVA and this one though. It seemed like the content was all the same, but it was different. And who did most of the drafting of this? Mike Martin and the technology committee includes representatives in all three buildings, teachers, tech support specialists, library tech integrationists. Yeah, that's what I remember mentioning that they wanted to cast it in a positive light. Any further questions about responsible technologies? We'll have a discussion on any of the policies after first reading. So I'll make sure that all three of these are on for a second reading for the next time when we all get together. Excellent. So moving on to item number five, the second reading of five policies, tobacco prohibition education records, student alcohol and drugs, limited English proficiency students, and firearms. Should I go through them one by one with discussion or? So do I make a motion? Todd. We need to, is there another topic? Is we need a motion to discuss? There for discussion? For discussion. Yeah. I think I'd ask this question at the first reading for tobacco prohibition, is whether or not this applied to marijuana? It did not apply to marijuana. It does not. It does not. So that would fall under the student alcohol and drugs policy? Correct. Okay, I just wanted to clarify this by head. No, that's a good clarification. All right, good, thank you. Is there any needed or planned change when marijuana becomes legal? I guess it's no because it's not. Well, maybe. It's for minors. It's for minors, but it's for teachers. We do that, I tell you. And we have teachers on the grounds as well. Uh-huh. Yeah. We have teachers on the grounds. As far as I understand it, there's still no legal protection for having a controlled substance on school property. As, unless it's under taking medication, as, and I have not read it, but it's, as I recall, the allowance for marijuana refers to one's personal residence. And so absent more information to the contrary, it is still not going to be legal whether you are, certainly you are not going to be legal as a student. And I would be incredibly surprised if you could legally, as an adult, bring that onto a school campus. Okay. And this policy specifically talks about students, not at a case. So in that case, it's a week. We have a separate policy for drug and alcohol in the workplace for staff. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. I'm just gonna go one by one and see if you'll have comment. Any discussion on tobacco provision beyond the case? I'm just gonna say if we don't have any comment, then next time it can be under adoption of policies, correct? Yes. In consent agenda. We just want to be clear. Yeah, no, that's, I'm keeping track. All right, so that can go to adoption. Of course. Education records. I'm good with that. Great. Student alcohol and drugs. Limited efficiency students and fire arms. Fire arms is where we had all the discussions last week. Partially resolved that. Mm-hmm. Statue to requirements. Great. So we don't, we move on to six. We don't have any action there. Well, this isn't for adoption. Yeah. This isn't substantive, but there's still shall in the fire arms one and I'm not sure. And I'll see implantation section. No underage spell. Shall be. And then the superintendent shall refer to, and then on the back, the superintendent shall. We're changing all that to well, is that correct? I believe we are using well instead of shall, unless, is that a statutory cut and paste? They have the same meaning. I'm with them. Could you raise that question last time, didn't you? Yeah, I think so. She's not here tonight to have that rationale, I don't know. It's the same meaning. Well, I mean, is there any harm in pushing it back in other meetings to make sure we have the correct answer? No. Yeah. I mean, this policy wouldn't preclude the district from having a shooting club or activities off campus. This is on campus. Right, it's all on campus. So. Well, campus is usually considered up to me for any school activity. Where the school goes. So this does say, for example, any student who brings a firearm to school and who possesses a firearm. Right, the thing is definitely on school. What I had wondered, like I think about the school that I grew up in, we had shooting sports clubs that we would leave campus and go after school hours. And I wasn't sure if that would change or be allowed with this policy. Well, our Nordic team, I think, participated in some biathlon stuff this winter. Maybe we'll we're checking out some of the things that you've checked out there. Yeah. Just to find out. No, it's a good question. Because if you define campus broadly like that. Anything that's happening related to this one. Yeah. Well, I'd possess. Yeah. Possess arguing means that they have one in there. Yeah. Even if they didn't bring it and even if it was provided to them as part of an activity. Yeah, we might want to just have a section that says if they're participating in a school sponsor event that includes. Can they collect within the spot, Lori? This has to be almost identical to the Northfields policy right now for firearms, right? And they're able to participate in that. Right. The Rifle Team. Then the ROTC. So there is some flexibility or it's. Or people have never asked that question. Well, I guess the question is like, is there flexibility or people just not. Followers. Yeah, I mean, I already had the type of thing where if someone said, yeah, we want to shut down the Rifle Team. That's the question. Right. None of these students can have guns. They might have a pretty good argument that they could. See how shouts, wills, and clubs off physical campus. Well, maybe even not. Maybe not even clubs. Just activity. Approved, board approved. But I hope not. Do we approve activity? No. No, you don't. So how is a school sponsored or I would say. School sponsored. And appropriately supervised or something. School sponsored. Yeah. Because if there is a club or a sport, they're required to have an adult. Moderator? Yeah. So if I heard this correctly, tobacco prohibition, education records, student alcohol and drugs, and limited English proficiency students will be warned for adoption on June 6th. They'll add firearms as a third reading, along with the second reading for student attendance, people, privacy, and responsible computer, internet, and network use. We are squared away there. A few questions. Thank you all. Excellent. So we are basically out of schedule. Item six, update on superintendent search. That would be Tina and Lisa. Tina is actually officially part of your board for your search committee chair duties, isn't it? So report out. Although, Lisa, please feel free to. Absolutely. Check on me. My report is we have a great search committee. It's taking a lot of time and energy on everybody's part, so we really appreciate the search committee. We added another interview day. The interviews will happen on the 21st and the 22nd. And I thought. Do we need to approve the extra interview day? I don't know. Should we just for? Sure. Daltons and suspenders? Okay. It needs to be warned, but do we have to do any approval? Because we had approved moving it from 12 to 13, and some other change. And we did originally approve the dates. I think we did originally approve the meeting dates. Let's do it. Just to do it. Make sure. So is that an indication that we have candidates that we like? It's an indication that we have a lot of people to look at. Okay. Good. That's better than. A lot of people made it through the screening tool. Yes. So while you're talking about approvals, we have two sets of minutes, which leads to nicely. Three sets, I believe. Oh, you're right. Three sets of minutes that need board approval. Okay. And there's not much to them. Right. Because most of our time is spent in executive session. And speaking of. I was going to say, can we approve the meeting since they weren't. No. They would have to be. Who has those minutes? We all have. They're brought copies for everybody tonight. Okay. No, you. Right. Right. Committee can approve its own minutes. Because we give the committee has a charge to operate. You told me to do so. Great. Great. Okay. Thank you. So I thought I'd review since we have are having a few extra board meetings that we would be clarify when those were. So Tuesday, May 22nd. We're meeting. Are we? Lisa and I have down that we talked about it. We were meeting to plan for the June 4th. And I think that was something Mike introduced at the meeting when he came and presented to us. That a number of school board. However, there's a high school concert that evening. I know. We talked about it. There are people on this committee on the high school. Seven o'clock on the 22nd. The logistics for. Yeah. So the. And that was on. I used to. It occurred to me that we. I think it was Bridget last time that was saying, could we please clarify when we're having meetings? And this did not come up. I don't think. Yeah, I, if the 22nd meeting came up, it does escape to me. But I would. It makes sense. Well, if. I guess I'm saying. If not on the 22nd, when would you do it before. And the other thing about that is we talked with Mike. And he's, he can be there that night. And he said that the screening committee will actually. Have a general outline. For us. For what the fourth would look like. And so very short. Yes, we expect to be relatively short, but. And that we wouldn't necessarily be doing all the light work. Just that. We would be kind of taking a look and maybe delegating. Different folks. Different places and figuring out when the interviews can happen. And the idea on the 22nd being the. Screening committee would be there and just kind of. Flow one to the other. Well, on the 22nd, we're meeting all things. So. Well, we doesn't have to be that day that the board meets. Right. But the board, as a matter of fact, we discussed, we had to be done by. So. The board was meeting because that was our understanding, but. It would have to be done sometime. To be ready for June. Fourth. So what's the board? What's the board's pleasure? I'm going to the 22nd. I'm going to the 22nd. I could do the 23rd as well. That week is actually pretty good for me the. Following week. That's good. It's, it's as Michelle pointed out, that's a deadly week. For any parent. I'm a child. Not only is it the high school concert, the next day's the art show, which you just got a little card. Yes. Which is happening. I guess we don't know yet. How late. It will actually be necessary for us to go. Because. Would it help if it's a very short meeting to make it early? I'm not sure we can because of our interviews. Well, that's what I was saying. We don't know what exactly what's happening. Right. What time is the concert? I'm just trying to find that out. I have it in my calendar at six o'clock. But I don't know that that's real. Uh huh. I have everything down right now. Seven o'clock. The art show is at six thirty. We could meet at five thirty or six. I'm not sure where, if this whole building will be. No, it's in the gym. Oh, it's not. Oh, okay. It's quite the show you should come. So we can use this space. Yeah. Well, the question would be, we could ask Mike if he could come or he could get us ready so Lisa and I could do it. Right. Right. So, and I guess Mike's preference for five to twenty seconds. I can do so. Somehow I thought that came out in the discussion and the board picked it. But I can't imagine why we didn't. We did on that first night. First meeting on our spring break. A couple of people were absent. Well, maybe we should check with availability of people. If we did it on Wednesday before the art show, how does that strike the rest of the people on board? What time would we send in? Five thirty? Five thirty. People won't take that long, will they? I think, Tina, I remember we were talking with Mike and he said something about not expecting it to be too short either. Do you know what I mean? So, I think maybe an hour is probably a good cushion. About your discussion of what we'll have to say and how long you would discuss it, I think. So, if it was five thirty, that's an hour. I wouldn't say more. Well, if you don't have to get to the art show the minute that it starts. It's flexible. That's a good point. So, actually, if I'm thinking Orion, how about six instead of five? Is that better? It's going to be some shuffling of the schedule. If it's a chance kid will be in tow, but figure something out. Because Michelle's right. The art show is not like a concert. Although there is a concert during the art show. That is true. But it's unlikely it will be at six thirty. So, we're going to check with Mike for the Wednesday. Confirm that he can come and then move forward with that. Is that what we're saying? I think it's the pleasure of the board because I'm betting we will have what we're doing done with by then. So, probably, if he can't come, Lisa and I can present it. Is that your thought? Yeah, sure. Can anyone not attend on Wednesday? Yeah, I don't. Bridge is going to be back in town, right? I don't think Steve is going to be back in town. He's only been out of town for two weeks. Yeah. It doesn't matter which of those days he's not here. Though I can't say for sure though, if it's a mushroom that he actually left. It depends whether this is week one or week two. I actually don't know which one he left. He was at the farmer's market on Saturdays. So, it's not going to be a regardless. I'm good with the twenty-third. That's six. Okay. The spring was set Tuesday, not Wednesday, by the way, Michelle. Right, but we began by discussing Tuesday. That's why it came back. Oh, yeah. And the jazz band plays during the art show. Oh, sorry. Yeah. It's not exactly a concert, but it's live music. It's very nice. Yeah. So, that we're clear. So, that's a board meeting on the twenty-third. And then there'll be a board meeting on the fourth. Yeah. And I forgot. How exactly is that envisioned to work? That's going to be the kind of... That's what we're talking about on the twenty-third. Yeah. That's going to be... But the other issue... The trailer? Sure. To some degree you can. The candidates would be here probably for the day. And culminating in them talking with you. And if there were a couple of them, you'd be here awhile. And it's the only thing that we agenda for that. Yeah. Up to three. Up to three. So, I think Mike said that it's likely that each candidate, that the screening committee names or finalists, would have a liaison who would take them to every school that day. It's not necessarily a board member, though. I think he's... Somebody from the screening committee. Yeah. And that would happen prior to coming to the board. So, the board does... It's not directly different. So, that perhaps every day of the board convenes at night. And meets would... How long that would take depends on... Well, and you talked also about having a robust opportunity for public engagement with the candidates or the finalists. And so, there's a question as to whether that would happen prior to the board meeting. Like would we have a public forum prior to the board meeting or would that happen as part of the board meeting? That's putting some of that during the day. So that there would be opportunities for the community to meet the candidates during the day. We could also build in just prior to the board meeting something. But also the board meetings... Right. Yeah. And... I was just wondering whether we wanted to create a special time for that and we'll promote it. Well, I think it was our intention to promote the ones during the day. I think it's your call on whether you feel if we had one or two during the day, would you also want one following more in the evening? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So... Or at least we could kind of, you know, wrap it into what we're doing. Maybe we have... When we talk to the candidates as part of that time for a little back and forth with whatever shows up. I guess I would say to you... It could be a lot. Well, it could be. Yes. So, you know, if the community's here going to ask questions and the board's going to ask questions, do you want to separate that in some way? Yeah. I would have the board part and then a, you know, attention to minutes for interaction with the community members. And we have done things before where we asked the public to write the question on an index card and give them. We could do that. And then the board can ask questions. That might be good for that part. Especially if they have time for the day when they can ask questions directly. How about if we report this back to Mike and he might have suggestions too of a good way to do it? Yeah. Yeah, that would be great. And did he discuss about how the community forums would look? Would all candidates be in a room together? So people could come for an hour and hear the different answers? Probably the candidates would be separated. So if someone wanted to hear from all of them, they'd have to. I think he offered up either of those. Yeah. Sometimes it's done where the candidates are all in the same big room and community teachers, students can all be there and go from one to the next during a period of an hour or something like that. And sometimes it's done where they're separate times. And there'll be separate times, I guess. Yeah. I guess I'd never see them all together, but it doesn't mean it couldn't be. Yeah. I mean, from the candidate's perspective, they probably would not want to be all together. But from the public's perspective... It's convenient. Right. It's a lot more convenient. Right. And then you get some people who saw one person, but not the other two. And I know they wouldn't love it, but... Yeah, that's certainly the same uncomfortable thing as a candidate. What? Yeah. Ask Mike. How he feels it's best knowing... He is aware that we're very concerned about the community being able to give input into this. Yeah. And we have discussed it, so... Well, we could do a thing where we're pretty disciplined about, it's going to be an hour and one person is going to go up to 20 minutes and then take the candidate in 20 minutes and then, you know, and really have, like, so you can see all three in an hour and it would be a dependable hour. But they won't be all sitting there together. I wouldn't recommend a 20-minute conversation. I think you're going to want more than 20 minutes. Yeah. Big time. I mean, you could... That's what concerns us about doing both public and board questions. If the board has a good number of questions and then you open it to the community, that's not because I want to cut off the community. I'm just thinking of the length of time. So you might want to separate that the community gets to talk to them and the board. So then the other thing to think about, and we've been asked to think about it, is how would you get feedback back from the community once they have talked to them? Right. Well, they're always welcome to call or email us. Yeah. Well, we encourage them to call email. We encourage them to... Oh, do you have to make the decision tonight? You don't have to? Well, going back to my 20-minute suggestion, I wasn't saying that would be the only opportunity, but I'm saying maybe have... Each candidate has an hour, so people who really want to dig in, but then have a session where, for people who don't have three hours to spend and want to see all three candidates, there's going to be kind of like a quick 20 minutes each. You can see them all, and then they'll each have a separate community meeting. You know, something that I haven't thought of is I wonder if there's a way of videoing. A lot of people watch the board members, the board meetings on ORCA. Maybe there's a way of videoing each of them and some specific thing and running it prior to that also. How about the search committee we'll talk about? Yeah, definitely. So that's what we're talking about on the 23rd. Yeah. I think we do want to make the decision as quickly as possible because we do need to hire someone and have them start just minutes later. Yes. Right, but the point of your decision is next week. You're talking about the hiring decision? Yeah, I'm talking about the hiring decision. Well, you can hire that one. Right, but I was just starting down the road of envisioning a process in which we hear from everybody, the community gets to ask questions, we tell community members, hey, watch the recording on ORCA three days from now. Give us your feedback. We're going to make this decision. This has been so quick already that that can't happen. The fact of the 23rd, then you have a week and a half between there and when the candidates come. Right, so we should really be prepared. We should really be prepared to have a system which produces a superintendent on the fourth, which means if we're going to get feedback from the community, we need to set up a way of doing that. I wonder if we could have, like, the... Yeah, I have a question. I'm concerned that it's going to get unstructured and unwielded very quickly in hiring and group hiring processes. It helps if you have a list of, say, five questions from which you'll choose three so that you have a fair understanding and equitable treatment of the candidates. And you can do that on the public forum as well. Have the people that are coming forward from the public also be able to choose, say, from a list of five questions within which three people can ask the question or however it is. Otherwise, you're really not going to have an equitable interviewing process. Can I follow up a little bit on that? Thinking, we're talking about the community in very broad terms, but how likely are we to get the whole community to show up that night? It's not very likely. We'll have a lot of people. But is it a general representation of the community or is it a subset of the community? It's parents. Right. So the concern is that we'll have a bunch of folks on one end of the spectrum, one way or the other to show up. And if that's all the feedback we get from the community, it's not going to be that helpful overall for us to make an informed decision. It is still our decision to make. Absolutely. But thinking about this conversation about what we're expecting from the community, it's like we have to be realistic about what we're setting up in terms of what we're going to get for feedback, if anything, and whether or not it's actually going to be useful in terms of informing us as a board on the community overall. Yeah, Lisa? Mike did mention some kind of system for community feedback prior to when the board interviews the candidates. So I think there's something more specific that we will bring on the 23rd about that. And I think... Maybe they'd send it out before. Nobody looks at it. Yeah. If that would be helpful. Well, and I think the issue is you wouldn't want to ask people to come and then not ask them what they thought no matter where they came from. That was what we were trying to figure out. How do we get back that? No matter what the representation. That's fair. And we have members on the search committee. Right. And I think... I feel confident that on the 23rd we'll come back with some sort of a one-day plan. Good. Good. What do you think? I think so. That sounds great. In that end, and the next thing on my list is where Becky was going, I would like the people on the board to think about a question they would like to ask during this interview process and please send them to me so that I could incorporate them so that we're fairly structured when we ask our questions during the interview. Yeah. So kind of what I'm hearing and a question referring to Mike, community feedback, how do we get that? How do we structure the community engagement? So it's both... Some people feel that they have adequate time with the candidates, but we also generally... People on a position where they have to take three and a half hours out of the day to feel that they've got to see all... All... Assuming we have three candidates, three candidates. And then an orderly fair process for questioning, which I think is... And I think Becky, that's going to be a little bit... I think for us, that's going to be easy to achieve. I think telling the public what they can and cannot ask is not going to go over well. I just don't know how to have an equitable interviewing process without some sort of... I hope Mike... I'm sure Mike's done this before. Yeah. He lives. I think that's a good plan for how to manage the community. Yeah. But remember, there are people who are going to want to ask their own questions in this community. Especially this community. That's right. And they're not technically... They're not interviewing the people. No, it's feedback. It's not community. Yeah. Maybe that's a caveat. I mean, they would... I think what we would have to do... And I think what we would have to do is probably the index card thing so that if the board that's managing the questions, and we would have to give all of the finalists the opportunity to answer each question. Yeah. And that's what would make it equitable so that we don't have individuals from the public addressing specific questions with specific candidates. But here we have a question from the public. Could each of you please respond? That's a good idea. Well, and in all fairness, there may be different questions if we're going to want to ask different candidates. Like... Depending upon their background. Yeah. If you have an out-of-state candidate, there might be a question about, what do you know about Vermont? Do you know what you're going to be into? Yeah. Yeah. Not sure. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Sounds like you've covered that ground well. Thank you. Yeah. And thank you both of you for doing this. I know it's a big type of event, frequently. I can say I think we're very impressed with the person you hired to do this. It's Mike. It's Mike's doing a good job. Excellent. So moving on to item seven, which I think we may have to... Unfortunately, neither Bridget nor Steve are here, and they have been working on three major aspects of this. It's funny, Jim, I emailed Bridget about 10 o'clock this morning. So I missed the last policy meeting because I was in interviews for the C&T director position, which they were discussing those two items. It's like, well, what's the plan tonight? They weren't in the package. Are you bringing handouts? We're planning or presenting something. How was the structure for this discussion? I actually don't know. She didn't get back to me so I'm not sure. Yeah. Steve's indication was we should punt on a lot of this. I know we've done this previously. I do kind of want to set up, I think, what we need to do. And this is a big piece. I think this would be our biggest piece if we didn't have other pieces that we're also focusing on. We're getting those other ones squared real quickly. Yeah. So I just kind of want to use a little time to remind people about the day we spent with Steve Dale and kind of, I think, where we need to go and to go starting this summer. Mission and vision and ends. And that's another community process. So I think early on, and I think we're going to work with the news report to get a public process, engagement process to get those two things going. And then I was, we could go about, I think it would be good to have a series of discussions about board governance and board structure and board decorum, et cetera. And maybe either build that into some of our meetings over the summer where we just kind of take part of the meeting and do a topic we might want to consider getting some sort of facilitator to help with that. And just iron out the three or four things we need to go through and really make that kind of our summer project and maybe wrap it up with a retreat in August where we finalize a lot of the work and get those pieces in place. Going into the 2018-2019 school year. So that's kind of my overall thought. I think we need to probably really set that timetable either like the 7th or the 20th of June. And it might be a really good thing to be ready to pounce on after the 4th or 5th when we make a new hire and really bring the new superintendent into that process. So that's kind of my high level thought on that given that we can't talk about some of these items that are in Stephen Birchit's head and we'll need to talk about later. So I don't know if you can... I like the idea of having the vote at time again and stuff and get taken care of. But I'm a little bit concerned pushing it off all the way into the summer because we're talking about the budgeting policy and old planning policy. We'll be well into... We're not talking about this until August maybe getting it confirmed and voted on in September. We're into the budget cycle already. Yeah, I agree. I think we're going to have to prioritize and hopefully get... I think the two top items here are probably things we should try to wrap up in June or early July if we can. And then we can work on some other things like really refining what our governance structure looks like what governance by policy instead of policy governance means. Things like board decorum, et cetera. Another big piece we're going to talk about next is superintendent evaluation process. I think that's budget process, superintendent evaluation process and annual... just our annual planning. Are things we really need to... Our powers. Your responsibilities. Yeah, need to get moving on soon. Yeah, and the mission it ends but I think that's something we can build in kind of running with the new SI. So we're not going to talk about these policies now, right? That's what you're saying? Yes, because we just can't have a meaningful discussion about... I missed the last round of drafts. The annual planning policy I can just give you a rough update. It's still pretty rough. I think we're really hoping to have a broad discussion before Steve's spending more time on that one. It could go a bunch of different directions. The budget policy has been I think a little bit more refined. It's gone through a couple of drafts. It's had some feedback from administrators. So the budget policy draft is probably in a much more better position to have a meaningful conversation rather than the annual planning policy. But I guess I was in the last planning committee, the policy committee, so I can't speak with exactly what Stephen Bridget had said. May I ask you a question about the budget policy? You've got the action of the board will be to approve an overall percent change in the district's education spending. If the education spending is defined, is the stable budget less local? My question is definitely positive. I was just asking this so you could talk about it was in the process where is that? And the reason I'm asking is I often feel like I had a question about that too. So I'm not I have it. Yes, I don't know. I'll just express that I've always found it hard to give anybody a percentage or anything until I know what you need. So if I'm not opposed to doing that, but if you had a whole bunch of a list of things that would happen, if that happened ahead of time, and then you said to the board, given these factors, what do you think? I'd be better able to do that. Because technically the board approves a dollar amount budget. In the S&P made that motion. I had made the last draft that I had seen on this. I made that same those asked even. So I'm not sure how they flesh that out. It would be great to have a timeline. Yes. I think that goes into the angle cutting policy also. So there's some overlap between the two. It's been discussed how to make those not be redundant. Yeah. Make sure that such a board input can be received in a timely fashion. Here's the proposed leverage. Now. The board would really benefit from procedures. I know this is a policy, but I think we would really benefit from procedures. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. And I also agree that we'll be for September. Yeah. We're already midway through May. Yes. So are we ready to move on to eight? So one of the most important things I think the board function is superintendent evaluation. And I know we've had somewhat of a, at least not clear, school board has had kind of an up and down history with that just in terms of actually having a process in place and understanding this is actually really doing it much at all. I think it's really important we have a clear and consistent and effective superintendent evaluation process that starts with the new superintendent that perhaps we can at least at the initial stages help the new superintendent build. But kind of the major things that I have on my list for, well, here's kind of my, here's some thoughts I have on that. One, I think we need an evaluation that's tasked with putting a timetable together, making sure the evaluation happens, making sure all the pieces come together, and just getting that going. So that means a committee and then a set process for that committee to follow. Again, procedures with timelines. Procedures with timelines. Yeah. I think part of that is a process that would involve the whole board plus the superintendent of setting goals. The superintendent would set goals, the board would also set goals for the superintendent. There would be a coming together in agreement of what those goals actually are. So there's common agreed upon goals between the board and the superintendent about what the goals for the year are. And that would then be evaluated with some things I think we need to put together pretty soon, which is a job description. So just kind of what are the basic expectations. There's yearly goals of the superintendent, but then just as a base level function, what do we expect of the superintendent just in terms of doing her or his job? Essential functions. Essential functions. And then also that can also, for the new superintendent, I think that should be married to an entry plan, which is something we should also get together. And part of that would also be in the contract. What are they contractually obligated to do? What's their job description tell it to do? And then for the initial first year, what's the entry plan? And then beyond that it would be the goals. So just get clear expectations about what we're measuring, what we expect, make sure those are up front. And then as the year progresses, I'd like a pretty aggressive review process, or at least thorough, because aggressive is the wrong word, but thorough and concrete has a review process. That the evaluation committee would be in charge of moving along, but obviously the board would be informed along the way. And kind of, you know, the three main pieces that I would love to see as kind of part of like a 360 review are I think there should be one or two opportunities during the year where the evaluation committee meets one on one. And I've done this in nonprofit boards. It's very effective with the leadership team and just gets feedback on how things are going. And I think that does a couple things. It gives the board a lot of information. And the board is hearing from the superintendent. I think it's good to hear from people immediately supervised from the superintendent what's working, what's not. I think it creates a level of transparency and honesty and gives the board different perspectives. I also think it gives planned and meaningful opportunities for immediate leadership to be heard by the board in a way that will make them feel that the board is listening to them and there's a check-in point and the check-in point is very defined. The other piece is, which I think we're doing and we're getting up is kind of non-leadership team, survey monkey where we send a survey out and we get comments back in. And then the third piece, which I think is trickier but I still would like to do is some sort of community input and parental input, which I think we'd have to take with a bit of grant of salt because it's going to be probably the most self-selecting of the three processes. There's going to be a lot of people who aren't going to take the time for it. But I think it's still valuable and I think it's good to have the community given an opportunity. And then use that information, look at the goals, look at the job description, look at the entry plan and sit down and just have a really constructive conversation at the end of the year with the superintendent about how she's doing or how he's doing. And then we start the process over and just make sure that that, think about that as that and the budget being really the two most important things the board does. Makes sense. And then following up on that, Nancy Reid has volunteered to help at least get a process in place and get some of these things going over the next month or so. With volunteers to this board, if they're willing. Nancy is on the other board who'd be serving as a community member which I think we could do. There's a little bit of awkwardness there. I don't know how people feel about it. The plus side is she's got the time and she has a strong education background. So I just wanted to throw that off around there and get people's thoughts. Otherwise one of us could step up and do that. I know the session's over, Peter. I think the committee would need a charge and it would need to have defined membership. Exactly. Jim, do you know, I feel like at some point in the BSVA website I've seen one of the services they provide is superintendent evaluation. Have you had any conversations with them to see? I've had some, definitely some of the people willing to help us on. So we can look to it quickly. I can look to it more. I do think I would like to at least be pretty, I don't want to see deep into the process, but I would like this to look, I would like this to go hand in hand with the new superintendent hire. It looks like, not that it just looks like, but it is that with the new superintendent we're going to bring a consistent process and it's not going to come in and realize everything. Yeah, after, you know, she or he has been established for a while, he's going, whoa, wait a second, what is this? I want the expectation to be pretty clear that we're going to have an entry plan. We're going to have an entry plan. We're going to have a comprehensive evaluation process. We're going to stick to it. It's, you know, it's not about, you know, we're not imposing something on you have, you've been here a while. This is how we expect, you know, our relationship to be. So I mean, just heard about this and this isn't against Nancy or anything. Some reason it's not clicking in my head that Nancy might seem weird to have someone from another board helping guide. I just want a moment to think about it. Do we have to okay it now? No, we definitely don't. I just wanted to throw it out there. We can talk about it. Before any actions, they agree. Yeah. I know it just doesn't seem right to me. It probably is okay, but it seems weird. Yeah, I'm totally fine. Thank you. I just wanted to, you know, Nancy volunteered. I wanted to throw it out there. I appreciate that. You know, she brought it up. She says, you know, if the board feels it's weird, she's not going to be, you know, put off at all. It certainly needs people from this board on. It definitely needs people from this board. This board. This board. Yes, this board. That's the difference. This board would need to create a charge and design the membership. And then if Nancy were to represent, to be on it as a community member. Right. But will we have community members on a superintendent evaluation committee as a question? Well, I don't think it would be a superintendent. It would be a committee to set a process and help with some of these documents. And then, and then the. This would be, maybe this is a committee to help write this. Write the charge. Okay. Carry it out. Which would be consistent people on this board and no one else. Yeah. Or we could get that stuff all together and go straight to superintendent. Let's just think about that. Yeah. So I'm so happy to have you out there. Thank you. I appreciate that. This is, this is ideas, but I do want us as we move into June. Right. I mean, I'd like to have. Yeah. This is not something I'd like to put off to like, August or July or, you know, September. I'd like to have. It starts 30 days. Yeah. If you're going to do it right. Yes. I can just say that. We're making this real complicated. And there are established procedures. Previous procedures. Yeah. It started. Okay. So you guys were having a lot of. Yeah. It's a good thing. I was saying that there are established procedures. In place to do a good job at this. We're making it really, really complicated. When I don't think it really, really is. And. Having a new person come into a position like this and getting them embedded. Part of the team. Part of the district. Has to start immediately. Actually. And when you bring someone on board like this, as you were calling it, the entry process. It's 36 days. So. Yeah. Yeah. I was saying that there are established procedures in place to do a good job at this. We're making it really, really complicated. It's 30, 60, 90. Then quarterly. Then annual. I mean, almost like when you're a full year out, it's almost too late to do an evaluation. It needs to be a continuous process. And I think we're making it really, really complicated. When I'm not sure, sure it should be. How would you propose we get there? Well, we. We're handicapped that we have not done a good job at this so far. Right. Perhaps the BSBA actually has a process in place. Or I have timelines in place for my own work. There are established procedures and how it is you bring on a new hospital administrator or school superintendent. It's not like we're not creating the wheel here. Yeah. Just put it that way. We just, right. But we just haven't done it. So we haven't done it. So we are handicapped. Somebody has to do it is what we're saying. I don't know why we can't adopt it from another school district that's already done it. Right. There has to be places out. I know. And a separate search I did, there are superintendent job descriptions out there that are easily brought in and as a draft and can be edited and updated. And can the policy committee just, I mean, to me, the, the, when we were talking about it earlier, the, and Brian quite rightly observed that the budget process, the planning process and the superintendent evaluation process are like our three main jobs. And they kind of all live together. I think, I think the policy committee is under a lot of skills. Well, I know they are, but maybe they need more help or something. But that seems like, and maybe Becky has resources at hand to offer them. So that would help. I think I also think that Nancy had talked to Mike and several other people for samples of process that I'm sure she'd be glad to give whoever's going to look at it. So you don't start from zero. Yeah. No, and that's, I agree we don't start from zero, but we need, we need to have people that kind of come up with ideas and do that research and come up, yeah, come up with that process. And, you know, come up with, with the job descriptions, come up with the entry plan. I mean, I think it's all out there, but something needs to. Find it. No, I'm not going to say. Mike story. Maybe, maybe I was thinking about the fact. So now we're going to meet again on the 23rd because we love meeting so much. And maybe if you think about all this and on the 23rd, we're more, we've, we develop a plan, whatever the plan is, but we say, here's how we'll do it and here's who will do it. Because otherwise you're going to be into June and it won't have started. Would it be easier to react to a proposal than it would be to draft it from straw man? I think so too. We need a, it, if I just put out there what I have to this board, then you can react to it, update it, fix it, correct it, delete it, whatever. But you actually have a tool at least to look at if that would be helpful. Would you, would you have time, Becky, to check in with BSPA and that's going to say have a model. You could compare their model with what you're used to working with. I'd be happy to. That would be awesome. Actually, I think I had a, I checked with it a while back and they do have models on this. So I'll just pull it up and send it out. Yeah, no, that would be super helpful. Okay. To be clear then, we're not forming any committees right now. The intention is in the future we will have an evaluation committee. We're expecting on the 23rd we're going to have a rough draft of a, or at least some, some, yeah, some deeper thoughts of here. Or at least on the 23rd. It's something that's going to come with us. Yeah. Your process and your, your look at this. Yeah. I'll move to adjourn. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. I'll take your blue.