 order at 6.03. Thank you all for being here. Thank you members of the public. The first thing I wanna do is do a bunch of introductions here. We have Kyle Marie Southworth here who has, she's basically running the district now, right, in this position. I just wanna say, because I've been in admin work, or I was in admin work for a long time and it's generally a thankless job and I just want to thank you and tell you how much we appreciate everything that you do. Keeping us organized, getting us what we need, making sure we're at the right place at the right time. Thank you. So, welcome to your first meeting. We'll make it as riveting as possible. Oh, I'm, should we go around? I think so. Yeah, I'm Hannah. We've emailed a lot, we've seen each other. Okay. I'm Katja, I'm the brain tree representative. Hi, Kat. I'm Megan, I'm the Randolph, or a Randolph representative. You know me, Heather Yeller? Thank you, I like that. And I'm Anne, one of Randolph's reps. Sam Hooper, we've emailed Brookfield. Yes, we have. You'll get to know our email signatures quite well. Okay, so I'm enjuring a quorum and we'll start as we always do with public comment. I'll say first, please do make sure that you sign in over there so that we can get your name into the record as being present. I'm just gonna read a little statement here. The board welcomes comments, but is not able to take action on them other than to direct the public to the appropriate staff member or to the complaint procedure. Comments are limited to three minutes per speaker. Could you be more, thank you. Time may not be ceded to another speaker. Comments are to be addressed to me, the board chair or the board as a whole, not to any individual on the board, on the staff or in the public. Please raise your hand and wait to speak until you are asked to by myself. Please identify yourself with your first and last name and your town of residence. Please refrain from restating comments that have already been shared. You can certainly express agreements with those comments. Order and decorum shall be observed by everyone. Shouting and profanity are prohibited. As the board chair, I will maintain the order and decorum of the meeting. With that said, I invite public comment. Yes, sir. My name is Neil Richardson. I live here in Randolph Amarn. And if I could talk very quickly about something. In 2019, there was an ethnic and social equity standards advisory working group established and they worked on the coming up with new standards or reviewing the standards of equity in the school system. And my understanding and the group worked very diligently and I think about once a month they would have public meetings on Zoom. And I used to attend the meetings and Amanda used to ask me if I had anything to say and I used to tell her that I'd rather remain quiet and thought a fool than to open my mouth and remove all doubt. But at any rate, my understanding is that this year or recently, they have the state board of education has passed the education quality standards and it is now in a rulemaking process. And apparently actually on October 3rd, they had a public meeting to get comments and everything. My only reason for being here tonight is to simply ask if this board is kind of up to speed and what's going, is conscious of what's going on here. And I know that you are. And I just wanted someone from the outside to come in to let you all know that we are interested in it. And when the thing is finalized, we want to be a part of making, be able to review when help the process of changing. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate your comments. And with that, I'll leave. Thank you very much. We won't take it first. Thank you very much for listening to me. Thank you for coming. I know there's other public comments. I know there's other stuff on the agenda people might be here for online, right? Now online, anyone online want to make a comment? Okay. Going once, going twice. Upcoming board trainings. Really that's about, I mean, there is an upcoming one which I think I'm gonna, a webinar coming up that I'm gonna take advantage of. I actually think it's November or December, but it's about budgeting. And I'm a very much 101 rudimentary, elementary on the budget process. So I think that that might be really helpful for people if you want to register for it. If you end up not being able to attend one of their webinars, you are sent a link. Well, even if you do attend, you're sent a link. So that you can watch it after. Once we get to the committee reports, that's when I asked Kyle to print out the draft of what me and Sarah are working on. And you'll see that there are webinar trainings listed there. Those are all from the webinar archives. So if you go to the VSBA site, you go to resources and then webinar archives. There are some great ones there. I've, you know, done the board chair 101. There's first year of board, there's a whole bunch. I've picked, well, I'll talk about that when we get to the committee reports. Anywho, that's why this is on the agenda because I want, I think every month I want to talk about trainings that might be coming up. If someone wants to report on a training or a webinar, they just did. I think that's how we can, it's one of the many ways we can keep ourselves accountable and. Oh, it sounds like there's issues with the speaker. Sorry to interrupt. No, not at all. People are not hearing well. Is, no, no, that's the. I'm not sure if it's. Camera thingy. Oh, you just left. Probably the owl. Oh, no. Oh, any turns. There's a sense to it. Mm-hmm. Our quizzical looks. And the, the force of, sorry. I'm too curious if he does something like this. There's not a lot of buttons on there. I know. So. But Google had a big update that we were. They just say they're having problems here. Oh, it's really hard to hear. That's the school board members speaking. It was not on mute before. I just, she just pushed it. Now I can't seem to. Thank you, Sam. Heidi, I saw your comment. Can you hear us now? What's that? Is Sarah on there? Is she here? There was potentially maybe an echo. I don't know. Oh, please. It was a moment of silence, waiting for you. We've been waiting for you. Waiting patiently. Technical, technical. Can you hear us now? Yes. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, well, I was just gonna move on talking about trainings and webinars and all that good stuff. Board newsletter response. Do you remember why we put this on the agenda? Just if people had heard comments from our, is that what it was, Lane? Thank you. From that first letter going out, if there were additional things, people were told, had heard. We're gonna talk about future ones later in the agenda. Within the letter to the editor? Yeah, other than the letter to the editor. That was all I saw. Right. Everyone saw the letter to the editor? The Herald. If you didn't, I'm sure I can find you a link. No, from Ron Rilling. Oh, that's a recent one. That was an, was that in response? Oh yeah, it was in response to the letter. Yeah, yeah. When, I have like, probably about five back, right? It was right when school started. Maybe more than that. Probably mid-September. I can send it to you. I have it. But it sounds like that was, that was the kind of newest one since we last met. Great. Great. So attached to that, next listed here is Discuss Possible Goal Change of the Ownership Linkage Subcommittee. My question about that, and I'm one of those members, is if we talked a little bit last time about having kind of regularly scheduled communications going out to the public. Oh, where's my notebook? And we talked about specific months that it might be. And I wonder if that's something that a committee that already exists, the Ownership Linkage Committee, might be tasked with, without having to necessarily change its definition or goals or focus or direction or anything like that. Do other members of the Ownership Linkage Committee have thoughts on that? Or anyone who's not on that committee? I'm all not. I don't think you are. You are not on that. Is I not on that one? No, I'm not on that one. Which one did I replace for Scott? Oh, what's that? That was Portrait of the Graduate. That was POG. That was with you. POG was part of it. Part of it. So yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, that was ownership. So we just haven't met long. We haven't met long. Correct, okay. Correct. Oh, here it is. We thought about an August letter, a January letter, and a June letter to the public. Is that something? Let me put it, how do I wanna put it? Does that, do members of that subcommittee feel that that's something we could take on, composing those, bringing them to the board for approval? Yeah, cause I think they're gonna follow us pretty like standard format of what we talk about. Mm-hmm, okay, I do that. I'm good with that. Right. And Rachel can edit them. And Rachel can edit them. Is there anyone? Well, and because now that we know that that's something that that committee is taking on, if there's someone who wants to join that committee or leave that committee, because it's a new task that's allowed and you can talk to me privately about it or not, or publicly. For clarification, that was, I thought you was a chair. You were on it, I was on it. That's not for you. I was on a chair. Yep, and I'm on it. So I'll get off of it, that's a lot of people. If somebody else wants to be on it or if we just, I mean, a three person, our committee is a three person committee. I think a bunch of them are three. Somebody wants to. And that was the third one, say, I don't know. That's where we're doing them. The third one, say, at 5.30. Yep. Hope we start that up this month then, next week. Mm-hmm. So then we need to warn them, correct? Correct, 48 hours, yep. And are you going to set us on it? August, January, and June. Yeah, yeah. So we would want to, like for January letter, we'd want to have something for the board to initially look at in November, so that we can have, so everybody can have some time to weigh in, make suggestions, veto it. So then yes, we need to meet next week. Yes, we do. Yes, to have that ready for the November meeting. So we need to remind ourselves to warn that. How many days are there minutes? 48 hours. 48 hours. For regular, yep. And just a reminder, subcommittees don't have to only meet once a month. We can meet more often as needed. They can be remote, but just to review what we've, everybody's found out, not only warned, but recorded, and a link available. So really easy to record. Minutes, or it needs to be physically recorded. We did both at our last, oh, but that's all right, because they weren't really, it was all on executive section. Okay. And minutes can be very brief. I mean, it's, you know, discussing the subcommittee work, it can be as brief as that, but they do need to be treated as these meetings are, they're public meetings. Okay. So thank you, Anne, for thinking about the number of people on there and stepping off, and I'm sure there will be another committee to print you back on. I don't know if you need me for the committee either. It's up to you. I don't slink so. I mean, it's, you're not disinvited, but you don't have to feel. I'm tough. Or uninvited. I'm tough. Ben. Ben. Perfect. Oh yeah. Who was on the end today? He was in today. Oh, cool. Oh, thanks. He's in town. Yeah, you definitely don't need me if you have been. Why do we need Ben? Well, he kind of, we throw, what happened with the first newsletters, Chelsea and I kind of threw in ideas, and he kept, right? And he composed something. We talked about this last time though. So he did compose it, but then we changed like a lot of it. Changed so much of it. Like really condensed it. Yeah. And then we thought maybe it wasn't for his business now that I'm rethinking. Well, let's not say yay or nay period at the end right now. I think next week, we can talk about it. That's something because you're right. It can be in a similar format. So maybe we don't need that assistance, but there's a cost to it. Yeah. He does the annual reports for the district as well. So we've got him on. All right. We'll discuss that next week. Moving on to monitoring. We're way ahead. Please tell us. I don't want to say that. No, I know it's a good thing, but also if anybody feels like I'm just skimming over things or rushing too much. I can drag things. I'm getting. Okay. First read of Yale reports 2.1 and 2.2. 2.1 is treatment of students, parents, guardians and community. 2.2 is treatment of staff. So 2.1 is really ensuring that we've got policies, protocols, expectations in place just to make sure that the stakeholders are being treated consistently and carefully. 2.2 treatment of staff is really about making sure that we've got some sort of master agreement in place for every category of staff that we have that really kind of explains what their roles are, what their responsibilities are to the district and what the district's responsibilities are to them as well. And it also makes sure that we are doing emergency training with the staff. Most specifically, you know, the fire drills and what used to be locked down at the time for those options based drills now. Right, okay. In general. This is the first reading, but does anyone have questions or comments at this point? I did have a question on 2.2 under provision too. It says right before right at the end, it meets with the union currently twice a month to discuss concerns and ways to work together. Are you currently meeting with the union? I know there was some discussion about... Which is actually, it's good. Yeah, because I know that there have been maybe in the past the meetings weren't happening as regularly. Okay, I meet every other Monday. Great, that's great to hear. And they've graciously allowed Chelsea and I to, we just started last time, kind of sitting in and yeah, observing. I mean, we're not really participating, but. That's, I'm glad to hear that. Other questions? Oh, I just, playing real quick. I noticed on the policy and procedures link, there's three hyperlinks in the bottom of that page that are redirecting to a 404, not the page not found. It's like, board policies and then HIPAA, and so it may just be from the new website. Yeah, I'll go through and put that on and check it. I appreciate you bringing that up. They had some, it was an odd summer, most of the major software that we use, including this, everybody did updates on it, so it didn't get kind of problem solved. No, I just thought, yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah, good stuff. And you said policy specifically? Yeah, policy and then I think all three of those hyperlinks at the bottom. Okay. Great, thank you both. Update on the status of the 2223 Ennis report. So we did, the state did get out the last round of data, which was the grade nine data just recently, probably about a week ago. They had some glitches that they found in the earlier data from the elementary schools, which have now been fixed and we're getting ready at the end of this week to send out the individual student reports. What it means is I've got 99% of what I need to be able to produce the Ennis report and hopefully have it in everybody's hands for the November data. And some of it will be the actual data, some of it is the Ennis like social studies where this year they are working on creating their DDQs, they call them, but they're essay questions that they're using to be able to measure student requirements. Should be also. Great. I had asked to put this on the agenda and update on the easement request just because we had a visit from Mr. Garrow at our last meeting at public comment. So I just asked for any updates in the past month. Yeah, we had followed up with Mr. Garrow, went out, talked to them. It was a little terse at the beginning. It actually was very productive at the end. He was concerned. He didn't feel that the folks had followed through on the plan, the excavator and whatnot. We took a look at it and then he asked for some minor changes, removal of one of the stop signs and moving one of the other stop signs if it was possible, a little bit closer to the road. As well as pruning back his apple tree so it's not getting damaged as vehicles are going through. He agreed, talked with them, said, hey, you know, we're in agreement on this. I'll put it to an email to you when you respond back that we're in agreement, you know, we'll get the work that I have not heard back. He is typically out in his yard. Usually I see him if I'm walking, you know, let to RTCC or if I'm walking over to RAS. I have not seen him recently, so I'm a little worried, but I'm gonna check in, try to wait and kind of see him and both of them go and say, hey, you know, are we still good? That's kind of where things are sitting at this point in time. Okay, great. It sounds like then, yeah, all of the concerns that he had were attended to. Okay, it's time for an informational discussion. I wanna start with kind of an overview. We don't need to read it, but policy F2, non-discriminatory mascots and school branding. If Heather, you wanna just kind of give a broad overview of what is a compulsory policy for school districts. Toward the end of 2022, the state of Vermont compelled all school districts to adopt a mandatory policy, policy F2 non-discriminatory mascots and school branding. Our board reviewed this policy in December and it was adopted on January 11th, 2023 in compliance with the mandate. The language is exactly as provided by the state and includes a compulsion that the superintendent or designee shall assist the board in its review of the district school branding to ensure compliance and that it specifically references no mascots, shall include stereotypes, likenesses, features, symbols, traditions or other characteristics specific to people of any race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or of any person or group of persons or organizations associated with the repression of others. Based on this policy, we did work across the district to ensure compliance. Great, thank you, thank you. That was a great brief overview of the policy. Now, as this relates to a question that was raised again at that last meeting in public comment about the RES mascot, if we, so we'll start with the board kind of chatting about it or concerns, thoughts, anything like that, how it relates back to that policy and also if, I don't know, Lane, if you can speak to the process by which it's being done or maybe when we get to Melinda, Melinda could talk a little bit about the process, but first just how it relates to that policy. So this is why it came up, right? Why Wizards became a concern. Wizards became a concern because even the hat could be seen as a symbol of a wizard which could be interpreted as a group of persons associated with the repression of others. Typically it's a symbol of a white man in power that can cause harm to others and is also associated with some, an organization which I'd rather not, an organization where in a high level of discrimination someone would earn the title of wizard. Right, so we made the decision that we should review that mascot and possibly replace it. Okay, and can you list the we in that? You and Lane and Melinda, great. At the time, Kara Houston. Right, okay. Did we involve the parent advisory group? We had talked about this back in the spring with the advisory group. The parent advisory group. Great, great, okay. So you had input from individuals outside of immediate administration. If you're saying a parent advisory group. Just trying to get up for a presentation from the next. I apologize. Okay, so board members, are there questions either about interpretations of that policy, how it relates to the RES mascot? So this derived from within a review of our policy not a complaint from outside the community? Correct. Outside the school. At this time, there is not a complaint that I know of. If I remember the policy does require a review. Periodical review. A period, yeah. So periodically review and provide recommendations for necessary updates? Yeah. So where is this at right now? Has there been a recommendation made? I can speak to that if you'd like. I don't know if you want me to sit back here or we'll vote. I'm Melinda Robinson. Please need to. So we had reviewed in the spring with our parent teacher organization and talked to a lot of our staff. At that time, it didn't seem like it was an issue that a lot of we didn't feel like it was an issue. Then I believe it was the summer that Lane and Heather said we needed to do more of a thorough review of that. And perhaps even just consider not having the wizard as the mascot. Am I remembering that correctly? Yeah. And then so we came into the school year with the idea that we weren't gonna have the wizards, that we would adopt a new mascot. And then we did get some community response to that. That really they felt the mascot had been around for a long time. We hadn't had pushback from that and wanted to revisit that idea. Lane came a few, about a month ago, maybe a few weeks ago and said that really we didn't have to completely give up the idea of the wizards but we should do a thorough vetting of it and make sure that we were following the process carefully. I went back to the parent teacher organization, did a thorough discussion with them. None of them seemed to be in concern with that. I put it in my newsletter also with asking for pros and cons. Anyone who felt strongly either way to give me feedback. And that newsletter also went out to the greater community through the front porch forum so anyone in the greater community might be able to give me feedback on that. I've gotten nothing but positive responses towards the wizards and not a single negative response towards it. Since when- I'm keeping it. Sorry, positive towards keeping it. Positive towards keeping it, yes. So my teacher leadership organization that in the building thought that since we'd started the democratic process of letting the kids suggest a mascot, that we should continue that democratic process where we allow the vetted final decisions on what we could, the kids could vote on, we would include the wizard in that as well and let them have a vote for, there's about, it's down to three, Ravens, Capabarras, and wizards. What was this? Capabarras, yes. And one thing that we tried to strongly like explain was we wanted a strong reason for the mascot, not just some random thing but what does it really represent for Randolph elementary? So we've tried to like weed out the ones that it was didn't have a strong meaning for Randolph. So we're hoping to hear from the board if you have any concerns with that and we'd like to move forward with a vote from our student body in the next week. Through the democratic process, how has the student body felt about the opportunity to change or keep? I think they've been interested in the idea of exploring new options but for the most part, a lot of the kids were saying they really liked the wizards, they didn't know why we weren't doing the wizards anymore. We've got a sawn, we've got our wizard of the month so I think there was a strong feel that we should still explore keeping the wizards. I would say that if we did decide to go, if the vote went that we were gonna go with the wizards, I'd still would like to rebrand it so that as Heather mentioned that the icons of that wizard would be very thoughtful and careful not to represent something that might be taken wrong. So I'll take any thoughts or questions. So I guess it's my understanding that the vote is not with the school board but the vote is with the principal. Students. The students. I was just hoping to hear from you if you were comfortable with me putting wizards up for one of the actions to vote for. If there was any concern with that. I think there's inherent. It does leave us a little bit open for criticism in the future even though we haven't received it thus far but from my personal standpoint, I think if the community is behind wizards and the students are behind wizards and if you can change the icon or the imagery and the logo so it doesn't evoke persons with power over others then it seems, yeah, I mean, I can only speak for myself but I would say yes, proceed with your democratic process. Yeah, I mean, I think imagery is huge. The word itself is also problematic. I mean, the title is also problematic. Personally, I think my daughter would disown me if I said keep it out of the vote because the song is what she cited as the reason. She didn't want to learn a new song. But I do think, yes, I think it does leave us open in the future for criticism. I also think that having this conversation and going about the process thoughtfully and agreeing that it would be one of the choices is responsible and could be presented as this is what we chose to do. Now, will we have to revisit it due to a complaint? We might. Sure, I don't think by putting it into the vote that we're trying to buck the system or sneak something past the policy or anything like that. I think about the hat. I think about the gender. I think about can it be, sure it's the word wizards, but can the imagery actually not include a human at all? It's a blonde. You know, I think there are a lot of ways to go about it. I also want to be sure to include the public in this discussion, because that was listed there. But yes. The only comment just on the policy, that the policy does allow for an appeal. So, you know, if a decision is made and folks aren't happy with it, then the community members can always put in for an appeal. But at least some good work will have already been done on a backup scenario. So, I mean, that's, you know, it's all time well spent. So in preparation, I just Googled about wizards because I was like, okay. And I thought it was going to be related to that it was somebody's creed that we were, because it's witches or. But then I also noticed that like in the definition of wizard, because the way my kids looked at being wizards was the second definition that I found that said somebody who's very clever in a specific area. So, I feel comfortable with it, with going ahead. Because if there is someone is feeling offended by it, there is the ability to ask for redress and be heard. What does the process look like when if you guys go to a vote and you said the Ravens? Ravens and capybaras. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and assume that Ravens might be the second one there. So, say the Ravens wins in the vote. What's the process for appeal at that point? Same thing, any community member can appeal. Well, if it's not based on this, then it would be your conflict resolution protocols that you have. Would talk with Melinda first and then take it up the chain. But it wouldn't be an appeal based on this policy. I guess I would just hope if the community did back Ravens. Well, Raven has an American Indian component, that's the reason. Yeah, I asked a Native American component with Ravens. That's a lot of different symbiology. What was the connection to Randolph with Ravens? Because you said you made them. This was a student-driven idea. It came from one of the classrooms. They liked the alliteration of it, Randolph-Ragans. And like this with the capybaras. I'm just curious about that. Apparently, last year the Red Clover books featured a capybara as one of the books. And it's all about how capybaras can get along with everyone, that they are kind and they're gentle and they take anybody in and make them feel welcome. That's part of that book. So I thought that was lovely. Well, they're very cute. I thought that was lovely. We had to shut down the campaigning on it though. It got a little aggressive. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, sorry. Wasn't as kind as they had brought it back to. Okay, if it is capybaras or the Ravens that went out in the boat, not a complaint against any issue with one of those two logos, but what if a complaint comes in that a community member didn't want to change from Wizards? I guess the board needs to decide if under administrative responsibilities number three, but this is a prohibited school branding. And if it's not prohibited, then let the kids vote. They did a fair process. They included the most important stakeholders in the process and that makes the sense. And sometimes the vote doesn't always go the way that people want. We might be surprised. Might be the capybaras. So if the students vote and it comes out, the Wizards is everybody good to go with that being the. Unless a community member files a complaint. And then that's a different process and we have to look at it again. Okay. Are there members of the public that would like to weigh in on this discussion? I feel like the spotlight's on me. Yeah. So, Bethany Silloway, Randolph Center. I just want to thank you for putting this on the agenda tonight and discussing it. My biggest issue was that I felt like the decision was being made without any discussion with the public. And so the fact that it's come up and a lot more thought has been put into it you all have talked about it. I appreciate that. The capybaras win. I'm not going to file a complaint. But you know, my concern is this is a third grader coming home campaigning for capybaras. And then she came the other day. She's like, I really would rather keep the wizards. So I think they, I just worry the kids kind of were swayed a little early and now, I don't know. So I just, that part worries me a little bit but I'm not going to complain anymore no matter what they pick, even though I think it's really silly. I thank you guys for looking at it. Can I just add to that? I think capybaras aren't needed to Vermont, are they? No, they're not. They're not. Yeah, they're rodents. They're rodents. They're ravens, you know. They're rodents. They're rodents. I think there can be something wrong with everything. Literally, that was, well, Chris Armstrong would like to see the mascot, but. Let's have a sign upstairs then. We've mixed that one. Yeah, well, he does. That's a good person, that's a good person. He can't be a person. Good experience in democratic decision making. So we'll see how they feel. So when will the vote happen? Well, I'm going to put out a last appeal to the classrooms to see if anyone else wanted to put their ideas in. Only like two classrooms have really given me their thoughts. There's been a lot of discussions around those thoughts. And then I will, if there is more than these two, if it's like a lot more all of a sudden come in that I'll have our leadership team narrow it down to two or three or probably three just to make it a fair round. And we will vote by next week. So, that's who we'll be. You're going to do multi-voting or the end of the year. Right, right, right, right, right, right. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. Oh, we got a tiebreaker. Well, thanks everyone for that discussion. And this segues so seamlessly into an update just from the Randolph Elementary School in general. Sure, and this is due to the principles here. Well, I think it was done a while ago but it's been a long time since this has been done. So, I don't know if I've over killed what I'm presenting but there you have it. I'm going to grab mine so I can see it. You want the, you can have my computer and you can- That's all right, I can forget. If you want to just turn to the first round. So, our focus, the focus is that we have for- Folk Eye for the year. As an admin team, myself and Mindy Beth Pike are my new assistant principal is really looking at a few specific things. We're really trying to hammer home collecting important data regularly and using that data to inform our instruction and to have goal-driven interventions put in place for those students who are struggling in any area whether it's academic or social-emotional. We would like to take a proactive approach to social-emotional learning and regulation and we wanted to focus on making sure we maximize our time for instruction in the classroom. So, I want to unpack each of those just quickly for you. The goal-driven instruction decision-making. This is based on a assessment calendar that is put out by the district where we have specific benchmark assessments that we do periodically throughout the year. We have created as an admin team a kid-talk protocol where each team gets together and they bring forth kids that they're concerned about whether it's data-driven concerns or it's concerns other than just the data shows. They come together, we have a protocol in place for how we are unpacking that data, how we're unpacking what the needs are. We're creating goal-driven instruction for those students, creating intervention if they need it and then we're regularly coming back and checking in with where they are at. Our goal is always to get the students where they should be academically. We also have our new PLC plan with team leaders. We have on each grade team, there is a leader that is helping to direct the professional learning communities that are taking the lead on that and they're really focusing on that first instruction in ELA and math. How can we beef up that initial instruction and work on improving our curriculum? And finally, we are working on this with our intervention and tutoring schedule to be certain that we're meeting all the needs. So we have, thanks to a lot of grant writing, we have the opportunity for a lot of tutoring and busing for those students that are getting tutoring after school and we're gonna be starting that first cycle of tutoring next week. So buses will be available as well. The next one is our proactive approach to SEL growth in the building. We are in kindergarten through second grade focusing on second step, which is a research-based program that helps students learn how to work with others, how to improve their own ability to self-regulate. And it's a great opportunity in the kindergarten through second to really do some role-playing and help them at the classroom level to improve their ability to self-regulate. Second step, it's calling. And third through sixth, we're working on continuing with a program we started a few years ago called Leader in Me. This is another research-based program that gets students looking at the habits of highly effective people. It took Stephen Covey's work and has brought it down to a student level and it's teaching the students how do they become leaders of their own learning, of their own life? How do they set goals for themselves? How do they create actions based on those goals? How do they work with others? It's a really powerful program that we're excited to be continuing with our third through sixth grade. We were doing it last year with kindergarten through second and it just was a little bit much for our kindergarten through second. So we've gone back to second step instead. We're continuing our PBIS protocols with monthly goals for our staff to focus on with those PBIS goals. We've started a new screener this year across the district called DESA. It's actually just in the elementaries. They're doing a different one, I believe in the high school and middle school. DESA is a screener for all of our students so that our teachers can do through pretty quick questions, really identify students that they're concerned with their social-emotional growth and learning. And then within that program, there is interventions that we can put into place that will address specifically how to help those students. We also continue here at Randolph with our RISE and our SEL, small group interventions. And we've now started this year monthly yoga sessions with our students which is a great way for them again to learn how to self-regulate themselves. We are, we took a real strong stance on maximizing our instruction in the classroom this year. Mindy Beth and I really looked at every single schedule for every single teacher gave suggestions. We were looking for specific things. Do they have 75 minutes of math? Do they have 90 minutes of ELA which includes writing and reading? Do they have 30 minutes of word work every, four times a week? Do they have 60 to 90 minutes of science in their weekly schedule? And do they have 30 minutes of designated SEL work in their schedule? We created those. We helped them to really set that goal that that's what we're looking for. And as we do our walkthroughs, we're looking to see we know what their schedule is supposed to be. Is the schedule being followed? And if they're struggling in some area, how can we help? What can we do to help support that, maximizing that instruction? You didn't tell us about STEM? What? We've also been working hard in the last few years to increase our STEM and our eco integration in throughout the school. We have a designated STEM teacher three days a week in the building who is working K through six. And she's doing a nice job of integrating that science, technology, math, engineering. She's also working with a committee of teachers on eco classrooms, outdoor classroom work, going into nature, using that nature to learn. And she's embedding in those eco classroom times. We have three of our grade teams who have weekly or bi-weekly designated eco times in their schedule where they're out integrating that science and doing hands-on problem solving in the environment. The other thing that's been just a big, huge piece for me, when I started its admin, it was important to me to build the leadership capacity of our students. So our students are given the opportunity to apply for leadership roles. They take their job applications, they fill them out, they turn them in, they get hired for different jobs. And they do a nice job of that. They take a lot of pride in those leadership roles that they have. And I could tell that it was really working last year because instead of me just putting forth jobs that they could apply for, they started to come to me for jobs that they thought should happen in committees that they thought should be taking place. For example, I had one fourth grade girl get a group together and come and advocate for a cleanup committee. And she took the managerial role of the cleanup committee and managed a group of third and fourth graders weekly on the playground. We had another group that wanted to do a writing club and they came and asked for the ability to apply for to have a job posting for a writing club. So I think that's really shown that they have taken on this role of leadership and they are starting to understand what that means. And just wanted to share some upcoming events. Our PTO in the last, it's only two years old but it's been great having that parent teacher organization and they brought a lot to our community here at school. We have a PTO movie night and pumpkin carving on October 20th coming up. We have our Thanksgiving feast, which we've always had but the PTO has changed that so much for us because they come in, they help to prep in the kitchen, they help to serve, they help to clean. It was the smoothest Thanksgiving feast ever last year. We have our school harvest gathering which is something we had started last year where each classroom creates food to bring together for this harvest gathering and we sat in the gym and we were all feasting on food that the classrooms had made and brought together. In December we are continuing with our holiday market which is a strong tradition we've had here to help with the farm to school movement in our district and coming in January we have a PTO steam night with a mini golf course that's coming into the building and it's gonna be followed up with a lot of steam activities. So I'll take any questions or thoughts or concerns? The echo classroom, is that integrated into your farm school program? It to some extent it is. More, it's more integrated into our science curriculum. We're trying to really beef up that science curriculum. It's more integrated into that. But your farm school is still robust? Absolutely. I just wanna say I appreciate the application process for those jobs. I really, that it's written and they have to think about the qualities they're bringing and I really appreciate that. And it's fun, some we've had so many people apply that I've made them do job interviews. They loved that. They loved the job interviews so. Cool. So I'm just curious, what's the gender equity in the leadership? Are you seeing mostly female students or is it a cross section? It's pretty balanced. It's balanced. Very balanced. I would say it's interesting. We have our third and fourth grade get very excited about the leadership jobs and I have probably a stronger applicant pool from our third and fourth grade team and that's over the last three years, I've noticed that. They just get really excited about it. Yeah, by the time they hit six, they're too cool for that. Right, yeah. In just coming off the heels of this pandemic, these world wars, socioeconomic wealth gap, homelessness in this community, food insecurity. Are you seeing in below average, or above average social emotional rate of understanding the body? We've all the schools in the state and the country and the world probably have seen an increase in social emotional needs. After the pandemic, we are certainly seeing that here at RES, a lot of needs that we're trying to all meet and it's hard. And so DESA is the protocol in place to screen and identify? Yes, we're trying to. We've been doing a lot of work with social emotional needs but we needed something that was gonna allow us to do it in a more scientific way, like really looking at everybody and not just the squeaky wheel so that we can start to see who really needs some help. And what I love about the DESA is they have lessons that can be done at the universal level in the classroom. Let's say we see at this need for all of our students, we can do these lessons and they have specific ones that they can do. And then there is also small group instruction that can be done if we need a true intervention. So all of those tiers and layers of intervention can happen from the universal all the way up through to intensive needs. Cool. Yeah. And the high school is using a, it's Wayfinder that's using. Wayfinder. It's a similar program. It's a little bit different company. It does the same thing. What's it called? Wayfinder. So I have a very specific, specific question. And if you don't know it, don't worry about it. There have been a couple of articles now. One Time Magazine had it. Seven Days just had a recent article about reading instruction. And they're talking about more of a structured literacy approach. Yes. And they even mentioned Doreen Dorfman. And I'm pretty sure she was working in our district. I do know the name. Yeah. Yeah, she was. But anyway, it's, do we do that here? Absolutely. We've been really focused on the science of reading for quite a few years now. That's when I said that we needed 30 minutes, four times a week of word work, that is based on that. Directly on that science of reading. Life that you were probably doing that, which is wonderful. Yep. The students that have needs, extra needs. Do you feel like you have enough staff to help them? On any given day, that answer is different. Yeah. There's days when it feels a little overwhelming. We have a really strong SEL group here who work really closely together to meet those needs. And there's days when we feel a little overwhelmed by some of those needs. But we work hard to manage them, to be proactive and try to get to the root of what is causing some of these difficulties rather than just putting a band-aid on it. So that can be hard. It can bring up a lot of emotions for the kids. And you have to go there to get them past having to have a band-aid constantly. If that makes sense. What percentage of students of that? Of the really intense needs. The student body. Out of, I was just, it's interesting when we were just doing it with my SEL team a few days ago, we were really digging into who do we think are biggest needs for tier two and tier three SEL support. And I would say, I mean, I could give you the exact number, but it's probably about between 25 and 28 kids that are really on those higher tier two, tier three pretty heavy needs of intervention for social-emotional learning. The entire student body? Out of the entire student body. Yeah, I mean, I can. And what's the number of staff members that SEL? We have, it is five staff members that are really zeroed in completely on social-emotional learning. We have our two behavioral interventionists. We have two master level clinicians at our RISE program. And we have our guidance counselor who is a 0.8 position. So, and they work tirelessly for these kids. And all the other people that help pick up the nurses. Yeah, oh yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, those five can honestly do it alone some days. We all are digging in together to help some of our needs. This summer alone, we got three new students in from outside of the area with intense needs that we're having to help them to build relationships, to unpack the needs that they have and try to figure out what we can put into place to help support them. So, and that's on top of the ones that we have already had. So. Do you have concerns about burnout? Definitely. Yeah, the September was a point of real hardship for our SEL team. They were running ragged. I've told Lane and Heather that they were just running ragged in September. I worry about them. How did the classroom teachers manage? How are they feeling about the management of? I think they feel supported. They feel like they've got a lot of people to help them. They're working hard at the universal level to figure out what they need to do to help the students be successful and how to meet some of those really tough needs right there in the classroom without having to leave the classroom to get support outside. But it's tiring for them too. Yeah. How has attendance been? So in the month and a half. Great. I mean, we traditionally have very good attendance. And it's interesting, we've had some students who have had very poor attendance that we've had to work with. We've had to do coordinating service plan meetings for them. And those students all of a sudden this year are coming to school and are here every single day. So I'm not sure if it's been a, we've gotten past the pandemic enough and they've started to feel more confident, but that's improved. Well, Melinda, you were the first of at least this iteration of the board to be visited by a principal. And this was awesome. Oh, thank you. Thank you. The opportunity to have you present but then to just feel questions with us. This was fun. Thank you. Let's go to the grave. Appreciate it. Thank you. Well, how was it? All right. Let's move on to our self-monitoring, our compliance with board governance policy 4.7. I know that the grid didn't make it in, but I think that that's probably me needing to share them with you. And I apologize for that. This one I figured would, I didn't put much time on the agenda for it because it's not as meaty as some of the others that we've assessed ourselves on. Does anyone wanna jump in and talk about how they think we're doing? Funds being allocated so that we can meet our standards of governance. So you've got 10 grand. Yeah, we maintain a budget. This year. That we'll be spending $363 of it so far. And so usually it depends upon $63 of it. If you decide that you're gonna do more, board training and things like that, then we probably would wanna up it a little if you're gonna do what you've been consistent with over the last couple of years, that the 10,000 is probably more than enough. Well, and we haven't yet fully paid the evaluation leading process, right? So we know. So is that taken out of the fund? So we've paid $363 plus $1,500 out of 10,000. So it's a skunk. Yeah, there's a skunk right there. I have a skunk living in my horse barn and under my porch, there, everywhere. You see one of them? Yeah, I thought it was a cat at first and then I was like, oh my gosh, it's going to be so cute. So on the 363, is that our like PR stuff with community engagement? That it was probably, I would guess it was the Ben Merrill. It was Ben. Yeah. Oh, Ben, okay. It would be like, yes. Without looking and checking with Robin. I mean, I feel like we are, Larry, we discuss any trainings or any things that we may be spending that money on. We vote on it. We have board input. It's prudent to spend that or not on certain things. We do well with this one. Gas money to Fairleigh. So are we deciding what trainings we're doing or are we just saying we do this? Well, if there's- Do you have a suggestion on this, right? This is a suggestion. Yeah, I mean, when we get to the annual agenda, that's right when you came in today, I was talking about, and these are free, these webinars on the BSVA website, and they keep an archive. So I've, on the annual agenda, tried to tie it to kind of what we'd be doing for that meeting, you know, coming in to rearranging the board. There's a webinar on. Anyway, those are free trainings. If someone brought to, or you want a request of me to research a more in-depth or intense training on any particular topic, I don't mind doing that research. And then, you know, that would be a cost incurred. But the kind of training, there's training available that I think is effective that doesn't necessarily cost us money. And then we sent this in the past on when we had- You had Susan. The, right. Then we had Jackie. And we had Jackie, yeah. And Winston. Winston, we sent that on. Yeah, that was that. That same, yeah. So is this a move-in or was it budget, or is it we just keep- This is just part of planning for next year. So it would be finalized when you do your vote on January, whatever the date is for that board meeting. But usually 10 grand seems to cover it. And if you go a little over, there's other places that we can pull from. If you're planning on some major thing that's going to cost 30 or 40,000, that's what we want to know in just a part. 10 feels good in my mind. Yeah. So in case we do want to do more of group hired and consult and training or anything like that. So I just want to point out that, first of all, if we are in compliance with number three here, because we are establishing the cost of its governance budget, but we're also skipping ahead to when we actually determine that number, which we're doing tonight as well. No, no, hey, let's, let's. And you don't have to have it to the end of this. Let me go. I'm trying to spin it a little bit. No stones. I mean, that's fine for us to jump because we're still in the same category of the agenda. If anyone feels differently about that number of 10, we can have a discussion about it. Is there anyone who's concerned about that number? Well, I think we should have a discussion about do we want to have. So we just came from our meeting and the gal we were working with was recommending some training. I don't know if it would have, would be, if it would have to pay, but she was. The superintendent, she was definitely saying that across the state, what she's seeing is that boards need training on how to govern, right? Basically. Which I think is probably true in our case as well, since I forget to warn meetings and things like that happen. So just having that would be a good idea and also clearly defined roles of boards and superintendents as another training. And then there was another third one that I didn't write down. There's more open meeting laws, which was what she mentioned. Yeah. I haven't in my notes. Did she give any estimate on how much those cost per? No. No. Is an open meeting law what, like governing? Part of it. Yeah. And there's a free training through the, if you watch this one, you get the whole thing. And the one suggested for the, that we would watch and discuss in November is the government's core. Okay. There's also some good stuff in the SBA toolkit. Yeah. I mean, what I was trying to do here, and we can definitely change which webinars, because Ann has seen a live, seen a few. We can change which they are. I think it's important, at least personally, for it to be assigned somewhat, so that we come to have a discussion about stuff and we have things that we can deliberately and specifically refer to. I think it's a great idea. Homework. Homework, yeah. And to just, there's nothing you have to fill out or anything, just take some notes and bring it. And if what you bring to the discussion is, that was a horrible webinar and I didn't think it was well run. That's okay too. I mean, I think if we're doing, like this is new for the board to be doing kind of a training a month on something specific. So I wonder if it's worth going through what you have proposed here for the year and then saying, okay, is there an area in here or we as a board feel like we need a really more dedicated training on? But I mean, I would hesitate to say we're gonna do this monthly and then we're gonna find times to do the three trainings that were suggested. I mean, that's just, I agree. Really a lot of additional time. And I think we can, yeah, I think we can gain a lot of good information from these three ones that are available to us. And then if we find, like we say, an area of that. We say, okay, we're gonna do one training this year on this specific topic and that's gonna be dedicated to our summer board retreat. And then we have that time set aside. And it may or may not be through the VSBA. I mean, there are other ones too. If we don't need to decide until November on the value of the budget here, right? Just said December, I would say. So we may think of something at wake morning that we all say, maybe we should dig in on that. I mean, none of our trainings have been more than, I think what was it, 5,000 was like the most in the past? Yeah, I think that was Winston, I think. That was Winston, I think it was either five or seven. Because that was a month long process. So even that, even if we wanna do something, I think 10 will still be well within our budget. We also put in during COVID, just so folks are aware of operations reserve fund and that handles anything operationally. So again, if something came up out of the blue, like there was some crisis and we need some major training on this or I want a speaker to come in and we could always with board approval tap into that. So I did set that aside a few years back. Yeah, we have a conflict of interest there on the board. If it was for the board and we've had to prove it. Because it's operations and that would be performing kind of an operational function, like getting us to be able to do what we need to do to make sure the district is running effectively and efficiently, that would be operations. So I think we'd follow under that. But I can double check with you. But because we have, I'm just asking because we're the ones who approve the funds and how those funds are spent if we're spending it on something for us as a board, that's okay. It's not considered conflict. You know, by statute, you're the ones that decide. I have big ideas now about what you're going to do. Is it on a cruise or something? Yeah. Like, I mean, that's just for a little bit of... Is Beyonce coming in to do it? Yeah, I mean, I just think it's, that could be, we would have to look into that, I think. Because it just makes me a little bit nervous to say, yeah, like, oh, we want to do this training, it's $10,000 or $25,000, and we have to approve it from operationals, but we're the ones who approve it. That just makes me feel a little... Well, and then it's Lane's... I'm not trying to speak enough. Right, Lane's responsibility is to then say, hey, yo, you're not appropriate. Yeah. Check some balances, for sure. Yeah. So, wow, so, since we're already looking at this, the next is subcommittee reports. I know it's last, but since we're already looking at the annual agenda, can we start with that one? Because the biggest things that Sarah and I added were those webinar trainings under board education, the principals attending, and we did try to, next month, we're at our UHS, so we thought we'd make it convenient. Brookfield, then Braintree, we skip February, which is when the legislators come, so it can be a lengthy meeting. And then we'll be back here at RES for RTCC. And then with the quarterly facilities monitoring reports, we added that it would include a report from the facilities staff. I think that was really useful. I think it encourages transparency, just if we have questions, if they wanna be sure we know what they're doing, anything like that. Yeah, those were the biggest things. And again, I tried to, you'll see, for instance, in June, that the webinar I'd like us to talk about is how to make the most out of a summer board retreat. Try to tie it in with something that we're doing that month. I also just wanna mention that this is the base of this, that we kind of added things to and plugged things into and created. So I wanna give credit where credit is due that Ann provided me with the last one that she had really flushed out. And then we just put some icing on there. It's a silly thing. But I think we should move the quarterly report just up to monitoring, because really that is monitoring assets. So it shouldn't be in the consent agenda section. The facilities monitoring report. Yeah, it really should be in monitoring, because it's a quarterly monitoring of our assets policy. We're checking in on how we're doing, taking care of our assets. So the consent agenda is just those little things that we have to approve as a board, but he pretty much does it all. Whereas the quarterly facilities monitoring report, that's really part of how we're monitoring, are we taking care of our assets? So it really should be up in that monitoring section, not in the consent agenda. In its own row, because we have ends monitoring and EL monitoring. It would be EL monitoring. Great. Because there's asset protection. Yeah. Cool, yep, I will make that change. My only question was with the schools, the attendant reports. I think it was great hearing from Linda tonight regarding RAS, but I'm wondering if this would make sense to shift them to a little bit later in the year, because the year has really only just started. I mean, I guess if we're listening to kind of what the plan is, if we're wanting to know what the plan is for the year, or like a look back, or a little bit more like a look back of like, this is what we're seeing, or this is what we're experiencing, this is how I'm moving forward through the year. I don't know if that's, but that would be my only question. All of the people that we've been creating, some sort of mechanism for a review, I thought that was an awesome presentation and it would be awesome to check in and ways down the road to see, is it, how's it going? Is it working? Do you have enough resources? Where do you feel like that? And that's the big question, is the budget pieces, do you have what you need to get it done? Thanks. Again, right. Because you have R-T-C-C technically, four times. Because four, so true. Because we have the meetings. The 30 minutes ahead of four times in here. That's true. So if we take that out, then we can go through another cycle starting in March. So March, April, May and June. Might not line up with location, but. Oh, but I'll make it. That will actually, because you'd have R-E-S going first at R-E-S in March. You'd have Brookfield, you can have them going second at April. Yeah, we can swap those. R-U-H-S going the up third and then Braintree going last. The R-T-C-C meetings, just to add a little history to it, they were put next to the regular OSSB board meetings because they weren't getting enough folks to show up for their advisory boards. And so the folks from the regular board here were doing double duty. They do not have to be there. It's just an advisory meeting, just like the elementary schools or high school or handling. So they couldn't move that. I mean, if the board prefers that they're there, that's fine too, but they couldn't move that to fit the best schedules of the folks coming in from the different schools. They used to always run them early on when they had enough folks coming in. It was usually like 3.34 in the afternoon over at the Fishbowl and the Fish Center. Well, do you mean, that was from five and I think we got out of executive session about 9.45. Yeah, because it makes a long day for you if it's one after the other. Well, why don't you, Sam, you don't mind bring that to the next meeting and see if there's a time that works better for that. So I'm not suggesting you have to change it, but just it doesn't have to do it. Yeah, because it is nice to attend. I mean, I've gone a couple of times just because I feel disconnected, just as an observer and I encourage anybody else to do that. It does make a long night. I agree. But I agree. It's nice to have some contact with RTCC where we normally wouldn't. Yeah. They can come in and do presentations too. Yeah, you could have them actually come in. I mean, you could have them come in February. Yeah. And do it. And just be a shorter one. And then you have them presenting once a year and everyone else presenting twice or twice a year. So I do think we should, because Melinda just sort of said, well, I put this together. I'm guessing this is maybe what you want to hear, but it might be helpful for us to give them some direction in terms of what we want to hear from them. Especially if we're gonna have them do it twice, just so they can kind of prepare. Yeah, I mean, I actually wish I had asked her while she was here, but I can email her. Maybe she can share with all of us that those, the slide presentation. I liked the format she used. I really thought it kind of laid out, this is what our groundwork is and this is what our goals are. And then the second time through the cycle, there'd be very specific things for us to check in now. And it's valuable too, because a lot of what Melinda especially is talking about was the planning and the goal setting that we did at the strategic planning session this summer and then kind of their own personal goals. So it actually helps making sure that outside of us checking in and keeping folks on track that if they're having those bigger reports, it's a good thing. And they do a wonderful job. How has it been communicated thus far to the principals as to when they're coming and what they're doing? I said, tentatively right now, that it'd be based upon where the school board meeting is being held. So when it's held at RUHS, then RUHS would be just fine. And when you ask them, can you come and give a presentation what it would be told them thus far? This particular one, I just kind of said things that you think are important for the board to hear about the work that you're doing. It could be as simple as how did the school year open. So I agree with Anne, maybe a little bit of a rubric to say. You know, what's going well, what's not like what are your biggest concerns about the year going into it? What are your biggest excitements? What's your path forward? And then on the second one, how's it going? What kind of a surprise is the challenge? Yeah. This is a good opportunity. We had touched on this earlier that without their input and kind of the way that the policy governance was structured for a while, the community wasn't getting a really good feel for what actually is happening in the schools. And so this can also be a showcase of, okay, this is the work that we're engaged in and what we're attempting to accomplish. This is what the results have been so far. And yeah, it's working out really well. You know how we've been plugging away at this for two years with full fidelity and it's not quite what we think it should be. So we're gonna try this instead. But I think that's a really good conversation for the community here so that they know that there's real significant work that's been happening. Well, and it's important to me though that they know that a presentation is great and we can give them kind of parameters of what we're looking for. But I also think this back and forth discussion, question and answer thing is really important. And I appreciate Sam that you clearly came with things that you wanted to ask or wanted to open a discussion about. And I think that's our responsibility. We're not inviting them just so we can be an audience or they can kind of prove something to us or something like that but that we wanna hear what's going on for them. And we are asking for clarification or a real back and forth, a real give and take kind of thing. Yeah, that's a good start. I think I've gotten all of the suggestions on the annual agenda. So I will make these changes and then send out with, I'll get to you in time to send out with the material for next month and we can vote it in, hopefully or have more discussion about it or anything like that. Okay, we're going all around. Oh, Rachel's not here to report out on the ends committee. Oh, I love that. Woof. Oh, she was our minute taker and our speaker. Do you feel prepared at all to talk about her? This is ends committee report out. I mean, we, I wasn't here the month before so I don't exactly know what she said. We were really focused this last time on the mission statement. Yes. And, Heather, maybe you can also, none of us are really prepared to report out about it but we actually had something we were gonna propose to bat around, didn't we? As a mission statement, Rachel was gonna bring something for us to brand a storm on. The committee looked at many other districts. Mission statement sort of is like a preamble to the ends and sort of started to put together samples that we might have to put in front of you. I'm sorry that we don't have them. And then also we used a tool to, a computerized tool to put them together and it was quite clever. And so we thought we would put that in front of you for review. We'll have to bench it until next time. Also some work was done on pulling out foundational academics, specifically pulling out life skills to elaborate on what is meant by that. And that's about as far as the committee has gotten. We talked a lot about also keeping in mind how it might be measured. You know, if we wanna pull something out and specifically list it as an end, how would we be looking for it to be measured? Remember, we don't have to necessarily figure that out. That can be done. How to measure it? No, but if it can be. Yeah. I mean, we don't wanna give someone a goal that doesn't have a way to, yeah. To measure. We're being very strategic. Like one row at a time, what would fit here? Why we think it should go here versus here? A lot of just puzzle pieces. It's going well, though. It's a process. Megan brings snacks for my child, for the rest of it. So these we all need to start warning, right? Moving forward. Correct. So yeah, so we'll table for a more kind of. We're definitely not done yet. So we've got a lot more of work to do, but we're getting somewhere. We feel like we're getting somewhere. We met twice in the last month and we'll plan on doing that again. So I have a question just because we're working on a budget, are these ends gonna be changed so much that when he's putting together a budget, it's gonna be like, oh man, we gotta revamp everything or is it, my guess, it's sort of a rhetorical question. My guess is it's pretty, it's not gonna change things dramatically in terms of where we're going, in terms of budgetary needs. I agree with that statement. Some of it we've already launched, like expanding our life skills programming. And so I think what it may have the impact of doing is forward-facing, making us look more intentional about the things we're doing, like these SEL and PBIS and things that maybe are not currently reflected in the end statement. And also tighten down how they may be interpreted. They're very open right now to the superintendent's interpretation. And the board may want to have a more narrow scope on the data that would be appropriate for each end. Just make sure it's data we can collect and it doesn't take a year to. Absolutely, like this is what we need. That's what we need. Like this desidata would be perfect. It would plug right into, right, right, right. Exactly. There's good ways to do stuff, so that's good. Yeah, that's just excellent question, Anne. Very off-topic, that just reminded me of something. When we have presentations, can we please ask that acronyms be spelled out? Yeah, I was thinking that it was happening. Like which one, DESA? No, any of them, SEL, SEL, right, yeah, yeah. It's a different language that many of us right now. We'll have them come with a gloss, and I'm not joking about this, we'll actually have them come with a gloss. But we also have to make sure they say it the full way for folks that are watching. Right, right. So they say, yeah, positive behavior, interventions and boards. That's PBIM. And the social emotional learning. Social emotional learning is SEL. I don't know what DESA stands for, it's brand new. Have to Google it. That is an excellent suggestion. As someone who lives in a world of acronyms, right. Especially in Vermont, it's bad. It's very, in the education sector, it's huge. I mean, it's not uncommon for me to, in the middle of a meeting, be Googling, what is that? Same with the healthcare sector. We like acronyms over there. Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee. I know you just had a meeting. Yeah. So we just had a meeting. We have, the committee has the compiled data from all of the survey information. 100% of the board did the survey, so that's awesome. Yay, board. We're just going through it right now with Sandra Cameron from BSBA and sort of highlighting goals for this next year. And we didn't get through all of it today. So we're gonna meet again on Friday and finish and clearly write out those goals. Is that? And go over the goals, yeah. And then hopefully at least begin to pinpoint where in policies we might need to add some language. Language or some more specific things. So I will, tonight, send you all the survey results. She wants a privacy clause put into the email that I send out and she was gonna send me the words for that, so as soon as I get that out. The person I owe information to has to be confidential. But yeah, everyone will see that. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, it's good. So I think the hope is to have it going forward for the next year to review at the end of next year, this time next year to say, how did it go? Mm-hmm, cool. Do you agree? Do you have any input? Do you have any thing you wanna add? No, I thought it was a good process. Especially being able to get some clarity on real specific goals will be really helpful. So yeah, cool. Facilities subcommittee, I'm turning towards the sole member, which I do think we need to do something about. Yeah, so we have to do something about it. It's my understanding about just rules. We have to add at least another person to the subcommittee. So it did have a meeting lined up with facilities. Stop, put the brakes on that meeting because we need to warn it and then need another member. That's in order to have a quorum. Just so everyone understands why there should be more than one person on a subcommittee. So the meeting that we were scheduling was gonna be an update on where Bob and Wes are with working with the engineers because we had earmarked some money for them to start the process with examining viability of new school and what that might look like. And so that was, the next meeting is merely a check-in. We are basically starting from the ground floor so it's not like anybody's behind. So is that the charge of this? I don't remember when we established this committee but is that the charge of this committee? Is to look at possible new building. And so if there's anyone who is interested in volunteering for being on that committee, I have an idea in mind of someone that I'd like to invite and request to be on that committee but is anyone wanna throw themselves in? Well, we definitely need just because of, at least something that you said at the end of the last meeting we should definitely have somebody from Brookfield and somebody from Braintree. Just because when we even were trying to unify the district, there was a lot of concern from the smaller communities we were gonna shut down their schools. So I think to make sure that those communities are well represented, I think we should have somebody from Braintree, somebody from Brookfield. You have a Brookfield? Yeah, a Brookfield. And then we could start. And as far as East Hill Brookfield, too. Looks like the furthest corner. Yeah, I'm gonna be able to speak to bussing. It's the longest bussing that I can tell you that for free. So our Braintree representatives. Who's not here tonight? Is Sarah Braintree? No, she's Randall. She's Randall. Oh, is Rachel. She's online. Yeah. Sarah. She's Randall. She's Randall. She's Randall. It's Rachel and Katya. So I think we, if you, yeah. You're just looking down. So I think we can wait to see if Rachel would like to join. I also wondered, Sarah, if you would be interested on being on this subcommittee, just because of your interest slash knowledge about facilities topics. But I know you're not feeling well, so I'm not gonna put you on this. Well, I just did, but no need to respond right now. Just know that your name occurred to me. But that's great. Thank you for setting up the meeting and then putting a pause until we get our ducks in a row here. That's it for committees. Except. A new committee. We're gonna discuss having another committee. No. But Rachel had actually pointed this out to me that we need to start talking about the superintendent contract, which in his contract, it's by December, I believe that we're required to state our intent. So I thought it might be a good idea to have a subcommittee to really dig in on contractual. Who did this last time? Do you remember who was part of that? Paul Puck. I think so, too. I used to appear and I don't remember who the second party. It was a three year. It was a three year. That's why I don't remember who the second party was. It was 2020. So it must have been right. Probably Laura. Right before you. Yeah. I don't think they made it. I don't think they made it. Yeah, I don't think they made it. Brian, maybe. So if you wanna think about it, I suppose that would be okay, but if anyone's ready to volunteer. So what's the charge of this committee gonna be to just make up a contract? Or. Make a review, whatever is currently in place to see. I mean, it would be like almost like a teacher's contract. Right? I mean, is it similar to that? You look at it and you see if both sides are in agreement to what's currently on the contract, if there's changes that need to be made. Yeah. It's usually, it should be kind of a negotiation piece. So it's kind of like having the committees that go and meet with the teachers, just like you're saying. The VSBA has put out a model contract. I've never been a stickler about what's in it. Ours is actually a pretty good contract on both sides. So it might be worth kind of, if whoever gets on that committee is just taking a look at what VSBA is produced. And is legal involved in that too, though, in those discussions? Yeah, it's definitely worth running it. Past Pietro, he can be there. Or if there seems to be an agreement, you wanna buy him and just say, hey, is this language leading us to something that we didn't intend on both sides? Yeah. And that subcommittee, those meetings would be warned, but would be executive session meetings. Just. Yeah, it's like labor negotiations. Exactly. Exactly. So again, if people wanna think about whether they wanna be involved, although I think time obviously is of the essence. So we do. Well, one way or the other, we're gonna need a superintendent and a contract. So we need a group working on that. By December 15th, we just need to let him know our intentions. Right. Whether or not we wanna go into negotiations to renew or not. So. Right. Time is of the essence in terms of that particular decision, but not to get the contract written. Right. By December. Right. In any way. Which in itself is an executive session topic personnel. So we do not have that on this month. So I will put it on next as a personnel issue. And we can talk about it. Yes. But in terms of, so you're right. And in that case, I suppose people do have time to think about whether they wanna be on that committee because it's something that would go beyond December. So. It goes till the end of June, right? It's not. When the end of June 30th, yeah. Okay. So please do consider whether that's something you wanna be on. Standing committees. So I kind of threw this out there as something I want us to talk about and consider. Many boards, I think two different board members of at the table at this training that we went to, Chelsea and Lane, we're talking about how they have standing committees, a budget slash finance committee, a facilities committee, a, I guess we would call it ownership linkage. I mean, I think that we've had subcommittees either in the past or we do now that would apply here, but I think they should be standing. You come onto the board and you are either assigned or volunteer to be on and regularly meet throughout the year. Not just one. All your members need to, yeah. All, yes. And it's a requirement of being on the board that you serve on one of these standing committees. So right now it's just kind of a discussion topic proposal is this something we're interested in? In my experience on the board, and it's just a few years, we kind of think of something that needs to be, that we need to dive into, okay, let's create a subcommittee and it's very kind of as needed. And I feel like there's an argument to be made that if we already had standing committees in place, it would be more about, okay, this is something we need to dive into, assigning it to a committee that already exists unless it's something like the contract one which is only a certain, at certain times. I'm not necessarily advocating for it or not. What do people think? Are we already fried? It's only, it's only seven point only. Um, I mean, I think it makes sense because there are some things that fall under that. I mean, I think even just, you know, some of the operational pieces was like discussing, starting the discussion for labor contracts and all that stuff that happens and that kind of pops up around there too. But I mean, I do feel like that ownership linkage one would be one that would be a standing committee. I don't see that going away anytime soon. So that. And then depending on what you need of what comes up, you can just assign tasks to that committee that's already going. That's what you're saying? As long as it's like, if you had like an operational committee that just understood that charge of that committee is to kind of, if something arises to the top as a need, it's not being addressed by these other two, that would be the focus of that committee. I don't, I guess I don't see the, seems pretty transparent to just say, all right, we have this need. Let's create a committee. Let's give it a charge. Let's give it a budget rather than, I mean, we have the negotiation committees. Which we do assign at the beginning of each cycle. Right. Those are the only real sort of regular ones. The ownership committee that we've now turned into the newsletter committee. No, we've given it a charge. So what is the charge? They charge us to write the newsletters. But I think ownership, I think ownership link is to stay ownership linkage. And right now, there will be other things that come up under ownership linkage. It just so happens that this is one of the things that the ownership linkage group should be charged with doing. Yeah. So that would be an engagement. Yeah. Yeah, they would do other engagement pieces. Yeah. Okay. So that, yeah. So that's on facilities as they're... But that's because we have a need. We've got a need for that. So that probably doesn't need to be a charge. I think these are examples that you've heard from. Yes, yeah. Or if people have other examples. But I feel like we can make a committee when we need a committee. And so until we change our policies, we also have a policy that says we won't just have committees for the sake of having committees. And our committee policy is a board. So... I do think it would be helpful though, if we're making these like ad hoc committees to be specific about the work that we've done and the timeframe which that work should be completed. So those committees can kind of stand up quickly, be tasked with something and bring it back to the board in a certain timeframe that's not, you know, the next year. Not this ongoing, right. And that's what I like about having it be a committee with a charge, because then you can kind of have this wandering. But I do still feel ownership linkage should be an ongoing committee that's... I don't see that changing as that is... I don't think so either. Strategy of the board. I feel like it should be addressed in no meeting because if it's not, then it gets lost. And it also, I mean, it's been being treated differently. It's not being treated as a, you know, these reports for these subcommittees that are the annual agenda subcommittee. Not going to have to exist. But the ownership linkage, I mean, that's one of our primary purposes of being. Yeah. Originally that committee was supposed to come up with a plan for the year for linking with the community. And then that sort of feeds into this annual agenda so that you kind of know, okay, we're gonna do this event to reach out to the community or whatever. So if you create your plan, then you don't need the committee anymore. Except that we said the newsletter. And then you have the next year when you're gonna create your plan again. I think it needs to be a live committee. I think a plan takes out the active engagement that I think needs to be there to monitor whether that plan is working to see. Because I think sometimes the purpose of a committee is to really focus on one thing that's being done and make sure it's being done well. And I think that the ownership linkage committee can have different, right now it's tasked with the newsletters and we'll see how that goes. But it's not the only thing. Ownership linkage is always gonna be a live moving thing we need to create and recreate. Yeah, I mean, that's a big part of our job as a board. Right. So if we're. So we've gotta be thinking and planning for doing that. So it's usually, are we not gonna, so are we gonna, we've tasked them to do that. So then how are we gonna come up with, okay, what's our linkage plan? What are we gonna do? What do we wanna do? Or is that something that is gonna take place in the ownership linkage committee? I think that's a great question. I think tasking the committee with writing the newsletter is not it. Even just in terms of the newsletter, excuse me while I stare in space, I'm trying to organize what I'm thinking here. It's not just about composing the newsletter, it's about thinking about the rhythm of the newsletter. It's thinking about the responses that we're getting. I think just saying right now the task is you're just writing one and then that'll be it. And then in three months you'll write another one and that'll be it. I think seeing how they do and thinking about, yeah, bringing other ideas here, I'm still, I'm staring into space and still not making much sense. So I'm gonna stop talking. I can't organize my thoughts enough to get them out. It sounds like maybe this is either worth continuing to discuss this. I didn't mean for this to be a thing. We're voting on tonight. I did, you know, we're electing people to or anything like that. It's something to consider and keep in people's brains. So in your training, they had recommended this. No, no, this was, we happen to be at a table with, you know, you're sitting with other members of other school district board. And they just mentioned this. They happen to have, this guy we were talking to is talking about subcommittees, I think. So it's an idea that I thought to throw out there. It sounds like we're okay as we are. Okay. Yeah. Business as usual. It's hot in here. We can always go. We can back to it if there's something. Right. If we want to. I mean, we don't have an end date for ownership as of right now. So that is basic. I mean, we don't have an end date for any of these committees as of right now. True. So until we start applying those. I just have a comment about the annual agenda and the work that we're doing on the superintendent evaluation because in order for it to be effective, it needs to be done every year, which means that many needs to be formed every year to look at it, right? Meet with the FBA, meet with the superintendent, come up with all of that. It needs to happen this time of year as board members come and go and shouldn't be written into the annual agenda to form a committee in August for. Why does it have to be with the VSBA each time? I think it's a good, neutral way to run it. Because they facilitate the surveys and they collect the data. Okay. Yeah. Something like an independent, you know. It's a great, yeah. Okay. That's what I think. So I don't know if we want to write that into the annual agenda or if we want to just not. Yeah. That makes sense. And then, I mean, I would think the feedback from that would go probably not with, I don't know how pay like happens with the superintendent, but in evaluation typically, if you are going for an evaluation, you're also either getting a pay raise or something like that. I think at least in my business, but maybe not in the bigger corporate world. Maybe evaluations are just evaluations and cost of living raises are just given. I don't know how that works though with a budget. Right. And superintendents is budgeted, like that's in the budget, right? And it's in your contract when you start, right? It's negotiated, yeah. And so it's whatever comes out of the negotiation session. Just kind of like the teachers. It's a pretty similar process. Maybe you could talk to, in your subcommittee, you could ask if that's even a thing. Or if it's just, yeah. Well, my other question then is the evaluation, does that make sense and to have it tied almost to the start and end of the school year too? Because if we're asking if the idea is to set goals for the superintendent for the following year, wouldn't that tie in better with the goals should be coming in at the start of a school year rather than midway through a school year? Right, that's why we're madly trying to do it right now. And then in most cases, because if there's like a significant budget impact in terms of what's being asked, that we're gonna have to, that might be a two year, right? Because if I hear about it now when I'm planning out for the budget, I don't get that money in the budget until the following school year. So I'm just wondering if we should back, I mean, I know now it would be difficult then to say, okay, now we're gonna go into another one in six months rather than a year, but I'm wondering if we try to back it up and say we start this process in April to have it concluded by July or something like that. Yeah, no, that does make sense. Because I feel like when we started it was in July was when our my first year here, because we got that questionnaire in March when we first joined and I was like, I just started, I feel like I can't respond to this. Right. And that came out, I believe in June or July. But if you have to make the decision in December, you might want the process to follow that timeline. But couldn't, oh, I guess I was gonna say, couldn't that be adjusted to moving forward? Yeah, I guess what it, where does it make most sense? Does it make most sense to them? And like I said, have goals and what not come out at a not congruent to the school year so that superintendent isn't able to initiate those changes for a full school year. Cause it's gonna carry that over to school years. And usually like the December 15th date, that's actually a late one. Most superintendents had it probably end of October, early November, because there's certain windows when it's not like the positions are open all year cause people are in contracts, so you wanna be prepared. They're already posted. Yeah, so. Not all of them. You're looking, are you? Yeah, I do. I was about to say, hey, hey. Oh no, I came, I'm not out there. Not for myself, just for myself, but all of the districts around us, like what's going on. Yeah, it's nice to get a couple of weeks. I take a look at what's going on, who still needs a principal at this time of year. It's interesting and it's important to know what's going on. But in New Hampshire, there's a couple of superintendents posted right now, but I haven't seen the Vermont ones posted yet. But. Well, I gotta, the Massachusetts for whatever, keeps trying to haul me back. Yeah, and there are direct recruiters who will reach out directly to people. So, thank you for those funny, those very kind. Thank you. So yeah, I mean, just worth considering how we want to frame that as far as the timeframe that we're looking at this. And where it falls and being mindful of the fact that, I think it should start at the beginning of the year, in September, start of school, right? You wanna give me enough time, especially, because a lot of these goals aren't like, one week and they're done, right? You gotta give time to actually be able to do the work and try to see the impact. So when would work July, August? Whatever the longest stretch is. You know, if I knew what the goals were in July, you know, that way I can go into the strategic planning with the cabinet on it and we can work out what our plans are and how we're gonna get the stuff achieved and then have the whole year to try to get it done. And this is set up for policy governance. So policy governance, you're evaluated based on ends. But, and that's part of what we're doing with the evaluation process is looking at, you know, do we need to change some ELs and we are gonna need to change our policy that talks about how we evaluate the superintendent so that it matches in with what we're doing because otherwise we're not in compliance and you could say, does it matter that you guys aren't in compliance and I'm doing what it says in your policy. So we've gotta have it all. It all has to go together, has to match. And I would say, I still want compliance with the ends and with the ELs. That's a pretty big part of the evaluation that I would like to make sure we maintain and then we maybe add a few. Only concern that I would have is that if with the ends piece, we keep it going, keep the ELs going because it's good to review those processes and making sure we're in compliance. But if some massive goal came out of the evaluation process that is at odds with the ends, that may not just physically be doable, right? So I'm assuming most of the goals are gonna be in alignment with what we're looking for at the ends anyway, so I don't think it's gonna be a problem but just to throw that caution out there. Sorry. So April? April's date? Well, you know what it might be? Maybe it was that the BSBA was busy. You know, if they get other districts wanting them to, although they put a survey together and they email it out. It's fast, I think, and I think it'll be fast the second time, faster the second time. I just think. Or if you sign up for it now, you know? Yeah. If you make a decision what date it is, just sign up for it now. I almost think June, you know, right at the, toward the end, although would we not get as much? No, I would, yeah, I would start it earlier. Maybe May. Yeah, I would form the committee at the April meeting and then May would be when the committee would start. So. Meeting. Because we want to get that survey out by May, early June, before people have, it's pretty busy at the end of the school year. Yeah, because you're asking, you're gonna feedback from administration. Yeah. Ooh-hoo. All right, and Hannah, did you put that on for me? Mm-hmm. Thank you. April, I mean. Right, to form the committee in April. Yeah. Great. Okay. We're moving on to advocacy, which is when I'm going to remind everyone that the annual BSBA, BSA Fall Conference is at the Lake Maureen, October 26th and 27th. I'll be there just the 26th. You'll be there both. Well, I have it on my calendar for both. The 26th is especially important because they're doing, highlighting the equity work that we did with the portrait of a graduate. Right? Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And, but currently I have it on my calendar for both days, yes. Okay. Yes. I'm gonna be there. Yeah, and I were both days last year, and it was good. Yeah. So what time? I have a morning conflict on the 26th, but I plan to be there for the rest of Thursday and then Friday. It's usually like nine to 3.30, and then the specialty meetings where when you guys are doing your vote proxies, those usually happen the first day at around 4.30. Those groups go off because they're going to be there. There you go. Thank you. They sent them to me, but. Oh, cool. Okay. If they go to the chair. Thank you. So great. That sounds like we'll have several people there. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. All right. And we'll report back. Consent agenda. So let's start with, if anyone has changes to the minutes. I'm being such a stickler for this one, I'm so sorry. I love that you, hey. Well, no, I know you, you did. No, we're at, where is it in the chair? I just saw that on, and I think I requested this change last time. There's still approved minutes from special board meeting on 8 23, 2 p.m. A quote in close with agenda. We didn't, we did not have a special board meeting on that day at that time. We only had the 6 p.m. one. It was a committee meeting at 2 p.m. So we need to strike that. So that's 6 p.m. under consent agenda on the previous minutes. That's down on you. Right, or change to committee. The one we had is covered in C. So B can just be stricken, struck. Okay. Stricken. Anything? I think that's all I saw. Yeah. Okay. Facility Reserve Funds Request. Can I speak to that one? Please do. Okay, wonderful. The outdoor classroom at Braintree Elementary School, currently there's no pathway by which it can be accessed by people with any type of physical disabilities. And there's a steep trail that goes up from the elementary school to the outdoor classroom. And so this third paragraph on this letter written really captures it well, the third paragraph, talks about the need for an ADA compliant trail. So they were very proactive and they reached out and they got a pitch from a local community member and on the subsequent pages, the pitch from Zach Freeman to install a ADA compliant walking trail is outlined. And so we did investigate the opportunity to purchase this with grant funds, but found that the restrictions on construction with grant funds are so tight that we recommend that we move forward with using reserve funds. So the request is for $19,450 to be approved for reserve funds to build an ADA compliant from the Braintree outdoor classroom to the elementary school. And we don't need to get more than one bed because it's not over 40,000, that's great. You got it. Let's go. Thank you. What's that? And he would be doing the work? Yes. And you can see there's a multi-page proposal, the Braintree Elementary School universally accessible trail design and construction proposal. And he goes, he has, you know, he maps it and then he itemizes the expenses with an estimated cost at the end of the $19,450. We have 1.9 million left in the facility. I guess my only question is, what are the ADA, like what, what? If a student had a physical disability that required that they used any assistive device. Well, no, I mean like, in this proposal, what is saving the like ADA requirements like how it's meeting ADA requirements that be my only? Well, at this time, if we held an event at the outdoor classroom, we would basically have to tell adults and students who couldn't make the trek up the steep hill that they couldn't participate, which would not be compliant with ADA regulations. That part I definitely understand. Yeah. I guess the, I'm not saying this right. Okay. How is, like is it gonna be three feet wide? In the scope of this project, yeah. How is he defining that he is meeting ADA requirements for the path to be considered ADA? So they usually, and this might be helpful. The ADA usually is pretty explicit about, you know, what the angle of incline can be and things like that, you know, that's something that Bob and Les could actually look at folks to look at. I know, I know that he just did one last year in Bethel, an ADA walking trail. So I know that he knows the specs, but. Yeah, he's using the language universally, I'm sorry. We could just ask him that. He's using the phrase universally accessible trail throughout his proposal. And then he starts using the acronym, right? U-A, right? So he's proposing 800 and linear, 850 linear feet. With an existing footbridge. Built with best practices throughout. Sam, were you proposing that we ask him to come and speak? Well, no, I was just saying if we wanted him to mail that in. It's the sentence here, I guess would be the. Maybe just double check with him. Okay, to make sure it's gonna be whatever the standard is, whatever the compliant requirements are. Yeah, I mean that was my only thing, because if we say we've built an ADA trail, and it doesn't actually meet ADA requirements, that's just my only, like, just the caveat. I guess it does, the sentence here though, I guess it could be the trail design will maintain the appropriate grades and profiles in accordance to U-A guidelines. But I think it would just be helpful to have that confirmation. What the U-A guidelines are. Exactly. Right, how many feet wide, what's the greatest, what's the slope, what's that, yeah. Okay, I know we're not required to go out for more bids. I don't have enough knowledge in this area to know, this is where I find approving these things tricky on a personal level. I don't know if 11.9 is appropriate. I feel almost irresponsible voting to approve something when I have no, if there's someone here that can help me, but I would be just blindly approving a number, and not that I don't have trust here, but it feels irresponsible to not ask. Someone can tell me, or compare it to something. So I'm close friends with Zach, so I'll recuse myself from the boat, but I do know that the expect for building dirt, single track trail for biking is about 25 per foot. Okay. Or whatever, 25, IF, or LF, whatever, one ear foot. Are you on the first line? Yeah. And that's what he's charging. He's charging 14. Yeah, I see. Thank you. But I do know that the cost of these things are just high in general. Right. I mean, the materials I'm less concerned about, that's very helpful to have that number to compare labor and how long it will take for anyone who's done this kind of thing. So he says two weeks build, start to finish. Right. He's building at 60 per hour, which is reasonable. And so total for like design, you know, he's... Only 25 hours, I mean. Yeah. That's less than two weeks, pretty much, if you're working eight hours a day on a site. We hire excavators than dirt movers a lot, and it seems like a very reasonable quote to me. Sarah would probably know the best because her husband does this exact work, I think. Right, she's not on anymore. Right. Well, and there's an opportunity, it says for hand work, volunteer hand work is provided, so there's an opportunity for people to support the project, too. I don't know if they're, you know, the school would put a call out to... He does seem to invite that several times in the proposal. Yeah. And I do see now that it says that it will maintain a 60-inch width, which is five feet, to accommodate throughout the trail. So that is under trail design and construction. I mean, it seems totally legit. Yeah, no, it totally does. I just thought of a roll of fabric. That's the right price for that. I think it's a great idea. I mean, I agree that classroom is hard to get to, even as a parent who would go up there. And it is on a pretty steep, steep walk up. So I think making it more accessible to all people who can enjoy that space and especially coming in and seeing what a great space that is for the students. I think making it accessible to children, younger children, people with disabilities, older adults, all that would be very beneficial. Do the other schools have outdoor classroom spaces? I made sure that we put them in with the first year of S-Refunds, so they all have them. This one's up on a pretty steep sledding hill, I guess. Yeah, I think it's kind of soggy too in the springtime, so the trail would be quite... Where is the one here? Oh, in the playground somewhere? Oh, wait. And it is easy to get to. I think a lot of them can go right out the door. And the one in Brookfield is just down around the corner here. Brookfield is over towards where they tried to put in the second well. So you go across the athletic fields, you go through the pine trees and then it's right there. Yeah, part of it. So is that one easily accessible by wheelchair? Yeah, there's actually a road up there. Because they built a road to get down to the well so you can get there that way. Plus they also did some improvements when they were putting in the paving. They recognized that if they added some paving in some areas where it didn't exist, it was going to help out with a lot of the mobility issues, especially in the wintertime when things were slowly. So they did expand the footprint of the paving job this last time. So this is just part of the consent agenda. So we're not... Unless someone wants to separately vote on that, I'd like to include it as the full vote. So then the transportation reserve funds request for the bus. And the bus. So the bus, they have a bunch of these old 2012 blue Ford F-150 vans, a haul of not many kits. They are getting well to the end of the useful life. The one in particular that he's talking about before is pretty much rotted out of. It will not pass inspection when inspection is due in January. We had the shop mechanic up at the town garage take a look at it. They do the work on our equipment. And so he went out to take a look. The prices are astronomical right now. And the vehicles are hard to find because of the strike. So what he's looking at is a used Ford F-150 van for 44,000. It's got 17,000 miles on it. It's the only thing that's available out there right now. The price actually is not bad because that also includes the retrofit, right? They've got to put the bus lights on there and then the signs that go out, so all that equipment on there. The only thing it won't come with is our camera systems which we'll put in after we get it here. All right, it's from California. So rest is sort of the interest. And literally they can't get the new ones. They'll, they're happy to take our money for a brand new one for the 96,000, which is ridiculous. But they can't guarantee if and when they'll have one. Even during COVID, we had delays with replacing some of the pickup trucks that the facilities department used. We ordered them and it would a year and a half wait to actually get the vehicle. Where is it? It's in California. No, it's in Maine. It's in Maine. Oh now, yeah, but it's from California. It's a reasonable price. We should do it. Especially with that mileage. We've got 890,000 in the transportation reserve line. Well depending on what bluebird strikes for a deal. That's interesting, a couple years here. And the approval of change of signers for community bank. Is that you? That's already done. Great, so I guess we better consent. Well, that wasn't in last month. And all those names are on that sheet that we had to approve last month. They were some because of the new print. Do you want to see? Yeah, some good of the new principles. I think we did two last month for some of them. And you had Sue and you had, because we had to change the law. And then I asked the question what, because Linda was still on there, yeah. And she's still technically on there because she's retracted. Yeah, yeah. And that's just to take a poll. Same. So you would be the two coming on. Oh no, it's Rachel and Linda. Are the ones on here? Right. Okay. So it is, but it is different from what was, okay, that was a question. I just thought we've done it already. So I will now entertain a motion to approve with the edit on the minutes. Please. So moved. Second. Thank you, Katia. Seconded by Megan. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. No ones on there. Opposed? Great. I'm gonna, I'm staying. Yes. So those opposed, no abstentions. Sam. Sam. The motion passes. Closing superintendent's report. Do you wanna talk about it at all? Or questions? Most of it was just updating the board on the Act 29. So they had the swatting incident last year, which was where they kind of overloaded the switchboards with hoax calls in that there were multiple shootings going off across the state. Randolph High School being one of the locations. The state responded by passing Act 29 in the legislature. Most of the provisions that that law requires, we have already done, they were in place a year before the law actually went into place. The biggest piece of work on my plate is the all emergency plan has to be redone by July 1st. We do have one, it's old, it does need to be updated, especially needs to be updated using the new format and process that the state has recommended. And so I'll be getting to work on that in November. I've been done three, four trainings at this point in time on it. So that should be good and ready to go. That is not something the board would have to vote on at the end. I'll be able to report out that yes, it is completely made by the deadline. Great, though. Great. Did anyone have, I think they're not here to answer, but questions about the reports, the newsletters that we were sent separately from the principals and directors. It is nice to get those, thank you. The financial report. Are there things you want to specifically? There was some things that I scribbled down, but I don't think there are anything that's, or stuff, questions I had for Robin, which I talked about today, which are good. But I think the biggest thing is the rule of thumb here is that we're spending, we should be spending about 8.3% of the overall budget every month. We are a quarter of the way into the fiscal year. Our fiscal year starts on July 1st. So we should have spent about 75% of it. We spent 86% of it. So we're well on the block at this point in time. Let me see if there's anything that was. I have a request. Can we move this report to the monitoring section of our agenda? And when you say 86%, like where are you talking? So just looking at these numbers and I'm like, if you take a look at the overall budget for 2023-24, right, 23,534,968, that's on the front page, you see that we've spent 3,460,000 of it so far. So if I did my math right, we've got eight. 3,000,460, is that what you're saying? Yeah, so that's how much has been spent so far. Here's the amount. And then the last column is how much of the overall budget we've got left, it's 20 million. 20, okay. The quirky one, some I can point out just to familiarize people a little bit. Page three under expenditures, under instruction. So if you go down, there's a tuition line. If you go over, it says that it's overspent by 17%. That's due to some of the students that moved in that were high need that needed to go to out placements. So, you know, we talked a couple of years back about we had built a special education fund because we often have students that move in and they can be quite expensive and they're hard to predict within the budget process, so that's something that we'll suffer for it. So wait a minute, that was, that's 385? Am I in the wrong thing again? I'm in the wrong thing. I apologize. Actually, you know, it'd be easier if I actually projected these, I should have thought about that because there's so many lines. But we do go through and we kind of scan and see what's over and under. But if you check the overall piece, so it says instruction at the top and it's got all these rollup lines, we call them, they all roll up into instruction. It gives you the total amount that's left with that instruction part of the budget as 84.37%. So we're still pretty, yeah, we're still pretty good. And the only reason why I was thinking, I would like to see it up in the monitoring section is when you do your financial conditions, monitoring report, you refer to this. And where it is in the agenda, it's sort of like just kind of these general reports, but this is really showing the community it's for us to sort of say, okay, are we on track? Why is this one negative? You know, those are good questions. Right, right. And just getting more, just so that we're on how to read it and what it means and. Other one that's probably important for the Board to know, especially because we have been asking for reserve funds. If you look at the very first page, right, Orange South West School District summary and you go down to about here, and it starts off with vehicle e-bus fund and building maintenance fund and legal fund. These are all reserve funds and the amount of money that's in them that are sitting there that, you know, we could access an emergency or an aid. So you've always got a running kind of total of what's sitting in those reserve funds. So if you see a dramatic change sometime and you don't remember voting for it, that's worth asking some questions about. So, okay. Right, and that's showing what we've spent so far. And typically just for edification with the reserve funds, we will ask for the money from them to make sure that we've got to pay what we need to. But we usually don't draw it until the end of the year and then only if we need to because we frequently have surplus. So I'm asking you for 44,000 for a ban. If you approve it, we're going to pay for it out of the regular budget and then at the end of the year, if we're in the black, we're not going to pull it from the reserve fund. So those numbers may flop back? Yeah. The expended may come back into those reserve funds about the end. We'll try not to tap them even if you've approved it unless we have something to do with it. Right, yeah. We just need to make sure that we're going out for the whole time. The action items recap. Okay. Well, we have homework. If you could please watch that webinar and we can come and discuss it a bit. Again, it is the, and I can send the link that will make it easier, but the governance core is the one we'll be discussing next week. I have an action item to make these edits and make sure that Kyle has it to be in the packet next week. Yes. Once you do that, do you want to check if you still want me to check with the RTCC advisory group as to whether they can move? That would be a changing of the, that meeting schedule. Yeah. Right. So let me know if it needs to or not. When is your, well, it wouldn't be before our next meeting. That's when it is. When is the next RTCC meeting? Why am I not here? Oh, it's next month. So I think at your time November 8th, you talked about changing. Yeah. Yeah. And then maybe we can still vote on it with an edit if we need to edit that one. Those headings, thank you for putting that up. Let's see. And then we've got some subcommittees to create to figure out. Think about being on yet another subcommittee. Subcommittees, please make a plan to meet. Let Kyle know so we can warn them at least 48 hours in advance. So the ownership linkage will be meeting next Wednesday at 5.30 to be a Zoom link. Right. So I think it's most for email. Great. Great. So Kyle, Todd, you will email that to you. I'm not going to move on actually. Chelsea's going to email survey results with the legal language, right? Yeah. And you're going to email Ron's. Yep. To that version. And we're also have a superintendent evaluation meeting on Friday at 12.30 that we have to be warned. Yeah. So I've got that on my notes first thing in the morning. Okay. So we didn't quite get through the last piece of the night. Yeah. So you'll just take care of the warning for that. Okay. Good to know. Thank you. Great. I think we've got to do the minutes from it. Which I'll be getting out of the way. And whoever wants to join the facilities, it's going to be a great time, guys. Yeah. You said you were going to talk to Rachel about facilities committee. Yes. She and I will fight over it. It's all right. It's good. And I'll mention Sarah. Throw it out there. Hopefully Sarah will do that. Yep. You're going to want a green building award. So we do have an executive session on the agenda. So I'm going to have to enter executive session for labor relations agreements with employees and we'll have that while we're in the middle of time. Okay. Okay. We'll have that in the middle of the time. Do I have at 8.30, exactly. And do I have a second? All second. Seconded by Megan. The motion was made by Katya. Thank you. At 8.30 to go into executive session. All those in favor. Opposed? Great. Passes, we shall move into. I'll switch. I'm going to switch the meeting.