 Um, six 32 p.m. Uh, let's do roll call. Um, Jill. Here. Anaket. Here. Ma. Here. Emma. Here. Jerry. Here. And I think I see Andrew's iPhone. Is that Andrew Stein? That's LaRosa. Andrew LaRosa and Andrew Stein said he might be late. Um, and Ryan. Here. Okay. Uh, I think we have two agenda items, Ryan. Um, you want to add something from the policy committee? Yes, I'd like to propose that we make an appointment from a board member to the policy committee at some point during the meeting this evening. Okay. Um, and then I also, Libby, did you raise it? We had never officially appointed a clerk. Yeah. And then I don't think you've ever done that. Okay. Jerry, do you still want to possibly do that? Sure. Okay. Uh, so let's add that too. Um, okay. Excellent. Uh, so first item, public comment. Do you have anyone? And let's, looks like I can see William Alexander. He's raised his hand and Susan Coke, um, William, go ahead, please. I also see Julia raised her hand, Julian Chappetz. Okay. So Julia, Susan and William Alexander. William. All right. I'm looking for hands too. Just habit. I just thought a bunch of seminars. Um, hello everyone. I just wanted to speak in support of Beth Nolan's statement about school resource officers, um, especially by posing the question of what sending an officer means and to who, um, because in this context, I'll just unpack what it means to me, um, in this moment and really regardless of the stated purpose of the SRO program, um, what it means to send an officer into a school classroom is, um, a show of force. Um, for context, I used to live in South Minneapolis where for a long time, police have behaved, um, like an occupying army. And the mere presence of an officer in a classroom reminds me very much of the flexing and active intimidation that I used to see all the time and George Floyd was murdered in my old neighborhood, just a few blocks from my place. Um, now of course intimidation may not be the intent, but note that it's still the meaning I receive and black and brown students have told us clearly, repeatedly and passionately that it's also the meaning that they receive given that more footage of excessive force and brutality is uploading daily. That layer of meaning is really impossible to avoid. It is there regardless of the officer in question, regardless of their conduct or their record or their years of honorable service, or their training and deescalation and support to put an SRO in the classroom is still a show of force and an active intimidation, regardless of who's wearing that uniform. So given that I assume it isn't our goal to, um, subject minority students to ongoing trauma, um, I ask that the board please considers reallocating those resources to some other area of urgent needs. And that is all. Thank you so much for your time and attention. Thank you. Um, Susan. Hi, um, so my name is Susan Koch and I know a lot of you. I'm sort of wearing two hats at the moment. Um, I have been a teacher in a Montpelier Rocksbury school district. I'm entering my 13th year and in 2016 I was named the Vermont teacher of year, which was super exciting. I'm also wearing the hat as a community member. Um, I've lived in Montpelier for 29 years and both of my children are graduates of the Montpelier school system. So I really believe in our school system. I'm very fond of our school system. And I'm here tonight to encourage a discussion about school resource officers, um, and about the reallocating funding for school resource officers. And so I wanted to talk for a couple of minutes about my own personal journey and I wanted to encourage that ongoing discussion. And so, um, when I first heard the idea of reallocating school resource officer funding, I was sort of like, whoa, I, I need them. I call them on police departments sometimes and I kind of thought back over the years and it's, I feel like I call them on average about once a year for a situation that I really feel that, um, perhaps children are in danger or a child is in danger. Sometimes it's a family situation. Sometimes it's a situation where we're in, um, Hubbard Park and there is maybe somebody living in one of the stick structures we've built and I need help with that. Um, and I've been very pleased by the response of the Montpelier police department, but I have to be honest when, when those responses come, it's not always the school resource officer who comes. As a matter of fact, it has never been the school resource resource officer. It has always been a competent Montpelier police officer with firearms who has been there to ensure safety in an emergency situation. And I have very much appreciated that. I, I have relied on that and I appreciate that. Um, so I think that we have those, um, that feedback right at our fingertips being us, all of our school buildings are downtown and close by. We can get emergency help when we need it. Um, but I am worried about the idea of a school resource, an armed school resource officer in our buildings and, um, I thought back to Libby's words, um, which were very wise and at our end of the year, um, one of the workshops with Libby, um, that we had at the end of the year, I actually don't remember which one, I took a screenshot of one of the slides Libby shared with us and it said, um, the title was brutal realities and it said, um, we are dealing with two very real crises as an educational system in America. Number one, how to redesign school in the context of COVID-19, which I know is on the forefront of all of our minds. Um, and number two was how to redesign a major white school system to do our part in ending institutional racism, bigotry and any exclusionary practice based on color, creed, gender, class, ability or sexual orientation. And I feel that we have an opportunity here and planning the budget for the upcoming year to reconsider the funding for the school resource officer. That would be a systemic change for us. Um, it is not about one person, it is about that role, um, that that relationship with our school district and I really would love to see the board consider, um, how we might use funding to meet the needs in our district, how we might, um, you know, how we might meet the needs of, I've heard there were, there have been nine families who have, you know, spoken to the issue of basically having a feeling of, um, bias, you know, people have been racial, perhaps racially profiling them or they've had difficulties. That's nine families in our district who have spoken up. I'm sure there are more families who have not spoken up, who have had, um, difficult feelings. So I think that it would be wise to look into the needs of our families and consider whether a social worker, school counselor, different types of therapists, people who are really trained in the work of, um, a trauma, an approach to trauma, the effects of trauma and the situations that we might be facing. Um, it's not to say that school office, school resource officers aren't trained, but it is not their specialty. Um, and social workers have a specialty in this area and we could use our funding to meet the needs in a different way. Um, so that's why I'm here tonight. I just wanted to appeal to you to be open to that discussion and, you know, at the end of the day, we want a school system where everyone feels safe and I'm hearing that that's not the case currently. And I think that the school board and the school administration and the school employees, all of us have a role to ensure that our students feel safe so that learning can happen. And I feel like thinking about how that resource officer is funded and thinking about, um, changing things up a bit, um, is really important and it is the right time to do that. We have a lot of work to do with, um, you know, COVID-19 and pending issues, but this work is important too. And I think both of those things can happen simultaneously, so I'm going to encourage the board to set aside some time to discuss this more and to really look into what is happening and what we need to do to meet the needs of, of the people in our community. And that's why I came tonight and I appreciate the opportunity to speak. Thanks. Great. Thanks, Susan. Um, and we had one more, Julia. Um, if Lelita is planning to speak, I want to see my time to her. Lelita. Hi, my name is Lelita Malwagonam and, uh, I'm a parent of two kids going to, uh, sorry, one going to middle school and one going to the high school next year. Uh, and I also am a committee member with, uh, C-Jack that works with the city of Montpelier. I just finished a quick meeting with police chief, um, Pete, and, uh, I asked him a question, uh, earlier. So what is your decision and about the SROs? He says up to the school board meeting. Um, so I also, um, uh, thank you, Susan, uh, for your feedback. Um, a lot of it, uh, my experience, my kids' experience, uh, really resonate. I'm going to take off this, uh, it's hard. I'm sorry. So, um, I'm a little bit flustered because whenever I want to talk about my experience on my kids, it brings a lot of emotion. Uh, as a person of color, I have, uh, encountered racism since I was six, seven years old. Um, I was born in race to Malaysia. I've encountered racism there. I've encountered racism here. So, uh, it brings a lot of stuff for me. Um, I'm against having SROs, uh, in the school board, in the school. I would rather have the resources that's been funding the SROs to go to a social worker. Uh, let me, um, share with you the experience that my daughter had, uh, three years ago. Um, she was outside the school library, waiting, uh, reading the books. Uh, she was just hanging out there. And a boy from a different school came to her and started, uh, calling her names. Um, something about mud. I totally, I don't remember what, but it was, uh, racist. And he threw, uh, a bottle that was filled with something things to her and she avoided. Uh, and then he took a stick and started hitting her. There were wells all over her body. And she called me. I went to the school. I'm talking about the Hubbard School Library. I went there, picked it up, came home, and she told me what happened. Um, she was very traumatized. I went to the school next day, thinking that this boy was from, uh, Main Street Middle School. But he wasn't. He was from another district. Uh, the school didn't want to get involved, even though my daughter was from, uh, MSMS. Uh, I had to talk to the police officer. He found out about the boy. And then I had to drag my daughter to the police station, to the SIROS. I'm sorry. First, I went there to give a statement. And the second time I had to drag my daughter, who was like 10 or 11 years old, to the police station to give a statement. And I was not happy about that. That boy was not dragged to the police station. My daughter was. Um, even though it was racism, the SRO did not want to say the word racism. He just said, oh, it's a kid thing. What do you mean? Kid hitting another kid, calling her mud and all kind of stuff. And then the next year, the boy transferred to Main Street Middle School. And I was not told about it. My daughter was terrified. And I had to talk to her. And I told her, avoid him at all costs. My daughter, who was the victim, had to avoid him. And I told her to keep safe. If anything happens to give me a call. If a social worker was there, things would be different. I would have been informed that this boy who hit her was enrolled in Main Street Middle School. Nobody told me and dragging my daughter to give a statement and having not my voice heard when a brown or a black person tells you or anybody that this is racism. Please believe our word. We know what is racism and. There are not many people like me in the school. They love you. Maybe some of them have not encountered racism. But I know and I'm worried for my son right now, who is going to Main Street Middle School and my daughter is going to high school next year. I'm keeping an eye. But it's also giving me sleepless nights that my daughter or my son is going to encounter this. And there's no social worker to help her about facing a trauma. I've seen like a month ago when she saw another boy hit another boy, she just shut down and walked away. And then I spoke to her and she was like, oh, those what happened a couple of years ago just came back. She's going to do therapy, but you know, when things like this happen again, it traumatizes you freeze. I've frozen a lot in my life. Even in Montpelier, when I walked and people say something, I don't interact because I am more concerned about my safety. Where's the safety for my kid in the school? And the SRO is not going to help her, who's going to be in the police uniform with a gun. That's intimidation, not a support. I want support for my daughter, not somebody to scare. I want to pull my kids out of the school, but I can't afford to send them to private school. I'm a homeowner. I've been living in Montpelier since 2002. I love this place, I love this school, but the things that's happening right now, I am not happy. My daughter has checked out from school when she goes, especially the cafeteria and when she's surrounded with other people because she can hear people are saying something. But I've taught her to like, just disregard, just don't pay attention, you know. Because what choice do I have? Do I want her to confront the people and have an SRO come in and talk to them about? That's not worth it. That's not worth it. To have more traumatic experience for my family. So I've been with chief, meeting with chief paid a couple of times about SROs. And now he just told me it's up to the school board. I would rather use the funding. I'm a taxpayer, I'm paying taxes to go to the education. I want part of the money to go to a social worker who can help children. SROs or police officers is for adults, not for a kid. And I also remember somebody in the previous meeting with the Brian chief said, oh, we have one incident of kids throwing chairs and we have to call the SROs. Come on, how frequent does that happen? If that happens, go on, call the police from the police department, they'll be there to help. It's rowdy, it's really, yes. But for small things, a social worker would be helpful. And I forgot about something else that I want to talk. And I can see there's no other person of color that wants to talk about this, because like I said, it is very traumatizing. We'd rather talk to each other, other person of color, because a lot of emotions comes out. If you know what I'm talking about, it's easier to speak, but even not, it is hard. That's all I can think about right now, thank you. Great, thank you and thank you for sharing your story. I know it's a tough one to share and we appreciate it. And I do want to say that we are taking these very seriously. We appreciate all the feedback we're getting on this. This will be taken up by the school board in September as we consider the budget. That's really our authority for the position either that or under policy and we might want to have a policy discussion about it too. We'll be taking it up in September and we appreciate the feedback and know it's a tough thing to speak about. Okay, thank you. The courage and the honesty. So again, thank you to everyone who spoke. Again, we will be taking this up in September, which is only a board meeting or two away. The next item is our consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Can I make a motion to approve the consent agenda minus the minutes of July 15th to correct a typo? Okay, do I have a second to approve? I second it. So we'll have to do roll call. Aniquette. Yes. Jill. Hi. Ryan. Hi. Andrew. Mara. Hi. And Jerry. Hi. And Emma, sorry. Hi. Did I miss anyone? No. So consent agenda is approved and, and Ryan, what did you want to address on the minutes? Was it? There was, when we formed the subcommittee, it's the paragraph immediately before for the board discussion. It says we've recreated a subcommittee of board members to elaborate on some possible lead guidance. That should be leave. That doesn't make any sense for what was that committee up for as it's written. So it should be leave, L-E-A-V-E. Okay, thanks for catching that. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes with the correction that Ryan just pointed out? I move to accept the minutes with the correction that Ryan pointed out. Do you have a second? I second. Um, Mara. Yes, hi. Jerry. Hi. Ryan. Hi. Emma. Hi. Andrew. Andrew. No. Hi. Sorry. I thought it was you. Who else do we have? Jill. Hi. Anaket. Hi. And I think Ryan did get you. Say, Jack. Yes, hi. Okay. Good, so that is approved. Next matter, COVID-19 planning update, which also serves as a superintendent's report. Libyan crew, do you wanna take that over? Sure, I'll let. So Andrew LaRosa, Director of Facilities is gonna be up first to give an update on where we are with ventilation improvements as well as cleaning schedules. So Andrew, go for it. Yes. So, give you a little rundown on where we are with ventilation. We have, we talked about in generalities a couple of weeks ago about where we're heading and give you a little more specifics on this. Sorry, I just, so the specifics are we retained Honeywell a couple of weeks ago. They're actually going through all our buildings, making sure that all the ventilation equipment that we have is working properly. They're cleaning, lubricating, actuating, making sure that everything is working the way it's supposed to. That process has already begun. We've also been engaged with CX Associates and Mechanical Engineering firm here in Burlington. They're already going through our systems to make adjustments, to coordinate adjustments with our controls contractor. We, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we're very fortunate in that we had all our buildings retro commissioned last winter. Retro commissioning was a process of where you go through all your systems. You look at what they're designed to do. You look at what they're actually doing. You look for opportunities to make improvements. This was done through efficiency Vermont. So we were really fortunate that we had our controls people, our engineers, and our contractors go through all our buildings. We did not have the formal retro commissioning take place down in Roxbury, just because Roxbury is such a different animal, but we did actually go through, at that same time period, with our mechanical contractor to look at the systems, see where improvements could be made. And so that put us in really good stead for being ready to address the needs of this coming school year. That subsequent, as you all are probably aware, efficiency Vermont, the state, with CARES money has granted efficiency around about $6.2 million to be put towards school ventilation and indoor air quality specifically. Again, we've been praised many times over that we have the most complete proposals that they've seen. They're getting a lot of faxes saying we need $20,000 for improvements. And they don't really know what that is. Well, we actually have full blown reports that say we want to do X, Y, and Z. We presented those last week. We asked for some very generous, but realistic projects to be completed. I'm gonna say that we are not waiting for efficiency Vermont money for the COVID money. We are making these improvements whether we get this funding or not. The degree of what we do may change depending on how much money we can count on from the grant, but the work is moving forward. We're not gonna not get the money and not do the work. We had sort of a little bit of a horse trading session today because three weeks ago, they thought $6 million was a lot of money. 275 schools later, they're realizing that $6 million is not a lot of money. But that being said, I think we're in pretty good position to be able to take advantage of a good chunk of money. The reality is, is that their process is a little bit loose. And in fact, they don't even have the money yet to distribute the money. So they haven't given us any official word yet on where we stand, but we are one of the first ones in line. Again, the things that we're looking at is getting the systems that we have. We're gonna start very fundamentally. We're gonna make sure that windows have screens in them and they open. That's very basic. We're gonna make sure that we have many operable windows with screens in as we possibly can. Some of our older buildings, that's not a guarantee that every window will open, but we're certainly will have at least two and as many more as we can in the older buildings. I went through the cleaning and maintenance that we're having done on all our air handling units, whether they're unit ventilators in the classroom or the large air handling systems. CX is in the process right now of going through all of our blueprints and plans and looking at the filters quality that we can put in. There's lots of talk about what's called MERV ratings on filters. Mechanical systems are designed for a specific filter. There's a motor that pushes a designed amount of air through a filter, there's the pressure drop and then that designed airflow moves out. So if we're so simple to just go out and buy MERV 13 filters and plump them in, that would be a lot easier, but we need to actually have an engineer look at it and say, yep, okay, we know this is design pressure. We know if we put a filter in here, it's gonna work. It's not gonna overburden the system. We're gonna continue to get the airflow that we need or they very well may say, you know what, this is at its limit, this is at its capacity and this is a filter you can't change. They're already doing that work. They're actually gonna be doing site visits next week. We will order those MERV filters and we will order the highest level that we can get. That's gonna, I guarantee you, that's gonna be an ongoing process. Every school in America is doing the same bit of work. But that's, again, we're just gonna keep making improvements and our improvements are not gonna stop the first day of school. They're gonna just keep getting better. We talked a little bit about the DDC control system of simply starting them up earlier in the morning, letting them run wide open, I don't wanna say wide open, but letting them run as wide as comfortably possible and get us the quality that we want and then we'll let them run after the end of the day for extra time to flush the air through the building. The other piece, that couple other pieces, there is monitoring tools that efficiency Vermont is going to be giving us tools that we can actually use to check air flows and balance systems as well as do some indoor air quality monitoring. And they're buying this equipment and they'll be doing training on this and it should be, we should have that in a couple of weeks. Another specific piece that we have towards COVID is we are in the process of taking our isolation rooms and our nursing station, nursing offices and we're putting purge fans in them for lack of a better term. And really what that allows us to do is if we have a case in there that are suspected case we can turn these fans on, it'll put the room under negative pressure. And that's a guidance that the state would like to see. And so that's what we're doing. There was very little guidance on what it should look like and what it needs to be, the specifications on it. Basically, we've got a big fan sucking air out of those rooms. And we're gonna actually have the engineers do a little tweaking to those, dial them down a little bit. They're definitely oversized but we're getting those put into place. So those are the fundamental pieces that we're doing with regards to ventilation. With regards to cleaning, we have now that we have our schedules for all the different schools. Tom and his custodians are looking through, they're adjusting their schedules and how we can make sure that we get those three cleanings a day in our buildings. We're trying to do our best to avoid things like swing shifts or split shifts to do this. But now that we know what the schedule is in each of the buildings, we will be in good position for that. We are, Tom is actively and I believe is confident, I know is confident that we'll have hand sanitizer stations for the entries of the buildings and on the playgrounds for recess. We will have a citrus based disinfectant that we'll be using throughout the day and cleaner that we'll also have available beyond the normal wipes, sanitary wipes that we have in the classrooms available. We will obviously make sure that those cleaners are not in the reach of the children. They're not toxic to the children, but we don't want them near the children for obvious reasons. And then at the end of the day, the last clean we'll be using our EPA enlisted cleaning products at the end of the day after everyone has left the buildings. So it is going to be a challenge for sure. But we're confident that we have the manpower to do it and we will make sure that it's done appropriately. Another piece that I don't know if how widely it's known or not, but we have put in an application to close Park Avenue again, like we did for the playground project to give a safe staging area for the health checks and like I say, staging the different pods before they enter into Union Elementary also allows us to have the street will be closed 24-7. So it allows an extra recess space so that we can spread kids out at that time. So long and short, we are continuing to double check that our orders are coming in. I'll speak to this and Libby can stop me when I'm wrong. I know we've had, there's been lots of offers of what can we get, what do you need? I think as it stands right now with regards to cleaning supplies and things of that nature and sanitizer, I think we're okay for right now. I think that what we will probably end up doing is putting together a list that says we got enough hand sanitizer, but if you want to buy some and you want to donate it, here's the specifications. It needs to be 70% alcohol, things like that. So I think we will be putting that together, but I think right now as it stands, we feel like we're in pretty good shape. Libby, have I missed anything? Is there anything else you'd like me to cover? Jill has a question I can see. Sure. Thanks, Andrew. That's really helpful. I'm wondering if you could translate for myself and maybe some folks who are listening in layman's terms, the air circulation, because I know that you can read some scary stuff about how you actually don't want to circulate the air because then it can transmit across office buildings and schools. So for folks who aren't really well versed in that, you can just explain the thinking. That would be great. Thank you. Yeah, so that was a discussion that we've had internally and we'll have to make a final decision on this, but one of the questions was, well, can we have fans in our rooms? And we had heard very specifically, no, you don't want that. And then we heard very specifically, yes, you do want that. And then we heard, well, you actually should have one blowing in and one blowing out. So I think that we're gonna continue, our engineer at CX is right on top of this stuff. So we're gonna, I think that's gonna sugar out a little bit as to what the recommendations will be. And I think we'll definitely share that with folks that if it's, I suspect it's gonna be a neutral thing. Because my guess is there's gonna be enough people saying yes and enough people saying no, but the consensus will be we're not sure. So maybe it's probably okay. So we looked at the potential of getting fans for all the rooms and then heard the news of, no, you don't want to do that because you're just blowing around. So I don't think there is a heck of a lot of clarification on that, unfortunately. Any other questions for Andrew? Andrew, I've got a question, a couple of questions. One was you mentioned two windows, I'm assuming that's part of classroom, that you can open in all the schools and all the buildings, is that right? I am being very conservative when I say that. What I mean by that is at the very least, and this is the very, very least, I want one on one side of the room and one as far away from it on the other side of the room. So we can get that air moving as much as possible. The reality is that it's going to be more like, in the high school, it's gonna be 100% of the windows. At Main Street, at Roxbury, it's gonna be 100% of the windows. At Main Street Middle, I'm gonna say it's probably 75% of the windows and you, we asked about the same. The only reason I give those caveats is those windows are 80 years old and they're big and they're heavy and they're, you know, you or I, if we were willing to get up there and really hustle on it. When I say operable, I need someone, a teacher, anyone can go in there, open it, operate it properly without any concern. So the minimum is two, our goal is to have as many as possible. And I suspect, you know, when I think of a UES classroom, is it, there's four in each. Yeah, so on my expectations, there's gonna be at least three, at least three quarters of them. And I'm just, I'm, I wanna manage expectations. I suspect they're gonna find more available than, more available than I've promised. That's our goal. Okay, and the second question, you mentioned about staging area for UES. And the first thing that popped in my head was the middle school. The high school? Not the high school, middle school. Oh, middle school. The middle school is a little bit, and I'll defer, I'll give you basics, but I'll defer to Katie on that. But the difference that we're gonna have at Main Street Middle is we're gonna use a lot more entrances at Main Street Middle. We're gonna be using, I think at last count, in the numbers, once we understand the virtual academy numbers and how it all goes. But we're gonna be using about six entrances at Main Street Middle. So we're gonna be able to disperse the kids a lot more easily. And the kids at that age are a little more controllable, I guess this is maybe the term. So we don't have that crunch in that management issue that we foresee at Main Street, or at UES. Cool, all right, well thank you. And thanks for the detailed rundown of things. I appreciate it, and I appreciate all the efforts and work you guys have been putting into it. Thank you. You're more than welcome in. We're gonna continue to, as we clarify things, as we get more specific, we'll share them. I have a question too. Go for it. Or not really a question, but just, you know, I know a lot of parents, like you said, have been asking how they can help with the parents group has been interested in how they can help. And so if there ends up being a list that you can roll together of resources or materials or things that the parents are interested in, they can provide. It'd be awesome to get that as soon as possible, because I predict that there will be a run on some of the supplies that you might be needing. So if we can get a jump on that in way, you know, the sooner the better. Yeah, I would agree, and I apologize, I'm not sure what I'm talking into here. I agree, I agree. And I think that's absolutely, I could see that as being a good page on our website saying if you're looking to donate something, these are the items and these are the standards that we have to meet for whatever it is. So I think that's a good idea. And it's probably not a bad idea for beyond this, you know, just classroom needs in general, but. Anna's on it. Of course she is. That's why I said it. I have a question. And I don't know if this is best answered by Andrew or Libby or even Renee. But a question that I've been asked by a bunch of community members for which I just have absolutely no clue is with regard to space in our facilities, a bunch of people have asked me about the high school and they were curious about why the high school doesn't have the space that the middle and elementary schools do when it seemed that the middle and elementary schools were near capacity. Can anybody touch on that? I can. The classrooms are just, they're just smaller. They're, this is off the top of my head. The classrooms at UES are 730, 750 square feet on average. The high school is closer to 620. They're just that much smaller. And. When you add in the fact that high school bodies are bigger and elementary kids are smaller, the high school classrooms are mostly uniform and they are much smaller than the other two buildings. Yeah. Thanks. Other questions? Great, thanks, Andrew. That was very helpful. And Libby, I know you have, we have up next, let me grab the agenda. We've got, we've got up next to just go over the high school schedule in general and answer any board members' questions around the high school schedule. You'd think after five months of being online that I would know how to unmute myself, but obviously not in the board. Thanks for having me. I first, I'm just gonna take you a little bit through the process. I sent out a 30 minute presentation that kind of went over that process for our community to know how we arrived at the schedule. But I first to start off this presentation, if that's what you call it today, is just to thank our guiding coalition at MHS. There are a bunch of teacher leaders within our building who came together to do some amazing work and continue to do some amazing work. Little worried that they're not having any type of summer and I'm dragging them along with me, but super appreciative of their efforts and their brains and their commitment to MHS and our community. Also thankful for our parents and students that participated in the process. So just to kind of go back, back in June, similar to what Libby did for the district, I held a town hall with some parents to jump on and give us some feedback about the spring and then also to give us kind of some hopes and dreams about what they would like to see moving into the fall, not knowing what we were coming into, the schedule or anything of the sort. Once we kind of had a sense of what was happening, by the way, at the same time, one of our teachers, Heather McLean also worked with some students to create a student survey in which we got about a hundred responses back that gave us some feedback about the spring as well that helped drive some of the conversations that we had in July. In early July, I brought together a group of staff members. Some were part of our guiding coalition and some were not. Invited a few parents in and some students as well and just began to have conversations around perspectives and what was important to each of those groups within our community as we went into the new schedule for the 2020-2021 school year. I will say that from our staff and our students, what seemed to be the most, the primary consideration was safety at that time. Our students wanted some consistency and simplicity which they found a little bit in the spring and wanted that to carry over into the fall and throughout the year. Our teachers wanted to feel safe coming into the buildings. Our parents wanted face-to-face interactions. They wanted rigor. They wanted high levels of engagement. They wanted to think outside of the box as to how we could look at school. I will say after that meeting, the parents, a couple of the parents that were a part of that, and by the way, Bridget was a part of, Bridget SC was a part of our parent group both on July 9th and again after we met with the guiding coalition. After that meeting, the parents had responded back to me and said after hearing from the teachers that safety became paramount to them as well for our students and for our staff and concern for our faculty. We took that information and met with our guiding coalition over two days. That was the 16th and 17th for which really just put the perspectives of each of the groups in front of them and put some sample schedules and some ideas that we had come up with in the July 9th group and just really let them get after it based off of the different perspectives and what was important to the parents, what was important to the students and what was important to the staff. They came up with three very similar schedules, put them up into three groups, came up with three very similar schedules that really arrived at the schedule that you probably have seen out in the public as of now. There's been some minor tweaks here and there based off of just some iterations over time and some new ideas that have come and truthfully, I think there's still a little bit to be reworked in that schedule but it's a really strong foundation for where we're moving forward. The basis of that schedule, as Andrew mentioned before is number one, we had to split our classes in half. There's no easy way for us to hold all students in the building at the same time based on our class sizes. So we had to split our schedule up in some way and so we split it up through an AM and PM cohort. And part of that, other schools around the area have split their schools up in two days, two days in, three days out or one day in, four days out, however they might split it up. We were essentially focused on safety and limiting the amount of exposure for our students and for our staff. So in this scenario, our staff over the course of one quarter will be exposed to no more than 52 students and our students, is that right now? Yeah, 52 students and our students will only be exposed to 26. So safety was really paramount when exploring the schedule but the other piece was that we wanted to keep consistency some level of consistency, I can speak from where they were in years past. That includes their eight courses, their green and white schedule. And to do that, and the only way to do that and thinking about how we were gonna split our courses up is how we arrived at the quarters. So instead of moving into a semester system, we'll be moving into a quarter system next year. So we'll have four quarters. Each quarter will have two classes within those quarters. So each, we have green and white days. So every green day will have one class that will be split up in between an AM and a PM. So a student will only have one class a day and they'll be assigned either to an AM or a PM cohort. And then on Tuesdays and Fridays, they'll have another class and those classes will be two and a half hours each. Twice a week plus they'll have remote instruction and support and or support on Wednesdays and the afternoon for each of those courses. And that will take place over the course of a quarter. So students will earn a full year's credit within one quarter of time in two courses. Our teachers had a lot of dialogue about moving to this and I know that that's a lot of, there's a lot of communication out in the community about taking a year long class and breaking it down to a quarter. And so some reasons behind that, number one is that our students are gonna be split in half. 50% of our students in a normal class will be sitting in a class in any cohort. So we'll have anywhere from 10 to 13 students in a class for two and a half hours. There's incredible opportunity for intensive instruction that can take place during that time, personalization and an abundance of time for support within that class. Our teachers will be working and they started to work on this when they left school in the spring, leading into the summer working on more depth than breadth of the standards that they cover. And that's good practice across the board, whether you're in a pandemic type schedule or you're in a traditional schedule is really digging in and mastering the content as opposed to trying to cover a whole bunch of content that students aren't able to retain. So I've heard from a lot of parents that retention is a concern. Our teachers are committed to that rigor. They don't want to see their students from ninth grade to 10th grade not gaining the math facts that they need in order to be successful when they enter into geometry or algebra two or pre-capitalist. So the work that we're doing in addition to that is that all teachers normally teach anywhere from the main is five classes. Some of our teachers teach six just based on the student requests. But for the most part the majority of our teachers teach five classes in an effort to make sure that there's equity across the board as far as teaching schedules and also to provide a multitude of opportunities for our students to not only get additional support throughout their schedule. So if they get math in quarter one our hope is that we can develop some sort of support system across the year in which students can also either be enriched in the math in some way, shape or form or still developing the support and enrichment classes or they're getting additional support. There are situations or there could be cases where a student doesn't do well and I'm just gonna use algebra one doesn't do well in an algebra one class in quarter one and may have the opportunity to take that algebra one class again in quarter three should they need to. So as a guiding coalition I think the group of teachers that we had within this in our guiding coalition we have AP teachers we have teachers representative of pretty much all subject areas including the arts that are a part of this team. When we walked out of there on the 17th we felt pretty good about what we were gonna put on the table which led us to bringing this in front of a group of students. So we invited about seven students actually we went to the staff first when we put it out in front of the entire staff then we went to our students and we brought about seven or eight students in and let them go through the schedule and talk about the process and the schedule itself. They picked poke holes in the schedule and actually brought up some really good points and then we had our parent group come in and allowed them to hear the proposal for the schedule and also poke holes and provide some feedback before we put it out into the community. So what you see or what you may have seen and put out into the community has gone through a pretty rigorous process as far as receiving feedback from various groups knowing that when we started this back in June it was just as important then as it is now. What I do know is that no schedule that we're gonna create that any school creates in a pandemic is going to satisfy everyone's needs. I think we've done an incredible job at being creative and thinking outside of the box to support the various perspectives that came to us and what we're asked of us. So I'm proud of our group. So it's definitely been a challenge. It's certainly been a challenge this week and we have a lot of work still to do as far as figuring out all the details that go with a schedule like this that's so different than the schedule that we left last year with. And lots of creativity, lots of opportunity but lots of challenges ahead as well. Yeah, thank you, Renee. I also wanna thank you for the video and the great work your team has done. I thought the video was a great way to present it to the community and the parents and I know a lot of people appreciated it. It was well explained and well done and very authentic. Questions for Renee? I just have a general question slash thought and it's based on some emails that we receive because we receive emails about similar concerns that you receive, Renee. And when I saw this, it reminded me a lot of Colorado colleges scheduling. They do a similar thing where they just focus on one class at a time. I know there are some other high level at universities that have some colleges that do a similar, take a similar approach. And I'm just wondering if as we, there might be some advantages that we might find along the way. And I'm just wondering the extent, this might be a question for Viper there too about what type of advantages, if we've explored what type of advantages could come with this type of programming and model because it is a little, it's unconventional for public high schools, but there are some leading academic institutions that follow similar models. So just, yeah. Yeah, I'll speak to that. And if Mike wants to jump or Viper, principle Viper, I think our group also feels like there's a lot of opportunity with this schedule. And I think when you look at the light of the pandemic and you look at education and what opportunities are presenting themselves to educational institutions right now, it's what we can do with it. We have completely, I don't know of any other school, a high school in the state that's doing this schedule like ours. And that can be scary, but that can also be super exciting. And I don't wanna say to the public here that this schedule is gonna continue on because there's definitely gonna be bumps in the road and things are gonna be shifted and changed. But I definitely think that there's a lot of opportunity within this schedule that can shift what teaching and learning looks like at Montpular High School. Viper? Sorry about the naming conventions, everyone. That is something that we just started talking about recently was trying to find some research around high schools in particular that had either moved through a semester model or something similar, as you mentioned. We haven't been able to find anything locally or even really in New England, but we've got some feelers out. We talked to the VPA and put some things out to folks on the interwebs to see if we can find some schools that are doing similar things. There is a Christian, there's a private Christian school in Massachusetts that's doing something very similar or has been actually pre-pandemic. Oh, sorry, Emma, go ahead. I said Jill's hand, but go ahead, Emma. I used to teach at Danville and they, I don't know if they're still doing this, but when I taught there, they did semester model. So students would have one class load for a semester and then a completely different class load second semester. Like a four by four. Yeah. I just had a comment that I've heard a lot of positive response from parents and some students. So I'm no expert in high school pedagogy or scheduling, but I think you guys have done an incredible job with incredible parameters that are once in a lifetime parameters. And I have, I have heard very vigorous and positive responses to that. So you should be commended, you and your team. Thank you. It's nice to hear that. Other comments or questions for Renee? Okay, thanks. And Libby, are you up next? Yeah, I was just thinking that I didn't want to leave the other principles out. If anybody wanted to ask Ryan or Katie or Beth a question or Bill here for a special education from the board, I don't want to, you know, make Renee feel totally special for presenting. So I'll just give a second if the board wants to ask any of the other administrators any questions about their schools specifically since I forced them to come to the board meetings. Not that you have to, just want to make sure you have the opportunity to. Well, since you're all here, I want to thank you all personally for the huge effort you've all put in. I think you've done a fantastic job of both putting together some really creative plans to bring our kids back safely. And I know you've been working around the clock and tirelessly. So we really appreciate both, you know, the work you've put together and the time you've put into the commitment you've shown to the district and the kids. So a hearty thanks for me. And I think I'll probably speak for all the other board members as well. So. Okay, I can get going. Oh, Emma, did you have a question? Did I see? Well, I just want whoever is here from the public to know that we are hosting the town hall tomorrow that's gonna have an opportunity to, there's a document circulating where you can post any questions and all questions will be answered tomorrow night at that town hall. And so there's been a lot of community members with a lot of questions and I'm sort of tempted to delve in and start asking some of those questions on behalf of the community. But I think tomorrow night is probably a better platform for that. Yeah, thank you for organizing that, Emma. I think that's gonna be a great opportunity for the community to get some further clarity. So thank you. Tim, actually I have a question for you just because it's a question I've been asked and I think as the chair it might be helpful for any members of the public watching. You know, a lot of times the community comes to school board members because we're community representatives for the district. But when it comes to where the rubber meets the road with regard to administration and a lot of the really heavy lifting that we're seeing here, we don't actually, we get briefed on it but we don't really have much of a decision-making role. And I just thought it might be helpful for you to clarify the board's role with regard to these schedules and everything. Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, actually I was on a call with Libby the other day and I'm sorry, I'm gonna credit her for pretty succinctly defining the board's role. The board really kind of has two roles in the administration of the school. Well, I guess three roles. One is we supervise the superintendent but in terms of actual impact on the school we have a financial oversight role. We approve the budget. So when it's budget time, obviously, we scrutinize the budget and can make budgetary choices that impact what gets funded and what doesn't or what levels. And we have a policy role. The policy role allows us to put general parameters around things or transportation would be a good example. A transportation policy that provides for busing and other means to ensure that our kids get safely to school. But in terms of who picks up Johnny at one time and at one route, those are decisions that go to the administration and as long as the administration is making reasonable decisions, we don't, our role there is simply making sure that the superintendent is implementing those policies in a manner that's reasonable and consistent with the policy. So we don't have a COVID policy. So right now we are doing all we can to give support to the administration around some decisions that have never really had to be dealt with before. And we're also dealing with mandates from the state that are coming down particularly over the last few months with less than complete consistency. There's been a lot of kind of quick turns and other adjustments that the administration has had to deal with. So our big roles are policy and finance. And unfortunately in this situation, neither one fits super neatly into a bucket that gives us a lot of clarity about what our role is. So in terms of the day-to-day decisions about curriculum and what the school day is gonna look like, we are listening to the administration and we're following what the state is telling us in terms of safety, et cetera, and trying to make sure that we stay informed and exercise as much oversight as we can without overreaching. So I don't know if that was helpful or not, but I think really framing it in the policy and finance, but in terms of putting together the programming and the curriculum and making decisions about what time school is gonna open, what the procedures are gonna be, those are decisions that are gonna be made by the administration with the guidance and the directives that the state are giving. All right, Jim, with that, you want me to get going? Yeah. Okay, so we have some conversations to have, the school board has some conversations to have around some dilemmas that are popping up around Roxbury Village School. We currently, and Beth, correct me if I'm wrong, we still have an open one, two position. You're interviewing soon, somebody, I believe? Actually, we had a pretty good interview yesterday and we are currently moving forward with this person of candidacy. Okay, so that's good. And I'll keep you informed. Okay, so that's good. So hopefully we have that one, two position filled, relatively soon. We still have an open nursing position. Beth has interviewed a few different candidates and they don't want the job. So we're, that's still open. I have talked to state representatives about that dilemma. We are not alone. As a small school, lots of small schools can't find a nurse right now. So we'll keep looking, but the board should be aware that we do not have a nurse at Roxbury School, even in the 0.5 capacity. Does, we thought we had one yesterday, but we don't have one today. I do have another applicant that I'll be following up with tomorrow, I just found out about it after five. Woo-hoo, that's good, that's good to hear. We have some lower pre-K numbers. They actually jumped up a little bit yesterday or the day before to six. They were at four when I wrote the board agenda. They're now at six for pre-K and we have potential staffing challenges there as well. So I have reached out to Central Vermont to see if they have room in their public pre-K, which would just be like an Act 166 tuitioning piece because their pre-K is 10 hours. And they're still checking in on that and getting back to me to see if they have room in their pre-K for students who are signed up for the RBS pre-K. But that is a major dilemma currently with RBS. The RBS bus situation. So there's two buses in Roxbury. One goes to the Roxbury Village School, so the elementary school kids. And the other takes the kids from Roxbury and brings them into Montpelier for MSMS and MHS. We currently don't have a bus monitor for either bus. We've had that school spring posting since the beginning of June and we've had zero takers. We've pulled our entire IA staff. Nobody wants that position. We believe we have bus monitors for the Montpelier buses through our IA staff, but we do not have anybody for the two Roxbury buses. Currently we have eight students who have answered on the survey that they are in need of bussing transportation. But one bus, the bus that is in Roxbury Village School is $55,000. So that's approximately $7,300 a year per kid to bus in Roxbury. So I think a conversation could be had at the school board level of, is that a financial piece that we want to do? Or could we eliminate that for a year and have parents drop kids off at Roxbury Village School or create some sort of community carpool thing? The bus from Montpelier to Roxbury, because we don't have a bus monitor, we can't do the health checks, although there is now a new rumor that as of, what, Mike, 6.15 this evening that the bus check, the bus health check is going to go away in the safety guidance, I've not seen that yet. That is just a rumor. As of a Senate Education Committee meeting today with Dan French and the Senate Ed Committee. So I didn't hear that, we saw it on Twitter. If that's the case, then this is a moot point, but right now the plan is because we don't have a health monitor or a bus monitor on that Roxbury bus that we would have kids who need to get to Montpelier from Roxbury get dropped off at RVS and probably Beth or somebody at Roxbury would be doing their health checks before boarding that bus and then getting them on the bus and taking them into Montpelier with no bus monitor on that. That has other issues as well, other challenges, as we had plenty of behavior challenges on that bus last year without the bus monitor. And this year we just simply can't have behavior challenges on that bus. So that's a challenge that we're still facing. So there's two busing challenges for Roxbury that I think is worth considering. Is it okay to not do door-to-door pickup with the Montpelier, the kids who need to get to Montpelier and does the school board wanna consider canceling the Roxbury Village School bus for a year because of low ridership? And the other piece of that is that we have a small ridership in the afternoon. So if we only have eight kids, now mind you a bus can hold 72 kids. So if we have eight kids on that bus and it's less in the afternoon, it's a significant expense to the district that we have planned and budgeted to pay for. However, if it's a spot that we could save some money, that's one thing to consider. So I'll stop right there for a minute. I have a couple, I have some other things district-wide but that's pretty Roxbury specific and I want the board to have a chance to discuss it if you would like to. Questions or discussions? Can I just ask, has the bus monitor position, the vacancy been posted anywhere besides school spring? It's been posted internally with all of our staff and it's been posted on school spring. Not sure where, I mean, we could put posters up in Roxbury probably. Yeah, I was gonna say, there were so many people that worked in Montpelier from Roxbury that I find it hard to believe there wouldn't be a few of those people willing to take the free ride up in the morning. Yeah, I think some local postings, flyers in town, front porch forum, et cetera, would probably yield to results if we haven't done anything besides. Yeah, we can certainly try. I think it's the hours that are a little tricky too. You gotta get back home and try. Yeah. We can certainly try though in the time we have left to post in other places. I actually was gonna ask you if I could post something at the library. Who's doing bulletin boards up on the outside? Okay, other questions or comments? Maybe just one more. Has anyone in the district reached out to the pre-K families to see about their possibilities of maybe self-selecting something else or a discussion of the situation? Has there been any contact with those families? Beth, do you wanna answer that? Yes, so in conjunction with the regular survey that had gone out to families, we had double-checked our registration and the numbers for preschool have pretty much been flexing in and out as those surveys come in, as let me share the other day we had for. The deadline for the district survey was today and so a few more flexed in as a result of that sibling. And so, Tina actually just confirmed the last one recently and so checked with all of the preschool families over the phone that we've been able to get a hold of to confirm the six enrollee that we have now. There are a few that we haven't been able to reach and there are different things going on with that that has made it difficult to get in touch with them. So yes, we've really made an effort to see what's going on in terms of the enrollment and what their plans are. Emma? I'm new to the Roxbury Village School busing discussion so I don't know the history or anything really about it. The $55,000 is that like a small yellow school bus and is that contracted through a company or what? Yeah, our buses are contracted through a STA and it's not a smaller bus. It's a larger bus. We couldn't, we're kind of stuck because you can't fit the eight kids with the safety guidance on a smaller bus and so it's a big bus or bust, really. Those are our two choices. Okay, yeah, because it seems like maybe even like leasing a bigger van or something like that for one year. Yeah, with the safety guidance, we're not allowed to have school staff in a van with more than two kids. And they wouldn't be able to do some sort of, I mean, I just don't know, I don't know because I'm new to this conversation but they wouldn't be able to do some sort of like two, two, two, like shuttling back and forth and just. I mean, we could, we have a van to do that. It's just, that's a lot of time and a staff member to do it, which we don't have, we'd have to hire or pull somebody away from the school from one of the three-month failure schools to do it. But I think if we, even if we hired someone and paid them pretty well, it would be cheaper than the $55,000. Yes, yes. And if we, if we're, so we have two employees right now who have the bus driver licensure. So you can't drive kids without the bus driver licensure. And so we have two people on staff who have that. One of whom is a social worker at NHS who's not available because he's working on his farm with kids with intensive needs. And the other is Drew, he has it for his after-school enrichment pieces and he's working as a pod teacher in, at MSMS. So we'd have to hire somebody with the driver's certification as well. Yeah. I would be interested in looking into that. It just feels, you know, the whole equity piece around like we're offering busing for some elementary school kids, but not others within the same district doesn't feel right to me. And I feel like there's probably a creative solution. If it's only eight kids, that seems like something that we could try to figure out a creative solution for. Any others? Sorry, Jim, I can talk to over you. As our category talking at the same time. I just say that's a year to start as a principal and thank you for everything that you've been doing. And I wondered if we don't have a nurse, are we not compliant somehow? Like is there, is there some hammer that drops if we don't have a nurse in time? And I'm sorry, you're having to deal with that on top of everything else. No, that's a great question. Sorry, go ahead, Libby. No, go ahead, Beth, you're doing great. No, because I actually didn't know the answer to the compliance question. I'm going to say I don't know the answer, but I do know that we've really been working hard on getting someone. And I think probably the issue is that it's part time and it's the era of COVID and school nurses in general are challenging for you to hire these days. But I don't know the answer for the compliance question. So perhaps I'll toss it back to Libby for that. This has been posed by the superintendents to Dan French quite a bit who have small schools and we have not gotten any answer on that. As far as compliant, I mean, there's very little times where a hammer will drop on us. The hammer would drop from our union. And we as administrators feel incredibly strong about the need for a nurse in this situation. If we can't get one, then Beth will not only be principal but she will also be nurse. And she's not registered or licensed to be a nurse and that's not what we really need her to do. Is there a state law or mandate with the state guidance that there needs to be a nurse? No-ish, you could claim reading the state guidance that there has to be a nurse. But I think the choice would be, are we doing that open then for Roxbury? I mean, that's kind of the choice. It sounds like really big, but that's our choice. There's no real other way to get a nurse in there unless we can hire somebody or to handle that situation unless we can hire somebody. And they haven't given you guys, you guys being superintendents, any flexibility about who can work as a school nurse? You know, we've asked for waivers on that. We've asked for waivers on it and they won't do those waivers. Okay. Thanks. What about any provisional licensing stuff? So is it a school nurse license or can they just be, can they be in Ellen or Naran? At this point, I think they have to have a school nurse license and I don't know what the provisional status for that one is. I mean, we can get a provisional status for everybody else so I don't see why we couldn't get one for a nurse. But at this point, and I think Beth would agree that I'll take anybody. I'm like, we'll hire them as a consulting basis. If they are willing to be there for five days a week, we'll take anyone to come in who's got the background right now and can do that work. This is like when you're saying, Ryan's question about like where are we advertised? Have we advertised this to end in any other ways in the school spring? Yes, we've advertised this in a nursing, it's like a statewide nursing place. We have a state nurse, I don't know who it is, but the state nurse attached to us every school has kind of like a liaison to the Department of Health through some sort of nurse and she wrote me last week asking what kind of help I needed with the guidance and I just wrote back and said the only help I need is you finding me a nurse. And so she sent me some websites and we've posted it on there. We've posted on everything she sent us to and we don't have any hits from it. This is just thinking outside as a box, but has anyone reached out to the nursing department at Norwich University? No, we have not done that. Just because those people are, I'm thinking physically closer to Roxbury than some other things. And because they sometimes have access or at least thoughts about things nursing wise that I guess I would call us civilians maybe don't think about. I know the main problem is just that like looking for someone who's got adequate licensure and can spend the time. But yeah, I'm just trying to think what creative elements that we could pull on for people that maybe haven't already heard about it. Yeah, I think licensure is a piece of it. Ryan? Yeah, Libby later in the agenda, we're being asked to increase the PE position from point four to point eight. I had kind of assumed that that asked was to accommodate maybe this nursing piece a little bit. How does that increase the PE position in the fall into this conversation? That increase for the PE position is to make the pod model whole at RVS. So when we're trying to get two adults in each classroom to help eliminate the need for substitutes and to ensure that each classroom has two adults in it at all times or whenever basically it's the substitute piece to do risk mitigation. We could do that with our staff at UES and we could do it with our staff that was present at MSMS. But because of all the part timers at RVS we couldn't do it. So the ask for Scott who is willing to do it, if the board sees it's a good fit, is so that Scott would be placed with a teacher so he would be the second person in a pod. That's the basis of that ask. So it's not connected to the nurse's need. But Beth has said can we increase the nurse even more to point eight and maybe then we'll get somebody but I don't know if we would or not. Sure. And then we just final question. If there is to be board action on the busing preschool would you be expecting that at the next meeting? What's kind of the timeline for making decisions? Well, I still don't know if there's spots at Northfield for the pre-K kids. And they're getting, I wrote to them a few days ago and they're still getting back to me. So they may have been able to find spots for four. I don't know if they can find spots for six. So I'm still waiting on that piece. The next board meeting is in two weeks, right? Yeah. And so the question there for that piece is we have to let parents know that piece, right? Because they're expecting their kids to be in the pre-K at that time. So I'm not sure about what the board wants to do with that piece of information. The busing piece we probably could hold until the 12th and let everybody think about it a little bit. Certainly Ryan and Jerry can reach out to people in the community to ask, to talk to. You can, Ryan, you can address it with your wife since you're two of the eight who needs nothing. I'm a quarter of the eight. Yeah, exactly. So I think the bus is a big one. But again, you budgeted for it already. So that was money we expected to spend. But it's also a year where if we can save some things, we should. And if it would, I don't know how much it would put people out or not. So. Some delegate? On the busing thing, maybe you mentioned 55,000 for a large bus and you can't accommodate in a smaller bus. What's the difference for getting a smaller bus? And a second part of that is Emma asked, can we do a multiple round trip? So can we get a smaller bus to do two round trips and split the kids? Yeah, I haven't looked into that, Anna Kitt. I can certainly talk to our bus company around that to see if they have a smaller bus available. So when I say smaller bus through the bus company, imagine a bus that holds kids with significant special needs in the morning. And so I don't know what they have and what they don't have. I have not reached out to the bus company regarding that piece. And if they would be willing to do two runs. What has typically happened in the past and I'm not sure what's happening now is that the Roxbury bus typically latches onto other bus routes because it has low numbers. When I say other bus routes, I mean, Williamstown and Randolph even last year, Brandon and Northfield. So I don't know what this impact would be on other bus routes, but I know there's some shared entity there with our bus company. And I also don't know how much that smaller bus costs and Grant's not on the call tonight. So I can't get that information right now, but I can certainly bring that information next time and talk to Stacy Emerson, who's our bus garage person in between now and then. Other questions? No, so next is board feedback on the- I have a couple other things, Jim. I'm sorry. Oh, sorry. Sorry. I just wanted to say just so the in-person virtual data and some most likely needs. So I'm gonna turn off the survey after the board meeting tonight and just to give the board a sense. At the moment, we have about 1075, which is almost 85% response rate, which is great. And we're almost to 20% who would like the virtual option. It's really interesting how that's sugaring out in terms of grade level. We are most likely gonna run our virtual academy for K6 and then our seventh and eighth graders are mostly, we're gonna tag up with the Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative because of the high numbers and because of the specialties with our seventh and eighth grade. So seventh and eighth grade turns to licensure, much like high school has licensure qualifications, which makes it more difficult for us to run those two sessions or those two pieces as part of our virtual academy simply because we have to take more teachers in order to make that happen. And then Katie won't have the teachers she needs for the in-person. So we have a little bit of a conundrum there that we didn't think through in the beginning, but Mike has been talking closely with Vermont Virtual Learning Collaborative around the seventh and eighth grade to pair up with them to help us out with that. And if you have any questions, Mike or Mike there is more than happy to answer those questions. Well, most likely because of the numbers do a straight grade through fourth grade. So we'll have a K1, 2, 3, 4, and then a 5, 6, multi-age based on the numbers right now. We could have a flurry before the end of the evening, but that's where we are right now. And then the last thing that the board really needs to be aware of is that what I've spoken to before is still very much in play that I am incredibly concerned about our staff and their mental status and coming into the school building and the status overall of the position the NEA is taking. And I'm not putting any judgment on that position whatsoever, but I do think the board needs to be well aware that there are significant staffing challenges across the state. The administrative team is talking closely as to how we can solve childcare challenges. And I think we might be able to solve childcare challenges, but this goes beyond childcare. It goes into I don't wanna come into the building. That's where we're at. With that, I don't feel safe. My family doesn't feel safe and how could you ask me to do that? So there are some major ethical challenges that we're facing just as human beings, not just as administrators. We're not alone in that. Everybody's facing the same challenges, but the board really needs to know that this could all crumble very quickly if our staff decides they're just not coming in. And they'd probably be deciding that over a statewide level, not a local level. However, that is a reality that we are all wondering if it will happen by September 8th. So I definitely wanted to put that out there. I think every superintendent in the state is talking to their board about that problem, but there's definitely a large percentage of our staff in Montpelier-Roxbury who is incredibly concerned for their wellbeing and their welfare. We have designed, I believe, the system that can mitigate risk the most, but notice I don't say safe. I say mitigate risk the most because that's what we're trying to do. And our staff understand that and they know that and they understand the science and they understand where Vermont is right now and they're also terrified. Many of them are also terrified. So we're working, we're trying to work through that. We're providing some help with an in-service around that piece, but the board definitely needs to know that that is the card that will bring everything down immediately and we will have to pivot to a virtual world overnight again. We'll be more prepared for it this time, but that's a very real piece that could happen in the coming weeks. So I just wanted to put that message out there to everybody. Go ahead, Anka. We talked, you guys talked about the schedule, school schedule and how it's gonna happen in person learning. I was just curious how much of a buying we have from the teachers? What's the, you know, you've got the input from the teachers. Is there a sense that teachers have bought into it or, you know, I'm just trying to get a sense of that. I don't think the term buying into it is the term we want to use. And principals speak up and Mike and Bill as well, speak up if you want to add anything to this. I think- I'm sorry to cut you off. I didn't mean to be crude. I just, I was trying to say, not buying in, but maybe on board with the plan. Yeah. I think that our teachers understand that the administration has worked incredibly hard to mitigate as much risk as possible. I think that there's a clear understanding of that. And that we have been very transparent and we have included them in every conversation we could, particularly through the union leadership. I think there's a difference between understanding that and dealing with a disease that's just quite, that is terrifying them. And so we hear children are safe and the state is parading pediatrician after pediatrician across that podium, saying children are safe, but they have yet to address the fact that they're, that I have over 200 adults that are in my employee and that I am responsible for. And so that, and that they're scared, right? And so we're trying, that's the rub that is not, they understand the pediatricians. They believe the pediatricians for the most part. However, it's this other piece of what risk am I willing to take for this job? That is the bigger question. Principles, do you want to add on to any of that from what you're hearing from your staff? Yeah, I mean, I can. The at-risk population of staff at our school is pretty significant. In addition, people who work so hard and diligently on our guiding coalition to create this schedule that we did, just a good percentage of them that are super scared about coming back. So their commitment to trying to make something work, but behind the scenes, they're scared to death of walking into the building. And I held a town hall today with my staff and I'll tell you that they're, I would say 80% of the questions that came out today were about safety. So I have to ask the question then. I mean, I understand parents want their, a lot of parents want their kids, not at home for learning, but with those considerations in mind, why aren't we starting with a remote option first and basing in a physical option? It's a question that's been asked of me, so. Yeah, yeah, and it's a legit question. I mean, first of all, I go back to the time period or the history, right? On June 17th, we were told to open in person. We weren't given the option to open virtually until about four weeks ago. So that's the first thing, right? We were told to open in person and the option came much later on. Secondly, the science does support opening. It's clear. Like we're in a relatively safe, we're in the best state in the union right now with this disease and it's clear for kids as well, especially those under 10. So the science does support us going back in in person and regardless of whether we want to say it or not, we are the drivers of this economy, regardless of what that means. I mean, it means several things to me, but we have 80% of our parent population who wants and needs our kids in school. And bottom line, I firmly believe kids need to be in school and I think most of our teachers believe kids need to be in school. And there's the rub that it's the adults that make the school work. So why we're starting in person in the way we did, one, we were told to and the wheels were going before we were told that we could do other things. Two, we're in a very safe place. Washington County has the least number of, I think, and no, Northeast Kingdom does, but we might be second for a number of cases in the state. The science works for in-person instruction. It's the risk mitigation that adults are willing to take or not willing to take. That is the card that will pull it down. I don't know if that answers your question, Andrew, but that's when we think about the timeline here, that's what we're dealing with. Thanks, Lodi. Jill? I just wanted to add to that, I think what you've provided with the option, I haven't heard any other district do that. There's lots of talk between teachers and parents and relatives about what different districts are doing. And I'm really impressed that Montpelier Rocksbury was able to offer that choice. I think that, I don't know what else you could do, frankly, to provide the options that you have for families and for students. I don't think there's anything else you could do because I hear Andrew's point, but I also hear a lot of and experience myself the need for our kids and the want for our kids to be back in school and that virtual works for some and not others. And so to provide that option and then five days of each is unique that I've heard. And I think it's pulling a rabbit out of a hat. And I haven't seen another district be that creative and that flexible and offering those options. So I don't know that there's anything else you folks that could have possibly done. Joe, my point though was about the staff. It wasn't about our students and about our families who obviously are critically wanna, they're the centerpiece of our schools, but so are our teachers. And so our teachers don't have the choice that you're talking about. So that's where that question came from. And I think it really needs to be said that, and I think it's hard to say this, but until we have a vaccine or an effective treatment, the safety concern will always be there. Yeah, and the only thing to add to that, Jim, is that the vaccine, people have asked a lot about when the vaccine comes in December, are you gonna switch this all up? The vaccine's not gonna come in December. It's just not gonna happen. And when a vaccine comes, regardless of December, January, whenever, it's not coming to Vermont first. And all of them are gonna be a two-shot vaccine that take a month in between them. So when you really factor in all of the pieces around the vaccine, like we're in this for a full year, at least, at least. And so we need to consider that piece. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but the vaccine piece can, we get a lot of questions about when the vaccine comes in November, are we gonna switch this all up when the vaccine's not coming in November? Yeah, no, I think that's a very good point. I think I was echoing that point, which is until we get to the point where we've got community vaccination, and that's gonna be a while, that this risk is gonna be with us to some degree. And I think you're right, Libby, that right now, if the numbers stay where they're at in the state, we are about as safe a place as you can be in terms of going back to an in-person situation, which I think, and this is why it's obviously not just a district-wide decision or a statewide decision, but keeping Vermont's numbers low and all the community things that are involved in doing that and the precautions have to be things that we have to keep talking about to our neighbors. I have a question, Libby, with regard to students and families. If we have students and families that are traveling to areas that are red and yellow on the state's map in terms of risks for quarantining when they come to our state, have we considered or have any schools considered, do you know, any steps for dealing with those types of situations because? They have to quarantine. They have to quarantine under state rules. It's not an MRPS rule. That's a state rule. So teachers will have to work. That's a choice that parents are gonna make, right? And it's also a choice that students, if they make those choices, students will miss some learning. That's a choice that's, you know, that's a part of the consequence of making a choice to traveling someplace where quarantine is mandatory. For our staff, the FFCRA or FFCR, no, it's FFCRA, gives staff a one-shot deal for 10 days of quarantine, but that's a one-shot deal. And so after that, well, it's 14 days, but in a work week, it's 10 days, right? So after that one shot, then they have sick time, they have their leave, right? But quarantine doesn't fall under a sick leave. So they'd have personal days, they have four or five personal days that they can take. But they have one shot for quarantining. We're having that question a lot around parents dropping kids off from college, at college and having to come back in quarantine and being in a din service right then, right? So we don't have any right to tell them no. I don't believe, I haven't asked my legal yet about that, but other superintendents are saying we do have that right. So it's a question I have for Pietro, but that's a reality that happens every year around this time. And so they'll have to quarantine and that's their shot, that's their 10 days that they get for under that act. And that act runs out December 31st. So, but if families choose to make that, make that choice to travel where they're gonna need to quarantine, then they're also making the choice that their learning will look very different and that teachers will do what they can to help with that learning. But if they have chosen an in-person option, then they're gonna miss learning opportunities. The other piece I wanna say about the staff piece is that this administrative team has worked as the school board knows, but it's worth repeating, worked incredibly hard to make options that still can educate children to high levels of learning and mitigates as much risk as possible. When Ryan Harry came in and said, I wanna do the pod model at UES, all of us thought he was crazy and then he said, no, we can make it work, right? So Ryan's got it at UES and then Katie said, hey, I wanna do that at MSMS. And Beth said, what do I need to do to do that at RBS? Like we've been working together to mitigate as much risk as possible and the high school schedule is another piece of that. I know Renee's getting a lot of feedback around learning opportunities and missing out on learning opportunities, but that is not the only piece of this puzzle right now in this global pandemic that safety and mitigating risk is a major piece of the puzzle for our staff. So it's just worth repeating that over and over again as well. Go ahead, Emma. Yeah, I think it's just such a complicated moral dilemma and it's really heartbreaking to think about any of our staff being afraid to come into work and that does not sit well with me and I am really open to hearing any creative solutions that are within the school board's power to help make people feel safe. If it's a budgetary thing, if there's anything that teachers feel like they need in their classrooms, that would help in their risk assessment to feel a tiny bit safer or if there's some other creative solution that we haven't looked at. I mean, just personally as a board member, I'm open to hearing and I know that you've heard millions of them and doing whatever within our power to, I mean, in an ideal world like Andrew said, everyone would have the same choice that the kids have and the parents have of choosing virtual or choosing in person and that our staff would have that same choice and I know that there's a lot of roadblocks to offering that. But I'm good. And we've got all our staff, we've got a mask, we've got goggles, we've got face shields, we've got plexiglass screens, we've got a lot of things coming in also that Andrew LaRosa has done a great job taking the lead on to provide more risk mitigation than before. Jill, did I hear? Yeah, I probably shouldn't weigh in, but I think it's just important when we have these conversations to remember that the majority of working parents don't have a union or pay the leave time to the extent that a lot of maybe those of us on this call and those of us who work in a school have and I know even some school employees do not have a particularly livable wage. So I just think it's really important that we don't lose touch with that reality and sort of speak about this up here when it might feel very out of touch to a significant number of parents who are probably not on the call right now who have not had a choice all along about whether they can go to work or not. That has not been an option. They would lose their job and they may be at Shaw's, they may be at the post office, they may be at the hospital. And so I just want us to sort of remember that flavor of respect for the fact that, well, I absolutely hear and understand and want to do everything I can obviously for our incredible staff. I think it's out of touch if we don't keep in mind that there are a lot of our parents and families who have been working all along through this and do not have that option and do not have that same protection. And so to just keep that in our mind when we're making these decisions. Cause I know there's a lot of parents, frankly, that struggled before with that period of time after school got out at three o'clock where their kids were left to their own devices through no fault of theirs and they don't want that to happen. And there's a ton of kids who have been alone all summer or watching siblings because their parents don't have those choices. So I just, I just felt that was important to just put that out there on the record. And thank you. I'm not implying anyone has it, but I think it's important to keep in mind. Thank you. Thanks, Joe. Other comments, questions? I have one more question for you, Libby. What, because you started to talk about this for a second. I know some districts are providing their teachers with PPE and some districts are giving their teachers like one disposable mask. Can you tell us a little bit, you've mentioned a little bit about what the students will get, but can you talk a little bit about what staff, teachers, support staff will be getting in terms of risk mitigation equipment and as well as students, I know we have some masks for students. Can you talk? We have masks for students and staff. The state has wonderfully gotten us 10 masks per adult. So we got the first two weeks taken care of from the state. So we do have those masks from the state. I don't know if they're reusable or not, but each adult will get 10 of them. They're K and 95. So they're not the N95, they're the KN95, which is the next step down from what healthcare uses. We have gotten every staff member and we're working on getting every staff member goggles if they want to use goggles and also face shields. Our nurses wanted us to go with the goggles over the face shield where we've gotten plexiglass for students or for our special education staff in particular, as well as our office assistants. We've moved desks around. Mike Barry has been working in the cafeteria so Anna can have his office in the central, I mean, we're doing all we can in terms of helping each other out here with movement and flexibility and PPE. We have, the nurses are all set. I saw their gowns came in this week. So they're all set with gowns and they're getting pretty much top of the line treatment around PPE as well and what they would have in a hospital. So we've ordered quite a bit. It's just we're waiting for it all to come in now. But yeah, we're spending the money in our fund balance. We're not holding back saying that we don't have the money for this. We are spending that money too. And because we always said it's for a rainy day, right? And it's pouring right now. So we are making sure that we have what we need to help that risk mitigation piece. This is gonna be a really nitty gritty sounding question but is there a plan for things like library materials and gym equipment that are typically circulated and trade hands with people? Like, are we still doing those things? Are we setting it up differently? We're saying differently. So the library and association recommends that books stay in quarantine for 72 hours when they come back. And so our librarians will set up a system for that. The pediatricians have been quite clear that things like classroom libraries and stuff, this disease is airborne more than it's on services. So they've been pretty clear that books are okay, that we want books and kids' hands and the librarians are all setting up that piece. Our gym teachers aren't going to be using equipment. It just looks much different. Brian Gallagher will be working very differently at MHS and our PE teachers at the other three buildings will be in classrooms as pod teachers. So it will be more of a movement kind of focus for PE rather than a ball and equipment focus for PE moving forward. Each, Ryan, you may be able to speak to this better than I can but I think I believe for recess and our younger grades each pod will have a bag of recess equipment. Is that true, Ryan? Yeah, that's correct, they've arrived. They've arrived, so each pod will have a piece of a bag so the same kids will use the same equipment every day and they'll also have their own space out there, right, Ryan? Each pod will have a space designated to them. Yeah, we have a schedule set out right now so that when kids go to recess they will be split by class so that they stay within their pod. And we're also very grateful that the city agreed to close down Park Avenue for the year which has expanded our outdoor space. So we intend to use that either as additional outdoor space for recess or to use it as outdoor space by section for teachers to take their kids out for snack and lunch if they can just to try to mitigate as much risk as they can. And this is another, just a kind of ignorance I don't know the answer to this. What during the school year, what did the elementary schools do? Is there a cut off for when it gets too cold or too icy to go outside and what do they do when that happens? Ryan, go for it. I can take that. We have some pretty hearty kids in Vermont which was a bit of a shock for me when I moved up from Massachusetts that the community expectation is that the kids go outside every day and I think that is just a super healthy mentality but from a practical standpoint when it's unsafe for kids to be outside then they don't go outside. And zero degrees is a cut off that includes the windshield other than that if it's not pouring rain outside or freezing rain outside or below zero degrees the kids they pretty much go outside and they wanna be out there. And what happens to them when it is zero or pouring? Well, I think in the past the teachers tried to adjust their schedules as much as they can. So if they were scheduled to go out at 9 a.m. for their recess and it's too cold in the morning then they would try to have an additional recess in the afternoon to get their kids outside. This year, if kids can't get outside then we're not gonna have any common spaces for them that's against the guidance so they won't be able to go to the gym or to the calf or somewhere like that. The kids will have to be in their room. The one thing that we're feeling grateful for is last year we had a large contingent of our teachers that did some movement and mindfulness training and we feel like there's an opportunity there to build that capacity within our schools. So the movement and the yoga work that they did last year I think is something that they can do from their standing position in class. Other questions, comments? Emma? Libby, I think I heard you mentioned that you were gonna close the survey tonight and it's the fifth and we said that the deadline was the fifth so I would just ask that you wait until midnight. Not that you need to wake up at midnight, but... Not waking up at midnight to close that survey. I can do it at five, four, three in the morning when I wake up in the morning. I think that would be better just because we've told people the fifth and some people might wanna fill it out later tonight. No. Next item? That's the RVS. Is it or is it the, yeah, there's a board feedback on all those procedures. Oh, yeah. So the board should have gotten that in their packet. Everybody wants to pull that up. I'm gonna pull mine up. I think my only question on it was, are we gonna, if someone has a fever 104, are we gonna require testing? We can't. Does it sound that way, huh? We can't. Yeah. So let me pull this up too first. Well, so this is the background of this piece right here is that, sorry, I was just pulling it up. So the secretary of education for weeks had been telling us that we were gonna get a formalized matrix for school closure decisions. That came two weeks ago when it said the superintendent will be making all decisions around school closure for the exception of step one with some help from the Department of Health. I mean, I'm paraphrasing there, but that's basically what it said. It was one sentence. And so when that happened, I immediately called Jim and said, I need your help with this. This can't be just on my shoulders here. So the document that you saw in the board packet for the illness procedures, the draft packet. So what happened was I took the words from the guidance, which it was different than what you see here because the guidance does have a step between student registers a temperature of 104 and confirmed case. There's it, well, the confirmed case for COVID-19 in a school or student, the guidance says to close off that area for 24 hours and then do a deep clean and then have people come back in. And so that's what it basically, that's what it originally said. The administrator, so I took a chance at a chop at it. The administrative team gave feedback and changed it up. Then I brought this document to my nurses union leadership and administration. And we had some long conversations about some really hard questions that we don't necessarily know the answer to. But what we all agreed upon with the confirmed case first of all, that's gonna happen after that kid is most likely or that adult has been in our classroom because the way the state testing is working is that confirmed cases don't come back for three or five days. And so there's a very large possibility that person could have been infecting others in our buildings prior to a confirmed case. So, and the reality is, is that if there's a confirmed case in Franklin Northeast up in, up North and Franklin County in their school, we will most likely close as well. The political pressure that will be on superintendents across the state at that moment in time will be enormous. And I can imagine a sick out happening almost immediately with our staff. We won't be able to staff our school if there's some sort of confirmed case. And so after the administration and union leadership and nurses and we talked about it for a long time, we basically just said, let's just say that then, that if there's a confirmed case, we're closing down until we can figure this out. So if the board would like me to change that back to what the guidance said, then I can do that as well. But there's pretty much, the reality is that the political pressure on every single one of us will be huge in that moment. I did, you'll notice in the middle of who makes that decision. I did open up to its principals, its myself, it's any central office administrator, including Andrew LaRosa will be in collaboration with the Department of Health, because if I'm not available for whatever reason, I don't plan on not being available. But if I'm not available, then I wanna make sure that anyone on my team can make that call confidently without having to run it by me at first. So that's a piece of this that I want the board to definitely know. Jim, what you're asking about is what we can say, because we had this conversation and the nurses weighed in on this, what we can say is you need to talk to your health provider before coming back into school and that they will take guidance from the pediatrician or doctor if it's a teacher. So we can say that, but we can't require a test to happen. We don't have those tests available to us, right? So we can't make that happen. The challenge that I see here is that the guidance is written for bipediatricians with one or two soups and a couple of school nurses involved that for a doctor's office, it's written with thinking that people are just passing through and that there's lots of room for people to quarantine in or to isolate in. When in reality, that's just not what happens. We have a group of kids that are in adults that are there every single day and they're not passing through, they're always there. And the fact of the matter is if you look at those symptoms, anybody with a child, look at those symptoms and think to yourself, how many times a year does my child have one of those symptoms? Often. You know, often. So the nurses say there's any given day that I'll have four or five kids with a high fever in my office or I'll have three kids with diarrhea in my office. And so we'll have one isolation room in a nurse's office in our schools, but when we have four or five kids with a fever, we can't isolate four or five kids. So there's some big reality questions there that we keep posing as superintendents to the Department of Health and the Secretary of Education. And the answer that we get is do the best you can. We have to work within our realities and do the best we can. So a lot of people are asking us questions around what's gonna happen if a kid has a fever? Am I gonna get notified if a kid in my class has a fever? And the reality is, no, you're not gonna get notified if a kid in my class has a fever because that happens often. And our nurses would be on the phone the entire day calling much of our school population. And there's also HIPAA and all kinds of FERPA violations there as well. So this is a piece that's really tricky and I know a lot of our people, our family and our community has some significant concerns over this piece. Rightly so. Rightly, I'm not belittling those concerns at all but this and the staffing piece may be the biggest challenge that we're facing in terms of this disease. When you look at those symptoms and think about your own children, it's big. I mean, Jim, I know you put out an all-colleague, people have to get vaccinated this year for the flu. That's a biggie. Like to really encourage people to get vaccinated for the flu this year to try to eliminate some of these symptoms coming in. The other piece is I know I am guilty. I will not do it this year. I can promise my children school this but I am guilty of dragging my kid up and sending them in when they had 100 degree fever because I know it's gonna be over 100.4 by noon, right? And I will not be doing that this year and parents cannot do that this year to bring that fever, that 99.9 fever down. We just can't do it as parents anymore because we know that fever's probably gonna spike by noon. So there's some real realities here that our nurses are kind of like, we'll do the best we can with it. And we will have a zero pressure isolation room and we will have all the PPE gowns. But the fact of the matter is we will have days where there are five kids lined up outside that nurse's office all with a fever or with one of those symptoms. And so that's just a reality and we will do the best we can with it. I have a question for you, Libby. Where does the 100.4 threshold come from? I wish I had one of my nurses here. That's a threshold for a fever. Anything underneath that is not technically a fever. Libby, I have a question thinking about the kids lining up in front of the nurse's office. So last year, the year before that, I had been asked, are nurses provided a lot of healthcare for kids? The kids in our district would have had vision tests, would have had hearing tests. There was a whole slew of dentist visits. Like our kids received a good bit of healthcare inside our schools. So we have quite a few of our students who will not be potentially entering our schools this year. Do we have any plans or any ways of maybe being able to maybe check in on those students who are 100% remote? Are you so more to the doctor's office? You know, have you been to the dentist this year? Just kind of some general healthcare check-ins? Not even related to COVID. Mike, have you thought about that at all as the principal of the virtual academy? Yes, I have. I'm sure you have. Yeah, I was waiting for the dust to settle with the nurses and the staff to really visit that. There's a component of the virtual academy planning where we wanna set up access to school staff like social workers, nurses, guidance counselors, things that they would typically have access to in the building to make sure that those are still there. Other questions or comments? Well, thanks a bit for putting those together. Now we're on to the action item on the 0.4 FTE, the PE position at RES to 0.8. And I know that we used you, I think largely explain the justification for this which is to fit the pod mode. Anything else you wanna add before we? I can tell you, it's an approximate $20,000 expense. Yeah. Do I have a motion to increase the RVSPE from 0.4 to 0.8 for one school year? And are we paying for that out of fund balance? Is that the idea? We might be able to buy it to put it into a COVID related expense. Oh, right, yeah. We'll try that first, but other than that we would pay for it out of the fund balance, yes. Okay, thanks. A motion? I have a motion to approve the RVSPE position from 0.4 to 0.8 for the upcoming school year. Thanks, Ryan. Andrew, you want a second? Yeah, I second. Oh, any discussion? No? Anakin? Hi. Ryan? Hi. Emma? Hi. Andrew? Hi. Jill? Hi. Mara? Hi. And Jerry? Hi. I think that's everyone. A motion passes. And while we have it, why don't we also vote to appoint Jerry as clerk because that's the other action item that we need. Jim, before we go through the voting, can I say goodbye to my administrators so they can go to bed? Yes, you can. Five principals and administrators. Thank you for joining us. Thank you all so much. Sorry, go ahead. Do I have a motion to appoint Jerry Huck as clerk of the board? No motion. A second? I'll second. Anakin? Hi. Oh, any discussion? All right, Anakin? Hi. Ryan? Hi. Emma? Hi. Andrew? Hi. Jill? Hi. Mara? Hi. Jerry? Hi. All right, great, motion passes. Sorry, we'll turn to one on where I'm at. So we were going to have a third policy reading, but Ryan, you said that the policy committee is taking up. And also, do you discuss a possible realignment of the committee as well, or at least just? We did, yeah. Maybe before we get out of the action item, who would make sense to take care of the policy committee addition? So unfortunately, Jill left us. She stepped down. Now that she's on some other committees. So we have a vacancy on the policy committee. The committee had met on Monday for a meeting, and it felt like a fourth person is imperative for this coming time year. So we would like to take a minute and appoint someone else before the motion is passed forward, whatever. Bridget has agreed to join us. If there was nobody else who was willing to, Bridget would be more than happy to try out a policy committee. So we have in front of us tonight. Who's on that committee again, Ryan? Would you mind just telling folks? Right, so the policy committee is Emma, Mara, myself, and the fourth appointment who is forthcoming. Bridget. If there is a motion she'd be happy. If she's more than happy, I'd make the motion to appoint Bridget to the policy committee. Notice Bridget's that here tonight. And she's more than happy. Coincidence? She's willing. And she's great in that role. She's spectacular in that role. No, she's really, she's done a fantastic job on that committee. I will second that. Any discussion? Okay. Hi. Ryan? Hi. Hi. Andrew? Hi. Bill? Hi. Mara? Hi. And Jared? Hi. Great, motion passes. So, up for pro of that, the, what was supposed to be our third policy reading on transgender and gender nonconforming students, it sounds like the policy committee wants to do a little extra work on that. Roger, rather than taking action tonight, it's going to be more of an update session from the policy committee. First, probably easier at the gender draft policy that we've been talking about for several meetings now. At the last reading, there was no other input from the board. However, Libby had come to the board with some feedback from the guidance counselors and the show's workers. Really nothing too dramatic. It was adding in a different definition and then changing one term in one section, I think. We did that. We plugged it in. We kind of talked through that and we found one other section where we thought it might make sense to change the term transgender to something else, which ultimately ended up opening up a good can of worms thinking about the specific terms we were using throughout the policy to make sure it is as inclusive as possible. The policy had been a bit transcentric when it first came to us, so binary focused. And we had felt like it might take worthwhile for the committee to spend one more week, maybe two more weeks, potentially considering some other terminology rather than just strictly transgender and gender non-conforming. I think the only guidance that we would look for tonight before we really flesh it out into specifics would be whether or not that the board was somehow opposed to the idea of maybe not having it be slightly more non-binary focused. All right, correct me if I'm wrong, but the term we had fully in our discussion on having a firm agenda, so that's, again, there's, from what I understand, there isn't great language surrounding the topics that this policy is addressing, so we're kind of doing our best to ensure that we do accomplish what we want with dynamic goals. And as I was making some language edits, I just, I was thinking about the fact that what we really want is for the policy to apply to all students, right? Like, because any of our students may be trans non-binary or questioning, and any of those students may be in any stage of being out or wondering or even just trying to test out something to see if it's okay. So I spent a little bit of time trying to put things in where we say like all students have the right to, you know, like have their gender affirmed via the name and pronouns that they prefer to affirm their gender, right? So that, you know, for most kids, they won't ever think about that thing, but technically they are then covered in that, they are then covered under that policy as well. I actually had a really weird situation at not our school district, another school district, where there was a harassment thing going on where it was like a coach who was repeatedly calling his, like his track team boys, ladies and blah, blah, blah, blah, and while that's a harassment thing all on its own, there was some question that came up in our district about like, if we had a thing saying everyone gets to be the gender that they want to be and that we don't use gender to shame or to other or et cetera. So those are some of the pieces that I was putting in there. I don't think it's gonna change the functionality much at all, but Emma just raised a really good point that if it mostly only says transgender and you know, if someone maybe isn't out as transgender, it can sometimes feel like maybe that policy isn't for them, or if you're a non-binary kid and it says transgender, you may feel like, well, it specifies transgender here and gender non-conforming another paragraph but not here. So that was probably a bunch of convoluted garble that may or may not have been useful, but I think that we are actually doing a really beautiful job writing this policy and speaking as someone who works for outright, I will be really excited to use Montcoyers as a Montcoyer Roxbury as a model for other schools when I talk to them about how to write policies like this. Now, I don't make sense and I think getting clarity and ensuring that it's as broad as possible and that there's not an institution about who it covers and that it's very inclusive. I think that all makes a lot of sense. The procedural question I have is at some point, does it become a re-written policy that you have to go back to square one? It will have to be another reading for sure. It won't be able to be adopted when it comes back and nobody has even been questionable after we had changed those definitions before the last reading. So yes, there will definitely have to be at least one more, maybe two more in. It won't be adopted again without being read. Also the changing of the language in the one section that I pointed out was under the student records section. And so that brought up this question about like, are we creating a policy that our school cannot comply with just in the software that they use and that type of thing? Like, is there, we wanna make sure that the policy that we're creating can be followed. Great, well thanks for all the work on this and I look forward to seeing the changes. Maybe one other just kind of temperature taking from the board. The SBA has sent out an email today that included some recommendations on some policies that related to what we had earlier about the board's roles, the superintendent's roles, how the school is supposed to be operating throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. They had proposed, I think I'd be totally honest here, they came across this afternoon and I haven't had a chance to read them. So I'm just making assumptions based on titles and very cursory reading. But it looks like they're asking boards to kind of declare in a formal fashion that we are delegating our power to the superintendent to make decisions on how we operate or we as a board are committing to making all of our decisions through policy for how the board, excuse me, for how the district will be functioning throughout the pandemic. I know we as a committee had actually talked about that last week as well. Should we be making a tendency to all of our policies? Should we be making a global COVID-19 pandemic statement on how we're gonna be operating? So we've actually been a little bit on our radar and then BSBA has come out with a couple of templates kind of structuring which of those two routes would go to a fun and go based on your selection. But before we leave the meeting tonight, since that has all come out in this past, we could did want to just kind of get a sense for the board on whether or not they would be interested in having the district have a policy on, let's just say the pandemic in the books during the duration of the pandemic. And if so, would you be interested in us maybe exploring one of the two templates that the BSBA is proposing? I can give you a little background on that if you're interested. Yeah. So the background of what the BSBA just did was two weeks ago, we got the hybrid guidance. I guess that was two weeks ago. We have the hybrid guidance in it. There was a sentence that said, no, it was the same guidance about the formal matrix. It's the superintendent's responsibility kind of thing for school closure. And so that was two weeks ago. And in that, it was a Wednesday. And in that guidance, there was a statement that said, school boards are responsible for making the decision between hybrid, remote or in-person learning. Or school boards should be responsible for that. My superintendent colleagues, I honestly didn't read it, either read it very closely or didn't think very much of it because I feel that myself and you all have a very collaborative relationship and I reach out to you all for feedback all the time. So I didn't think much of it, but the next day when we were on the phone with Dan French, other colleagues of mine in the state were pretty furious that that, because all along it had been the superintendent will, the superintendent shall, the superintendent should. And we've been making decisions as superintendents. And this was a significant shift in language from the perception of many of my superintendent colleagues that the school board shall be making those decisions. Dan backpedaled in that conversation saying, well, it says should. So school boards could decide if they wanted to or not. Then in between that time and today, the VSBA met Michelle, our friend Michelle was on that board and she met and she was texting me through the meeting and she said that the VSBA board was undecided as to what stand they should take. And so that's why they decided to have two options for those policies, either delegate the responsibility to the superintendent or make the decisions yourself. And however, that guidance came out yesterday, again, as a update that has taken the school board language out of the guidance completely. So now the VSBA has reacted to guidance that was put out two Wednesdays ago and in yesterday, new guidance came out that was revised to take out that school board language to make matters even more confusing with that, with what the VSBA sent out to you today. So that's the history of that. Yeah, I kind of have two off the top of the head thoughts. My first one is that at some level, I think it makes sense to have some policy around COVID. At the second level, I feel that the directors from the state have been so fast moving and in some ways perhaps more reactive than they should be that would it be a lot of effort that might not result in much because we're just reacting to too many things and it's too fast moving a situation to really put effective policy in place other than something very general that might not mean much. I think you're absolutely right, Jim. I mean, if we were to follow the open meeting law and the adoption of policy, I mean, it would be required like a minimum of 10 days, even holding emergency meetings, we're not able to adopt policy in a very specific manner. So that's maybe to hold off on doing any work on it. Maybe if we get to a situation where I think we're a little more stable in terms of, we're in school and it's working and some guidance on could be helpful. But right now it seems like it would have a chill chasing exercise. I have a question for Libby. What do you think about this as our chief administrator? I think that we as a school board and superintendent relationship work really well. I consider myself, I'm not to say this, I consider myself incredibly lucky and privileged to be able to work with you all. You ask very smart questions, you know your lanes, you don't get out of your lanes. I know my lanes. And I also think that you don't want this responsibility that the time that, I mean, so it's 8.54, I'm now working on hour, I counted them before I went, I was driving home. I'm now on hour 48 of my work week. And I still have three more days to go on it because Saturday is a work day now. So, and it's not like I'm twiddling my thumbs through that whole time. You don't have time for that. You don't have time to know it all. So if you're gonna adopt one of these two policies, then I would suggest unless you have real problems with how I'm leading this effort, in which case I need to know that, then I would say adopt the one that says we're delegating that responsibility to the superintendent. But that would be my drother. If not, go have at it and tell me how it goes. Let me know what I can do for you to help out. I think you'd be doing it anyway. I think you'd be delegating it to me anyway. And do we need to adopt one of the two or is it just like, I don't know. No, I don't think so. I think the VSBA was trying to react to that guidance because it was such a shift in what had been coming out. Thanks Libby. Yeah, thank you. On Libby's note that she is on our 48 of her work week, which I agree. We have the policy monitoring reports. Any questions or discussions about those? No. Do we die, I always forget this. Do we do approve them or we don't, right? No, I think we leave them up for discussion. Yeah. Hearing none, we can move to the adjournment item, which we do need to take action on. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Don't everyone? I moved. Okay, thanks. Do you have a second? Second. Yeah, I get it. Brian. Hi. Emma. Hi. Andrew. Hi. Mara. Hi. Jerry. Hi. Angel. Hi. Good night, everyone. Thanks.