 To do this once a year. So I'm gonna call the annual reorganizational meeting of the White River Unified District Board of Directors to order at 6.32 p.m. Are there any adjustments to the agenda? Hearing none. The first order of business before I hand this office to elect a chairperson. Do I have nominations for chair? I would like to nominate Andrew Jones to be our chairperson. Do I have a second for that? Second. Do we have any other nominations? All those in favor? Signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? I think I got all the ayes. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Andrew, it's all yours. Okay. And we're going to electing a vice chairperson. Any nominations for vice chair? I would like to nominate Chris Jarvis to be vice chair. Is it vice chair or co-chair? Vice chair. Do we have a second? I'll second. I'll second. All in favor or are there any other nominations? Hearing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Chris for vice chair. Now electing a clerk. Is there anybody like to nominate a clerk? Well before we do this, does anybody like to volunteer to be a clerk? The clerk approves the minutes. Yes. And anything else? The agenda is getting posted. I'll do it. I'll volunteer if nobody wants to nominate. Okay. I'll nominate Ed because it's open. Is there any other nominations? Do we have a second for Ed? Anybody want a second? Ed for clerk? I'll second it. Okay. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. So we need three members for the WRVSU full board. What we've typically done is done three members to the full board and then done three alternates, not just one for three five. We have it listed as the point one alternate, but generally we have just a point whoever's not a member to be an alternate and the members try and make it any time that they can, but if not, then we have somebody else fill in for them. So who would like to represent us on the full board? These are still Tuesdays? Okay. I'd like to be on the full board. Fourth Tuesday. Six. Okay. Rodney, I'll be one of them. I'd like to. I'd like to as well. Okay. So we have one, we have four people interested. Would you be okay to be an alternate just as well? Well, as I was looking it over, what I was thinking is that if we've got too many people as the initials, the primaries that are from one town, you as the chair are more neutral in being on it, like the chair is expected to be on it. So I was figuring the other two slots. I would see if Chris or Rodney wants to go in or Nancy and then I would volunteer if nobody wanted Royalton for the other slot. So maybe me or Peggy could be the other one for the primaries, be the chair and one from each town. I figured that was the further. Yeah, we haven't done it that way in the past just because the chair is on the executive board. So they're kind of like, so that the full board meets every other month and the executive board meets every other month. Well, we really haven't been doing it that way anymore. Oh, right. Wait, I haven't been doing it. Do we even do the executive board anymore? Yeah, this came up in share. It's part of your bylaws. So that's why we still do it. I certainly have tried. I think it is better for the organization to have full board meetings every month from momentum and as much as possible to keep folks informed and just felt like it's even a different level of transparency to me in a way, having the full board every month. So we really have not used the executive board in over a year, but it is part of the bylaws and part of why this has worked is we do hybrids. Yeah, when we were doing just in person, it was really challenging to get full board qualms as it moved throughout the SU. What do you guys think? I mean, I think one thing, you know, I was going to kind of bring it up with some of the articles of agreement this evening is, you know, we have to start looking at ourselves as one unified district and not Burlton or Beffle or, you know, because we often do that even though, you know, we're one happy family and it shouldn't matter, you know, what side of the street you're from, because we should all have the same interests in mind. So I don't feel that it matters in what town who's representing us as long as we're representing the board as a whole. I mean, if you go by the members that we have, you know, Gavni and myself would be, you know, not that we have a lot of experience, but the most experience other than Peggy. So, you know, I'd be more willing to bow out for Peggy because she's got more experience, but I would just say, you know, more experience to date. It doesn't change my desire to participate at that level. So I can't learn it if I can't. And just so you know, too, you can go, you don't have to be a voting, like a lot of times somebody doesn't show up. So you can still go to the full board as an alternate and basically you can still participate and you might not, there's three other people there then somebody doesn't vote. If it's four of us, say four of us, show up to a full board meeting, well, three of them can vote. If somebody's not on, just don't feel that you don't have to, you can't go if you're not a voting member. I would go anyway, but I'm probably going to go to every one of them. And people, you know, you still get to be involved in the discussion and whatnot. It's just, and very seldom does it come down to like one vote when they do vote on something. So, but anyways, I mean, okay, I'm not, you know, so it's just no sense, but it's great if all of us go to every meeting, every full meeting. Okay. We still do it for people for three spots. Eight thoughts on how to resolve or should we just? We have a quorum, could we vote? Yeah, we can. Yeah, we can just call a little question of each person. Well, then I'd entertain a motion to vote on something. Well, I mean, the simple motion would be you as the chair. Well, I think, right, that's one. And then we, or am I incorrect? I mean, we can make motions to appoint each member individually or do them as a block of three. Do three at a time, whatever somebody would like to make a motion for. Well, do we have to nominate each member separately? Is what you're saying? Is these things we could do either. We could do a three-person block, or we could go one at a time. I mean, if it's one at a time, I will nominate Andrew for the full board. Okay. Do we have a second? Second. All right. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay. Nancy, were you and I there? Okay. I forgot to turn the audio off because there's a lot of background here. Sure. I mean, I would make a motion that to nominate myself and Rodney for their remaining two board seats. Okay. Is there a second? I would second that. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? One. Nancy, are you in aye or nay? I said aye. Okay. Yeah, I couldn't hear it. Okay. Okay, so I think that makes the three members me, Chris and Rodney. You should definitely come to the meetings. Appreciate your interest. Is everybody okay being appointed alternates? Okay. I would nominate. I do need to nominate Ed and Nancy and Peggy as alternate full board members. I nominate it. Seconded. Okay. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay. Point one member to the executive board. My understanding was that is always, well not always, but pretty much always the chair. But it's not. It's not. An automatic. It's not an automatic. I nominate Andrew. I second that. Okay. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. And I nominate Chris, the co-chair to be the alternate. I'll second. Okay. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Pointing a recording secretary. Tammy, are you still willing to be recording secretary? Oh, there you are. Just throw your voice. Great. Affirmative. Affirmative. Okay. Affirmative. Oh, I thought she said permanent. I do too. That's a long time, Tammy. Point, Tammy is the recording secretary, but you need to appoint a member for signing AP and payroll. Rodney's been doing that. You want me to continue? Yeah, I guess I'll do it. Do you want to be a second person? Yep. Alternate. All right, so we'll have Rodney for signing AP and payroll and Ed as the alternate. So moved. Okay. We do that electronically. I think it can't be a lot, a lot to it, so you can show me whatever. Well, yeah, they email it to us. They email the whole payroll, whatever the whole board. I usually give it like a day for it, so everybody gets a chance to look at it and then I sign it quickly the next day and return it to them. Okay. So that would be a case of like if Rodney's on vacation or... Right. Yeah. And I would let you know if I'm out of town. Right. Okay. Okay. So not when we moved it, but does it... Okay. Do we have a second? I'll second it. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Aye. Negotiation Council. There's somebody who... This has been Shannon, so we need somebody to beyond that. Somebody interested in being on the negotiation council? They were currently in the thick of support staff negotiations. I would estimate we'll be meeting weekly until we're able to come to a resolution, so we meet on Thursdays at 5.30 to about 6.30 every other week. And then on the other Thursday, it's from 5.30 until about 8. So that's the time commitment right now. We're in the thick of it. I can't do it because it would be a conflict to be interesting. Okay. I have a conflict of interest because my daughter is in support staff. Okay. I don't think Peggy can do those times. I am coaching most Thursdays. Staying Thursday from what? I guess the best way to think about is... So we meet every two weeks on Thursdays and they go... We start the committee meets to get prepped from 5.30 to 6. And then we negotiate from 6.00 to 8. And then on the off Thursday, we meet again as a planning session from usually about 5.30 to 6.30. So you can plan on a weekly meeting. And that would be at least, well to be determined. But we're in the thick of it right now. Now, I mean, I talked to Jamie about it or inquired about it. I'd like to, but I just don't know if I can put the time towards it with the town functions as well. Right. So nobody... I'm going to make a commitment that I can't every week on Thursday. Would there be some way of kind of having rotating members from our district? The committee would be... I would know because the way negotiations work is you build momentum. And it's really challenging if the membership of that committee is rotating. I would say it would put the board at a disadvantage. Right. Can we table that one for now? Come back to it. I'm not sure if we're going to be able to have anybody since we've got multiple conflicts spent raised in conflicts with time. And so the board knows just like you've seen the other ones, there's certainly every board has to approve the agreement. So just like policy. And as we get further along in negotiations, that committee will continue to give updates at the full board level in executive session when we get to some places where there's information at that level to discuss. Is... These aren't virtual meetings, right? No, they are. They're hybrid. Yeah. Right. Well, why don't we table that for now? Pointing a member for the policy committee? Rodney's been doing that in the past. I'm fine with continuing that. Okay. I'd entertain a motion to point Rodney onto the policy committee. So moved. Second. Okay. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Pointing a trot officer. This has been Loretta Stonik. Yeah. So we've used Loretta. Then I would say you should appoint the Bevel Constable as well. And the principles. Okay. So we'll wait a point. The Royalton, please do you appoint Constable and principles. This is an old thing in statute when there was truancy officer. So we have to appoint. But every district attorney's office now has protocol that schools have to abide by in regards to truancy. And so we follow the Windsor County here in this district truancy protocols. Which is a, it's a collaborative approach to dealing with chronic absenteeism. Okay. Move to appoint the police chief in Royalton and the Bevel Constable and the principles of the truancy officer. So in Bethel we have two constables so. First and second or. Well they, yeah they, they split duty. Split duty. So I guess they would both be. Just like Baltimore. Yeah. Is there any harm in. I mean the principles actually do it anyway. I haven't seen that used in a long time. Yeah you could just say we're in the constables. So those were the Royalton police chief, the constables, the principles fall into their house backups or. Okay, great. Just wanted to make sure that it was kind of equal. Okay. So being that the Royalton also has a constable, would that be a person to appoint to that or. No I would just say wouldn't it be the whole police department. The Oscar is actually the constable for Bethel. And he's a police officer in Royalton. So it would be. Well I think we would follow chamber command and that doesn't mean that the chief couldn't designate those responsibilities. But I think we should have, should appoint the chief. Okay. So we do it like at the sheriff's office we appoint the sheriff's. Or we could do the Royalton police department. Let's just do the chief. I think that's not. Okay. So for the record for Royalton he's chief Bethel constables and principles. We have a motion right? Yep I don't think it's a second. Okay there we go. All in favor say aye. Aye. The newspaper is designated newspaper for official notices was the Randolph Herald. Do we have the Valley News in there too? And the Valley News. And the radio station. Great Eastern. Great Eastern. Okay that's the conglomeration that does multiple stations. Is it the Great Eastern or the Greater Vermont broadcasters? We've been doing Great Eastern. Great. Thank you. Is there no longer a RTCC representative? That's a good question. I apologize for interrupting. No I may have missed that one. So we'll move. We can have that at the end. Okay. One to 3.18. Yep. Good catch. So I'll move the designation of the newspaper and radio stations. Seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Setting the date time and location of regular school board meetings. We have been doing 6.30 Tuesday of the month alternating between the Bethel and Royalton campuses. Peggy did ask if it was possible to change it to start at seven. I don't know if we want to hold off on doing this until she's able to join the meeting or do people have any yeah why don't we hold off on doing this until Peggy's able to join and we'll return to 3.15 later if everybody's okay with that. And I like the seven o'clock meetings. I know they're tougher because if it's a longer agenda you're here later but seem to think that we I think we had more participation early you know we weren't waiting for as many members come on. Right. Yeah no I can see some advantages. I think it might be tough on the staff administration to have the days go that late. But we can we can certainly discuss it once she's able to join us. Yeah one one angle around that is we could dismiss certain administrators like if there's not discussion that it's going to need principal input we could dismiss them. Right. The plus I would speak for in regards to for me is that it would allow me some additional time at Sharon. So if you said to me I would rather be later and out one last night a week than be out two nights. But if it could give me an hour and a half with the Sharon board before joining actually I think it could serve us serve me well anyway so know that in regards to me if if there's things where the principals aren't needed for the agenda we could let them lose I'm fine staying later. Okay does that sound okay to you guys principals? I mean I mean it's going to go as late as it used to anyways. Yeah. Because we're doing such a great job. Of course. But it would I'm fine with it in the sense of it. Yeah because in general the earlier board tends to get short time they get shorted my time. So you stay at our board as long as yeah right so actually that would be a gain and some of them it's worked out just fine having it this way but for Sharon and you guys actually if you went later I think it would be better. Okay. Well is that okay? Do we need a motion on that? Yeah. So I'd make a motion that we set a time of 7 p.m. the third Tuesday of each month. We'll alternate locations between Ethel campus and Royalton campus. Okay. Seconded. All right all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. That is set. Designated posting places. Do you have the list of what we did last year? Do you want to or do you want the recommendation to be post offices, town offices, and school entrances, and White River Valley website as designated posting places? That sounds that's what we did last year. Yeah we'll continue doing what we did. Unless anybody has any other thoughts. Okay. That's a pretty standard. Yeah. I'll move that those locations you just read are the designated posting places. Okay. Do we have a second? Seconded. All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. The 317, the task force appointments. We currently... I went on it last week. So what... So we've got facilities. Right. Facilities. We've got the recruitment. Is it recruitment or communication? It was both. Yeah it was like recruitment and communications. You've got finance and then there's been a task force at the run level for child care. All right. It was the child care specifically. Separate pre-K1 and then a child care one. Is the child care one ongoing? I'd be interested in the recruitment one. Okay. All right. So I don't think we need a motion for this. I think we could just... That's just committees, right? Yeah. So Nancy, do the recruitment communication orders. Okay. Add facilities. Did you want to continue on the facilities as well? Yeah. Yeah I've just started. I'll be on finance. Peggy was on finance too and I assume she'd want us to stay. And so the child care task force, is that still going on, Andrew? I don't think so because we made a three-year recommendation. I mean I think what we talked about was we could come back together as needed. Okay. But same thing with the preschool task force. I think they just kind of made a recommendation and... They really cease to exist at that point. Yeah. Right. All right. Did you want to be on any of the task force, Rodney? Or just not task force? Yeah I was on the recruitment task force. Okay. So you and Nancy for recruitment or communications? It's on communications. Same one. We did the same one. Okay. Yeah we can put both beyond it I guess. Yeah that's good because then there's two of us on each one. Yeah. That's what I was missing. Peggy's on finance with you? Yep. Good. Okay. So... Historically there was a policy committee but I'm not certain that there is a need for that one. That's at the resort bathroom. Okay great. That confirmation. Thank you. Okay. So RTCC? Yep. RTCC representative. This was once a month. They're almost like once a quarter right now. Yeah I went to one meeting. You've been at Rodney. Yeah I have. Yeah. I mean they don't have meetings very often. They don't meet often. It's more like once a year. Are you willing to do it again? I don't know what I'm doing next year. Okay. Okay Rodney. What point Rodney is our RTCC representative? Yeah. I think we need to make a motion for that one. Unless anybody else wants to do it. Okay we're through the reorg. That's good because you're on there west. Yeah they'll just keep sending me the email next year. All right. Last two years. Moving on to our consent agenda to approve the minutes of Wednesday, March 1st. Regular and the minutes of March 1st special. I'd entertain a motion to approve the minutes. Motion to approve both. Regular and special. Do you have a second? Yeah I'll second those. Is there any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right the minutes are approved. Do we have any public comment at this time? Either in person or online? Question on the busing. Do we change bus companies? Is that further in your agenda? Yeah go ahead. So we did a request for proposals for bus companies and we only received one. The board rejected that proposal. We've put it back up to bid and we've received a bid that the full board will take up at their meeting next week. In addition the board charged me to price out leasing options in the event that we've decided to if the board wanted to run around. So we'll have a budget for that as well and the board will hopefully be able to make a decision next Tuesday. I know there were concerns about busing. There's definitely will be busing in place and we won't miss any bid even starting July 1st. So basically we're exploring our options right now. Yeah and that's done at the supervisory. I answered the email for the drivers for coaching and I went to Bill and he basically. Oh great. We should talk. Okay any other public comment? Okay do we have any board comment? Yeah I was going to say something. I don't know how many of you have gotten this book but I got this a while back and I started going through it but I don't know if that's something that you can get sent to us but everyone gets one right? Yeah so anyways it's there's not a good information on their own procedure and whatnot. I just wanted to mention it so I don't know if everybody's getting that but it's like I didn't I think I got this one last year but so anyways I don't get one ask for one. Yeah if you're not getting it let me know but everyone should get it. I don't they just mail them to you directly so. Yeah I'm sure I'll name it. Have you guys received one of those? I got my hands on an old copy I haven't gotten the new one. Yeah they're a little slow to be up to. Yeah I don't think it's updated by my name but anyways just make sure you got one. Okay was the the VPA doing their board orientation? I went through one there. VSBA? Yeah. Yep I just sent it out to Nancy actually and Ed for any new board members that training earlier today and asked folks to register. So yes I know it's pretty helpful especially if you haven't been on a board before it really gives you a lot of insight as well as on the school level of it. Any other board comment? Move to the celebration of learning. A celebration of learning for this month? No I think the video is going to speak to it. This is Pam Arnold, an interim principal over here at the middle school in Bethel. I'm sorry I'm not there in person tonight I'm going to share a little message for the celebration of learning for this month. Tell someone you are sorry if you need help ask for it. You are loved beyond belief. Be an upstander not a bystander. You can still turn an ink blot into a butterfly. The middle school community was so grateful to have Mr. John Halligan as a guest last week to share Ryan's story. Through powerful video and pictures of Ryan's young life Mr. Halligan shared so much of what he learned following Ryan's tragic suicide at the age of 13. The Halligan family learned that Ryan had been a victim of cyber bullying and bullying during his middle school years. Following the tragedy and as a result of all that Mr. Halligan and his family learned afterwards he felt compelled to protect other children and families from similar harm. In 2004 he spearheaded here in Vermont the passing of the bullying prevention law and in 2006 he established a law that requires education concerning suicide prevention in schools. This presentation supported our focused efforts in the middle school to provide continuing education around bullying and cyber bullying. A continuation that has included facts language examples and with this presentation a personal situation. There was so much power in this story because it was real. It happened and our students felt that personal connection to Mr. Halligan and the impact that it had on his family. The respect and engagement for not only a guest to our school but the heartfelt caring compassion and empathy demonstrated by our students to Mr. Halligan certainly made us proud. Our incredible staff through POT advisory engaged in discussion with students in the days leading up to the presentation and then immediately after everyone returned to their POT advisory for an opportunity to have a discussion and to debrief their experience. There were many takeaways that students shared. Some specific ones that they articulated to me were the only way we can actually change is if we choose to and they shared how important it is to be nice to people. People sometimes have depression and that is okay because there are people who can help you. I learned about how to recognize fake friends and another one there's something that I want to share with my mother and I'm going to do that tonight because it's really important that she knows. Mr. Halligan highlighted the need to take their friends action seriously to encourage a friend to get help to talk to an adult they trust to not be afraid and don't be alone in helping a friend. Tell someone, tell anyone. Don't ever believe that you don't matter and that no matter what no one would miss you because that is absolutely not true. He shared multiple times that you are loved beyond belief and never be ashamed to ask for help. His final message to the students was to make a difference in your school, to apologize to others if you need to, to recognize people who are not really friends and to be an upstander and not a bystander. And finally something he shared took time for him himself to realize and that was that there's always a message and a hope for forgiveness. Mr. Halligan also presented to adults that evening and even with the small turnout he provided so much information and suggestions around technology safety and suicide prevention. He graciously gave each adult who attended the presentation a copy of his two books one for kids and one for parents. He also provided our school with a copy of each and we will have them in our library. Again we were so grateful for this opportunity and I believe that Mr. Halligan's message will resonate with our students forever and that their individual takeaways will support how they interact and support each other. So yes this is a celebration of learning maybe not in a way that you typically have a report. However in this case we are celebrating how important it is to take care of each other to find kindness to have forgiveness to apologize if we need to apologize but more than that to be proactive positive members of our school community and to help each other and not bring each other down. So again I thank you for allowing me to share this message. I'm sorry that I'm not there in person and I hope that you will take a message away from this as we have taken as well. Thank you. All right that's great. Okay then we'll move on to a superintendent report. So you have my report in hand and I did send out a memo today around three particular legislative bills but it was late in the day by the time I got them out to you. So I'll orally just go over each one of those as well but what I wanted to point out in my report is that and I had also even this out to the full board that Secretary French has stepped down and will be leaving the Department of Ed at the end of the month and that aligns to in my report under the work around our new state standardized testing that I wanted to talk to you about in regards to V-CAP and so I'm mentioning that because remember back in the fall I talked to you about actually I wrote a letter all our families that the state was going with a new testing platform Cognia that's now named part of the Vermont state the Vermont comprehensive assessment program that's what V-CAP stands for and it replaced Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium I'm just bringing it up to let you know that there there have been challenges with the rollout of V-CAP and so and most of the challenges are just getting information in a timely manner to get our folks trained our teachers are being incredibly flexible and resilient I think in navigating this new standardized assessment program at the SU level Ray and our Chief Academic Officer Onda Adams has been working diligently to make certain that we're able to have things uploaded in the system so hopefully we don't have significant hiccups in the buildings and Onda's actually is created her own training for our staff because that hasn't been rolled out by the agency yet and so I mentioned all of it to say that you know it is baseline assessment data I'm hopeful that we're going to be able to use it to measure our indicators and to see if we're continuing our trajectory of growth I think there's a frustration at least in the field in regards to rolling out a pretty significant new education quality measuring metric around V-CAP because it is part of how the agency holds us accountable for making adequate yearly progress and it just seems they've lost some people in that department and now we've lost our secretary and so I would just say to you that we're going to work really hard to make certain that our we're supporting folks as best as we possibly can to implement I'm concerned that there's going to be challenges throughout the field in it and I do think Dan's leaving will add to those challenges so any other questions on the report before I move to the legislative updates so I sent you information today and I'll start with the first one is S-56 that is the pre-k it was S-56 slash H-208 S-56 is still alive it may cross over from the senate to the house S-56 is essentially requesting that there's an approval of a study committee to study childcare and pre-k there is a possibility though that the house egg committee could and this would be good for our district could indicate that those school districts that are providing full day pre-k be awarded a full 1.0 FTE average daily membership right now under Act 166 all we get is a .46 for pre-k student but for us where we provide five days a week of pre-k it would actually allow us to count them as a whole student 1.0 I will be trying to I'm going to actually ask if I can get in front of the house egg committee to testify on that and so I'm hopeful that I may be able to do that on our behalf of our districts I think for our districts that are providing full day pre-k we there's clearly been articulated a shortage in pre-k high quality pre-k childcare and for our districts that are providing it I believe we should be acknowledged as a 1.0 student and so I do plan to try to see if I can get in front of the house head on that because I think there's a possibility that that could happen for next year which would benefit us so that's S-56 the rest of the provisions within that bill have been taken out and just committed to a study committee so the other one is universal meals there's a lot of movement I believe that universal meals it may cross over I think there's a lot of traction to approve it the one area concern that I'll know with universal meals is that they have not diversified a funding mechanism I've been talking about this since last year they still have not and when you say well what could there be there could be looking at other taxes possibly across the state that they could have used to help pay for it and they could have looked to also split it up from the general fund and also into the ed fund right now they're just looking at it at the ed fund level I think it's important for boards to know what that means is an automatic three cent increase on taxes moving forward basically they just adjust the yield that's all they're going to do is adjust the yield but I think as we get into budgeting I'm already thinking ahead that that yield we already knew the yield was not going to be as positive next year and now we've got an added expense to the ed fund and so that's something for us to just be thinking about but that that's the universal meal piece and like I said there seems to be tons of momentum and again when I'm speaking to this as an educator we all acknowledge there's a lot of positives that come from at universal meals in regards to students not feeling shame for being qualified for free and reduced lunch and getting meals that way I think we've seen participation increase significantly I think there's been lots of good around it I just wish there had been more thought around how do we diversify the funding stream for it so that's me that's that's my talk about universal meals and then the other one is Senate bill s66 which had to do with the fall out of Carson v makin and and certainly had a lot of a lot of discussion at choice districts throughout the supervisory unit in the state what we've got now is a house ed bill and it's in the email I sent you it's two maybe 56 I can't go I don't remember but it's in your email which is a bill that increases accountability and reporting measures and assurances from independent schools it doesn't specifically address public funds going to religious schools but it does say public funds going to any independent school will require them to provide for example special education to all students ensure that they don't charge tuition that offsets their ability to provide either scholarships or reduced tuition for folks paying choosing to to send kids there on an independent level it requires that independent schools report student achievement data to the lea which right now and I don't know those of you have followed it jay badams who lives in rsu and is a superintendent handover he lives in strafford testified in front of the house ed committee about how there really are not equal playing fields around independent schools accountability in public schools accountability and an example would be that you cannot find any data from the agency around how students at independent schools are achieving on the statewide assessment system they would now be required to report that out so I think there's a lot of real positive outcomes out of the house version right now in regards to ensuring that if a public dollar is going to fund students that that public daughter dollar is assuring the same assurances that any student that attended a public school would be provided around equity and so that is the current creation of that bill it does it took away the cap of having to designate schools it took her away that threshold of only the traditional for independent historically independent schools being able to be designated but did really require significant more accountability for independent schools and so that's where that bill is currently at right now on crossover I expect more drafting around it it seems the senate ed committee um has thus far had less of an appetite to want to require more accountability for independent schools well the bill out of the senate was a lot more strict though as far as it was but it died as soon as they got to the the senate ed committee they never even really discussed it all right okay um I'm sorry if you mentioned this the the preschool one was that for both or is that still only for four four year olds or does it provide my year olds as well my understanding is is that and I again I'm basing this off of the chair of the house ed committee giving an update to the superintendents last week that they were gonna look for it to be 1.0 fte for four year olds and nothing for well they would still give us 0.46 now that could again be redrafted I would say that what's it it's about early education and it's not any cheaper for us to provide programming for a three-year-old versus a four-year-old right but I think you know what we've kind of done in the past was there's the half-day option and there's the full-day option so you can you know say three-year-olds get the half-day option can pay to have a full-day option or something like that no right we could I'm just saying for those schools that are providing three-year-old I have some districts providing full-day three-year-olds right now without charging and I think if we're providing it and we're saying that there's a shortage and there's a need that they should count as a 1.02 sure so that that's going to be what I try to speak to at the housing committee yeah good okay great somebody have any other questions for Jamie just fill you in we did change the meeting time to seven o'clock going forward thank you now hopefully I'll only be fashionable and as far as committees go you're going to continue on the finance committee and you're an alternate for the SU board would you have any ability to join the negotiation committee five thirty meetings so we kind of suspect yeah that's that's going to be working being a former teacher myself I might not be very good yeah all right well I'm up to the principal's report now yeah do you have a report for elementary we highlighted our most recent community builder and that was all about connectedness and it's kind of lovely because we were short somebody so I get to step in and help a very messy handprint project about creating something all together uh and I would just update that we're working on our climate surveys for families for staff and for students uh so that will be gathered soon by about just elementary to elementary middle and high school so we can find out all that information so if you've got that and your tax for your email and you are here I really encourage you to fill that out and reply um and then in addition uh talked about their Friday in service that the elementary is getting responsive classroom training uh specifically on responding to misbehavior which is has been really wonderful and well received and great generating good conversation it's a nice follow to our last summer four-day responsive classroom training that many teachers took and also maybe a little good gateway for gateway for teachers that didn't take it because it will be offered in our district in Chelsea and Turnbridge and so hopefully if people didn't take it they'll help the little taste of it so they can want to take it there uh and then I would say for elementary finally we just did a big shout out to the PTO and Royalton who was able to help us bring in the owls and wrappers I was really nice for the Royalton campus elementary to come we went out so we went to the birds that day but it was lovely out for the birds and at the middle school um three highlights several highlights but three that I'll point out are that we when I went out on leave Pam Arnold came in and reset the behavior expectations and that's been going very well the Mr West is running a flexible pathways program as you are aware and he's had lots of visitors coming into the school we've had EMTs and nurses and I think we may have had a trooper or a um dame warden and I sat in today with a athletic trainer which a lot of kids have interest in that career field and then in the under the third goal we have a lot going on as you might imagine with the the grant that's in our favor now and Bethlehem University continues to thrive all March long and we offered something in restored practices and actually we're going to have students teaching math next week so if you're interested still not too late to sign up and learn a little math and another highlight I could make is that um we heard about um John Halligan's presentation which is lovely but we're also sugaring outside again this year and Bonne Wheeler is doing that with a couple students that are very dedicated to it still using the I think I have the language right the arch I'm looking to a sugar maker and that was donated by um Ty Coucher's family so it's it's serving as well and that's uh some updates from the middle school yeah so at the high school just a few things I'd like to highlight is one is our Friday morning assembly is now all student run um Josh White and Trinity D Simone is taking that over and having the students run that and I'm telling you that is just the best thing I just sit back and watch those kids and you know some of those athletes that you see on the court that aren't nervous at all in front of all those fans when they're with their peers that microphone is just shaking this is really great to see and and you know you get to see a different side of students stepping up and uh it's been really well received next is and this wasn't in the report unfortunately because the report was due Thursday and the play was Friday and Saturday but if anyone saw the musical it was it was the highlight of my year thus far I mean those kids were phenomenal I've been to several Broadway shows and this tops it and it's like I went home on Thursday I told my wife we gotta go I said you've got to see this it's just amazing the singing dancing the what was also very cool was one of our seniors was a co-director of the play and so she wasn't in the play but she was directed we also had one of our students choreography that play and we had Sean Smith who has been doing lighting for years and years and years and we'll miss him um they had problems with the motherboard I guess you know the language I know I'm not familiar with and Sean called the company that we got it from and was like hey the lights aren't working and the guys like well what you'll need to do and before he got it out Sean was like I've already checked you know he went through the whole thing and the guy's like do you want a job and they offered Sean a job right over the phone so um but that was really amazing so next year with the performances we really got to do a better job of getting other schools here at our our school to see that because again once you see something like that why wouldn't you want to come to our school and right now there's a playwright issue where you can you have to pay for so many performances so we're going to straighten that out for next year for sure questions for us when are we going to get an update on the performing arts initiative for doing all that work and the revamp and is that we're going to get another update on that soon yeah probably as a future agenda item we should talk about next month is my thought there just wasn't really room on the agenda this month yeah we certainly haven't lost track of it okay thank you thank you okay um business manager reports terrible this maybe Sharon's still rolling if you did I don't know what happened we'll just table it maybe for now okay uh is there any negotiations committee update yeah uh so we're uh we're in the thinking negotiations we're meeting every two weeks and uh the committee this is like I said meeting weekly and hopefully we'll have some positive news to report to the board here in the next month okay Tara still at Sharon's all right we'll move on to some of our discussion items the BSBA code of ethics so everybody had a chance to read that okay everybody comfortable adopting it for this year I mean I mean I think the documents well written um with the expectations of the board member but I when I still have the the piece of it is what happens if the board member violates one of these intentionally or unintentionally yeah and we talked about you know how do we address the members conduct in a consistent manner that's laid out in a set of rules or recommendations I think is is the challenge I have with it that's actually in this book um right the potential suggested yeah okay but I guess my question is if we adopt this code of ethics that's here which is basically what's in the book does that come with the page that includes addressing board conduct only made one copy of it right well I think so this would be a sample um kind of policy for or a sample processing policy for dealing with board member conducts um this is have you guys been discussing this at the public committee no we haven't we haven't met since we haven't met since the last time we got feedback I plan to bring it up okay right so probably everything that we're talking about the the this uh conduct and the uh any public the contract code of ethics code of ethics contract yeah we'll probably see the next policy committee meeting just next Tuesday okay Tuesday okay so I would I would suggest we let that process play out until we can adopt something I see why I didn't align ourselves you know so that the game doesn't have a bunch of different rules to but I mean is it this would be helpful I think Rodney and I is there a sentiment from this board that they would like the code of ethics to become the the policy and and then capture the other pieces of that like take this and make it into actually our code of ethics policy the practice has been every board adopting it so I can't see that there'd be opposition to that but and would that add it because currently all all what we have in front of us as well as the the sample pages here they all come from the same yes so I guess if you adopted it you adopted as a package yeah but actually turn it into SUY policy right I didn't see anything wrong with with how it's written um in the packet through the Vermont school board association piece because I think I mean even though the addressing the behavior there there is some gray area there but at least it establishes a a template to go about that if something does happen right and I think that the code of ethics piece of it is well written and pretty much accompanies everything that that that we'd be looking for I just think you gotta have gotta have both right you gotta have the what we what we expect out of you and if something does happen these are maybe the board's options to to explore on right on behavior yeah no I I think that this all is basically I think that this makes sense and and the process makes sense you know I do think we need to be very clear and make sure it's you know crystal clear like when in the code of ethics you know it's like voice opinions respectfully and respect other board members administrators school staff members of the public is that like all the time or is that at board meetings or is that in official board contact or like when you're dealing with somebody who happens to be a constituent one-on-one and it's not necessarily a board thing like does this still apply you know I think that's where we need to make sure that it's very clear well I think if you're talking to somebody about school board subjects then you're representing the school board if you're an elected member yeah I mean I think I can certainly say that we should be respectful in that manner but I do think it's you know it's not representing the school board though like as far as your opinion isn't the opinion of the school board that's one of the things that this no everybody still has a right to their own opinion great exactly you don't have a right to call people names or say like you know I'm on the school board and you gotta do this you know you don't have that right yeah so all I was trying to say is like you know this I think is is pretty very good but I don't know maybe even a little more clarity on when it applies and when it doesn't yeah just to oh no I think the code about it is always and because you can't talk about things that are in executive session you can't you know yeah no no I know and you yes you can have your opinion but you can't uh like I said you know there's certain things you can't talk about that are private for whatever reason right no I mean there's a lot of it that's so I would say that the the code of ethics is always in effect whenever you're talking to somebody about school so okay that's my opinion right I mean I think it in the document I think it tried to do a good job of navigating through the you know when you have your board hat and when you don't have your board hat on but talked about negotiating or different different pieces when you may not be in a meeting but I think you're always going to have that gray area of you know when you take the public seat whatever that might be you know that you have to conduct yourself in a way at all times in the public regardless of what the subject matter might be so um well for tonight are we in agreement to adopt this code of ethics and sign on to that and then we can have the I mean we can excuse me we can at least we can adopt this and then adopt more correct I mean we can agree to it so then I move to adopt this this evening because there's nothing in what I read here there's nothing here that I find that doesn't fit what we need so and anything else would be additive there's nothing on here that I don't think we should be and then would be yeah and we all know that if the SU would uh pass as a yeah oh the SU yeah the SU would that would override this but it might be the same thing that would be policy that would be policy yeah yeah so just to be clear if we adopt again the one page is what we have in our packet does that also include the addressing the board members conduct pages that are also confusing they're also in the right that that's that page that I you know because essentially in the book from Vermont school boards association these pages are all linked together and what we have in front right so I think that would be this that they printed is like in the in the book right with these rights with those other ones so if we are adopting this are we saying we're just adopting this but not those sheets or are we adopting the whole thing as a package because I think well I think we're developing the code of ethics and I was gonna say the way it's on our agenda it says BSBA code of ethics so if they're all together in the book I would say that we could vote and say all together in the book this is the code of ethics page one two and three so the code of ethics is separate from this and that this this refers to a sample code of ethics right so basically this is what happens if you violate the code of ethics this is the code of ethics so I would suggest that we adopt the code of ethics and kind of work through the policy committee to see what the policy committee will adopt the rest and then we'll which hopefully we can have happen in a relatively expedient fashion though I guess it's still gonna need multiple readings but that's the thing is like it'll be like six months before we so I guess what happens is if we adopt this code of ethics tonight and we have an issue next month what do we do about it um we have we've adopted something that we don't have any enforcement for right I mean there's nothing to say that we can't follow this anyway we're like I can send a letter and we can well we're willing to roll the dice on that that we're not going to punish somebody next month right you know before the policy committee actually but I mean even if the policy committee adopts like recommend something it's going to need to go before the full board and then we need to have multiple readings but I think that's one of the reasons why I don't want to adopt this now is like we haven't had any sort of reading on like policies warnings that it's happening so you know I think following that process is important even though I agree it's important that we get something that actually outlines what what the actions to be taken are you know just I think it's important to follow the process so that the public can be involved in everything I do want to so I would I would recommend that we adopt the code of ethics and I implore everybody to follow it so this is an issue make sure you read it and understand what we're we are expected to how we're expected to behave and then take it seriously when we that we adopt the BSBA code of ethics as as it as it is in this packet right now I'll second that okay any further discussion all in favor say hi hi all right hi any opposed nay I just want to be on record that I agree with the code of ethics but however to not have the documents linked with the ability to address the members conduct if something happens I think we're just kind of in front of the worst I do so I'd like to see either a full package or not do it in peace but okay I didn't catch all of those words I mean no disrespect oh sorry but I got a general concept and so Chris agrees with the code of ethics but the board does not presently have the authority to enforce I apologize I mean no disrespect not authority to enforce but a procedure for you know a template the template for addressing board misconduct should it happen all right board member mentor mentee program so there's the there's the new the WRVSU based on our retreat created a WRVSU mentor committee to develop a mentoring program for new onboarding board members in addition to the work the BSBA does and so we have a handbook which I've been providing new board members part of the processes I also sit down and meet with new board members and I'm providing this handbook reminding them there's a bunch of hyperlinks of good information within the handbook I onboard them in regards to making certain they get an SU email I remind them to do old board business and work with their SU email I this provides you know reminds about the superintendent board relations policy we go over chain of command things of that nature but in addition to the full board has the idea of wanting to be able to assign a mentor so that new board members have someone locally that they can reach out to to have coffee and just talk about board work and so what I'm trying to do is solicit folks that are interested in serving as a mentor one of the agenda items for the full board to take up next week is going to be how we want to assign mentors it was really clear from the committee we didn't want board chairs serving for mentor as a mentor to incoming board members on that district board that that seems like it could be a conflict of interest possibly and so what we're looking to do is possibly have example a Sharon board member would serve as a mentor for a Rudd board member possibly and there seem to be a lot of traction in that idea have it be close in proximity but allow for board members within the SU to get to know each other but also not have it be have it be about the role of the board in the work of the board but not necessarily about specific topics that you might be taking out as board members new board members so that's going to be on the agenda for next Tuesday but what I'm interested in is trying to create a list of folks interested in the service mentors so I don't know if anyone's raising their hand like right now yes this sounds great I want to serve as a mentor you can also email me but we do currently right now have six new board members that have joined the organization as board members at the local district boards and I expect at least one new member still to go if not two from Rochester Stockbridge and Granville Hancock so we're looking for at least like eight eight folks to serve as a mentor so if you're interested in mentoring please let me know email Jamie um and are we considering formal board members yes all right so now we're on to the unified district articles agreement and discussion on current articles agreement in relation to unified elementary school did folks and Chris you had asked this to be on the agenda last month as well just the articles agreement in general and there have been a talk for a while about what it would be what would the articles agreement said specifically about a unified elementary if folks have an opportunity to read through these yeah yeah and you know reading through the um was kind of the the presentation part that was the proposal I guess that provided the background and justification and I I do still agree with the discussion of the elementary school there where it says that it's important for our youngest learners to be educated in elementary schools located in their home communities and I think when we were doing the merger we were very clear on that that we wanted to have separate elementary schools so you know kids are educated in our local community um and I still I still agree with that so I'm not very excited about combining elementary schools or I don't see that there's a good reason to do so as of now but we have a request to have a discussion about it so I'm willing to hear what people want to say about that I know on my end just kind of bringing up the articles of agreement was you know I mean anytime you establish rules it's good to go over them once in a while they are they working are they not working what should we make amendments to and correct me if I'm wrong but it seems as though that the comments that I've heard either in around the board or in around the community seems to be um three three things I don't want to say they're major things but um there's the the legal the legal um vote counting piece of it at the clerk's office which is right now the way in which we do it is we co-mingle the balance meaning that they're not counted in their respectful voting stations or then transported to one location to be counted um well co-mingled um which is it's not a it's not a practice that that the Secretary of State's office likes to see um the the other piece that as um Andrea just brought up is the you know and there was a few others that had brought up as well as you know taking a look at the elementary location but not just the elementary how how is elementary middle school and high school working out how are those campuses working out um and then the other piece that I believe um Rodney had brought up at one point because we were starving for members and we had at least one board seat open all the time was is the size of the board something that is sustainable at six or should we be looking to to to go down to four I think was would be the only other option but so those are kind of the three things I guess that I would like to talk about now the piece on the the vote counting I don't know if that's something that we can even make a decision on that might be something that that Jamie has to reach out to legal counsel to see if if that's you know can you count them in your own um towns and then publish the numbers you know independently or something like that count them independently combine them and yeah I mean it has a lot of challenges that you know so for instance and well the thoughtful anyways you know we had to um trans two members had to transport those to the superintendent's office and then and then you only have two members there and maybe two members from Royalton I'm assuming to count all the ballots um but you know you have that whole thing if you're transporting from one destination to another you know something can happen to them or whatever um so um I didn't see any article in articles agreement where it specifically says was down in the seems like there was a reason was doing that and I don't know I mean I think the original reason was that we didn't want it to be divided by towns that you'd see like well you know one town's forcing this onto another town you know yeah like I think the idea is we're one unified district and if we're not kind of looking at what one town is doing and what another town is doing then that kind of helps with the unity so yeah so you know if it's possible to just report one number about having counted separately I have no problem with that and that was a request you know that Pam the clerk had sure had talked about that it's a challenge to do it yeah if if we did do it separately would the clerk need to be present at both counts they certify both counts so they certified what counts does that mean that they need to be there for both or would they just designate that kind of a point they can designate they can designate they still sign off on it's probably illegal you know I probably have to talk to the legal counsel on if that's something that can be done or not but it just seems to be that keeps coming up when uh right season for this yeah I mean it was very easy this year it didn't take long at all well there's no but it's all uncontested yeah I mean it's easy yeah but if you get like writing campaigns or whatever that just becomes a very cumbersome thing but um so the only thing I saw was that elected at large at art large basis by Australian ballot vote voters um like I didn't see anything that said that they had to be commingled but maybe that's just because it's at large that means they have to be commingled I can check with legal counsel and have and report back to the board on that inquiry okay we'll be for the next meeting I mean I'll get the responses and I told you a town clerk might have information on it too I mean I think she's looking for some no they're gonna they're gonna want some direction yeah I think she's looking for some direction on that well maybe it was in the morning I actually I saw it somewhere I didn't actually beat the warning it definitely would have said it in the morning it referred to a statute I thought but oh right here there's been article nine data voter action right but I thought that that was just for basically the end of the vote I thought I referred to a statute well they they refer in article 11 they you know is where we break down the the difference between the annual budget and you know what's done in person versus what what is done Australian ballot and it just says refers back to the yeah 17 VSA 26 well so that's the process for changing from in person meeting to Australian ballot oh okay so I don't think that that's the one that would say that it's commingled I will inquire and then send that to you guys correct about why that's being put on I mean our legal counsel puts together our warning so I'll ask the why yeah if it's something we can just change in the next warning that'd be great right well right because to change anything within the article's agreement we need to put this back out for a vote right but I don't see anything in the article no me either so that's why I'm going to talk about the article's agreement talk about the commingling say I'm not seeing it but yet it's been what we've been provided on our warnings and ask the why to that yeah okay good okay so other things on the articles of agreement like do other board members think we should have a unified elementary school yeah oh I would like to see that it just feels like to me it just makes sense we get I know it's a little bit more travel for some but it would be I don't know the kids come together in middle and high school and they still is it's like two separate schools and it's still it just seems like it'd make more more of a community if we started them out together at a younger age and the other thing is the bus and you know if you started you could have an elementary school that started at one time all the kids get there I'd say seven I don't know 750 and then high school doesn't middle school in high school starts at 830 so the same buses that did the elementary routes could go around and do all the middle and high school this second you know two different start times which a lot of people think high school this should start later I don't know there's all kinds of things that could happen but I think you could still do that with the separate schools I mean like basically you'd be doing two bus rounds either way yeah you probably could I mean that's it's one of the things I guess I just think it would work better if it was they started out an elementary together one right up through when I talk maybe hesitation go ahead go ahead baby my my biggest hesitation is the idea of six-year-olds being on a school bus for probably 45 minutes to get to school it just that does not sound like a very good proposition when I taught in Berry City when I first started out I was in junior high or they called it junior high six seventh and eighth and we were fed by five different elementary schools within the city and you knew you could tell from the kids what kids went what school what part of town you had the those that had had the riches you had those that didn't have the riches and you could tell just from what school they came from and it was it took I don't know if you ever really did get them together as a group whereas if they had all been together which they are now I mean they have their little little pods their groups they're whatever but they're all mingled together and you didn't get that class's attitude though I got when I was teaching sixth grade from the kids because you just did it and it wasn't from the kids the kids got it from their parents and that's just the way it was and I I think it makes a huge difference when they get together now here you've only got two schools and they're not that far apart they really aren't I mean transportation between here and Bethel is not that far if I can go pick up my granddaughter several times from Bethel and I'm on the far south at broilton then I think they can handle the bus ride as long as rules are set and kids know how to behave and converse instead of being on their cell phones all the time but or put them on their cell phones all the time while they're on the bus and then they have to get rid of them when they get to school one or the other but I mean I guess I guess what I'd like to see anyways is you know again I'm just one of those type of people like let's just throw it against the wall and see what comes out of it does does it make sense let's could we could we collect data to see what are the pros and cons to make it up but you know classroom sizes a lot minutes of features um consistency of the curriculum in service days I mean just like how does it look transportation I'm interested in everything Chris is saying right now what does that make for classrooms and then just look at it as a board level and say here are the pluses here are the minuses what do we feel leave it alone do something different maybe a hybrid method who knows I I do know just a little bit from looking at the middle school versus high school you know piece of it is you know I think there's more opportunity for our middle schoolers if they were in the same complex with our high schoolers and the thing I say about that is like right now and I coach over middle school and I'm back and forth and I have kids in both schools there's nothing against anybody in either one of the schools but you know the when it comes to the academics and the arts I'm sorry the arts and athletics piece of it there's a little bit of a disconnect there of you know the high school has a little bit more resources than middle school does and I don't want to say they get left behind but it they don't have as many of those opportunities that if they were in the same buildings with plays or just athletics you know an athletic director has to go from this school to that school can't be in two schools at the same time you know it's difficult so I think there's there's opportunities there I guess is what what I'm saying and I think what would be nice is to have the principals get together and maybe explore some of those ideas of what they're seeing at each campus and what they're seeing at each school level and how and what those maybe they could report back to the board on what what those benefits and non-benefits would be or what they would see in their professional opinions my experience from being spending 30 years in a middle school high school situation is that it's really hard for the middle school to adopt best practices for example the pods the longer blocks when you're tied to the high school schedule because if you're going to have shared staff you you have to you have to sacrifice some of those better middle school practices in order to accommodate the shared staff with the high school if it's not going to be shared staff then then I don't see a problem with it if they're really going to be separate um that's yeah that's just my experience and from I can certainly see it from like the arts and the playing stuff having a band in the same place but for athletics like gym sharing the gym sharing the fields oh sure yeah it's very nice having that separate complex in Bethel that's all the middle school and they you know get to use it whenever they you know having to have all the teams and on the same campus I think would be a challenge but I don't know what he is knowing you'd still have new influx of kids because we've got other schools coming here in the end but by the time they finish their tenure so it's not like you're going to get all the kids together and keep them together the whole time you're going to get two of the towns together and then they're still going to pick up other kids from ton bridge and so on so it's not like it's not like you've got the whole the whole slot it's not like you're going to get the whole slate of kids there's still going to be oh you're from this school I'm from that school a little bit so um it's not like you you know you could mark it down as a clear victory if you combine them like that would the administration have any comment on the discussion I'm wondering do you see that kind of town clicks happening in the middle school or high school I mean I also I would say that the administration I think would be be very open and excited to be able to provide proposals to speak to the pros and cons and really research it um the and this is something that my example is when we just brought two communities together in first branch that was a year undertaking that didn't just happen in a month right and so there was a study committee that was put together that what we actually brought an outside consultant in to help organize that work so that folks could see that it was impartial I thought that was an important step that we took around that and they helped lead the committee through a research project around it and then the committee did a presentation to the board got feedback from the board eventually the committee made a proposal to the board and the board decided whether or not they wanted to pursue that proposal or not so I mean the board could decide to ask the administration to provide some pros and cons to start with and then off of that presentation decide whether or not they want to form a formal committee to study it or you could decide to form a committee or you could say you don't want to continue to pursue this conversation at all but I would say I think when I speak I'm speaking on behalf of the principles that it is something that I think the administration would like to dive into and roll up our sleeves because we haven't really spent time investigating the question at a real quantitative level but that would take some time I can't tell you we're just going to turn that we wouldn't just turn that around I mean that right it took years embarrassing just took years and the ones that had the hardest time with it were not the kids it was the teachers and it was the parents that had the hardest time moving to a central location with kids from all around I had there were teachers that decided they were going to retire rather than do that rather than give up their little school so it's it's hard in every aspect but the kids did fine yeah I will say I do feel like when we were doing the merger process it was very clear there were going to be separate elementary schools and that was something that people were people were fairly adamant about like there were very strong opinions about there being elementary schools in both towns and so I I am not particularly excited about bringing the subject forward open Pandora's box here well partially that but also you know it kind of feels a little bit like you know we the merger got passed and now we're like oh no just kidding we're gonna merge the elementary schools too where that was kind of a step too far at the time anyway so I'm not against the administration getting some more information but I am definitely not enthusiastic about this idea I do think the co-mingling of ballots I think we should separate that out because that's definitely something that we should look at so can we have that kind of be a separate yeah I think I've sort of feel like we've discussed and are we good with I mean do we feel confident that we'll keep six chairs and I mean because that was the other question that had come up and right well I would like to think that we could be fine but I think it's actually good having six because then if you do have a vacancy or you do have somebody who can't make it or is you know late or whatever then we have two two people who are you know backups right whereas if we go down to four one person this is and you don't have a four and I know it'd be tricky to have four and you know all these different committees and right shoeboards but it's this you know we were talking about yeah well whatever six months right here saying we we had to open it's the only reason I suggested it is because we went three years with like two three members empty seats yeah so that's why I suggested it I mean we've got a full board now for intense so one one thing that did come up reading through the articles of agreement is we did included in the articles of agreement was this school councils and we never really did those never got created so I wonder if having a school council where there are parents who are involved in you know providing feedback to either the board or the administration or whatever I'm not exactly sure what those were going to be and the way I read it was would that be a student council at each campus is that kind of the way it was I I don't think it's a student council I think it's a parent parent community council to kind of did we try to and it never really took off yeah we had coffee with a principal and I don't know we've had some other different things that work have trouble filling the board seats yeah so right I guess we are a council of parents for like yeah because it just doesn't uh it just wasn't any interesting from the means I did go to right well I mean one of the benefits of whatever the school council would be would be having if there are tuition parents from other communities who would be interested in joining it that would be one benefit because we can't you know people can attend board meetings but like we don't have any do we do we open it up publicly and try to see if we can get interested individuals that want to come together and revamp it or you know and if we don't get anybody then we just give it the college try leave it where it's at or we could invite parents to the school board meetings yeah that works there we go we get them it's almost like you're looking for PTAs in each group yeah we have that yeah that's basically that's basically what this says but we don't have it at the middle and high school level in Bethel's elementary anything I was reading it kind of almost seemed like it was giving I don't want to say they don't have a voice but you know individuals that let's say they live in Stockbridge that have a son or daughter that goes to one of the schools and it gives them a little more voice into what's going on with you know at the board level or the school level rather than you know they don't get the vote on town meeting day you know those types of things but it's certainly in line so our work within the community schools grant so I would be happy to work with our community school coordinator Mary Sheldon to put a proposal together what that might look like with the principals and share it with the board next month yeah because it certainly gets to the heart of what we're trying to create also within our community school work yeah I mean I think like us as a board we kind of provide the overall overall you know policy and direction and stuff but having kind of a group that would provide feedback on how things are going from the parent perspective or from the family perspective might be good for yeah the middle they do have the PTAs for the elementary yeah I mean it's exactly why I've started these community conversations they're supposed to be two-way conversations to give us feedback on what's working what's not working right you know it's not those are not designed to be we're going to talk at you they're really trying to be designed to like give us feedback about what's working what's not working and let's have a conversation about it okay so I think you know in the sense of that it seems like we could certainly try to create some that are more specific just to your district that are having on a regular basis and certainly align to some of the goals that you have and I've been in this a while if the public should comment or not you can comment go ahead so right at the merger time this I can't even get the word right the school console concept had best intentions of growing legs and walking forward limited parental involvement it kind of fizzled and I'm not using the right political terms but it kind of fizzled and so in trying to reinvigorate it we have these committees that are called finance facilities recruitment communication the child's care or whatnot and parental involvement on some of them but not all of them right and so that was kind of an evolution over time and we kind of got to get to you may need to go I apologize I'm rewording my statement you may need to put your feet in one camp or the other but not both because parents are limited in time and I could do an assessment to say hey who wants to be on the negotiations committee and you could get the answer I'm not trying to shoot ourselves in the foot and count our eggs before they're hatched but we've tried it and then I shouldn't say we but it was tried and in it being tried we evolved and modified to succeed in a better format and then the community discussions aren't going you belong to Royalton you belong to Bethel and that's where you stay the community discussions is another evolution of such because it takes what was a school council from the committee work to more global and so it pivots between both of those maybe you know the white river valley unified district has a facility focus but the folks in Sharon have their own facility to worry about and so this pivots between both and supports the coexistence of both and then it will potentially evolve in my mind it will evolve to grow up to be something ready for high school but I don't know that future state but from a bystander or public comment that's the growth that I have seen okay yeah I mean I do think the the kind of committees that we have the facilities committee and recruitment those are kind of board work but specialized so they're not necessarily kind of the same thing as the councils which we're going to be separate from the board that were again I need to read through they do have public involvement though right they do have public involvement but generally it's you know yeah I mean it's folks interested in that subject right but how do people find out about them aside from somebody taking notes yeah that's the thing is we we aren't and I don't know that we ever really fully tried the councils like Reid started something one year and I think it met a couple times and then didn't really go anywhere I would be interested in and hearing of Jeff had interested in you know I think he has the personality to kind of pull something like this off and bring community together and and make something worthwhile out of it so if if you want to work with you know I work the principles I work with Mary I mean it literally is at the heart of what we're trying to do with community schools trying to get community into our buildings to have conversations and I think you know if we did have something like that that was a little more official than the community conversations like the more more people we get involved then they can kind of be a staging ground for you know you've been doing this why don't you join the board and then maybe yeah it's just it's just challenging right the SU has a has an equity task force and we've got across the whole SU 12 people engaged and we've put callouts so I just I think we got to be realistic too oh sure I'm saying about we can try and try and I do think I do think we create lots of mediums for folks to engage but there is the real the reality of just bandwidth folks have and you know we've got good music boosters we've got great athletic boosters and you know people it's only so many so many engaged things that people can do but give it another try I guess any further discussion on that topic it's still not clear to me about the board in regards to like what you are charging are you charging the administration to create a proposal to have within a couple months about pros and cons for the board to then consider whether or not they wanted to pursue that conversation further I just need some clearer direction you don't need a motion do we one uh no I don't think so one thing I would ask of you is do you guys feel like you have the bandwidth right now to spend a lot of time looking at this like it's kind of like you guys wouldn't be more than just kind of like a meeting where you're like as this good idea not a good idea you wanted to kind of get into it you know I think we I would believe if we were going to provide data to the board we would really need to get into what it would look like in regards to just like staffing models right student class sizes any efficiencies and or reinvestment in expanding further programming due to efficiency seen and really run all that data and pull it together and into a comprehensive report for folks even down like the bus routes and travel times yes so yeah I mean I guess I'm asking is this a good time you know like certainly through COVID and you know you guys have had a lot of very busy times and I don't want to have you know there's no rush on this so if this would take away from you know work that is more pressing than I might say well schools wind up they don't wind down and I always say that right so principals jobs wind up from here on out and the reason why for that is they're in the thick of hiring season and we're trying to close the school year while we also are planning for summer and opening for next right and so I don't want to speak on behalf of them but I have always felt especially where they sit that my busiest months were now until June for me and where I sit we just put four budgets to bed we got two to go after they're put to bed in May my bandwidth for projects like this do open up so I don't know how principals are feeling in regards to be able to tackle this and have a thorough presentation by June I certainly can meet with them and pull something together on their behalf based on feedback that they're giving me I think we could have that ready for board review in June in digestion so not before that just because I do have Tara and I have two districts that we need to we're like everything we just did for four we're doing for two right now budgets in May but after July or August that would be better yeah I mean why don't we shoot for June and if I'm feeling like we haven't made good progress next month I can update the board and maybe then it's August but for now try to shoot for June okay yeah and it's certainly not it's not a rush but it's just a side yeah I know we want to keep keep not just drop the ball but we just always want to be looking at making sure that we're always doing the best thing for the students and where does it come from in different ideas okay is that yeah yeah it works okay all right um moving on to the declaration of inclusion possible action so the last page of the packets the declaration of inclusion yeah so at the at the annual school meeting that we had at the end there was there was some citizens that had spoke in regards to kind of where our board stance was in regards to some of LGBTQ pieces that had come before the school over over a period of time the you know we had the the resolution LGBTQ resolution that that came before the board this winter that they moved forward it seemed like from the discussions of that evening that um myself and others wanted to see more inclusiveness of a resolution to move something forward so so I started speaking out with some uh working with some community members the the town of Bethel had the equity and inclusion committee and Bethel had met um well they've been meeting for a couple years now and had put forward a declaration of inclusion last September um and and it was adopted by the town of Bethel in September so so what I was looking at was you know a strong statement that shows both the school and the board you know takes the inclusion of all of our students very seriously so I looked at if you had the town of Bethel one that's I think maybe Jamie got it at some point but it's very similar to this one just just kind of incorporates the school feel of it rather than the town I think it's important that especially with some of the community members that did voice their opinions at the um any other business portions of the meeting that you know I think would some of the things that have we have talked about over the last six months that it's important that not just the board but the school um you know have a strong statement of where we stand so I feel that that this declaration of inclusion is exactly what it says it is it's inclusive of everybody um everybody that's in in our school walls so okay I'm excited everybody had a chance to read through the declaration of inclusion that Chris's proposal yeah I had actually printed the one from the town uh I was gonna it I was gonna bring it up tonight anyways so it's pretty much the same thing uh but yeah I would make a motion that we accept uh this declaration of inclusion is there a second okay uh we have some discussion on this uh question partly for Jamie there's already an overarching policy um for Vermont schools and and an SU policy correct well that addresses specific to transgender and non-conforming students I see that this addresses yeah but there's an over overarching policy the SU has a policy that's based on state guidance okay so but the SU has a policy that we are beholden by already for this and we have the anti-racism policy and we have an anti-racism already yeah I mean I I do think that this is a worthwhile thing to adopt I mean it's I well there's nothing in there's nothing in here that's negative no no no but I was like I was just wondering there's other there's other policies and statements that we are beholden to but I mean the policies the policies are more like these are the things that we're going to follow this is just the kind of a statement is our belief statement yeah um you know I do just would say you know this is I agree with all of it and we do welcome everybody I do think when you do have a situation where there's a specific cohort or subset that you know has different needs it we can also like this shouldn't preclude us from expressions of support of other groups and I don't see that that is necessarily divisive or anything like that but I do support this as well I had meant to print out the Bethel one as well just to see what the changes were between the Bethel one and is there any significant no probably not much it's just a little more student specific as opposed to residents right yeah the one thing was that it has the town of Bethel condemns racism and welcomes all-person so this just has the condemned racism isn't in there so is there what we want to include that or keep it the way that it is here I guess it's one thing I'd be curious to hear others opinions on I think this is much more positive than rather than condemning we are welcome okay just just a general feeling I mean it does later I'd say as a school district reformally condemn all discrimination in all its forms so yeah I don't feel self-conscious about that as a statement we can formally condemn discrimination right yeah I'm given that given that this doesn't preclude us from making further statements and that we're already subject to other things there's nothing in here that I can't support okay are we ready to Andrew I have one question just I'm just curious is it and Chris you probably might be the answer because of it coming it mentioned it mentions lots of gives lots of examples of parties right and it mentions gender identity or expression it does speak to sex but it doesn't speak to sexual orientation and I don't know if that was just an oversight in the Bethel one I just it seems to name every single thing but it doesn't speak to that and I know I'm going to get asked that question well it does say sex and gender identity well it says sex right but gender identity or expression it doesn't say sexual orientation so should we modify it to I just I just think that that could have been asked so could we amend it to put sexual orientation in that list of things that are welcome and supported yeah I think I mean it wasn't it wasn't in the initial declaration of inclusion that was done by a a pretty thorough board of individuals that that represent all you know equity inclusion I actually didn't even think about that but I'm not sure why why they didn't put it in there or maybe it wasn't oversight or maybe there was a reason for it I don't I mean I guess I mean sometimes I I mean looking at it now I don't know if it needs to be in there we're talking about we're in school being educated I don't know I think it's pretty much covered in the rest of the document but I just think it'd be a shame to do eight or nine things that we're saying we're doing a declaration of inclusion and then just leaving one on the board would just be why leave one on the board when we could have everything listed by getting one more in there yeah I just I'm sure if it's already covered there but if you want to add it I'm okay with adding it in so I guess we'd need a motion to amend the declaration of inclusion a motion to amend to include sexual orientation would it be maybe after after after sex we could put sexual orientation then gender identity or expression so it's been moved and seconded so we're just voting on that amendment to this declaration at the moment is there any discussion further discussion on the amendment okay all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay add motion okay all right so now on adopting the declaration of inclusion is there any further discussion on the declaration as a whole okay um all in favor say aye aye aye all right okay any opposed declaration of inclusion is adopted one thing we didn't discuss is we've adopted this declaration do we want anything to be done with the declaration like have it I motion have it posted at the the our I'm sorry the the posting places designated posting places okay I mean I was kind of thinking you know when I was looking on the website it would be nice to have I like that somewhere front and center of the website or maybe any other important documents that the school has student handbook student handbook yeah or I don't know if there's any you know certain literature that goes to another school when we're trying to recruit or something but maybe it should be tagline there so yeah I think the posting places are more for ephemeral things you know like the monthly notices and things like that well I was thinking temporarily right so that they know that we've done this I was I was thinking more maybe I should have been more specific with my motion maybe posted the designated spot spaces for 30 days so that people could see that we just did this and make it a very public statement by letting people know in general that we've made this declaration of inclusion that that was just my thought you know I'm not married to it I just was thinking that you know if everybody saw it they would understand that we we had just done this but I do like the web and handbooks very much okay I'd be happy to place a motion that it would be included on the website in any literature and handbooks as appropriate and if you don't feel the posting play I can leave off the posting places if you don't feel it's appropriate well the minutes are posted right right so it's okay well then then I motion that it be included on the website in some capacity prominently and that it be included in any materials that are distributed as appropriate to students and parents okay I'll second okay any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye opposed thank you so that as finishes the discussion items we've already adopted the vsba code of ethics and the declaration of inclusion it's around to the final public comments is there any oh right right yes you're right yeah Tara we had tabled your part of the meeting but you were here good evening everyone my report was very short this meeting just letting you know what's happening in the business office during the month of March so if there's any questions on that I'll happily answer it does anybody have any questions for Tara okay well sorry for not having to do that a while ago when you first came that's all right no worries all right thanks Tara now would you like to do public comment ball program for it's a specifically 13 year old students they basically age 13 year old sixth grade students they are aged out of all Cal Ripken programs and they're not eligible for our middle school because vpa says they're seventh and eighth grade so there's there's three or four this year I'm sure it happens more it just seems like a weird this that they just they basically don't have anywhere to go unless they travel so we limited to seventh and eighth grade I'm gonna try to deal with that I didn't realize that this is the middle school baseball coach brought it up to the um ad and he was kind of like vpa says seventh and eighth we really can't I mean we we've certainly had six graders on middle school teams in the past I'll inquire about this I did I already did today I talked to Mr. Perot he said the decision was given to him by the school board when he came on well originally we said that we were into five six with rec but this is separate so well these kids these kids are six I'm gonna deal with it okay the breakdown is that one thing ends with age and the other begins with grade yeah I'll do right we'll get it fixed thanks for bringing it to our attention and actually it's something that comes up more time than not and it's one of the things that hopefully that the the SU and the principals will include in when we talk about how the alignment of the schools and the campuses are going because what has been really challenging having had two daughters that went through the sixth grade uh Anna being a coach in middle school is the sixth graders have they're in a tough spot they're they're either they're either brought up into the middle school maybe at too early of an age or they're kind of left behind to deal with an erect department type of you know athletic thing um still think that in some ways that the sixth graders are most of them are not mature enough to be in the middle school um they need another year of you know to get there to deal with those kind of more real world issues that they deal with in the middle school that's kind of the melting pot of you know our school district so I think and we've seen that with the athletics it's been challenging because we'll have one year we'll have like like basketball one year we had 18 sixth graders come out for basketball and we had 18 sixth graders and then we had like 18 seventh and eighth graders you know so we it was like what do we do with all these kids yeah and then the fifth grade rec team had three you know so it was like I think it's been a good decision to have fifth and sixth play rec in general and have seven eight but an example like this where students have aged out we need to invite them to our 718 but they're 13 they've aged out of the program they're eligible yeah so we'll but I would make the argument that if these children are in our school system they should have 100% of the privileges of being in that school system and one of those is to play middle school ball like if you are a talented sixth grader there should be no reason why you're not on the middle school team and why you have to be maybe playing down at a less level you know or vice versa I mean if you need a little more skills then there's the opportunity to go to the rec piece but I don't think that we should be normally opening up cameras here but I don't know that we should be just necessarily telling these sixth graders okay you can be on the bowling team but you can't be on the soccer team you know or we're kind of doing this on a case-by-case basis it's either they should have all the privileges that come with being a middle school or which is being on a middle school team with a choice maybe their choice is you could be on a middle school team or if you feel that you're need a stronger skill set maybe you could play direct league but right now we're kind of doing this on a case-by-case basis saying I think you kind of have to though because I mean like soccer but soccer you might need those extra kids in order of sixth graders but basketball you clearly can't so like you kind of have to make judgment calls I know but it's it's not fair right I mean it's fair if you do it consistent like if we're not consistently but I think we are we are we were opening up of kids aged out right I mean we are we're letting these kids can't play rec so they play middle school these kids can play rec so they play rec like that's consistent I don't know I mean it's okay we can agree not agree but it's I just feel like if we're gonna tell these kids are in the middle school then they should have all the privileges in middle school you know if they're not mature enough to be in middle school and be on middle school team then maybe they should be in elementary school but recognizing the public common period I don't know if our rural nature supports a 36 member sporting team if in your scenario I'm borrowing that scenario of 18 kids in sixth grade and 18 kids in seventh grade and so given our community structures and this is not limited to Bethel or South Royalton but well gosh we've got a sixth grade girls team who can we play against well they're going to get played against the seventh and eighth graders from that other town but and so what we find ourselves doing is trying to find our footing on how do we package this middle school when the sixth graders are playing an eighth grader and this also happens in Cal Ripken so the flexibility I think is done to the best degree of being unbiased and that flexibility that's been granted allows to cater to the unique situation that varies from one year to the next there's not consistency I can predict Tommy Sue Tommy and Sue are going to come up every year and I'm going to have to decide which team they're playing on but our surrounding communities have different structures that we rec is challenged by and they made a decision rec made a decision within the past two years directionally which helped us find our footing forward and I think we're on a good path I wasn't aware of the the aging concept and I follow baseball so this is fascinating to me but I don't think our communities that surround us can come up with a competing sixth grade basketball team and I'm just sticking to basketball because we just got out of it and so we kind of have to fit what surrounds us to move forward in a competitive fashion but that won't solely drive us we're attentive both ways looking at us and then looking at the community that surrounds us no I 100% agree with that I think again to back up into you know the article's origination as we put ourselves in a really tough spot with the sixth graders being in the middle school I mean again you know we made perfect sense of nobody else in our area you know in our area has six graders in middle school so why do we have six graders in school you know and thinking some of the challenges that we do have with that but you know not being mature enough at you know at times I've had two kids come through there so I clearly know what we're up against and I coach sports with 18 kids on a basketball team you know but we are not consistent with it so I won't agree that we are because we're not and I will say that right now it's alienating some of the parents that have sons or daughters that are six graders that let's say wanted to play basketball middle school that was told they have to go play rec ball now do we want to go to high school here or not do we want to go to Randolph you know because Randolph except you know like there's conversations happening and if we want to you know I think the ultimate goal like we've talked about is to keep our enrollment and keep our students moving through the system and I would hope that the challenge that we have I would remind the board the folks are having these concerns like Todd just did if that's happening because I hope you're directing them back to administration because I'm not hearing from those sixth grade families yeah so I hope you're asking them to share those concerns well please do yeah no I hear it all the time as a coach I mean please send them my direction because we don't I haven't heard that and when we hear about it we fix it I was just engaged about it so I want to remind the entire board that those should be directed back to administration right it is it's small school problems because like last year we had my daughter played softball last year we had eight players I mean they just barely had enough for a team they had the scrounge to get enough to make a team and this year they have 24 I mean it's just that's the way it goes it's it's like there's a lot of flexing and it is small school problem it's our problem not the kids a kid that wants to play shouldn't have no place to play if we're building a team if we're filling a team and a kid wants to play yeah and I think we we base it based on what makes sense for the kids developmentally and you know like where they're gonna succeed the best you know I think we definitely had a lot of challenge with the sixth graders being on the middle school teams just all the sixth graders being on the middle school teams that was not good for not in the best interest of the sixth graders we definitely were hearing a lot of concerns with that yeah yeah yeah and so you know I think it's been like we definitely changed the way that that was working and I think it's been working better this year um so but it's ongoing conversation and is baseball the only sport like that right with the yes yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's I mean talking about it pretty I'm I'm specifically talking about very small we need to be responsive to address that is there any other public comment are you saying something Nancy we can't hear you you're muted Nancy if you're talking to us I think I think she was saying good bye okay she hit the red button by mistake all right any new hires resignations every retirement not a resignation but a retirement uh Deb Olson Coffey who has been there longer than Andra which is a marker and Andrew's been with us 23 years so Deb is not going to return in the fall and I think we want to recognize her here this evening but also as we wind down in June and thank her for her years of service in the role it's a power educator okay she'd like us to make a motion thanking yeah I can I can make a motion to formally thank her okay yeah notice uh the full name again full name please Deb Olson Coffey and I motion to recognize Deb Olson Coffey formally uh for her meritorious service to our school system second all right all in favor say aye and we're hoping to have a slate of new hires even for some of the positions we hadn't filled this year like foreign language possibly for next month so we are getting folks applying to positions and uh principles are moving quickly so we had not tonight but I suspect some new hires for next month great I don't think we have any other oh yeah so we still don't have anybody for the negotiation council um I may die I'll accept a nomination if somebody wants to nominate me okay entertain a motion to point add to the negotiations council I'll move it a second okay uh all in favor say aye all right any opposed thank you very much for volunteering we can't we can't have unresolved business if I can help it yeah thanks it Thursday night at 5 30 virtually Thursday and in person at the central office I'm more inclined to probably do those virtual that's fine that's fine I'll get you the agenda okay thank you very much I'll help you I'll have this shirt on and put your pants on below the future agenda items uh hearing about the update on performance arts space next month yep um school councils potential discussion yep proposal or something um and then sometime in June or July or August uh when you're able a presentation presentation on school start to get it on under future agenda so we don't lose it uh the school councils proposals or something our next meeting date would be Tuesday April 18th 2023 at 7 p.m not 6 30 and battle what's the date on that again uh April 18th and I'd entertain a motion to adjourn second all right thanks everybody