 So we will call the meeting to order at 6.04. Are there any adjustments to the agenda? All right. Hearing none. Approve the minutes of January 3rd. So move. Do I have a second? Second. Is there any discussion on the minutes? All right. Hearing none, the minutes of January 3rd are passed. If you have any correspondence or communications which we did, we don't have anything. Very good. Any public comments? Do we have anybody on tonight? I couldn't see who's in the room with you, Jamie. We do not. Okay. All right. And reports to the board. Jamie, you're up. So good evening. I've been trying to keep the board updated in some written numbers via email in regards to the changes that have been happening over the last few weeks in regards to the Education Fund and the ramifications of the implementation of Act 127 and how that has impacted the Education Fund and specifically the yield. And so, and I know that many of you have been following this closely through information provided to us via the BSBA and provided via the media and or some of our local reps have put some information out via some of your local communication mechanisms, whether that's listservs from porch forums, things of that nature. I have, last week, I spent time with the BSA. I was invited to join the Vermont Supertenants Association trustees to discuss Act 127. And that invitation was extended to me from the Vermont's business officers, President Vasbo, the VSA Executive Director, the VSA president, and then also Sue joined from the BSBA. What became clear to me is that something that I would say that I think we've been doing a good job of discussing as a board since back in September around significant concerns around the implementation of Act 127 and how that may result in a really significant reduction in the yield of which by most reports is that, well over 70% of districts now are over the 5% tax cap. We actually have two districts right now that are under still. And what it is important to know is that we had all but one district under until the latest drop in the yield. Which then did kick over two additional districts into the 5% cap. Actually to the point where districts were looking at the 23rd hour and a half and they cut a quarter of a million dollars to even get under the cap before then they could start to have any impact on the tax rate. Just so the board members know that last drop in the yield was the equivalent of four cents in all of our districts. So it was pretty significant. That came out in January. My worry still remains that that may not have even been the last drop in the yield. My sense is by the time we get to May that we could see an even greater decrease to the yield. And so I share that with you for two reasons. One, boards that are already under the ceiling and within the 5% cap. When I send out information now as talking about a drop in the yield, it is important that you understand that now that you're within the 5% cap unless anything is changed currently in law that will not have an effect on your tax rate. For districts that are under the cap as that yield continues to drop it will impact our tax rate in those districts. So that's important to know. The other thing that I would say in regards to my meetings last week is that I have been told that there have been research done by the tax department that the ed fund will be funded via their one mechanism right now to generate increased revenue which is the only mechanism they really have the lever they can use is the yield. Okay, so they've already figured out in regards to the revenue streams that they bring in an example the lottery is the revenue stream that they bring into the ed fund, right? Like beyond that the mechanism they have currently unless they change statute is to drop the yield to increase funds. And they have supposedly run data to show that if they were to drop the yield to a level to fund the ed fund that it could potentially put everyone over the 5% gap. That's yet to be determined, right? They're looking to figure out what actual school district budgets have been approved at and my sense is they'll continue to run that data now between now and town meeting based on approved budgets. And then certainly they're gonna continue to follow districts that vote a little later. For example, we have two districts that don't vote until May. And so Jamie, what does this all mean? What I would say is what it means is that I'm really in a camp and I've talked to the VSA of it is very, very late in this budget season to now start changing the law. Yeah. And so to go around changing Act 127 and who goes in front of committees even if they, you know, we have a districts that have worked hard to stay under that 10% threshold. We had a district that was over the 10% ceiling who worked to make cuts to get under the 10% ceiling to ensure that they were able to utilize the provisions of Act 127 within the cap. The notion that that rule would then all of a sudden change to now that that district board is now going in front of some type of review committee and or our other districts who are under the cap that the yield then put them over the cap. I am completely opposed to just to be clear but that is, that has been my sentiment that to change the game at the 23rd hour and say that the goal line post moves this year when district boards have approved their budgets I do not believe this fair. What I would say though is that 127 the other piece to this though is that the legislature needs to work on this that as in current law I believe it needs to be changed moving forward. I think that we have an issue in regards to how we're gonna move forward of funding the Ed fund over the next five years if we don't address it moving forward. Okay, I don't think though doing anything that would upheave what districts believe the rules were in regards to their budgeting process now. That I'm not in favor of. I think we need to look at what we're gonna do moving forward. The other thing that I would just say to you is that and I shared this as a concern is that once again I believe the tax department had a really good sense that CLA's had tanked to the level that they have across the state back on the December one tax letter when there was notions of 17 and a half to 18 and a half percent increases in taxes. If you look at the driving force across our supervisory union in regards to the tax bill the drop in the CLA's are the huge chunk to that even with this drop in yield. And most of our districts even with the cap we're looking at about a six cent increase and then the CLA is doing the rest of the increase past that. And so I hear a lot of talk about ACT 127 and what districts are doing in regards to spending if they're under the ceiling and all these other different things. But I also think the legislature really needs to look at the common level of appraisal and how do we get on a regular cycle and how do we try to address that mechanism? There's been talk in the past around the legislature about how to try to get folks on a regular cycle or on the common level appraisal so that we don't see such huge discrepancies of changes year over year. And I'll just say, you know, my final thing that I get really frustrated is is that there's a lot of talk about education taxes going up 18 and a half, 20% but that's never said with the caveat that the CLA may be actually contributing, you know, 70% of that increase of 18 and a half percent. And instead, there's a lot of talk about what, you know, school boards or superintendents are doing to try to better cap spending. So those are all my thoughts in regards to what we're at right now. I don't know. So things that we have that we've changed up for this coming year is, we've got a question and answer sheet that is much like what we use during our COVID days. I think it was a good tool that we use that folks could submit questions and then we would do our best to address them and answer them. I think that I really would like to try to have our constituents across our multiple districts see that, you know, that most of us have ended up in the same place based to a lot of factors that are out of our control, like drop in yield, decrease in CLA. We'll also show them what some of our neighboring supervisory union districts are doing. In regards to those tax rates as we lead up to our votes and in our information sessions, the other thing we're doing this year is that we've created a opportunity for folks to link to a video that we're gonna produce that's specific to talking about Act 127 that have the impacts on the tax sheet to try to help folks understand what does it even mean to have a ceiling cap that folks can access that. We're gonna look to our high school at the post of weekly radio show with Royalton Public Radio. We're gonna try to get a podcast a couple of different times to just keep folks abreast about the mechanism of the 127 and what might be happening in the legislature moving up to our annual meetings. And certainly we'll be working with boards to change what our presentations look like to try to better highlight for folks all the different kind of moving mechanisms that have occurred here in the last, really three months of which some they're very accustomed to. Like the CLA, that is a term they've heard us talk about on a regular basis over time. I just think really helping folks dial into how that actually impacts the bottom line in regards to the tax bill is something we really need to help folks with. There was an animated thing that somebody thought out of. That explains the school budget. It's our law and you can find it, but it doesn't work so well. I've asked them to update one now with Act 127 that we could all utilize. And I have not heard whether or not that's actually gonna happen or not. The one I've seen is it's prior, but it does explain CLA somewhat. So right now without receiving any necessarily support from some of our organizations, I'm gonna try to see if we can duplicate something similar to that. I agree with you Rodney. It was pretty handy and made it simple to understand. Right. All right. Eric. So the first thing that I will say is thank you Jamie and the rest of the administration, both where you're sitting now and at the different schools for all the work that has gone into both the budgeting season and helping us and others to understand what's going on because I appreciate and understand how much work it is and how confusing it is. So thank you for the work that you folks are doing. The second thing that I will say is the one thing that I did not hear in your recitation of woes that is I think important for our policy makers to keep in mind is that there are a number of costs that we are incurring that we can't avoid either because there are rises in healthcare costs that are part of the way in which we tweet our employees in a reasonable way or there have been cost increases for salaries that are either pursuant to contracts or because we need to pay a living wage that are not indicative of padded or bloated budgets. They are indicative of us having to conduct business in this inflationary times. You know, thank you, Eric. Yeah, certainly that those points need to be continued to be made as well. Anybody have anything else for Jamie's report? Jamie's, Michael, could you perhaps or not speak to the way that I'm starting to hear folks characterize boards if they should choose to stay under the 10% but take advantage of some additional revenue because that's being portrayed as. I've heard it, the term I've heard, I've actually, it was said in a public meeting that that is slimy, and so what I would say to you is that I have pushed back significantly on that. And we do have two districts who have done what you just said that they have had to deal with deferred maintenance. They were two districts that were under the cap prior to the drop in the yield. They're districts that have struggled to put money away in previous years to fund capital improvements, of which many other districts in this state have done year after year, and those funds have come from the Ed fund annually. You know, I think to say that there are certain ways that people are budgeting and that those are looked upon as okay via Act 127, and that there's other ways that folks are budgeting that they may be putting some funds away to deal with deferred maintenance because they haven't been able to. I don't think it is fair to characterize what is okay in regards to a district decision around budgeting and what isn't. The other thing I would say to you is, is that there are many districts and we're gonna be getting ready to go into negotiations next year who have settled recently on teacher contracts, right? And that those additional spending are also part of their budgets in regards to whether or not they're under the ceiling. And frankly, having some funds in our budgets too that will help us in regards to offsetting that in years to come, strategic budgeting that way, I would hope would be looked at is, boy, boards are looking and thinking ahead. And so, you know, Michael, I have apologized to no one based on those two district boards decisions. I think you guys had all the information. The other part that again, I would come back to I think is an incredible flaw in regards to Act 127. It is in both situations, those districts would have to cut several teaching positions to even make an impact on the tax rate because they would have to get out from under the cap. And frankly, the CLA's have dropped so much prior that it really made no sense for them in regards to representing your constituents. And so Michael, what I would say to you is that we have two districts that did do that in this supervisory union. And I certainly know other districts who also did the same thing. And I would say that in general, most of those districts or districts who have been struggling to deal with deferred maintenance, there's been nothing done with via the legislature to help school districts be able to deal with deferred maintenance because there's been no funds since 2007 for school construction, right? And so if there's a mechanism here to help with things like pre-cave buildings that were used when we bought them and should have been taken care of eight years ago, I don't think there's any reason for anyone to have to apologize for that. So Michael, thanks for asking the question. That's been my stance and that's how I've been defending the boards within this SU's decisions. So I know Sarah's got her hand up. So I wanna turn it over to her. But Jamie, if those two districts could get together with you and work on some language to represent that stance, I think that would be helpful. Yep, that makes sense. Thanks. Sarah. Jamie, do you know anybody from our district or anybody anywhere who's testifying Thursday for that joint committee meeting? I don't know anyone who is testifying from RSU. I've been invited multiple times and testify. And frankly, I would say to the board, I am not feeling necessarily on Thursday that testifying made the best sense for us in regards to feeling like I was going into a playing field where there weren't some folks who are worried to have the result be such that a sound bike could be gained by this and or who already had their minds made up in regards to how they felt like this needed to play out. So I did not think it made sense for us in regards to strategy and or feeling like I was being received with an open mind necessarily that it made sense. I was really worried about some folks feeling really negatively about the thing that Michael just asked. And it wouldn't matter how that was described that that was gonna be seen as negative. And again, I say that just based on the, I've heard the word gaming, I've heard the word tax loophones and I've heard the notion of slimy being used. Andrew? So just a sec before, I just had one other follow-up on that and that is that yesterday I got on a roll. I wrote letters to all sorts of people and one of the letters that I wrote to, one of the people I wrote to was to the author of the Vermont Digger article that where some of the quotes came from that we were gaming the system and everything and asked him and volunteered that if he wanted a school board perspective, here was my phone number and he could give me a call and I'd be more than willing to talk to him. I also wrote a letter to Sue from the BSBA and I gotta admit that letter that we got through or that I think board chairs got but it was also in the Digger article, angered me and offended me. And so, and it really angered me that it came from an organization that's supposed to be advocates for us. And I let her know that and she came back and basically said, well, we didn't agree with it. We didn't write it. So we didn't really have anything to do with it but you sent it out to us and that really angered me. I also thanked Rebecca Holcomb for her letter to our listserv and I think it went into some other towns to really just basically say that school boards were not to blame in this. And she's coming to our board meeting on the 6th of February to talk with us about it because the impacts are huge. The impacts are even huge here in Norwich. I heard they have like a 36% increase from her in their budget. And I used to bargain the Dresden contract and Norwich always had a really hard time coming up with it because they partnered with Hanover's tax base to come up with it in it. So I mean, it's, we're in, I don't know, I just was angered and decided I was gonna write letters. Yes. Good for you, Sarah. Andrew. So speaking as a district that's in the opposite situation where we are under the cap and now we're hoping that deal doesn't go up. And so I certainly know would be taking advantage of the same thing you guys did. Like when we had Act 46 and we did our merger, we did that. We took advantage of our tax cap to some extra spending. But Jamie, I'm curious when you speak to representatives or whoever about what the fix should be, what are you saying? Because it seems to me that there's a pretty simple fix to this and if they could get it done quickly, like we could take that into account and it would kind of solve the issue and that the reason that they have the cap is that they didn't want towns that were adversely impacted by these waiting changes to have the full impact. And the way to do that would just be to cap the ratio of the equalized people to the yield and how that changed for each district. That doesn't change like how people are spending, it just changes the impact of Act 127 on the individual districts and makes it so that it can't go up by too much in one year. Thank you, Andrew. You mentioned that to me last week and I did start to discuss that more specifically with the VSA because I think it's important that they have a talking point around how we might solve this. And I would say I started to get some interest there, Andrew. And so I think we're gonna need to help walk them through that some more. The thing that I think in general our legislature struggles with is that it is everyone wrapping their head around the complexities of actually how we get to that tax rate. And so helping those folks understand that notion and or helping the advisors with the Joint Fiscal Offices understand that I think could be really helpful. Because I would say the heart of Act 127, I am completely in support of. The problem was is that there was a lot of time spent on the pupil waiting piece and not enough time spent on what we're talking about right now where the rubber meets the road around how it may actually impact the Ed fund and then also budgets and tax rates. And so, Andrew, I would actually be interested in talking to you further about that myself because I do think the VSA is looking for a solid solution and you ran that by me last week and I did share that. I think there could possibly be some interest there. Yeah, I mean, it seems like I would have to be done very soon before people are passing budgets based. Well, I'm talking about not necessarily for this year. I'm talking about, yeah, like moving forward because I don't think they have a good sense of how to change it moving forward where we could still get to the heart of the law, right? But we're not back in this type of scenario. Yeah, and I guess the other thing I would say is I hope you're speaking up strongly in favor of not raising the yield to, like, I mean, if there's 30% of districts that are still under the 5% cap, like raising the yield just makes it so that they're generating all the money from those 30%- Lowering? Oh, yeah, no, I totally, and that's what, and I've gone as far, Andrew, to say, look at an example of districts who have worked incredibly hard to be under the cap of which First Prince and Sharon were, and when you drop the yield further, you just put them way over, not even over a little bit. You put them over in a situation where they couldn't get back out from under it, over it. And so I shared to them, you're perpetuating this problem by doing that. So yes, I have certainly advocated for that. And I've said, and if you're concerned, maybe you need to look at a different lever right now to bring in funding for the ed fund. Yeah, and the more that you keep raising that lever, the less effective it is because the more towns are in the cap, so. Michael, did you have something else? Yeah, I'm just curious to know who's on the phone on answer one nine. It's a board member. Okay, great. Neil from G hood. Great. All right. Anything else for Jamie guys? Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, this is Shivo and Neil from Granville. Thank you. No problem. How do I read you? Okay. Star six. All right. Go ahead and question Kathy. Oh, go ahead. Right. Yeah, I think Jamie's spot on. We've got a tremendous challenge. You know, I'm an optimist and if any organization and leadership team can overcome this challenge and the headwinds we're facing regarding how personally perturbed we are with this, we can do it. That's my first thing. The second thing is I like the idea of really teaming together on how to present the reality to our constituents so they understand the building blocks of why this is happening and what we can control and not control. And I think that's well worth the effort. People just won't believe. I know in our said that the CLA is impacting Rochester by over a third and stock price by approximately two thirds. I mean, holy moly that is. So that's the thing that seems like we're well in our way to solve that. The second thing is that I looked at income sensitivity and that is up gigantically as well as for those one third of our property owners that pay their school tax by their property value. That said, my analysis shows that in many, many, many, many, many cases, even with that large increase with the income sensitivity tax, they're gonna be paying substantially less than their neighbors that are paying by the value of their property. And I think we need to be aware of that and we'd be able to explain that to our constituents. We're not saying excuses. We're not saying, oh, this isn't tough. But the fact is under our state law, we've got two ways of paying school taxes. And even with this increase, those paying basically make $100,000 or less, they're gonna be paying less. And I think we should be able to explain that to help soften the blow. The other thing that I can say towards time is that this is a time we've gotta be able to tell the taxpayers what are you getting for your value? Their hair, fire, everything else. What are you getting? And this is where we're gonna be very articulate of the progress, the advance, the advantages, the benefits of what the SU and the individual districts are doing for their kids. And we've gotta be very articulate about that. I say, we don't wanna lose that. That's too valuable here. You're looking at the cause. Don't take it out on the kids. But I think we need to be very, very articulate on the five or 10 points on that and drive that home the best we can. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. All right, guys. Anything else for Jamie? Okay. So, Anda, you're up next. And after Anda's done, I think, Sarah, will you take over for me? I'm gonna scoot. I have people waiting for me for dinner. If that's okay with you, Ms. Sarah. All right. Anda, yes, but my muted. Yes, it's okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. I guess that most, this feels like kind of a big shift in the conversations. I'll just say I'm extremely grateful to work with a superintendent and a board that can handle all of this as hard as it is so that I can do my job, which is to focus on teaching and learning, which we are still doing every day, despite all of these distractions. You have the report we're doing a lot with professional development right now. I almost think of, and you all will probably relate to this, that at this point in time, we're sort of straddling three years at the same time. So when we're looking at sort of academic data right now, we've got our winter benchmark that came in as we meet with teachers and we meet with buildings and data teams. We're looking at sort of the growth over the past years. We're looking at like school year 22, 23, how do our students do then? How have they grown since then? And we're starting to make plans. We're certainly very much in the middle of this year thinking about how much growth our students have made. Where do we have more work to do? What ways can we use the instructional time that we have to really continue to fill gaps and accelerate growth and deepen learning for all of our students? And then we're also, as you all know, with the budgets we're pivoting towards looking at next year. So we're starting to look at the SUY calendar. We do that in collaboration with the neighboring SUs so that our students who are in the technical career center have a consistent schedule. And our buildings are starting to look at their master schedules and say, where do we need to make some adjustments? Do we have an ELA program that needs a little bit more time? Here, how do we adjust that schedule? So all of those things sort of are going on it once and in terms of thinking about sort of this kind of three-year arc and both trying to stay in the moment but also look back and look ahead at the same time. So feels like a busy time of year. Happy to take any questions. I've got one PLC. I mean, so many things. Which one? You referred to that. Yes, okay, there. And I thought it was personalized learning classrooms or something like that, but I'm not sure I've got it right. PLC, you know, personalized capstone projects. But what's, what have we got here in PLC? So we probably use that acronym in two different ways most consistently. You are correct. One of them is the personalized learning classroom which we have in the high school, really about meeting those individual students needs. In this, in the way you're seeing it here in goal two and how you'll often hear about in education is professional learning community. And it's when we have educators coming together. So in this case, right? All of our TE teachers are coming together, are thinking about, right? They're kind of all by themselves in their individual schools or districts. And this is a real opportunity for them to share. So we do, yes. Thank you for making me always unpack those acronyms. I'll figure it out. So, trivia, I'm a member of the PLC which is the professional loggers. All right guys, I'm gonna turn this over to Sarah. I really appreciate you but everybody here is waiting for me to leave. So I should probably go do my due diligence. Bye. Good dinner. Thank you. Any other questions for Anda? Hearing none. Thanks Anda, moving along to Director of Special Services Annette. Hi. All right, you also have a few of my report. And yes, looking at some data over time, we submitted our December child counts due the beginning of December every year. So the first graph just gives you an idea of what our child count numbers are and have been over time. Again, there's not much fluctuation within those numbers and some of that's out of our control. We had a large number of students move in this fall that came already supported by IEP plans and special education. So in a way, I mean, I take that as a great thing that families are feeling, we're providing wonderful education and have wonderful supports for their children that they feel comfortable moving into our town. So I actually take that as a compliment and welcome families moving in. The next one I just broke it down by district. That was a question that I got last year around this time was like, thank you for the greater SU numbers, but what does it look like for each of the districts? So the next graph just breaks it down by what I had for data for the past two years. Again, some districts numbers are going down slightly. Some are saying about the same. The next graph I think is more is most important and really speaks to the work that we're doing with our system of supports that we are offering within our districts, the initial special education evaluations is down by almost 50%. And really what that's telling us is that we're catching students earlier that we're able to support them and give them proper interventions earlier and we're not waiting for them to kind of hit a mark to fail or get to a certain point where that they need special education. So I think that really just speaks to what we are offering within our systems of support and all of the professional development that we've been providing our professionals and support staff to be able to provide a proper research-based intervention to all of our students with fidelity. So I think that graph is just a really important data point for us. And then I just included our top two kind of disability categories within our supervisory union just so that everyone can kind of see how they've been flexing over time. And I just wanted to highlight that. The yellow is as our emotional disturbance category and it's on a trend, on a downward trend, which again, I think speaks to our early intervention and the work that we're doing with our designated mental health agencies and professionals here in our area. So we're really able to meet the needs of our students again, quickly, efficiently and in a timely manner. And the last few graphs just kind of speak to the first one is about students accessing our alternative classrooms or our personal learning classroom, the PLC of the high school. Again, those numbers of the elementary and middle school are going down. At the high school, as you can see the graph grew this year, but we were able to do that because we were able to kind of open up the depth and breadth of the services that we're able to provide students and actually bring in students with much broader disability categories and help support them within that system. So that's why that number went up. And then the next graph just talks about the number of students that are attending out of district educational placements. So that's not school choice, that's us placing them in a more of a therapeutic alternative school setting outside of their public school. And again, those numbers have decreased significantly over time and they gave you a projected number also for next year, which is down slightly from this year. Any questions? Yes. Sarah, am I okay? Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't see, yes. Couple of questions and this is really important. So I've got four or five questions if you don't mind and Sarah cut me off if I'm blathering or just monopolizing this, but... I don't have the mute button. I'm not afraid to do that for you. So important. I guess the first question is you have the child count some by year and then we've got the rest of the graph. Is the first graph, the child count is the only graph that includes the choice kids and choice schools or do all these graphs have to be interpreted by other than some are very clear within our SU. So explain. The full child count is everyone that lives here in our supervisory union towns. The next one, the child count by school district is everyone that lives in that town whether they attend our high school or high school somewhere else. The initial evaluations, that's just within our supervisory union. So those are our students attending our buildings. The specific learning disability and emotional disability that is everyone that lives within our supervisory union in our towns. So they could attend school somewhere else via school choice. And then the last two, those are students that are here within our supervisory union schools. Thank you. Do we have account of the students that are in the choice schools and within the SU because it seems to me that, because it goes to what my concern is that we need to be able to interpret this. And one way to interpret it is those kids that are within our system that we can influence directly. The ones in choice schools and that was gonna be one of the questions. How can we influence there and how do we know whether they're doing a good job for our kids? But the, so the first question is it'd be great if we could somehow in these graphs break out so that we can see them. Because as SU board and district board that's our responsibility, everything else but we can't really deal with the Sharon Academy or a Thetford Academy. Well, we do. We do. We can, we can have some influence. Sure, so yes, yes. So as I did mention it in the report but it is still our responsibility even though they don't attend like our building they go to our Sharon Academy or a Thetford or somewhere else. We are still responsible for their programming via their IEP. So we do have what we call legal education agency. We are that. So we go to their IEP meetings. We go to their evaluation planning meetings. We are a part of their students team. So we hear about how they're being educated and what interventions they're receiving in their schools that they're attending. We do have say in that we can question them about why they're not doing something or why they're doing something or to tell us more about if they're in a certain program in their school. We do have influence over that. Yep, we are still part of the team and you're still responsible. Make sure that they aren't being educated even though they are not attending our schools. I don't know, I'm so much skeptical that we can urge, push, report but to actually get the job done that takes the leadership of those individual schools and their staff and their teachers and their boards and somehow I think we should be aware of their results as well as our results, not to pick and choose but that's very important. I'm really heartened by the good news that this report shows and we're showing things that not only are helping kids sooner and more effectively but we're also helping the taxpayers because to the extent you do look at that chart showing the number of kids that need special help that go outside the SU, I'd suggest that correct me if I'm wrong, that cost is substantially more than if we can do it and we are doing it within. So we're helping the kids, we're helping the taxpayers and we're making a huge difference and I think that is a message, talking about messages that we need to be able to communicate effectively, consistently and repeatedly to our constituents. Thank you. Any other questions for Annette? Hearing none, thank you very much. Real quick, just so the board knows the central office admin team will be coming to the board. I wanted you to get this report in our social emotional reports that you've been receiving over the last month. We're gonna come to you with some suggestion measures much like how we have academic indicators. The board has asked for me to provide some measurable goals in regards to like social emotional. So I'll have some draft goals for the board to consider next month. But I want you to get all these reports first. So you kind of had some baseline so that when we come with those goals that it would make sense in regards to what we're suggesting. Thank you. Anything else? Great, Tara. Good evening, everyone. You have my report which outlines our reports that are due in the month of February. And then also the additional projects that I work through for all of you throughout the month of February and getting ready for our annual meetings. So if there's any questions, I'll happily answer them. Get their questions in the room, I don't see them. So just speak out. Okay, thank you, Tara. Good work. Thank you. Ray. Okay, as I bring up my report here I would be happy to feel any questions or hear any comments about anything within the four quarters of that report or my department. Bill? Yeah, thank heavens I'm not on the IT team and I don't have to be responsible for this but I just want to point out to my rest of my colleagues that Ray has, I think, gone beyond the normal and how many acronyms that he's been using here. We've got APs, I thought that was an advanced placement but it isn't. We've got SSH, I hate to say what I thought that was like add a few letters or things. We've got putty with a small U and capital P-T-T-Y. We just need to add PLC. I also have a putty slash SSH with a best PD. Okay, so I'm not going to even pretend that I understand that. I'm not going to ask you to explain it because it's way over my head but I just want to ask you, I think we have to expand our educational terminology to add these new symbols so that we'll have some sense maybe if somebody asks us out on the street what the hell we're doing. Thank you. Yeah, not the normal level of detail I might put in but definitely something we worked on and to be honest, important in the department that we are reflecting on our own practice about PD. We've had a very good year in that area. But beyond that, the focus at the moment is on BT-CAT, Cognitive BT-CAT and the National Assessment of Education Progress. Those are coming up next month. So assessments, state and national. Thank you, Ray. Any questions or comments for Ray? More? I think I see a hand, was it? Okay. Policy committee. Eric, do you want to add? Yeah, sure. So we considered two policies this evening as we also had legal counsel in the meeting and the long and the short of the conversation is both of the policies that we discussed which were the drugs and alcohol and the workplace policy and the harassment policies will go back to our attorney for further modifications to consider different things including and the alcohol and drug policy whether or not it makes sense to have a fitness for duty policy and in the harassment policy to ensure that we are compliant not just with Title VII in the employment area but Title IX and all of the different Title IX requirements. Questions or comments? All right, thanks, Eric. Discussion of the WRVSU-23-24 goals, board goals and with possible action on those. Who wants to take those? Yeah, we started last year with not only having more robust superintendent goals which are basically definitions of where we want to take the SU and we want him to lead us in the SU but we also started establishing SU board goals and this is our second year of doing that and the committee of the three O's, Kathy, Andrew and myself put this together. We think it's important. It helps to find why we're here and what we need to do in this next year but we're already well into this next year which is fiscal year 24. So we need this thing to be approved and we need to go at it. And these goals are in parallel with the superintendent. Some people would say, well, isn't that his goal? Well, no, it's our goals, most of them because if we don't support the superintendent or the superintendent doesn't take seriously his goals, we're gonna fall flat in our face. And again, we're a supervisory union and a leadership team that's second to none. At our last meeting, we had the first review of this. There weren't particularly a lot of questions that I recall, Kathy indicated that over the next few weeks, any of you who wanted to amend this with suggestions, amendments to forward them and I'm not aware by this document that any of those, any suggestions have been made. I think it's important to understand this is our collective board goals. We're voting yes for this. We're not just sticking it in the drawer. We're saying, hey, we need to do this and we need to be aware of it and keep coming back to that. We don't have much time left, we haven't tell June, but a lot of these things are, most of these things, we can do it. Some of these things, we've already done it. The budgets obviously are a huge challenge, but we can get there. And I was gonna suggest we don't decide that tonight but one way we could manage the goals after they're voted would be for Kathy to appoint or people to volunteer to take the lead on any one of these and help usher it to a positive conclusion, but we don't have to do that tonight at all. So I'd like to urge Sarah that we get a vote on this tonight. Okay. Are there any more discussion or questions from any of the board members on it? Eric. I didn't work on this, but I'm incredibly grateful for the three of you who worked on this document. I do think it's an important document. And I think that the way that it is written right now, it actually fairly encapsulates sort of where we have been and where we need to be. And yeah, I'm just grateful that you folks took this on. You Bill, especially two years in a row because it is an incredibly important piece of documentation to create cohesiveness and the work that we do. Yeah. Thank you. Anything else? Thanks Eric. Would anybody be opposed to taking action on this now as opposed to waiting to 9.1? So I would entertain a motion to accept the WRVS U23-24 board goals. Can I offer an amendment to that? Rather than accept, it's to adopt. Okay. Thank you. Good job. Thank you. So is that okay with you, Andrew? So Andrew, we have a... Andrew, move the motion. Do I have a second? I second. Michael second and Eric both seconded. Any questions or discussions? Do you want to do a roll call or do you want to just vote by... Let's do a vote by voice and then see if we need to do a roll call. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. No, Alright, you don't actually have to take action on this tonight. I just wanted an on here, just in case on there wrapping up the last section of our single audit for the S. U, should have it wrapped up by the end of the week, so it'll be next month. Great. So did any discussion on it? Or if you read, do you want to do that next month? Thank you. As soon as we have it to give you as much time as possible with it. Thanks. The electric buses rebate program who EPA update. So, Taryn, I met with the EPA on the Thursday following our last meeting, which the December meeting was actually in January. We had a productive meeting with the EPA and STA. And the good news is at this moment in time, we got to just finalize with legal. But it looks like they're going to permit us to allow STA to help assist with taking the lead in regards to implementation of the infrastructure and being able to go out to bid for the electric buses. And so that's not following on us to have to do that, which would be a huge for us. And STA does have a person who their full time job is those two things, electric buses and the infrastructure. And so that was good news. We just need to finalize that in regards to the agency of Ed and our legal team. And we'll come back with a report next month. About that, but I'm feeling as optimistic as I have in the last six. That we couldn't be actually be coming to a place where we're going to come to update. Patrick, can I get you to mute your, your microphone? Thank you. Thanks. So that was good news because having some assistance with folks that have experience in this in this domain. Who has worked directly with the EPA on this before they will be the folks operating these vehicles. They are also the folks that have to dispose. Remember part of this rebate grant was we needed to have three buses disposed of we don't own buses. So we need STA to dispose of the buses and make certain all that paperwork is filled out. So not happen to be the in between of some of that will make this a lot less complicated. Amy. I thought last time we met, we were discussing the cost of the infrastructure. Where are we with that? We're going to have to go back out to bid. Amy, but STA would actually be the one going out to bid. Okay. Yep. We wouldn't have to. And will. Yeah, so what, I mean, what do you think the timeline is now with this? If we, you know, if we get them on board to go out to bid. You know, within the next two, three months, when are we actually going to get buses? I think it's still the timeline would be next fall. Okay. Yeah, which is what we've been shooting for. Even if it was us, I would actually say, I think this will speed it up possibly. So that's, that's our hope. Other questions or comments? No, and the other thing to know by the pass through the nice thing for us to is because this was a rebate program that that pass through goes directly to STA. So we are not in the place of having to pay out for these things. Like you asked the question, Amy, and then wait to get reimbursed by the EPA. That would then become part of STA's responsibility through the pass through that they will be the ones laying out the funds ability infrastructure. And then they'll get reimbursed directly from the EPA, not us. Great. Questions or comments. Sorry, did I miss that? You got it all spot on. Great. Thank you. We've taken care of nine then. So public comment, I don't think we have public on here. So we'll move along to resignations and new hires. I look at a net because that's, it's special at that we really employ, but no, we don't have any. Okay, great. Any other business to bring before us tonight. Sorry. I just wanted to say that it's great to see Patrick's commitment to being on this telephone call with this kiddo with sleep on his shoulder. Support that father right on, man. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much. I just wanted to make sure that we do have a resignation and appears like Patrick's son or, sorry, child. Has resigned from this meeting. Yeah. Thank you both. Anything else? Does anybody have any future agenda items that we. I would like us to, to, I don't know if it's a board or just to be on our radar, just that working across districts to support each other's budgets and come up with talking points and all of that would be helpful. And I just like to encourage us to do that. I don't know if that's that that's my dog out there barking. I don't know if that's a. An agenda item or what, but, you know, I think we could capture that Sarah, especially because it will be, it will be leading up to the annual meetings. The other things just to remind the board is we'll have the audit. And then we also, you'll be receiving. An academic data report. Andrew. One word at some. Representation model that we have of three people per district was put in place kind of before all the mergers in our SU. And so after the mergers, it wound up where, you know, the. Towns that didn't merge still have the same number, but the towns that did merge wound up with basically half the representation. So I think that's something we should look at as a board. And try and come up with something for what makes sense now that kind of in our new configuration. So, so what the agenda. Andrew, I think what you're asking for is actually a discussion item on a wall that was passed last year. So it has nothing to do actually with. Districts that merger did it has to do actually with population in regards to districts within that statute. So, I think it is worth the full board taking up under discussion. And certainly I can offer the board my thoughts around that. And what I think the pros are. Okay, so we'll put that on as an agenda item. Thank you Andrew. Other thoughts. I just have a quick question for Jamie, because you sit in on all of our, our board meetings and. You just had the pleasure Jamie of being on one earlier. I was wondering about having a conversation at some point about how boards respond to. Community comments or feedback or input that is. Oh, what's the best way of putting it Jamie or will challenging. Less than desirable. Well, I mean everybody is welcome. It's just when people get particularly challenging. I would just love some guidance on what people do and some thoughts on that. For some brainstorming on it to bring up. And also, I would say Michael, you know, when they ask questions, right. Yeah. And they're not comments. And it becomes a conversation. And when people say things that are veiled threats. And our agenda do have a like board training part. I know the VSBA did it, but I also think that we have people who have facilitated and done, you know, so we could brainstorm that and maybe put a, you know, part back in there where we could help each other. In our, our board work. But I think what I what comes to my mind is really, you know, possibly as a as a full board committing to some type of like procedure and protocols in regards to how we would handle like public comment and participation through. Yep. Patrick. Yeah. Bill and Amy might recall conversation we had about this particular topic. And I think correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what we were saying is if we get address out in public with a tough question that we just simply suggest that they come to the next board meeting. And as, you know, as a public cut and have public comment at the next meeting and discuss this board. At actual meetings, Patrick. At meetings being understood. Yeah. Okay. Good. Let's, we'll work on that on the agenda, putting that into our agenda. Any other agenda items. All right. Those are some good ideas. Thank you all. Our next meeting is February 27 at six o'clock. And I would take a motion to adjourn. So move. And a second. And I'll see you all, if not before on the 27th. Have a good night. See ya. Bye bye. Get that kid to bed.