 Welcome everybody. You're going to call our community on boarder at 617 or 618 already. It's so nice to see so many people. All the way in Spoky, Calis, it was quite the drive for some. But we're excited to be here and thank you for having this so simply, you know, this very excessive, you know, we feel really welcome, I think I speak for everybody. We had a really great quality meeting and now let's get started. Welcome and I'm going to let Megan introduce our guests. Great. Thank you. So welcome everyone and I am really excited to introduce Lucinda Garthway. So Lucinda is the executive director of the Institute for Libertory Democracy. Innovation. Innovation. No democracy. No democracy. So the ILI is the entity that we contract with for our equity scholar program and so we knew that we had space in the agenda this night and it felt like the right time to be able to share with the board a little bit of the history in where we are and where we're going with the equity scholar and it's a good representation of this district's approach to our humanity and justice work. So this is both a conversation about what we're doing and why and why we think it's the right approach and where we're going. So I'm really excited. I think it's very timely and I'm sure we will come back to additional conversations about it. So very glad to have you in here. Thank you so much. Thank you Megan. Am I on? Am I live? Do I have the slides? But then when the slides are up you won't be able to see the people. That's a sad story. Well the slides are coming up. I just want to say I'm very glad to be here and I've met some of you but probably mostly on Zoom. Some of you have met in person. And before I start I just want to call out Stephen Dell in your paper because three and a half years ago we had an idea. Just an idea. We were thinking the DEI stuff is not moving the needle enough for kids. And that mattered a lot to us in part because our kids were kids of color in this district and we personally felt some of the hurt. And then as scholars and as activists we were like what? It's got to be so high. If it's research, Shelley, who's the equity scholar, was doing some practice. We went to Jody and Stephen and said we want to try something. Can we please make a duty too? And Stephen said yes. And if Stephen had said yes we wouldn't be sitting here and the impact that has been felt in the district since wouldn't have been felt. So I just want to thank Stephen for saying yes. I appreciate that very much. I was saying to him earlier it's a hallmark. In my book it's a hallmark of good leadership to take a thoughtful risk and he did. So I appreciate that a lot. Let me go back. So I have like 10 slides maybe. I'm not going to talk long. What I do want to do is explain who we are, what this partnership is about because it's a critical partnership for us, what the ILI's approach to equity is and sort of where we're going with that. And then open it up to your questions. Shelley Vermilia who is the equity scholar in residence in the district is here to answer any questions about sort of the day to day, what this looks like day to day. There are also plenty of principals, educators in the room who can talk to you about it as well because they experience it. For now though, again I'm Lucinda Garthway. I'm the founder and director of the Institute for Libertory Innovation. I'll go a little further. We're Vermont based nonprofit. We actually operate out of an office in the barn in Plainfield. And we call ourselves a social change generator. And what that means is that we have a mission to generate and implement innovative strategies so that more people thrive in ever more peace. And that's important because that is directly related to what we think about when we think about equity. Our core work, the behind the scenes work is research and experimentation. That leads to new ways of addressing urgent social issues. And then we continually evaluate and learn. How that's important because you are our most important partner at this point in this work. That all turns into publications, programs, and services. We're pretty new. This is our most long standing and robust program. We have others in the works and others that are beginning to get off the ground. The work with the district is our most profound work at this point and has helped us to learn a tremendous amount. So the foundations, of course, there's some stuff that can fall off the slide. It's okay. There were columns that got lost in them sending the email. Our foundations are liberatory practice and I'll just take a minute to say what we mean by that is liberation can be singular. Somebody gets out of jail. People are free. A racist institution stops being racist. That's a hard thing to come up with. And we believe liberatory, liberation is change. We're never going to be done. We're always going to be working on that. That's why the word liberatory makes people go what? We work with compassion. We work with, in all of our programs, we lead with compassion. It simply means not wanting other people to suffer and acting on that. We lead with accountability, not punishment. We lead with a restorative process, as I said, not a period of process. We believe in non-violence. I can't remember the rest of the stuff that's on the slide, but certainly collaboration is a huge piece of art. Oh, there it is. We have a relationship with you. This is three slides, because I think this is important. First of all, we have a learning partnership. For two years, from 2019 to 2021, after Steven said yes, we did a pilot project at U32. That cost the district nothing. We did all of that work. We paid for all of it. However, educators in the district did a ton of the work with us. It was very much collaborative action learning. We went in with a theory and a model, a theory of change based on stuff we'd understood before and things we wanted to try. I can tell you more about that in a minute. We hired an outside evaluator, who was so taken by the model that she ended up coming to work with us later. And I'll tell you more about that in a minute. We continued to do evaluation and research in the district. Never without the district permission. In fact, our work with the district is governed by an MOU that is completely in your favor. Megan could pull the plug tomorrow with no reason and we may be gone. We are required. I don't think she's going to, but she has been. It's important to you. I think if I were on the school board, I'd want to know that you have that. It's in your favor by design. We are required to follow all of the policies and the MOU is pretty thorough in that regard. Anything we publish about the ESR, we acknowledge a district for it's your collaboration in developing the equity scholar residence model, which I'll tell you about in a minute. And the ILI provides and supports all evaluation and research activity that never costs the district a penny, nor will it ever. So that's an important part of our relationship. The other thing that we do, that's the learning partnership. We also provide a resource, a paid resource to the district which you all have approved in your budget. The ILI employs an equity scholar residence. That's Dr. Shelley Vermilion who's sitting back there. We provide services to the district and that's governed by an MOU. I consult with district leaders and you, if you would like me to. None of that will ever cost you anything. Again, all because we couldn't do this at the work of the district. We only charge, the cost of the district of the equity scholar residence is 70% of the actual cost of the program because we only charge a dollar comes in the district, it goes directly to compensation. None of that comes off the top and goes to the ILI. We do everything else. So that's an important piece. So there are two parts of our relationship. One is the learning partnership, one is that we provide a service that certainly overlaps. The service we provide is the equity scholar residence model which you, your educators helped us to develop. The equity scholar residence model has four pillars. I almost went like this, three pillars. I have my doctorate. It has two pillars. The first three are quite well documented in prior research. We kind of knew those were going to work going in but we, with the help of educators in the district, we tweaked them. One is embedded in a genuine relationship. There's an independent contractor in the schools. We used to think that we needed to have a contractor in every school. It's beginning to feel like we could actually, we can succeed with a contractor embedded in the district so that they don't have to be in the school every day. They have to be in schools every day. So this is a full-time contractor. This is Shelley's full-time job. And she's in some school or in the district office or in her own office doing responsive scholarship. I'll get back to that in a minute. Full-time. Their job is to, the primary job is to intentionally develop genuine relationships. The next thing they do is learn a set of education specifically responding to context-based questions and challenges identified by educators and community members. You're going to start to see a theme here. Our theory of change is that if we can get more and more educators to be more and more willing and confident to really engage issues of equity, that that will change the experience for young people and for other educators in the system. That's getting tweaked a little bit as we go, but that was our theory of change to begin with. So they're learner-centered. This is critical. You'll see in a minute when I show the difference slide of what that means. We're always meeting people with compassion and a restorative approach. So these are responses to all of these questions of kindness and without prejudgment. This has been really important. There are stories I can tell you, and I do tell them in other situations, but I'm not going to tell them here because you all know that people too well and even if I disguise them, I'll blow their cover. But there are certainly quite a few stories of people coming into the ESR's office shutting the door and saying, I am so tired of being called. I'm looking at Kari because I know Kari, so I'm going to use you for a second, okay? So Kari can walk into the ESR's office and shut the door and sit down and say, I'm a really good man and I'm tired of being called a white racist. Now, it would be hard for me to go, you know, look, Kari, you've got some stuff to work on. That's not where we start. We start with, we start with, tell me more. I need to understand this. Then we move from there. And that has worked every time. With great effect, I had a state-level educational leader in tears with me on Zoom when he realized that a change he had seen happen came from an interaction with Shelly. He said to me, I have been working with this person for four years. I could not get him to move. What did she do? So I went back and said to Shelly, what did she do? She came into my office and was really pissed off. I said, how can I help? And two half-hour sessions later, I was in Mike's office going, we ought to do something about diversity. Where did this come from? All right. So they also strengthen those relationships through respect and mutual accountability. And finally, all three of those things are well researched, are already well researched. There's plenty of literature that says that moves the needle for educators. That gets educators to do better by young people. The last thing we made up, which is responsive scholarship, responsive scholarship is pretty simple. It means that we have a scholar who, by definition, needs to know how to find information and put it to use. That's what a scholar is, really. And we have a scholar who is well-versed in issues of equity and identity and education and they know how to find information and they don't come into the district to say, this is what you need to learn. They come into the district and listen. And then when Chris says, I don't know, okay, this is, sorry, I can't tell. When an elementary school teacher comes up to Shelly and says, oh my god, I just got a call from some parents. I have a trans kid in my first grade class. What is trans? I really don't know. And what do I do with a seven-year-old? I don't know. Shelly goes back. She goes into literature. She finds out what's going on. She finds out what the schools are doing. She finds out what the politics are. She goes back. She brings that information to the teacher. The two of them put their heads together and serve that student. That's a real story that happened in your district. And it happens over and over and over again. That's responsive scholarship. So Shelly doesn't commit into a training just from her own head. She responds. So those are the four models in action. It's a full-time contractor embedded in the district. Shelly provides regular and non-call consultation with all kinds of people in the district. I just listed a few. She provides all-call support. And this is important. Shelly doesn't work with students unless an educator asks her for it. So if a student who Shelly already knows comes into her office, she won't turn them away. But she doesn't show up in a classroom or create a club. She's always at the behest of and in collaboration with employees, educators. And then she will consult with the leader. This has been really important in our evaluation. Administrators said this is one of the most important things. When there's an urgent challenge, Shelly can come in and help figure that out based on the emerging literature. What's best practice yesterday? Because this stuff changes every single day. There is professional development. The ESR will work with school PD committees and create trainings and offer trainings, but only in collaboration with the educators. Do it district-wide. And one of the things that happened because Jen I think suggested it, is that now we have a regular credit bearing course which teachers can take at no additional cost to the district. That's part of the program. And that's been really popular and pretty profound. That's where the Humanity and Justice Coalition came from because at the end of every one of those courses, there's a project. And Shelly teaches that course. Jen makes sure it gets credit. Shelly has the doctorate and the credentials to do it, just to college, so that's all good. Ongoing the ESR-encouraged conversation offers observations and initiatives and tends a relationship all the time. This is a pretty important slide. So I'm going to take my time. There are other professional resources to deal with educational equity. And they're fine. And they have had some unintended consequences given more and more research and experience. The Equity Scholar of Relevance is employed by the ILI and contracted to serve as an embedded colleague. We didn't know that was important. We started, we thought this was going to be a school employee. The principal said to us, we need somebody to speak truth to power, please. So that changed us. The ILI went in thinking we were creating a position that schools could hire. We would just give them the model. We'd sell them the model and they could hire the person. We could train them. The principal said, no, no, no, no. Shelly's the only one that would come in my office and close the door and go, what are you doing? And that happens regularly. Remember, respectfully and compassionately and carefully, not with a chip on your shoulder. The other resources, the school staff member was associated and I'm just going to go down the left-hand side. The Equity Scholar of Residence is a scholar who knows how to find resources to address the urgent needs. They're a learner, set an educator. They respond to the needs of the school, specific school, and this is important for tonight to the community. What's happening right now, right this minute, is that up until this moment, the Equity Scholar of Residence has served schools one at a time. The ILI is now making me available to work with the district if you think I can be helpful. Not as a scholar. As a different kind of thing, which we'll figure out after I'm done talking. Together, because we're learning. It's the ESR as a collaborative colleague offering insights, asking questions. Thinking with providing resources. The other kinds of resources, I'm getting out of the way so you all can see it. Can you still hear me? You could hire a school staff member with associated employment requirements. So we can go, okay, teacher, we're going to give you a couple of courses off. You take care of diversity, equity, and inclusion. You bring in a drop-in expert in social and educational equity with a particular perspective, a particular ideological perspective, a particular take on what's the right way to go. You bring in a drop-in trainer or you put a DEI coordinator director in place and they're tasked with organizing and leading social equity. The problems with that, even according to the Harvard Business Review, is that training, drop-in training has not moved the needle. We can train until the cows come home. I can tell, I'm sorry, Karina, you're the only one I know, so I'm going to pick on you. Oh, I can pick on Floor. But, you know, I'll pick on Floor. I could tell Floor stuff that I believe about race, class, gender, about equity, about economic insecurity, about religion. I could tell her stuff. I could try to get her more culturally competent. There are two problems with that. One is that there's plenty of research that says telling people stuff doesn't necessarily get them to change. And the second thing is that that will change tomorrow. Tomorrow. Some child will show up in your district that has a whole new way of being in learning and the teachers are going to go to the principal and go, what do I do with that? And we won't have known we should have trained for that. And the teacher will probably make a mistake and the child's educational opportunities will be limited. Not because anybody did anything wrong. If we have an equity scholar in residence in place, the principal and shelly comes right over because remember they're embedded full-time in the district and says, what do you know about this kind of presentation of being human and shelly goes and finds out brings it back to Kat, the two of them work with the teacher and they figure out what to do. So it's different. So that's the problem the training, the problem that's happened oh man the research on this is so sad. When we put DEI coordinators in place who are most often people who are already marginalized in the system they get hurt. I'm going to say this is my opinion well intended and they get hurt. I have plenty of colleagues who have been badly hurt by being put in that position. Let me give you a raise and then tell us what to do person with a disability about all equity please. That has the research is more and more and more telling us that that's not that model is hard on those people. An equity scholar in residence is not a leader they are not a coordinator they are an equity scholar in residence. You have leaders, you have coordinators you've got educators they just need support. So that's the difference in the model our research evaluation in 2021 which we didn't continue during the really sort of I'm sorry in 2021 which we didn't continue last year because it was such a chaotic year Shelly was just in the district the ILI itself did nothing we left Jen and her staff alone Shelly was there to support them but I left everybody I was quiet. So what we have right now is that all respondents indicated all of them we talked to teachers and coaches and counselors and all different kinds of people we interviewed they all said they had increased competence and willingness to engage in conversations they all reported and we didn't expect this increased frequency and depth of reflection on issues of social equity that was new we didn't know that was coming the evaluator found that as a surprise administrators also by surprise as I said earlier strongly affirmed the embedded independent contractor and said to us we're able to do our jobs only because this person is here there are expectations of us that we didn't know how to fulfill before and how we do I'm not going to bother you with all the quotes but I like them I mean you can see them while I talk and then this is just a little bit of an example of what some teachers and coaches and counselors said I'll be quiet a minute if you can read it you can look at it what we need to do now is do some quantitative research and we are working we are starting that process now and Megan have been amazing colleagues to me in figuring out how to approach that that'll happen in the spring the ILIs do some research now to figure out what best practices are and then we're going to take those behaviors we're going to look at behaviors that have engender that have made it possible I'm going too fast and I don't know what to do for this we're going to do some preliminary research and then we're going to use that research to do some quantitative evaluations when the ILI talks about equity remember our mission is to innovate so that more people thrive and ever more peace we do that in schools, communities and organizations we're not trying to change the world we're trying to help schools, communities and organizations change any of you who know systems work know they're pretty big leverage points for change things start to change our definition of equity is that all children are thriving and learning as who they understand themselves to be and are becoming and that their behavior is allowing other children to thrive and learn in the same way we also know that that means adults in the schools need to thrive as who they are and are becoming and their behavior the best they can needs to ensure that students thrive and learn that's how we understand equity because people are constantly expressing many new ways because as I said earlier children arrive at schools every year every day with new and different ways of presenting them being human and because new insights are emerging all the time about how to use equity equity is a process not a finish line it's never going to be done that's the ILI's perspective it doesn't mean we can't solve specific problems it doesn't mean we can't make specific things go away singular inequities it means equity ensuring that all students thrive as who they are and are becoming is a forever project and this is really important it is really possible and it is essential to stop singular limitations and threats to a problem jelly can I tell the story from this afternoon that you told me so this afternoon jelly went into a bathroom high school and happened to see a racist term on the wall she let somebody know and within 5 minutes all 5 maintenance staff people were in there and it was gone 5 minutes later we need to respond that quickly to singular limitations on students we need to respond as quickly as we can to singular limitations and by that I mean we cannot tolerate and we must respond quickly to bigoted behavior and violence behavior and violence that is driven by beliefs that other people should not be able to express themselves as who they are and are becoming and we need to shift behavior quickly that emerges from honest ignorance I probably need to explain to you what honest ignorance is because my guess is that I am the only single one who has experienced it I didn't know that I am so sorry I owe you I will do everything I cannot to do it again and I will come back to you and check in on that that is honest ignorance and accountability so we also need to identify and change systemic artifacts and an artifact in a system is what it sounds like it is anything we make it is processes and policies documents and traditions and we need to identify the ones that limit people's ability to thrive and learn as who they are and are becoming and we also it is also possible this is the ILI's belief to make peace even where there is disagreement about what it means to behave in ways to allow all children to thrive and learn now I will say it to you right now because I am learning with you as I talk but I am beginning to wonder if we can say in a school system you go ahead Lindy believe what you want if you are working here you need to behave in this way you go ahead student if you come from a family that believes nobody should be gay you can believe that you still have to behave in a way that gay students can thrive and learn in this school I am just beginning to play with that I am not saying something this is not something the district has adopted this isn't a big policy statement I am talking to board principals and maybe a couple community members and I am saying I am thinking about this think with me is that something we should be thinking about that is how the ILI operates and that is the nature of our learning so what I hope will happen tonight and ongoing as you all will challenge me will ask questions I will only learn from that I am so and I just want to say to the board in particular I don't think I have ever had such amazing learning colleagues as Megan and Jen we get moved to tears when we sit in their offices and think about these things together so I just want to say as a community member nice job thank you and I just want to express my gratitude personally and professionally but it's not just intellectual it's moving and all three of us when we are sitting in that room anybody that watched would know the bottom line is to learn and thrive all of them so stop talking and I think I went over 10 minutes I'm sorry I did not play over 10 minutes shoot at least I didn't sing because you know when I get a microphone I am really having a hard time right now the songs like 70s pop but I won't do it later if anybody starts a bar in the old if anybody sings a bar at a 70s pop what do you think the first question is what do you think what sounds good what sounds questionable I loved your example you used with me I can believe what I believe I can behave in a way that everyone can thrive and learn in the school and you know that I'm not absolutely sure that I believe that yet I'm trying that on but I'm grateful for that feedback I like bringing it out I guess and talking about it because I do it with children okay I'm a teacher you can think that you can talk about that okay thank you Kari I wasn't going to talk about this but I completely agree with this too because it's the only thing that works you can't change beliefs easily and you can actually get changed because you might be able to get changed because you're not judging the person they don't feel threatened if they just know it's their behavior but what I wanted to say was I think it's wonderful I think this is really inspiring I'm very appreciative of everything that you're doing I hope it's sustainable for you and it makes me want to like fast forward 20 years and see where we've gotten from this exciting model but your point about this being a process makes me think it's exciting to be here now thanks a question I wanted to ask if I could what do you see as the key limiting factors to having impact I guess the flip side of that would be if you change one or two things what would really move this forward do you think I know it's sort of this it's such a hard question I don't know how to answer honestly I don't have to think about it really hard and I'm not sure I would answer because it's complex because I don't know Shelly do you have a different answer than that one I don't know I mean you know what really a $300,000 grant from the bar foundation would help but seriously I think that the only way I can answer that is this for me personally speaking for me inequity in schools is terribly urgent speaking for me the existence of racist behavior genderphobic behavior homophobic behavior go right down the line it is I wanted to be done yesterday I wanted to be over I want no more harm and that's what drives me and the worker I'm done I have very little patience for it anymore in my private life I'm known to go swear a lot it hasn't worked I have a very long history of activism and education and I have done all that stuff I have called people out I have beat people over the head I have trained and it hasn't changed anything so that's why I'm suggesting this other thing to answer your question it's the best I can do sorry but I'll think about it so how do you know when the needle has moved how do you know when the needle has moved that's a really good question and that's why we're doing the next set of research so what we're going to do next is the ILIs going to do some research and we're going to interview students who have experienced inequity based on their own social identity or social identities that people put on them that they didn't want their parents the ILIs doing this the district has given us permission to reach out to find participants this is our work and we're going to hopefully identify some common practices that have moved the needle for individual students in that way and then what we're going to do is switch to a quantitative piece where we're going to start counting the number of times that happens we're going to start counting how many times teachers do that we're going to be able to start to see if the needle is moving on teacher behavior then Megan is going to work with understanding beginning to measure the culture of the school and beginning to see if that needle changes equity cultures so we'll collaborate with Megan on that but that's, Megan's going to take that on so first we're going to find out what the behaviors are that have moved the needle for individuals educator behaviors so when, let me get really specific a student has experienced inequity based on their self identified for example race we're going to ask that student when did it get better what did teachers do to make it better either in a moment or a long term we're going to ask the parents to then we're going to find behaviors and then we're going to count them so what we hope to do over the next couple of years is begin to see coincident we're going to be able to tie them together causally we'll be able to see coincident changes we have counted that we can say quantitatively that first of all these behaviors work and we're seeing more of them and at the same time the culture of equity is changing we're having fewer reports of what I call single limitations and systemic artifacts that are creating a problem does that answer the question? would you also to the student did they have any behavior if they were behaving what was it that that has to be part of the that is that's another kind of question and it's a little bit more challenging to find participants so given our resource limitations we're not going to do that now right now we're going to speak to 18 and over 18 year old and over students older students and recent graduates and their parents and parents of any age and we're going to just focus on what's happened to make it better for them for now I love that question and I'd love to be able to get to it but we have more resources to look at thank you anybody else? yes so in just reflecting on first off what you're working on in terms of saying you can have that belief but here we do this I guess the thing that sticks to me and I just wanted to reflect it back is I worry about validating in any way I do too it's almost like how do we help them mentalize without validating and so that's the only thing that's really helpful thank you I can't say sincerely enough I really am not sure about what I said and so this all of this back and forth really helps I think so thank you that's very helpful and then a question is Washington Central the only school system that you're currently working with that is we're the only school system we're currently working with there are other schools that want us the ILI doesn't have the capacity to scale yet that there comes we need a staff a dedicated staff person who can scale we have another school that wants an equity scholar we don't have the capacity to find them one they have the budget the board has approved it they have the money to pay for it but we haven't been able to find them a scholar and we can't clone that's right that's the school but we haven't been able to find a scholar right that's right and there are other schools it might get them from our principal association knows or other schools would like to have this but we're not going after them because we don't have the capacity to fill the positions and manage the program yet we will that's the plan anybody else yes you mentioned about community members having access to the equity scholars how does that come about we haven't done it yet I'm going to say Shelly if a community member needed to talk with you how would they reach you you know okay I think that if we're going to start making Shelly more available to community members it probably needs to go out and declare from Megan we ought to talk about that it's a workload issue if it gets too big however I in terms of consulting I'm not an equity scholar I'm not the person that's going to go find the information if that's not my excuse but if I need information I can get it from Shelly I'm just not going to go find it if you and I are having a conversation on a consulting basis as a board member and there's something I don't know I have access to Shelly that's exactly what tonight's about it's new to start thinking how do we bring this out in the community how do we bring this approach to the community so for starters, based on that question I'm going to talk to Shelly and Megan this is a commitment to see about whether we can let the community know that Shelly is available to them as a scholar right it may make more sense in some ways for me to be available as a facilitator but we'll ask the question we'll go with it Flora sorry, I didn't see you hand up go ahead why are you only talking to students who are 18 or older performers it's completely about consent and legal issues from a research perspective I don't have the capacity to do the consent work to work with younger students it's the only reason that you're going to be missing a whole lot of information I know that's why we're going to parents we're there's a lot of students who aren't talking to the parents okay you know what, that's really good feedback and I haven't been able to figure out how to overcome that limitation but it's a big limitation in the study I'm with you, I know it is we're going to try to get it for the parents what I'd like to do and based on the strength of that get some grant money and do it more thoroughly this is a very limited study if you want to know anything about research, you know that it's on the face it's limited so thank you for that because that's the nudge I needed to work on Flora I'm wondering if you could share a little bit more with the board in the community since this has been recorded about how we're working with the elementary schools too sometimes this work is perceived as just well sure and I'll defer to Shelly I'm going to try to reflect what the ESR does with the elementary school Shelly has relationships with all the principals many of whom are here Shelly's job is to really work to create those relationships and often what she's doing is working with the professional development committees am I right, I'm looking at the principals in those schools not necessarily, so she's working with librarians right all across from our parents to our classroom teachers so for the last two years at EES we have this little conversation with Shelly in the library on Friday mornings and it's open to anyone who would like to be there last week we had a new attendee from our ESP and really it's just kind of an open conversation what's happening what are you seeing talking about Shelly asks great questions she listens and then also gives us resources like oh I know this is happening in this school or let me talk to you the U32 students about this opportunity and that's a bit like a liaison and really just this sounding board and just a pretty informal conversations about like what are you hearing what's going on what's the word of the week and also as a follow up to that she'll go in and work with teachers in classrooms like around different units or topics or conversations sometimes teachers might reach out to her and say hey I need to broach this subject or this has come up a lot in the classroom how can we handle this and Shelly says let me come in and they work together through it that's the best thank you that's really helpful Kat is it different for you it is a little bit different I got to know Shelly in the wake up machine we started a practice training together she's so fun to play with and I took the class was it last year or the year before you were in that class as well and it just really opened up in my thinking and since then we didn't formalize it until just recently but it has just been my way to have that close girl we got to talk can you come in and I'm going to close my door she'll text hold me right now and she lets me walk through hard things where I can sort of think imperfectly and talk out loud and try things out in a way that feels not safe because she wants me to change my language and to really think through some of the challenges that happen with our littles like and we're a small school a really homogenous small school and a lot of class differences and kids walking in with privilege and kids walking in with not and they're all in the same classroom and it all comes together in awkward or funky ways we look for some grace and I don't know how many times she'll be like okay I don't have an idea what I'm going to do some research and I'm going to come back to you then I'll get an email with some article I've got to read or a YouTube video that I've got to watch where it's head talk and it's just she's the first time I was like oh my goodness that's what it means when it all comes together and we've started just recently talking about how to make it more accessible to more staff members because it's a vulnerable conversation to have for adults we just started our chats with Kat and Kelly and finding people in we're hoping to get where Alicia's at we're not there yet thank you that's really helpful these are great examples of one of the things that I appreciate about this model having experienced kind of the thou shalt have X and this is how it should function and this is how the work will happen and not finding success this is a good example of the embedded nature building relationships and therefore helping people understand what you benefit from and then letting individual systems know that's going to work and then what I'm most interested in as it moves forward is the balance between accountability and expecting that something is happening in every part of our system and there is a non-negotiable component and yet what that is is really driven by the needs of the system the needs of the kids the framework so for me it's a really just that conversation is a good example of why this work is a good way and that it's not without a systemic and structured approach and that's where we're headed and that's exciting because that's how you balance both so I just wanted to add to that one of the things that she also participates in the new teacher training with teachers at all levels and makes herself available for in-service regularly so it's an honor I'm also aware that there, I mean Shelly gets a text from an elementary school principal who says we got a crisis right now in a classroom of help because she's a vet and she's there so those things are happening Does that answer your question about elementary school floor? Well you know what I realized that, remember that slide that I was missing a column the last word on that column the last words were determined and persistent I can speak for myself and I can speak for Shelly really it's not negotiable for us, we have got to make things better for students in schools and we can't and if the old ways aren't working even if they're precious to me I gotta let them go and do something different so all of this seems to be having an effect, we'll be measuring much more thoroughly going into the next few years and again your district is making that possible I hope we together are going to find that this really does move the needle for students and not incidentally for teachers, for educators, for staff members and the systems who also experience inequity so if we find that out then this district will forever have been the district that helped us create a model that could really make a difference in the world and honestly thank you yes floor so one last thing, so in this sort of actionable for the board, I think as a board we've done about reaffirming the statement for the coalition I think that's something that we should really consider doing again until we have putting policy I think the other important thing is that as a board we're responsible for setting the tone and being completely committed so this is a lens that we're using to look at our budget a lens that the administrators used to set those three priorities that we've been talking about so hearing you speak tonight we've heard that we're working towards we're working in the right direction support but there's still steps that we need to take to continue this journey together with the view and one of them for me is like do we have enough resources and until you come back with this data we don't know what we need I worry when you said that now Shell is going to be available to community too how many Shells can we have if she's going to be more available to other principal so it would be interesting to know if we need more resources as a board and also to commit ourselves to working in equity policy the policy committee is working on but in the meantime confirming the just coalition statement would be a good step towards that you'll notice I was noncommittal about Shelly being available to the whole community because I have the same concern which is why I said Shelly and I'll talk about it to figure out what being available to the community means because it's a big community there's five towns and a lot of people and we can't do that you know it came up and now I think we're going on two years when the conversation around the black lives matter flag when the second year request I believe came in and we as a board said that it was important for us to have a better understanding but we still were placing it on our students to educate us which isn't right I think I can say in equivocably Shelly stop me if you need to then Shelly is available to the board and that's what I want to me that would be the most helpful thing I am in terms of facilitation thinking about policy that kind of thing I can say that for this community right here if you have questions Shelly can help she can be the ESR for the whole community I would also say too I also have a monthly time with Shelly I very much appreciate and these are the types of things we talk through what would this look like or I'm thinking about this communication out to the community can you help me with that this is a good conversation because it helps us now be able to say what would it look like to be accessing the community it doesn't necessarily mean everybody has Shelly's email address although they could probably look it up it might mean do we post do I post some questions out to our community do we use our communication structure to ask for input and then the input might call us around some themes and then we offer something so there's different ways that I think we could bring it to the community and again what I appreciate about the structure is I have great people to think this through and that's a big lots of people and Floor we don't know as I said earlier the evaluator said I think you need I forget what she said for every 700 students or 3 schools you need an enemy scholar or we're doing that with 6 schools and a lot more than 700 students so we're finding and that's purely financial but we're trying it out and we're seeing if it's sustainable for Shelly it will be sustainable for us when we can scale and that's an ILI problem that's not the district's problem you know there's another word that I just want to throw out to you that's not on the list which is relentless there's a non-profit in Chelsea Prince just visited actually and I'm pretty closely affiliated with this called ROCA they have a 98% success rate keeping young primarily kids of color out of jail and in jobs 98% is the best success rate anywhere in the country and it's because they are relentless they never stop and that's what this is required if I leave you with one thing tonight it's never done working against inequity and for equity is forever and it's got to be relentless that's a word that I want to leave in your heads but somebody had a question yeah so when resources are being shared individual educators or principals is that being added to some kind of compilation of resources under different topic areas that people can access because it seems like there could be a fair amount of redundancy and people could be accessing those things independently in addition to potentially making those available to the community we have a great resource for the interface days and I just want to add that the Humanities and Justice Coalition is open to community members and we that is one entity that I hope will continue way beyond me it will grow and change and be really part of the community and the school thinking about all these issues and in addition to what Shelly just said I'm going to say no directly answering your question that would be a huge undertaking and I'll tell you why because Shelly you just heard Kat talk about it when Shelly finds a resource it's for a specific challenge that a specific educator is having and it's an interaction it's in the context of a relationship so when it's a training those resources that Shelly just said is collected when it's a specific one-on-one interaction Diane says to Shelly I don't know what to do about it if somebody was teaching Lord of the Flies one year and there was a situation in that class I don't know what to do with Shelly in the context of that relationship found some resources I don't know how we could systematize collecting all of those so I'm directly answering your questions I haven't figured that out yet so just to be transparent about that but the formal stuff is collected and we have to stop one quick thing though Maggie and we have only had this much of a conversation about it but we have started talking I'm pointing at Jen around we really should have a section of our website dedicated to this work partially to tell the story about what it is and why and why it's designed this way it could also become a fundraising so that we could share resources so again we have not had very much of that conversation but I think your question is a good one and it's part of the conversation it would be a cool iteration so I appreciate the last question it would be really amazing if we could do it one more note out of the first class came the project from one of the people in the class it's called Celebrations it's a magnificent website with teachers and all of our staff here they created this and they keep adding to this website about all kinds of resources films, books it's available for everybody so I'm going to stop because I promised 7.15 I actually promised a 10 minute PowerPoint but I won't promise that again I'm sorry and thank you all so much for doing this work and all of you for doing the work in the schools and for having us be part of your community I appreciate you a lot if you want to get in touch with me I have business cards and we have Jody with us and I said that this is the call to order but I think I think we're just going to continue our meeting Jody, welcome thank you I don't want to okay just touch thank you sorry Jody is the superintendent it's our career center as you know and most of you are familiar with Jody he's been many years doing this work too Michelley and everybody we're feeling a little ill and still here with us amazing I was worried for Monday I was getting a little sickness but so I'm going to do a budget overview and talk a little bit about the career center I'm trying to figure out what I'm looking at now sorry you're looking at everybody I'm going to turn around so you can see I don't know if you can see people here all good first just thank you for having me and thank you floor for being on the center for my career center school board everyone know that Terry Steele is a representative from the Washington Central Unified Union School District she was appointed as our member of our board this year so two great representatives from your district one of the things that's really important for us to note and to get the word out about this year is that for all of the life of the career center, Berry City and Berry Town have been the only towns voting on our budget 16 new towns your towns included in those that are voting for our budget for the first time they'll see it on a ballot it'll be a separate ballot from yours and it will look like more money and it's not it's already embedded in your budget the tuition that you send to us so we need to make sure that voters know yes we're voting for this additional 3.5 million that looks like extra but it's embedded across all of the sending schools and I'm hopeful that that message is what we get out and I am really sorry that I wasn't there tonight I haven't made it to much this week unfortunately so I'm glad I can at least be here virtually also from the presentation that you might have had in your packet the slideshow that I'm preparing to share has been updated and slide 8 in particular was inaccurate so I just want to note that so hopefully I'm presenting but it's not big yet here we go in a while since I used Zoom so thank you one of the things that we notice when putting this together is that we don't actually have a mission statement we wanted our mission statement to be front and center and what the only thing that we found was a little bit of description about what we do at the Central Vermont Career Center in providing education that allows students to develop professional skills in many different industries some of them go on to college some of them are career ready so one of our next steps as a school district is to work on that mission statement I have things in the way of my screen so hopefully they're not in the way of yours as part of our ongoing effort to get a more equitable system and to change a little bit about what the Central Vermont Career Center does we our budget committee first look at the resources that we need to just level fund and as you know there are things that are changing for all of us so that looked at the resources we need for the instruction for the supplies that we provide for our students as you can imagine there's PPE supplies that we have to get every year not to mention all of the hardware and equipment that we might need behind these slides you'll see some of our current students and in this case this is an automotive student every program gets equipment updates at some point as much like any of your schools will need updates for different things and you have that capital plan to do that we as a new district are looking at what are the upgrades that are coming to us the equipment that we have to update in the next five years and luckily next year there are not a lot of big equipment pieces that we need to update we also developed a process for our budgeting that we're going to use year to year and improve as we go along and that is available in this slide show which can be shared I can share it in the zoom link later also floor has it Megan has it so it can be shared out with anyone who needs that and they can access that development process some important things to note in that is that next Monday we have a budget forum which is virtual I shared that on front porch forum today so that should be something that your voters can see and attend if they want to know more about our budget it's a very similar presentation to what we're doing now except we'll have some more numbers in our business manager and board members will all be present some of the conditions that affect our budget for looking ahead to next year our class sizes are pretty predictable right now because we have a limited amount of space and many of our programs have limited numbers of students they can take in automotive for example or building trades electrical we can only have 16 students in there unless we have more staff to support them or more space currently our medpro classroom only allows us to have 10 students in that so a lot of the space is the issue around our sizes so we've been able to grow in the last few years but we're pretty much at our max with what we have we are moving to a full day schedule next year at least that's our plan and we will include academics we have taken a couple more classrooms for next year we have a lot of students from spalding high school so that will help us to keep kids there all day one of the struggles has been for all of our sending schools is that our kids they come to us in the morning they stay until 12 30 or 1 they have some of them have lunch with us and then they go back to their sending school for their academics and they have some of them a really long bus ride in between and they're going back to some programming that we passed so we're hoping by holding it here at the center we can meet the needs a little better by making sure that it's more related to the study that they're doing here in our programs some of the other things that fall into that there's a base education rate which we just got that it's anticipated at 12,500 this year coming year it was 11,247 as you all know the health insurance benefits costs are going up by 12.6% next year we've had increased liability insurances projected at 7 to 9% increase and the cost of supplies for our building trades program to put together framing and building for any of our programs really to do anything with the actual materials that students would use on a job site those prices are also going up so we are in the middle of negotiations or have just started them I'm sure you're one of our five out of our six ending schools are also negotiating so I know that there are salary increases that we all anticipate not sure what those are going to come out to that health insurance that we talked about we anticipate adding two full-time teachers for the academic supports and also one full-time program instructor as we separate our emergency services and advanced emergency services program this year our emergency services teacher was able to teach both programs with just two students piloting the advanced class which is getting them their paramedic certificate so next year we have a lot of interest in moving that forward and we're working with BTC to make that happen also lots of small line adjustments just for accuracy sake as we took over the budget from Barry and really took a look at what our numbers are and where things are going and realigned a few things our tuition is based on our six semester average of full-time equivalents and so I just have a few of the past numbers here 144 in FY 22 155 FY 23 we're predicting about 160 for FY 24 it could be more we're just trying to be conservative in that wanted to show you another look at enrollment just over the years and what our capacity is a couple of things like automotive I told you has a 16 head count limit in the program those extra two that were there in FY 22 were in the co-op program so additional students that are they've done the year of automotive and then they've moved out into co-op and they're working in the workforce like at one of the 802 groups for example we also have if you look at the FTE and the head count numbers in a given year you can see some differences this year for example you see it in cosmetology two and DMA two those are adult students and so they don't fall under the same funding formula as our students that are coming from high schools just wanted to show you our rates this year in comparison with most of the other career centers across the state and then our tuition we anticipate that our tuition will be 19,251 which is an 11% increase when you take away my understanding is that the funding for CTE is very complicated and so there's some payments made on the states that's on behalf of our sending schools so it's maybe taken away from my understanding is it's taken away from what you would get for that number of FTE's and given to us for the number that six semester average that we have there's a few other reductions that are given to us by the state and some grants and then we have the actual what we bill your school so you still have to I don't know how your business managers do it because I know it's going to be a lot of work but they have to figure out how many they think are coming and then anticipate both what that reduction is going to be that comes directly to us from the state and then what we're going to bill our six semester average and so we're billing for past students at least that's how it feels like and so while we might have 38 students from Washington Central enrolled in our programs this year our six semester average might be 34 and my understanding for why that was put in place way back in 2004 is that it helps level so that you can predict a little more easily how many students you have coming to us each year and so that you don't pay for 41 year and 20 the next and never know where it's going to be at that it's a little more level than predictable this is a look at the Central Vermont Career Center School District's budget by function code that my business manager did and as you can imagine in most of these cases it's the people and that cost the most the instructors for the education and other different components of that we're a very small district obviously and so we're learning how to how to navigate that in our first year we have a variety of revenue sources that were included in that tuition slide and so we broke them out here also in the total other revenues there's Perkins grant funding that we get time grants lots of other grants that we can apply for and add into that and I just want to end with thanking you for supporting us and your voters for supporting the district and helping us to prepare students for both college and career supporting the workforce as you do and I hope that this any questions you have or thoughts you have about this can help us to inform our decisions we again we're having a community forum next week and I'm visiting all the boards actually I was at the Harvard board an hour and a half ago and so finding out what people are thinking and feeling then we'll update our budget numbers and our board will approve our budget on January 2nd Any questions from the board members? Are you really critical to get that information out that you share with us about our contribution and that we're not responsible for that entire amount so whatever that can be disseminated it's going to be critical I think for the right information to get shared we can all take responsibility for that but I think utilizing public media is going to be really critical yeah and we have a postcard that's going out it was printed today so I expect it's going to be mailed at the end of this week or early next week that has that information going out to the voters across all 18 towns because the town clerks were able to get me the mailing lists for that so I'm hopeful that will help it has the same information that's in that front porch forum post today and so please share that widely and when people ask refer them there or to our website I was just thinking as related to that my first December newsletter goes out this Friday and I just made myself a note to add this in particular the part that this budget is baked into our budget message is probably the most important thing so I'm in that note too is there any reason why that informative language cannot be included in the article that's being voted upon like saying yeah it's the 3.5 million dollar budget but the respective town's proportional shares are already included in their budget it's not an additional amount something like that because that's going to be the best source for people to understand it if that's what they're looking at in the ballot itself that's a good point there's a lot as you know some of that ballot language is kind of set for us but that's a good question for me to ask so I'll reach out to the secretary of state and see about that doing that because that's an excellent point and I guess I'm confused as to why it is separate so you know because what happens if the budget goes down but we still have it in our budget I mean so I guess I'm confused as to why there's a separate vote when the calculation is in our current budget I'm confused also this has been the way that it always has been Berry City and Berrytown I guess are used to voting for the two I think there's a change coming with act 127 there's something around the funding of CTEs and potentially the governance that's going to change and we're all going to have to look and see what happens with that I'm not sure why it happens I know that if our budget goes down then we need to revisit it and then also you would get a different bill from us as a result of that as we would go back out to voters to try to fix that and I don't know how the board of central month career center decided to do that they may decide that if it goes down it went down because people thought it was extra and not embedded in so it'll be a discussion for sure if we get to that point we're hoping that we're going to show through December is what we schedule because something a process similar to what we're doing with our budget we're hoping that each of you will help us also just clarify that question and I think the other reason that is voted separate and why we became a separate district was to give us a little bit of ownership for example how we're moving into having a full day that was something that we couldn't have done before and there's just two other career centers within Vermont that are doing a full day there's a few others that have full day that say yes Stafford does as well and the ballot will be separate again the ballot will be separate and we won't be able to it's frustrating for my point because even though our five towns will hopefully approve to send them out for all our towns our process would be to have the 18 towns that send kids to our sixth sending school district or from a couple or at least one part that there's just not going to happen so you have to request your town ballot to get the career ballot so more than likely there will be more people voted for school budget and less people voting for the career center because you would have to request it if you're not going to the polling center so even more important for us to get out any other questions thank you thank you sorry I couldn't be there in person take care feel better so tonight is the night that I will share with the full board some conversations that the steering committee has heard a few different times around year one goals and I wanted to kind of start with framing a little bit why this first year of goals setting for me is different than it will look in future years by design for one thing these goals are not you know eventually superintendent goals and the goals of the system merge that's they are very content driven they are what we are focusing on I wouldn't presume to know that answer coming in after six months so the goals are very process structure system focus because part of the design is to get us to a place where we have sort of long range system goals and an example of that is you know there's work that we are focused on that I'll speak to but the goals are not written specifically around that work they're written around the systems and structures to achieve the work they're not going to look that way forever but I wanted to share that because some may look at it and say there's nothing in here about academic achievement and moving kids forward sorry I wanted to kind of share that so what I think I will do with my slides in advance is frame it around this is the work of the system you've seen this before you've seen it in budget presentations our faculty has seen this these are the three areas of focus that all of us are collectively working on and a lot of the more individualized work we have to do to become compliant with new laws they all fall under these three categories so this is still there even if you don't see them in the goals so hopefully I'm going to put this a little bit in context of the superintendent evaluation process that you all have adopted so you'll see where we are in that cycle share what my approach was to your one goal setting and that involves thinking about some observations to date understanding how that connects with the district's priority work the board's priority work what we hear from the communities and then some some talking points from the steering committee and then I'll share the goals and I realize as I say that if you prefer to have something just the goals not all the slides I can share the slides after the fact this is coming around this is too small to see up here but you've seen this before for a version of this this is the superintendent evaluation process that you all adopted it has dates on the right-hand side but I just kind of wanted to ground you with where we are so the first time the steering committee saw other activities within October gave some feedback brought a second version in November and sort of affirmed that yes they're ready to share with the board and that's what we're doing today so a little bit about my approach to this given the context of what your one goals are so coming into the system and I think we've talked about this enough so that this is familiar my focus is on observation and analysis and knowledge building understanding the system understanding our team understanding our structures how do we currently operate and that's really been the focus of all of those things and looking at our data looking at our existing communication structures over time that's where all of this starts there's a link to an entrance planning document that looks much more like a working document than perhaps what some people think of as entrance planning out of that and this is ongoing too this is not finished and in fact I'm constantly saying hey how do we do this can I look at how we structure this in the past and a lot of conversations conversations with board members all of you have conversations with my team and people in the community and then trying to consolidate themes from all of that work and interestingly or maybe not so surprising actually there is a lot of consistency themes across all of those groups and they really started to center around operations and logistics how do we do our work in this system that's true of the leadership team that's true of the board there's themes around direction setting and the desire for that long-term planning and where we headed and a lot around communication communication and engagement but that is true of all of those audiences which I think is really interesting so then my approach was to take all of those themes and integrate them into the other things that this board has identified as important integrate them into your board goals because again eventually these things will be much more merged integrate them into our leadership team areas of focus and integrate them frankly connect them to the rubric that you all will use as part of the evaluation so what you see in front of you looks like a lot of goals and that is actually because it is aligned to each of the areas in the rubric one of the pieces of feedback was about the number of goals so I will acknowledge that but those are the goal areas board and superintendent relationship policy business and finance community relations operational management and leadership and instructional leadership those are the identified areas of the BSBA tool that you all use I did make adjustments I'll talk about this in a second I made adjustments to the grain size based on that feedback so I do hear it and then this is where we are now so I've presented sort of a few different versions of the goals to the steering committee we're talking about this tonight and would love to hear feedback and then eventually the board will hear a reflection my reflection and evidence of my goals to inform the survey that you will all do as part of the process so that's sort of the approach I guess I'll keep going and then I'll stop the questions again I talked about this a little bit one of the things we talked about is just acknowledging what's the work of the board what's the work of the superintendent how are those things connected and how they are connected maybe different moving forward we talked about feasibility that's the grain size question and then for me this I related this last one to a grain size adjustment to one of my versions but this is working collectively on long term planning initial versions of the goals probably so then I think it should happen so really the goal was shifted to focus on the first year's work for that so now I will kind of walk through share a little bit about the format give you the highlights of these but I won't read it word for word and this is what's in front of you you have a copy of this so under the board goal area of educational and academic outcomes three areas that connect to the SBA priorities across the top just so you know these are smart goals I think everybody's pretty familiar with what that means if not there's a specific measurable attainable relevant and timely that's across the top but the three things in this area we've been spending a lot of time as a leadership team on how do we function together how do we make decisions together how do we collaborate so that's a big area of focus I'm very grateful for the leadership team that you all have so thank you one of the areas under here who is administrator evaluation process so again in the spirit of coming into the structures that currently exist my focus this year is on getting to know all of the administrators what are their goals what are they doing within their system or they're part of the organization there are existing tools at rubrics for us to use eventually I would love to work with administrators on what is a meaningful evaluation process what are some feedback cycles how do we get input from all the people that we work with but I don't want to hand that to the team I think the team should be part of developing that so this year it'll be focused on on understanding and learning them and their systems yes there will be a written component there always is but eventually I'd like to work with the team on what that process could look like moving forward and the last piece under educational and academic outcomes is the ed quality work and this goal is refined a little bit this goal was originally just about monitoring and data collection that really is the really good work that's happening with that quality so that's this piece I'm going to keep going communication so this is a big goal it is a big goal of the network and the year one portion of this for me is to develop initial ways that I as a superintendent will communicate with our students faculty and the community and you all receive what I send so I think you have a sense of how it's evolving and it'll continue to evolve based on the feedback that we get you know in the what is engagement versus communication this is still in the communication level for sure I mean I think we're doing a better job at hearing from people this will evolve and then under your board area of long-term planning the three things for me is what are our board structures so just getting to know how you all operate and how you work for your own goals so that's a lot about our work plan it's our board training our work with Phil it's shifting how we give information to you through the superintendent reports eventually you'll get feedback about pieces related to that we've talked a lot about policy we are working toward having a policy review cycle and having a more predictable way that we will review things on a regular basis but also review things because we have to or because we want to or because our community tells us we should so that's a goal and then this final one is where is the board in its visioning and strategic planning process and we've started those conversations soon we had a great subgroup conversation around what's the question that we're asking for help to answer around strategic planning so that the year one work is really getting that off the ground and helping to structure what that process will look like so there's a lot more information there than I just spoke to so I'll stop talking now questions comments thoughts I see goals as iterative they're never stamped so it's not I'd be happy to have feedback I appreciate your process I mean the clarity around that process was very helpful and just is reassuring to me as our leader through different systems do you think you're moving forward in terms of the team members and staff and in the field for the discussion I think so I would say particularly the leadership team they really answer this and they will have a chance to answer that for sure for me the circles are I do as an instructional leader my closest group of where I want to go and learn is that our leadership team it's also been really nice to spend time in the building get to know faculty I want to continue to do this so I'm excited about that but sitting down with students our student council has a finance committee they are I know Suzanne is a little afraid of this but I can still learn about the process so it's been great I mean I knew this because it's why I wanted to be here but we have great schools great people so it's been really nice and I still plenty of work to do to get to know people have you heard of any hospitals that you didn't expect in hospitals that are negative they're just like oh my goodness it's not even so much time doing this oh that's a bad question I think that the obstacles are the parts of the work that are always going to be hard budget building is hard figuring out how to dedicate our resources is hard equity work is hard right so I don't know that those are obstacles so much as there's a lot of work in education so thank you is this the timeline for the superintendent evaluation process does it feel appropriate or to accelerate particularly in light of a new one role well I think for me this might have more to do with how I understand supervision to be successful because this is a process that gives me feedback so that I can change and adjust what I'm doing the fact that it's going to land in a piece of paper in the February early March instead of June doesn't make that much difference to me because it's always going to be point in time so when I reflect to you in January or February sure if I reflected in January would I be giving you more information yes but because I see the process as iterative I'm kind of comfortable with that and I know the rationale for having this timeline is so that you all who've spent the most time with me are the ones who get to give the feedback as opposed to folks who and there won't be a lot but there will be a couple of new people speaking of spending time with you I'm so new I'm used to the impression that you've been here for so long you you you you you okay so I'm sorry that's okay and actually you're reminding me as an aside I have had the opportunity to sit down individually with all the board members as part of what I did this summer and I haven't had the opportunity to do with you so we should set up a time but July 1st is when I started very very very I think the steering committee has had the opportunity to look at this in depth and I really appreciate how you aligned the priorities the academic and the safety schools I feel like that integrated well on all of the four priorities and also I just want to hear the question is that I think the board our idea of supervision especially for this day or evaluation for the first year is that growth both for you and for us to learn more about each other and align our future goals together so the timeline well you know the context of that should be your first year and we're all getting to know each other really really very excited and I have to laugh a little bit and give credit to my leadership team who reminded me to put in the slide around our work areas because the goals were so system focused and then you might want to remind the board that this all is in service to so much work so thank you for highlighting that so this slide was a last minute ad it felt good the organization that aligns with our committee work and board work as well as your work and that makes it easy for me to see how it's lined up as well right I like that organization it feels like maybe I don't know if it's at the beginning of the summer or the end of the summer maybe we add this an opportunity to just check on the line of our goals and goals and we add that yeah I think it's a good question I do think that some of these I mean that work is not going to be finished overnight so they won't totally go away but they will start to merge with the structure of the goals will be based around the work that the strategic planning process has revealed that it's now my job to carry forward but yes I think there will be an inherently more to the process in the future years based on time I suspect yes for sure I would also hope that for the long term the superintendent performance evaluation will be more than just one point in a year and so there will be at least one check mid-year where we can just make sure we get on the same page because I think everybody benefits from smaller amounts of feedback but right now part of our agenda is both required by contractors for parking lot page 14 and then just for the people that we are going to have an executive session for educations tonight because it's just informational so just so you have that we're going to have an executive session at the end of the meeting for negotiations so we just have two to record here I'll move to the board to be called by Thurtec company LLC Eng. G.W.T. construction J.F. Kingsbury companies and S.D. Arlando Corporation and S.D. Arlando Corporation thank you any discussion any questions all those in favor please signify by saying hi hi any opposed hearing none the motion carries thank you everybody and one more page 16 to approve the new teachers the motion to appoint Alex Donaldson as a long term substitute for U32 math teacher a second thank you any discussion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying hi hi any opposed hearing none the motion carries thank you everybody so that concludes our business for tonight do you have a question yeah and it's brief because and all has changed since last time so the positions that the news is we are we are almost fully staffed with the exception of SLPs but we are still not understaffed with maintenance, custodial and lunch food service at high school and here specializations so the update is the same start in january is one of the start of Monday I appreciate that you were full we really needed you for those of you that don't know and you might already know this but Steven is also teaching calculus this year no we got that it's all the same you would not want me teaching that so we're going to have I was just chatting with Ursula so thank you everybody for being here I don't know about the meeting we feel very welcome to have these things that everybody is involved in yes it was worth the drive of the class just about in january I'm going to need a motion to go into executive session to comment it's okay thank you for being here we are going to adjourn the meeting to have a motion we're going to go into executive session but we're going to adjourn the public meeting thank you chris so chris can you come to adjourn all those in favor please say aye aye I think it would be the same if you're not how are you feeling do you want to come well you're okay so I just need a motion we're going to go into executive session and we're moving to the library and include megan to come into the executive session with us okay so I don't have donuts as fancy words but I move that we go into executive session for the purpose of negotiations and to include megan do we need susan I don't think so can I have a second well thank you sorry all those in favor please say aye and walk to the library the ayes have it here we are