 Hey, Zach, it's, um, so I just changed the setting in the entire network, this is, um, 480D and everything. I realize that that's doubling, like, the amount of information it's sending. Is that if I do a few pans, and you can just let me know if it looks, uh... Did Chris set the YouTube right? Are you gonna see anything? You might not see it till 7.30. I don't know. Yeah, nobody's seeing it. In fact, they'd like to get here, probably, you know, five minutes. Just, uh, are you getting any feed from, uh, the camera? No, it's not. Follow me to order at 6.35 p.m. Um, first order of business, uh, public comment. Hearing none. Second order of business, consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. Any discussion? Um, I need a little help on evidence of district goals in the superintendent's report. Do we discuss it after we approve it? What do we do about that? I think we have to pull it out. No, we discussed it on the consent agenda. Yeah, you have to pull the, the item out. So what do I, so I vote against? So you make an amendment to, uh, approve the consent agenda, except for that which you want to pull out and discuss separately. Looking at the timeline. Um, okay. Then I would amend, there's already an motion. Yeah, so amend the motion. Oh, amend the motion. I'd like to, I moved to amend the motion to, um, remove the superintendent's report from the consent agenda. And then approve the rest. Um, I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? I think we then have to vote on the underlying motion. I think that's right. Oh, that's right. All those in favor? All those in favor of approving the consent agenda, minus the items you read. Aye. Okay. Aye. Any opposed? Great. Just, just on the procedural point, I think in the past, if you just said before there was a motion that you wanted to pull something out, then the motion could just be to approve the consent agenda, minus something. That's a good idea. Okay. I think that's okay. As long as the beginning of the meeting, I think that's fine. That would be so efficient. Yeah. Can we discuss it for a moment? Yes. I just, I would just love to, uh, to, uh, to hear, I breezed through this, I will admit. So I may have missed the context for this. The evidence of district gold being stated here. I don't understand the context for it. I did read it. So remember someone like Barry shared the CIP. Yeah. The district goal is the district CIP is split into those four categories. Okay. So in each superintendents report, I'm asking principals, curriculum directors, head director to put the work that's happening within those four goals. As you'll see in the presentation, one of the board's responsibilities towards EQ SMS is to hold us accountable and monitor our progress towards those. So this is one place where I'm giving you evidence for that. Does that answer your question? Yeah. So as part of your regular report, you will provide evidence that we're moving forward on those four goals. Yes. And this is just a standing portion of this report. Okay. It will change. It will change every report. But it will always be those four categories and it will always be on the report. Yes. And the other pieces of this report are just by programmer, whatever you call those department or. Yeah. It's more information by different departments that the board would probably find interesting to ensure that we're doing our due diligence in certain areas. So if I see something like under literacy math, evidence of district goals, UES, RBS math and arts work, that's the curriculum alignment work or the beginning of that process anyway. So are you taking what's above that's above this? So are you taking that and then sticking it in here? Not really. Right. So that just happens to be in both sections. It just happens to be in both sections. Okay. Okay. All right. I got it. Thank you so much. The report's great. Yeah. It's great. You like the pictures? Yeah. They're cute. Very much. Although the vertical reading can be a little challenging. I know. I know. I'm trying to make the margins bigger. Maybe that one helps us. Yeah. Or just go sideways. Yeah. I like that. That's true. I can do that one. I like those photos. This is for the 11th comparison. Probably help you get things on the page. Yeah. So this is sort of, you do, when you do your work for the period, it's actually, you do a weekly report to the district, to kind of district employees. Is that who that's to? Yep. Okay. That does it. The intended audience is not beyond that, although I'm sure it's fine if it goes there. But it's really addressed to employees. Is that the idea? Yes. Okay. And you all are CCI. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Okay. I love that too. That's really wonderful. And I don't know why you can't open it. It's only you. Because you've got, you're sending it to my MPSVT or address, I think, instead of the one I actually use. Okay. But it's okay. And then the, and then this you write to us, which I see some commonalities, which is great. And can I wanted to say that because I noticed these photos in the one to staff. And I love that. And I even mentioned to Jim that it's really nice to see you right there, literally on the floor with the kids. Like that's a strong symbolic photo. And I think it's really, really great. So thank you. Let's see what next week of me doing a wall sit with a Trinidader. BD class. They're a lot more flexible. They're a lot more flexible. So we need a motion to approve this attendance report. Second. Second. Hi. Post. Great. So it's okay. I think I want to mix the agenda up just a bit. Jim hotness here as a representative of the transportation committee. He was originally scheduled at seven 30. He can conveniently has his daughter's playing soccer or soccer game ends at seven. So he has to get moved up a little earlier. So he can give this over with and not have to be a patient and hungry for any longer than she needs to be. So I'll just give a quick bit of context. And I'll turn it over to Jim. But as you recall, back in the fall, we pointed a transportation committee to kind of set values and look at some of the issues around getting our kids to school safely and reliably. And also, you know, broader goals about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, et cetera. Jim was a citizen member appointed committee. Lisa and I were the board members on the committee. The committee still exists. And we also had other citizen members and Watson, former board member Ken Jones, Heather Bosen, and Kara Wojcik, and GMT visited us once to give us more of a review. Before. Thanks for coming. I'm sorry. So just so the committee was taxed tax for coming up with this policy. And we went back a little and looked at what's happening historically. And I got involved actually when I found out that four years ago now, my daughter was going to be the first fifth grade class to be at the middle school. And, you know, at the time and for we figured back to the 80s at some point, K through 5 had been bust. Anybody that lived without, you know, outside of a mile of town had an option of taking a bus to school. When we found out our kids were moving, we also moved to middle school. We also found out that there was no busing. And frankly, because I have no older children, I had no idea there was no busing past that point. I asked some other parents about it they didn't know. I asked parents of older kids and they said, oh, that's the way it's always been, you know. So we started to ask the question of the administration and the school board of the, you know, the whys. And the whys, that's the way it's always been, basically. Or budget was the issue. So we've talked about it for a number of years. And the committee looked back at that, you know, that history and tried to say, okay, if a student lives outside of a certain radius, you know, and it's not practical to walk to school all year round in Vermont or ride your bike all year round from a mile and a half, two miles away from school, what can we do to provide that equitable transportation to reduce those single car trips into school and to make sure that all the kids have a way, a safe way to get to school. Because we know that the bus routes actually are providing a really great service to the kids that don't have a way to school safely. I mean, they're crossing River Street 302. They're coming down Town Hill with no sidewalks. They're coming down Northfield Street, which is, you know, a problem. They're coming all the way out from past the State House, way up Terrace Street. And so kids coming from very long distances in the winter and not always real safe areas. And over the years, we've also reduced the number of crossing guards at some of the major intersections in town. So as we were thinking about working on this policy, we came up with the idea that or came up the thought that we really want to promote safe pedestrian bike and public transportation options. We want to have the ability for kids to walk to school, kids to ride their bikes. My daughter does ride her bike when the weather allows and when her schedule allows. But because we do live a considerable distance and our kids that live further from us, we realize that there's a need for other ways for the kids to get to school. Working, we thought that there's an opportunity to work in coordination with the city, Green Mountain Transit. Right now, it's not a reliable option because of the timing with all the schools. So there's no way for the Green Mountain Transit buses to get the kids to school on time at the middle school or the high school. And we found that if you've spent any time like I do every day and Jim does in front of the middle school or in front of one of the high schools, they're from the big parking lot, but the middle school especially, it's a main thrift there into town from anybody that lives out in East Montpelier or out in Townhill. And it's also where every child gets dropped off or walking across the road there, injecting all the additional car traffic into that way, into that area with now the bus from Roxbury. It's chaotic. It's a quote from a Montpelier policeman. It is chaotic. So with the goal of trying to reduce the amount of trips into town, alleviate that congestion, provide additional, open up additional parking for the bus and to the people who sometimes do have to bring their kids to school. The idea being that we don't have to have every single parent bringing their child into school. So I think the policy is with, or the policy recommendation is with the policy committee now. And with the idea that taking into account the kids that were at one point on buses, on those three buses, continue to have some way to get to school, especially with the opportunity now with the new school district, new superintendent. Nice to meet you. Yeah, Lisa, do you want to add anything? I think you covered it really well, Jim. Yeah. We just felt like there was also, it's sort of an equity issue with making it challenging for some families to have to work around that schedule of getting their kid to school on time in addition to getting to work or whatever. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that what the committee tried to do and passed over to the policy committee and ultimately the board and I think the administration is just the reiteration of some of the values you should have around transportation, which is equity, safe and reliable, trips to and from school for all students. I think a special consideration for families where, especially on this in the Outer Edges, that's tough, some single parent families where both parents have to go to work early. We do have challenging winners, not just cold to go in distance, but as snow piles up, roads that aren't frankly terribly safe in July become much less safe as the walking areas get narrower, et cetera. So those considerations and also greenhouse gas emissions, we want to be a district that I think is as carbon neutral as possible and reducing individual car trips. Yeah, so really I think giving some thought to the values that should guide the transportation policy that I'm not sure the board thought deeply about without being descriptive. I don't know if you want to give some context on what you've been thinking. I did meet with Green Mountain Transit over the summer and my understanding was it's not an all out, not possible, like it's not out of the blue because they're changing their routes and I don't know enough to really speak adequately about it, but that was not out of the domain of possibility. But Pam and I, Pam and I had been talking about it and I didn't think that we really had gotten some good feedback this year and that we'd like to join any kind of group to try to problem solve this together with some parents and I have some volunteers that I've spoken to already. I kind of like just an open question. I think the spirit, you know, all these values are huge and one of them that I heard you allude to or talk about was the value of kids biking and walking and I'm wondering if you think or maybe you haven't thought about this too much but is the district doing everything it can to support those two modes of transportation? You know, obviously that's not enough and there's some kids just out of the question and at some point we pick some lines or pick some arbitrary spots and just say this is what we can afford but it makes sense to me that we make an investment of some sort, whether it's just through effort or through infrastructure or whatever it is in walking and biking. Somehow we really, you know, we know that's good for kids not just physically but mentally. We know that it's cheap, good for the environment, you know, all these things and so could we create a plan that enhances our busing plan with our walking and biking plan and could we be making all of the investments we need to? You know, for instance, in middle school it's really hard to find a bike rack sometimes if you're biking, it's like, oh man, there's not enough bike racks tie it up to a tree, tie it up somewhere else find somewhere tied to another bike and so I don't know whether there's a lot more we can do maybe we could be working with the and this is not a substitute, it's just an enhancement could we be working with the city on saying this particular sidewalk is really a problem or the fact that there is no sidewalk here is a problem for encouraging children to walk or bike. So I just wonder whether we should do that too as a serious planning around the school is can our kids get their bike, can they get their bike walking and what are the problems and ask the kids where's the worst spots on your route for walking or biking where does it feel dangerous, where do you have to cross something because I know the city is up for making things more pedestrian friendly making things more bike friendly but I don't think that's a big ask if we go back to them so I'm wondering whether you guys talk much about that what we did talk about is at the crossing guards where I know there's been a reduction in crossing guards in some areas and that maybe because there just weren't a lot of kids walking anymore and some of the spots at the bottom of at the Grand Street Bridge crossing 302 Berlin Street for years, I mean everybody knew him it's the guy that waved, he waved at every single car that went by he was there for many years but is no longer there is there still a crossing guard by the library? So there's some places where there aren't crossing guards I mean obviously the crossing guard at the middle school is invaluable and he is amazing by the way that guy should get a triple raise unbelievable what a good job he does controlling that flow of traffic I mean he's got a ton of responsibilities there was a substitute there the other day during his job and it was not nearly as well handled so he does a great job but you know I don't know that there's crossing guards in all places and we did discuss that a little bit but any opportunity to provide that safer travel would be great the city is working obviously on the bike path plan we don't have a good network of we don't have a network of bike paths we have one bike path that goes one direction essentially we do have a lot of good sidewalks but they don't all connect outside of the core downtown area I think a lot of the thought from the committee was it would be great to encourage the district to think creatively about better transportation generally but you know things we talked about because frankly a lot of the car trips in middle school and union are not people who necessarily live places where you can't walk or bike and if you could make it easier to walk or bike you'd reduce some of those trips there is one idea that someone in the committee floated was why don't we have some sort of fee or reward for people with carpool to the high school so we're reducing the number of single car trips to the high school or some sort of reward basis for people who would bike or walk to the high school because high schoolers are in the age where they can fly bikes from further distances so I think thinking creatively about while acknowledging the fact that it's difficult for some people to walk or bike making it easier for all people to walk and bike who want to especially in the radius where walking and biking is pretty easy and then I think you can do something about it I'd love to see as many people walking and biking as often as possible but I also don't want to I think it's difficult to say that's the answer for everyone it's not I mean we talk about the middle school being a walking school which is kind of a joke really but that is sort of what we've always said because we don't want to put the infrastructure into for other things and we don't have parking we don't have bus drop off really even we don't even have car drop off really I mean it's pretty sketchy so it's really a walking school or nothing and we've climbed in tons of vehicle trips into that block so if we can't be a walking school can we I mean I don't know, I'm not saying I don't support more busing what I'm saying is maybe we need a satellite drop off spot somewhere where kids arrive at that spot that can handle the traffic and then they can walk over from a block away or two blocks away or three blocks away rather than from two miles away so it seems to me that we do want to be creative and not just add buses at this point and I think we may still have to add buses but it's that kind of thinking that I'd like to encourage we did talk about the combination of the GMT and also the existing school buses you know the kids certainly could middle schoolers could obviously walk from the elementary to the middle school the problem is you know when you start to talk about that the timing of when school starts so we have the opportunity a lot of those buses aren't full and I think from personal experience and to me have this personal experience from his end of town of following, driving behind the elementary school bus to school I mean I drive behind it and stop when it stops the bus goes to the elementary school and I go to the middle school you know it doesn't, that doesn't make sense anyway, you know, for anybody so you know maybe aligning we didn't have as a committee I don't think the scope to say we need to realign school I mean the school starts but we have existing buses utilizing them better to make sure that can an eighth grader ride a bus with a kindergarten I know that's a... you do it in lots of places I don't know, I heard a lot of pushback on that that you can't do that but there's obviously a lot of creative ways to get kids to school if either the times of the buses work or the times of the GMT buses work and then when the weather is good I mean we did have to reign in the idea that everybody can ride their bike like I said, my daughter does a lot in some of those kids but I mean there are six months out of the year where the snow is piled high and the roads are not safe and clean for the kids to ride to school so I mean I think we were looking at that okay, what about for everybody and the kids who just don't ride bikes my next door neighbor doesn't ride her bike to school even when my daughter asked her to she's done it twice she's a 13 year old girl who won't ride her bike to school it just happens some of those kids won't she would walk but it's a long walk it's a 45 minute hour walk what is the rough cost estimate for basically duplicating elementary school busing elements busing, what is it? $60,000 we run three for elementary school just wanted to framework work how are we doing on occupancy on those buses or capacity on those buses are we mostly full on them? I don't know, we don't have a transportation coordinator to explain the challenges we're having now with adding buses or rocks they're not our buses they're not our buses I'm not sure that's been asked before I haven't heard there's anecdotal information just whether you have to add three more or you can add two more I have a Stacy, the bus company the person who runs it and we discussed it a little bit and while they're not at occupancy they can't take the entire middle school section of kids into the union buses and she was talking about start and end times and all that kind of thing which is a bigger can of worms and it would eliminate other things that we can do we did that so I would think that we take this year to study it with school people and you know who knows the kids and families best in that area and the needs of the needs of the middle school I also I'm not sure that the busing needs or the middle school are going to be the same as the elementary school just for one because the kids are older you're going to have one more kids who are able to walk who won't want to be on the bus and who won't want to be on the bus and also that's when more kids have after school activities and other things so I'm not sure that even though the sizes are simple I'm not sure kind of leads to sort of what the policy committee was trying to figure out where to go next really first and foremost respecting the work that's already been done and being very careful you know it's when we talk about studying it for a year it can send the message that thank you very much and we're just going to study for a while and I think that nobody wants to send that message what we were trying to do was think about maybe possible next steps and you know we didn't take a formal action on this but we had an idea that maybe the way to approach this would be to you know create or maintain transportation well first of all to adopt an interim transportation policy just to get us through this year and this coming year probably and to have some sort of a just get something probably our status quo in policy but to note in that policy that we are that it is an interim policy or that it is a you know that we're going to continue to work right in that policy so we don't lose track of that and then the other piece of it was to basically charge, have the board charge the administration to to do what you're suggesting Libby and in fact to create some sort of like an ad hoc working group or ad hoc committee that would study it and would work on it including looking at the money issues which are and the infrastructure issues and and potentially the school schedule issues whatever you know impacts there would be on various options and to choose you know an option that makes the most sense based on the values that we've all articulated but also the realities of all those things hopefully that committee would be made up of community members and board members in some sort of advisory role to you so that it would be informed by those ongoing kind of balanced values discussions and then and then coming back with a vision basically and something that we would think of as kind of like the next generation of busing vision like the next decade kind of vision versus what we've had is the last decade and that it's time with this new district coming together that we're we do do overthrow this thing or overhaul this and really think about from scratch and budget has to be on the table for that we can't just say well it's expensive and we it needs to be budget neutral I think that that was a piece of it is with budget recommendations whether it's it's a value a high enough value to be proposing something new in the budget or not so we don't have that formed into a into a policy but that concept wanted to kind of test that with the board and see folks thought that that was an appropriate way and it sounds like Libby's already on it and did you have an idea of like would that mean that sometime in the spring the committee would present the vision and then perhaps start implementation for next school year Libby I'd let you not if it has budgetary implications we'd have to move a little faster I don't I don't have it worked out I mean I think really that's Libby I really defer to you in terms of trying to identify kind of a good workable process that kind of you know that's it really and as fast as you think could be done but really talking about a big vision here for that's going to incorporate these values for the next you know decade or whatever then we should do it right also but I mean I think this respect that we think to some extent this is an administrative role it's really one of those things that's going to require a lot of nuts and bolts to get it to work and a budget proposal rather than the community or the board saying you know here's where we should draw the lines on where the buses are and I'd be interested in hearing your feedback your reaction to that idea yeah I'm comfortable I'm certainly comfortable with the idea I understand it's not going to happen for the school here since that shift has obviously sailed you know it's been something I've been talking to within the community and the school board about for four years now so so I would just ask you please to be very respectful of the fact that you know as you push this off it just means every single day longer that we do this that I've said this before I take if I have to drive my daughter every day to school and back I take 360 720 trips a year it's 180 school days here and back here and back so I take a roundtrip 360 trips a year and I have the flexibility in my work schedules for me I can do that I know there are a lot of people that it's a bit of a burden for and we're also you know that's a lot of cars we're putting in downtown core of a town that wants to be net zero so every time we push this out another year another year say it's too expensive and not find innovative ways to solve the problem I think that's a disservice to the community so anyway we can and even if there's interim solutions maybe we don't bite off the whole thing at once and just completely solve this this problem but you know if the kids can start riding the buses if you know I pose a question it's like kids have homeroom for the first 15 or 20 minutes of the school day in the middle school what happens if they're late by 10 minutes every day I don't know when I was in school homeroom didn't matter it was where kids just showed up I don't know if TA matters education I don't think that we weren't just sitting in the kids wasting time I hear what you're saying I have a fifth grader who's now going to middle school and there's no way with my present employment and I'm not just saying this because my bosses are sitting right next to me that I could get my child to school without the bus and there's just no way I could do it with my husband so I understand that concern very, very well so we'll get on it so tell us what you envision in terms of the timeline my brain and calendars and budgets don't work sometimes we're very much looking towards this presentation as a kickoff Pam and I have been talking about it we have an email with Jim that said we have a time, did we make a time? we made a time Pam, Jim and I just sit down and really get things going I have one parent who said tell me where to be and I will be there to me to talk about this and I know Pam has a couple other suggestions as well so we'll get this kicked off and you'll see in the pressures from the budget discussion piece, busing is on there at the high end because it's Grant who's writing that document but it is on there that we're considering so there's a thought that we could do something with budgetary implications in this budget round if we choose to do so we might not have the full answer but we could certainly put something together for the community and take it to the voters and see if they approve that okay hey Elston, thank you so much for your time thank you it was an interesting project to work on for sure and I'd like you to be involved too if you go on further okay, thanks Jim will you do the board presentation? yeah do you want to move on? well, we're under board governance we'll switch back to the learning focus totally up to you let's do, let's hear from the new board members because they're here although it might be good for both of you to stay through them just to get a sense because you may be serving soon but why don't we just snag out the board governance piece and I want to give both of you a chance to introduce yourselves are you Tanya? that's what I thought what we have is, as you know Peter Sterling resigned and under the process the board appoints someone and then the city council has to ratify that and they're going to do that to 26 but we got two applicants who very thankfully have thrown their hat to the ring Andrew Stein Tanya Congrats, Andrew Grath and Andrew Stein both were flooded to the board expressing interest so we're going to make a choice later on in the executive session but I want to carve out minutes for you to introduce yourself kind of reiterate what you said in your letter but introduce yourself and then we'll also give a minute or two for the board to ask any questions if they want to so Andrew, why don't you introduce yourself for the camera as well sure Andrew Stein, resident of Montpelier of course so I've spoken with each of you via the phone or in person and thank you so much for your time and sharing your insights I don't have much to add from our discussions previously or from my letter of interest I really care about the well-being of Montpelier students teachers administrators who foster the learning environment our schools I have a lot of experience in government and communications that I think would lend a valuable perspective to this board and I think would help this board during this transition process as you begin as a new school district with new leadership and I'm a very hard worker an eager learner a caring community member and it would be an honor to serve this city in this capacity if you have any questions for me I'm happy to answer them I'm going to ask just a general question this is for a temporary appointment if it wasn't for a temporary appointment would you see yourself running in the spring for a full term anyway full disclosure when Peter Sterling was thinking about leaving his position he was talking to different people about filling this post and I was one of the folks who he approached about the position and we talked for several weeks about it and he didn't want to leave until he was certain that somebody was applying who would be interested not only in filling the temporary vacancy but had an interest in carrying on and so that would be my aim of course it's up to the voters of Montpelier and that would be out of my control but I would in the short time try to prove my value as much as possible to them great well thank you and again feel free to stick around it will be educational alright thank you Tanya please introduce yourself for the good one hi I'm Tanya McGrath I have two daughters one at the mainstream middle school and one at Union I don't have a lot of experience in governmental stuff but I do have a daughter who has been on a 504 and I feel like that's kind of an important perspective to bring to the board and yeah I don't really come with a prepared statement but I run a little cleaning business and I feel like a maintenance oriented perspective I could bring that sort of thing sorry I don't have more I would definitely be learning on the fly but I think I'm a quick learner and I'm interested so I try thank you when you consider running for the full board again in March instead of just the temporary appointment I think so but one of the reasons I was so interested in the temporary appointment was to sort of see what it entails and if that's something I want to do I am interested in getting involved in the school governance but I'm not exactly sure the extent of what it entails so yes Steve you wrote a short letter of interest which was very helpful and one of the things you brought out which you didn't mention just now but I want to give you a chance to talk about it if you choose is mentioning your progressive education and blue collar background and if you don't mind just talking a little bit about what that means in terms of bringing that to the school board well attending Goddard is a very progressive institution and I feel like the traditional education over the years has been moving more towards that with a lot of things like mindfulness in the classroom more play-based learning that sort of thing and I have put a lot of personal research into just what's good for kids development in that field I feel like I feel like it's a really positive move for traditional education to be moving more towards progressive sort of things I threw in the blue collar thing mostly just because I feel like that's a perspective that's important since so many of the kids who go to school come from blue collar families and that's a perspective that sometimes gets overlooked in governance any other questions great thanks Tony and again please feel free to stick around if we're not going until the end we're going to be talking about the budget they both know the process we go through do they both kind of have a sense of the process we have to go through I think I explained it earlier in the beginning but just to reiterate we'll make a choice an executive session we will pass that name along to the city council the statute's a little unclear as to what the city council needs to do we need to consult with them but having them vote on it is as much consultation as they can possibly have so we've asked Bill Frazier to T.F. vote on the consent agenda on the 26th of October assuming the city council will pass it but assuming they do whoever we choose will that will officially be the appointment and then on our next meeting which is October 3rd you'll be a board member you'll have to be sworn in and you'll get to China's up there Jim just to be clear the board can discuss the appointment yes, the action needs to be taken here but we'll we'll confer and then come back to you yes, that's a thank you for being a petitioner I'll do whatever you want so this is going to be relatively short and sweet as always I live and breathe this stuff so if I start using jargon and acronyms especially please call me out this is a presentation that I actually created last year and just updated it for this year so ESA is the new education law, the new no child left behind now called ESA Every Students Succeed Act a little funny tidbit is when congress originally wanted to call this law or put this law in action it was ASSA every time you see that term and EQS which is the educational quality standards it's kind of the laws that Vermont has adopted you do have a role in this so that's what it is when ASSA first came out it was definitely advertised to give states more control and leniency that is yet to be seen I don't know how much it actually has achieved that fact then the EQS they were adopted in April 2005 there are rules were held accountable to them by a process that is still being pilot, they want to call it the AOE we want to call it a pilot right now but it's still being practiced and it's called the internal field review I will worse in a wait and see mode for the internal field review because the person who has been in charge of that process was just the secretary W. A. B. Fowler which had been following Ed News was just asked to leave the AOE with the new secretary so she was literally the brain child behind that so it will be interesting to see what happens with this process so here's your quote we're going to go through some of these things to be relatively quick board roles in EQS and ASSA you have a role in adopting certain policies most of which we have if not all of which the approval continues improvement plans and monitoring the effectiveness which we were talking about earlier with the superintendent's report that's one way I'm giving you evidence of that budgeting resources so we can accomplish our goals just an awareness that these are our policies so when community members ask you why do we have to do certain things you have them understanding behind it and holding me accountable to all the requirements because that's my job to make sure that EQS is followed and ASSA is followed so the required policies under EQS we have proficiency based graduation policy we have a class sized policy and then under ASSA we have environmental and family engagement so if you've been on the board for a while some of those were new I know we had to adopt them in my previous district because of these law changes but we're right on track with that so good job and continuous improvement plans we talked about that a bit with Mike Barry a couple meetings ago they have to be annual throughout the entire year we're working on those the area has just mentioned that we're moving into phase 2 without much definition of what that means for us so this is most definitely a learning year for us as to how that improvement plan carries out and for the AOE as to how they ensure that that improvement plan is carried out it's complete learning year you do have to approve the CIPs it's in the board we can't submit it without your approval so we will be bringing those to you probably in March I would imagine or April-ish and then we have to submit it the AOE and approves it it has to do all the requirements of EQS and ESSA so we're walking the fine line between those two they get merged together and then they get split apart and merged together again just a little history just in case anybody wants to geek out on this kind of stuff this is the school improvement plan and what's happened in Vermont it's getting more and more accountable to the state than it has been in the past and here's another just historical perspective from what were the standardized tests that Vermont has required of us and why they were required across across multiple years so just now we're at under ESSA the ESFAC will continue to meet that requirement in ESSA which there is a requirement that says we do some sort of national standardized test Vermont shows as we said before I believe to move the ESFAC from grade 11 to grade 9 there is a science ESFAC link I'm not sure exactly what they're calling it just yet that will be in grades 5, 8 and 11 they also added on an annual physical fitness exam for grades 4, 7 and 9 last year was the first year that they did that what's interesting about that piece is that that is not a requirement in ESSA and under the federal law there was the standardized testing and in addition one other more standardized test that was up to states to decide it was Vermont's decision to go with a physical fitness exam that was their decision totally so that you won't see across multiple states necessarily really sure why they chose that over social studies or that over something else but that's what they chose for school accountability again a historical perspective now under every child succeeds act it is required of states to name publicly the lowest 5% of performing title 1A schools and will receive targeted support our state agency the AOE argued against that a lot they really went to back for schools to say that's not what we believe for education that's the public that's not how we support institutions but they lost they lost with that so that was a biggie that Vermont argued against so the state does have to name the lowest 5% performing schools I'm not worried that we're going to be in that 5% and if we do become in the 5% you should probably fire me so then we have to report this annual snapshot that the agency is going to deliver to us and last board packet you had a memo from the agency of education about that annual snapshot so you do have some information about that again that's new so we're all learning about what it's going to look like and then the ed quality review which is the IFR that I discussed earlier Montpelier Roxbury is up in 2020-2021 for that IFR actually kind of wanted it this year because they take a real broad view look at our system and you get good information off of it so I actually wanted it to go this year but we're not slated until 2020-2021 which puts it in question based on Amy Fowler leaving which is not sure if that's actually going to happen but when it does you all will probably be approached to give some information around that according to the new state accountability system this is the kind of fun stuff here this is what the state of Vermont proposed to the feds to qualify under ESSA so this was part of the state so we will be accountable in 5 areas academic proficiency personalization, safe, healthy schools high quality staffing and investment priorities and when they come to do that internal field review these are the 5 areas we get feedback in so it's all connected to this so in academic achievement the indicators that the state has chosen is that 20% is in ELA 20% is in mathematics, 5% in science, 5% in physical education or fitness when you have a certain threshold of ELL learners in your district then that counts towards 10% of your scores, I'm not sure if we hit that or not yet and graduation rate is 20% in addition to college and career readiness indicators and they're defining that in multiple ways these are some of them so it's the percentage of kids and their scores how they're scoring taking things like the ACT, SAT, AP classes CLEP I believe is a military type examination I'm not positive on that one but nobody really uses it much anymore so everyone was kind of like right when that came out we didn't really know dual enrollment, that kind of thing so that's 10% of our score in proficiency personalization, you guys know all high school students participating they're judging it as all high school students participating in at least one flexible pathway that we have lots of flexible pathway offerings and that we have personalized learning plans I want to feel that our high school is doing a very good job here and they have for years does that only apply to high schools then? middle schools too it starts in 7th grade but the most pressure will be put on high schools safe and healthy schools so they're going to look at our disciplinary data and this is also the school climate survey and I know some of us have had a conversation around the school climate survey in regards to the contractual language and my personal evaluation so that's falling in safe and healthy schools and they have developed the climate survey we just started to get information it's going to come out in April they think of this year high quality staffing they're defining as the amount of licensed teachers we have educational staff stability so they're looking at teacher turnover, principal turnover superintendency turnover and then staff satisfaction surveys we haven't heard any information about what that is yet it's probably still being developed up there but it's interesting because the caveat is in professional learning opportunities so are they satisfied with what we're offering them as learners it's interesting and then investment priorities staffing ratios which our governor likes to talk about a lot our pursuit in expenditure and what's our return on investment so how are we doing in regards to the amount of money that we're spending towards education so those are the big the big five this is really interesting and I'm not going to go into much detail about this these have actually changed and I haven't upped it because I didn't have the exact thing this symbol has changed because of the violence that schools are experiencing right now they didn't feel like a symbol that has a violent background to it would be appropriate so it's interesting that will look different but this is one of the ways that we're going to see where we fall and what's interesting about it we referenced it a little bit with the aspect presentation last year is over here this is talking to our growth our year to year change so we want to see our scores do that this is talking about where our actual current performance is the number of schools you see all these like one school, six schools, nine schools that was for if they were going to hold schools accountable according to the new as a plan last school year based on two years ago now aspect results that's where the state of Vermont would land so that's all the schools in Vermont this is where this priority one right here this is where the 5% is and if you fall in this 5% you get lots of money thrown at you from the AOE in support it's called targeted support everyone else will not be eligible for that money so anywhere else you'll just be given support which means the AOE will take a look at our continuous improvement plan and give us a thumbs up or thumbs down if I were to bet based on what I was seeing from our aspect scores from the trends of what Mike showed you a couple weeks ago I would have a hunch that we are off target or near target for the year to year change we're down here and we're probably near target for our current performance we're probably down to the lower end here so I would bet that we fall kind of here right now but that's my hunch I couldn't find so I got this document from my old job I couldn't find this document for Montpelier or for Roxbury so it was literally just a document that was sent to us last year so we couldn't Mike and I searched through lots of binders we couldn't find it so we're not sure where we would fall but just based on what we know about this chart we would fall around here we want to get over here that way so we'll see continuous improvement plan we talked a bunch about this when we had to change ours so like I said right now we're moving into phase 2 and the AOE is hopefully going to give us some understanding of what that means to them so we know what it means to us we have some ideas but we don't want to do things that's not going to apply with the AOE so we're waiting to hear information about that it's based on a plan do study act kind of idea which is not a bad idea it's just really hard to put all of our investments into that framework so it'll be interesting we'll let you know when we know and how are we responding to all this so all our policies have been adopted I'm working on the procedures now as I work on those procedures they're also updated on the school board website so you can see those we're working with school leaders a lot about needs assessments we're putting in data days which are going to be three times a year for the central office team to sit down with building leadership teams and say this is what you show us evidence of how you're working towards our goal for each school and then so we know exactly what our needs are for this in addition to that Friday is our first what I'm calling round Robin Day so it's myself, Mike Barry every single school and doing walkthroughs in classrooms with principals and talking about what are the themes of instruction we're seeing across our districts so we have a better idea of where we need to focus our professional learning that's really exciting that all feeds into this needs assessment process we're participating in a lot of state trainings and Mike Barry's chagrin and we're going to bring the strategic agreement plan to you guys and what you're hearing so just know that any questions about EQS and ESO? That's great quick and relatively painless anyone like it yeah, no, it's fantastic is that presentation part of the minutes? it is not I didn't think to include it in the packet so I apologize for that, I will share it with all of you okay, that'd be great budget but the presentation would be long and very painful so you know I apologize I apologize for not getting a piece of paper to you in advance but you should have a piece of paper that says apply for a budget discussion in front of you that I just kind of wanted to go over some of the landscape with you some of the known landscape we haven't really started any kind of deliberations so there may be other things that pop up as the administration is looking at budget as we go along but I started off with some statewide issues some of them may be old news to you some of them may not you may remember that in FY19 at the very end the state decided to use a bunch of one-time money to balance the budget and reduce tax rates which is great for us for FY19 unfortunately bad for us in FY20 because that's one-time money that isn't available again in FY20 so the estimate was that tax rates would go up by 2 cents even if budgets were level that dynamic might be changing as we speak though but that's one statewide pressure statewide pupil counts will likely go down for us, I'm thinking we should be stable or fairly stable if you've been here for a few years you know that we've had big increases in equalized pupils that largely related to private preschool and being able to count those kids those kids I think have pretty much all been counted that big ramp up of kids I think is pretty much all counted so I don't think we can expect a big increase but it should be fairly stable and since tax rates are based on spending for pupil that's a very important thing common level of appraisal I put that in here just the fact that if the CLA drops tax rates rise that's a typical phenomenon that we've seen year after year unless you go through a reappraisal health rates that's something that just popped up this past week in 19 we know that the tax rates or the health rates went up 10% in FY20 the number that Vi sent forward is proposing 11.8% increase in health rates for the gold CDHP which pretty much every one of our employees has the gold CDHP so that is a fairly strong pressure statewide health clawbacks whenever we went to these high deductible plans the premiums were cheaper you know the state kind of for two years was pulling money back from us this year in FY19 is the last year that happens so this is a good thing that $65,000 that we will lose in FY19 we don't lose again in FY20 Act 46 you know that we have an 8 cent tax incentive in our first year of merger which is awesome we have a 6 cent tax incentive in year 2 which is awesome but unfortunately most people are going to see that as a 2 cent increase not a 6 cent incentive since we are going from 8 to 6 so that's a bit of a challenge Act 173 for those of you who don't know it talks a lot about special education not only about how funding will flow to us but also about how to deliver special ed services Act 173 is not going to impact the special ed funding formula until FY21 so it's not something we have to struggle with in FY20 but just to let you know that's coming and in FY20 what we will likely be doing is trying to figure out how to build the capacity to adapt to a new special ed delivery model that we will be facing in FY21 the last one under statewide issues probably doesn't mean a lot to you it's rocking my world a uniform chart of accounts and a new HR finance system is going to be in place for July 1st of next year that is a lot of work for our office to try to make that happen I only bring it up not to get your pity but to explain to you you know that's good if you have any what it might mean is because we have to go to a different chart of accounts we may have to bucket expenses in different places and as Steve knows last year we did a pretty good job trying to map what the increases and decreases are from year to year and we got pretty good into those details that may be a little more tricky this year but some of that might be because something that we counted as a professional service now has to be counted as a supply for example software some of that we may have counted as a professional service now we have to cover it as a supply which is a whole different kind of area of the budget so it might be a little trickier whenever I'm showing you changes from year to year some of it may be because this new requirement popped up some of it may be because I had to move the P from this shell to this shell we'll try to go through that as closely as we can you don't want to give us both portions do you so we can you know so we can compare but going forward after this it'll be it'll be fine because they'll never change it again we're good from there on out that's not true so then the next thing is the pressures which maybe pokes some fun at me for optimizing the pressures but salaries is on here it's on here because over half of our budget is salaries so even a modest increase in salaries is going to create a fairly significant cost increase we just know that that's the fact staffing I'm hoping that there won't be huge staffing applications related to enrollment projections we look at that look at class size averages sometimes we have to add a bunch of classroom teachers hopefully that's not the case I think we're pretty stable we'll have to see as that plays out we are considering some other positions which you can see on here Human Resources Coordinator we have three different people that actually four if you count me that do pieces of HR we don't have one person that kind of access the one stop shop for that and that is getting more and more difficult especially with HRAs and things like that a district-wide instructional coach we're looking at now with with Mike Berry coming on board he's looking at some of our processes and some ways that we can improve student achievement and what that might look like consolidated federal grants how we use those might change a little bit I'm hoping it doesn't create a big increase in overall staffing costs what it might mean is that I may not be allowed to use consolidated federal grants for someone who is a coach but I may be able to use it for somebody who's an interventionist so we may be shifting how we use the money but the hope is that it nets itself out hopefully the bond you know that in FY20 that's the first year that we have to pay principal which is a pretty big jump vehicles I think I'm going to cut that in half right now because I don't think we'll look at doing another special ed van we're looking at purchasing an additional van for CBL because they rely on community connections and that may not be able to be an option in the future so we may look at getting a second van for that I'm taking off the special ed van because if you buy a special ed van with special ed money you can only use it for specials if I buy a CBL van I don't get reimbursement for it but I can use it for whatever we want which might include special ed requirements so I think we can get by with one more van I don't think we really need to busing you just had a discussion about that yes I did kind of go on a high end and say 250 I was thinking maybe it might be as many as four van four buses times 60 or so thousand but it may not really be that high depending on what the solution is and in Libby will tell you we've had some issues with adding the Roxbury busing some of the issues that have popped up and somebody will ask a question so who do I need to talk to about this issue me maybe I don't know we don't have someone who handles busing because it's never been that big of a thing it was only union so it was really school based so now that there's a bigger transportation monster to deal with we need to sort through rules and responsibilities and see if anybody has the capacity right now to take on that kind of work so that's something else to just think about as we trouble solve that or problem solve that foreign languages on here for maybe a study committee and it's a study committee to look at something that is kind of exciting the possibility of an immersion program so that would be really cool yay I told you that boy it took that long you didn't yay data management we have various data management tools but we really don't have something to be able to keep good track for assessments and be able to document assessments and monitor those across time so we're looking at trying to find a good assessment tracking system to purchase elementary equity is something we talked about during the merger study it's something that we're going to continue to look at now that we're operating to K-4 schools pre-K-4 schools there may be some other areas of inequities that we might need the budget for to try to fix as we go along 504 requirements is really on here for me more than you it's just that if you have students that aren't on an IEP then you can't use special aid funding for it so we try to put a little bit of a set aside in general funds to deal with 504 type of requirements which might be adaptive equipment and things like that it may also mean an outside placement that's not for a special ed eligible student so I know that we have over executed this line and I just need to put a little more into there at least for the next few years so that we're not over extending ourselves the backside of this page talks about opportunities the list is a little shorter but there is a list facilities projects we talked last year during the budget process that we had increased some one-time costs in facilities because we knew we were going to lose two cents worth of incentive we knew we were going to have to pay for the bond so we had one-time facility project money in there that we think we can back off a little bit with a new facilities director I need to work with him to figure out what the appropriate amount is to back off but I do think we have extra money there that we can reduce high school tuition the kids that are grandparented in Roxbury that have choice that we have one less year of those kids to have choice which means one less year of tuition so we know that is going to go down health reimbursement arrangements in FY19 we budgeted 100% utilization partially because of the clawback that we knew we were going to have to deal with but also because we really didn't have data to know where we were going to end up I do know that in half the year we spent over half of the HRA money that we had in the bucket but you know a lot of that is people who spent that full amount so I assume that percentage is going to drop off in the second half of the year I think we can probably scale back 100% utilization but I don't want to get too carried away because we really still don't even have a year's worth of data so we might be able to back that off some fund balance you saw the draft fourth quarter report last month that we do have a surplus from last year so we do have some fund balance we do want to kind of hold some of that because with the $4.9 million bond there's things that are going to come up we want to make sure that we don't short change anything to do with bond projects so we might want to have some of that set aside in case we need it for furnishings and equipment and things that we didn't count on or change orders things like that but we do have some money that we might end up considering taking some fund balance and using it as a revenue source in the FY20 budget so for every dollar we put in as a fund balance revenue that's like taking a dollar of expense off so the good thing is it has that action the bad news is this could end up becoming one of those one time things where if you put $400,000 of fund balance in a revenue for FY20 and in FY21 you don't have $400,000 that's like increasing your budget by 400 grand so there's probably it's a lever that you can kind of adjust if we are close to where we want to be we can maybe throw a little bit of fund balance revenue into the budget to offset expenses so I think that's kind of it as far as those pieces there's one other aside I wanted to point out and that is that typically in the budget we show prior year actuals compared to a budget and then the new proposed budget we weren't able to do that last year because of the merger just so you know I still won't be able to do that because I still don't own the Roxbury data for last year so I still don't really have actuals to be able to show you for FY18 because that wasn't under our system I have on pill your FY18 actuals but not Roxbury so we still are probably going to be dealing with presenting a budget that shows from one budget year to the next budget year and then next year we'll have actuals and then for like 19 to be able to show you some actuals compared to budgets just wanted to set that expectation we do have on here kind of a proposed guidance that if basically for you to tell us if this is what you think is reasonable for us to consider all requirements that would improve student learning based on the continuous improvement plan and those that would improve efficiency and effectiveness of the district to prioritize those requirements with the goal to limit the increase in education spending to 4% in order to keep tax rates at a reasonable level in the past we've talked about spending per pupil but then we don't know what the pupil count is until late in the game so it's very hard to figure that out if we left it at just education spending we can kind of try to work within those bounds I think 4% hopefully is something that's would be viewed as reasonable without really constraining us too much as far as looking at all the real requirements that we want to bring forward for the sake of kids did I miss anything Ryan you did awesome any thoughts I know it's tough because of the district changes so maybe this number doesn't exist but can you give me a sense of how the district what the increases in education spending have been year over year for the last couple of years because it's not a number we usually talk about at this point I could I don't have it off the top of my head I think it went up a little more than usual last year because of the incentive for the merger but I think the year before that we were trying to keep it at about a 3% increase in per pupil spending I'm thinking it was around there it may have been a little more than that I'd have to go back and look but we can certainly cover that as part of the budget presentation the historical look at where we've been increasing with the caveat that that's where Montpelier has been and now we're in Montpelier at Roxbury so this is the first year that we really have seen any kind of change in spending for people for the new district I'm learning to trust your guidance your proposed guidance because you do a great job and you find that balance between recognizing that we want to always be improving and investing and we also want to be projecting 2, 3, 4 years out in terms of what impacts that's going to have on tax rates because that's a quagmire but it's quite it's quite bold to put out to limit to 4% this early and it's always something we always have a good fight about on the board and you know I hate to not have a fight so what I'm trying to determine is what 4% is based on I'm just always used to about 3% and I knew you were going to say I know I was just trying to think about what might be realistic knowing that because the CLA is going to drop the actual tax rate's going to go up even more so we know that and it's the second year of a merger and we are trying to kind of hold true to what we showed as part of the merger presentation and my concern was 3% might might constrain administrators a little bit too much to come up with some good ideas that might really turn a corner on achievement somehow so I didn't want to say 3% I just couldn't bring myself to say 5% so should I call it 6% would have been hard too you need a little help about okay no I get that I mean when we look through your numbers and your discussion about what's going good and bad right now it's not looking very balanced and so I know we're going to have some pressures on the upside just to hold even but I also know that you're really good at being careful with numbers so that you don't promise things that can't be delivered and so I just and I also don't see a lot of this isn't a majority but I don't see a lot of ambition in this does that sound bad in the sense that you're not saying well we need to add 7 positions or something like that right and it's very very very early no one's holding anyone to anything at this point but I just I guess at this point I'm just trying to understand that 4% and at what point and to what extent does the board actually give this guidance what if you decide on that I don't remember well yeah but we weren't necessarily we were trying to work or dance around this this idea and I think in last year to kind of go back in time a little bit last year when there was as part of the guidance or not guidance as part of the policy you had to give me a number and this year I don't think we're that constrained that's why I tried to work as if this is a goal the goal is to limit to 4% if somebody comes in with a great idea that we think is going to close the achievement gap in one year well I'm going to come to you with a 5% then if that's what it takes but I would like to try to I mean this is more of a challenge to us as a leadership team to just try to make sure if it gets much more than 4% in education spending depending on what happens with the equalized and dollar yield a 4% increase in education spending could still be an 8, 9, 10% increase in the tax rate which I don't want to get to that and we're in negotiations this year true so we haven't adopted the budget policy but it's in the agenda for tonight and it doesn't call on the board to have a specific number and and I just want to throw out a different way to think about the guidance the board's consideration which is that the administration has been looking at this issue is coming to us and saying this is where we are now perhaps it's not an opportunity for us to endorse it but an opportunity for us to object to it or not and if we don't you could look at it that way and that might be a more respectful way to look at the administration's role that they're telling us where they are and they're giving us a head up of what path they're going down if the board wanted to step in at that point and say wait a minute we're not happy with that or we have no concerns, we could or we could just respect the role that they're going down and let them have to proceed and that might be more consistent with the policy since the policy doesn't call for us to specifically give them the hard part is at what point in the timeline do we object because this is something that in past I'm going back a few years now the administration has felt caught in a bad situation around proceeding down a planning path building a consensus within the administration or within the district having the board come in at the 11th hour and say that's not enough in a contraction year for instance we're going to need to eliminate half a position of the board you're not eliminating that position or the other way around like hey I really want to do foreign language immersion and the administration is like we're not there so 4% is not enough and so the objection can't come too late the guidance can't come late in the process it's got to come out early enough that the administration can do its work I'm just trying to figure out a way to not be that monkey wrench I actually like the way this is presented and I have some reservations about putting it in a random number I mean I like the fact that I have a sense of what you're considering I think given kind of given where you are with reassessing the district and looking for efficiencies and looking for whether the current structure is working well I actually think there is some ambition here I think the idea of taking a chipping away at the foreign language block that we always talk about and make no progress on is big I think the idea of starting to look at transportation is big the human resource coordinator well perhaps not sexy I think has some real administrative advantages that can pay off down the road and I like the fact that at least compared to other years I have a better sense of what you're thinking about I mean I'm and I think this is kind of consistent with the budget because the policies go in I'm okay with getting guidance about what the ticket items are and whether we agree with those and then just a general sense of whether they're going to present numbers that are going to be eye popping or not rather than saying 5%, 6%, 3%, 4% I think if we have a direction idea of the direction you're going idea of the priorities that you want to fund how that fits in with kind of broader vision and whether there's going to be some price tags in there that are going to be difficult I think at this point in the budget that's kind of what I'm looking for Grant just to clarify when I'm reading this, I'm reading this as recommendations coming from you with your knowledge of what's happening in the district you know this doesn't include what principals are expecting to hopefully implement next year that this isn't principal's budget this is really just kind of the big picture this is what's happening in the district this is big picture we have talked about we're not showing you anything we haven't showed that okay there is still time to have shifts and changes still very early if we have because there could be something that bubbles up instead of gets pushed down whenever I send these budget worksheets I send them to the buildings they work with their teams so there could be something that we didn't anticipate but as Libby mentioned this is something we already talked about as a leadership team so everybody already had kind of an idea so they had an opportunity to raise their hand and say you completely missed this huge thing so I'm hoping that there isn't a big unknown in here but there might be several small unknowns and with the budget timeline that I believe we shared with you a while back that Grant put together a long time ago there are several opportunities for our leadership team to be working on more specifics of the budget that we will be doing and Jim and my relationship is such that I tell him pretty much everything that's going on so if he feels that's a time that needs to be brought to a board level at a different than this timeline then I know he will speak up and I'm comfortable without you making a motion to give me guidance as long as I'm not getting stuff thrown at me right now I think we're able to start doing our work are we okay? you had something to say? well I was going to say this is great I was actually just going to follow up on the point about where is this in terms of ambition a couple different reactions to that and my additional reaction is I'm pretty, I think that there's a lot of great stuff here and obviously a lot of serious things being considered that will be shocked if this were the year that the administration came to us with an ambitious programmatic budget anyway and that's just that if this isn't the year for it and so we're still learning still learning I remember this being a stable like we're building on what we've got and then your team is assessing things and there'll be a better position next year if there's big changes I think what I'm experiencing I'm realizing I'm having this emotional experience because this is a very collaborative process and I'm not used to that I think it's very interesting that we don't feel the need to really carefully define everything at this early stage and that I think the board's feeling a lot of trust honestly in both of you and the team and I think that you know I think this may go a lot smoother than my past experiences have been and so I think it might just be that that's where we leave it is that it's it sounds like Libby really and Grant really want to lead a collaborative process here and I'm sure you'll tell us when we overstep and that's appropriate and so let's watch it play out and learn something this year great thank you so much for sharing that so the next piece of budget is Outreach Expectations for the board Tina not shockingly wants to go talk to the senior center if anybody wants to join her I think she'd definitely be welcome to welcome to that suggestion I'm good reaching the forums I've already got to get something together put in meaningfully other groups people want to reach out to I'm assuming you guys want to do some outreach to Roxbury that would be good we have a little PTO senior selects I don't think we're going to reach out it's different in Roxbury just leave it at that I'm happy to do some road bomb killer or a live MBA all that kind of stuff I can try to work some of the business people over they traditionally have the response that's been very concerned we're busy we don't want to hear about the school Rotary's not like that they would be interested we haven't really done that we did that with the Roxbury committee the merger project we did reach out to them and that was very useful but no we haven't done that much but I'm happy to just leave touch base as people what they want to know what they desire to I'm glad to have that we're at our I've gone to the senior center as well sometimes I'm happy to do that again and I can have the phones I know sometimes members we've tried to just have this someone will be at the coffee shop I don't know how often people turn up I think it is it's like one or two people will show up is usually what it is it's like where Tina will hold court and people come and if you got somebody who is especially interested that person needs to have answers because they're going to tell 400 of the people what they're worried about is there a good place to tap into the community of people with children, young children not yet in the school system well I wonder if through the private child care places there could be something going through or just maybe just a note going out to all of them are posted with they're handed to every one of them saying there's going to be parents of young children meeting about what's going on in the school right now that would be a bit of a project but there's I think it's going to be a turtle island and children's house and small providers small providers through the hospital or the doctor's offices it's not going to get everybody but yeah that's a group that would be nice to connect to I'll try to I'll try to figure out some ways to do it you know down street health could help down street health might be a good place to congregate for that community I already said it's about a quite large forum too what's our timeline for that what would you like for overview that's meaningful definitely by when we pull the leadership team together to really start talking about staffing and personnel and stuff like that the grant has that scheduled for October 17 so mid to October would be good so we've got an October 15th meeting so October 15? October 17 is in Roxbury in the past I've gone to the parents' groups and it's always a timing issue but the boosters high school and the university parents' group is there a Roxbury parent's group is that something you'd be able to is anyone else interested in doing parents' groups Yeah, I wouldn't mind. Yeah, I'll hold up the. So what's the upcoming fundraiser on Columbus Day weekend? Has a board done anything? That's such an interesting product. The what's it? The fall festival. Is that what it's called? It's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah, whatever's happening, it's, yeah. We can have a little, like, come here and talk to school or something. Wow. I'm so excited. That's great. I'm sorry, at this early, what is it we're communicating? We're asking. We're asking. We're not communicating. We're receiving. We know how this works. Open-ended questions sometimes. Well, I mean, I think we get blank stares. Well, the good thing is we can give a quick overview of what the, you know, we've got this, so we can spend a few minutes saying, here's the things, here are the things that the officials. We're really worried about the Clawbacks, and Act 173 is going to have an impact this year. We're thinking about transportation issues. We're thinking about transportation issues. We're considering about, you know, getting something to start on the foreign language, human resources coordinator, and just kind of give the lay of the land. We also just said, yeah, this is a year where we are converging two districts and, you know, examining systems and how things are coming together and what the efficiencies are and how we can use what we have to do a change. I mean, if we were talking about this with somebody and we weren't trying to just give them a list of new things, I think it would have to be that it's like we're going to monitor the merger first year, make sure we're successful, evaluate how that's working on the budget. The bond is getting going. We need to be cautious about bond expenses and just be aware that, you know, we're going to find things along the way and then always just keep holding health care and staff costs, basically level means they go up and they don't go up a little bit. It just, you know, health care between these two. It looks like what, a half a million bucks or something. And, you know, to do nothing, it's a half a million dollars more. And then, you know, and then probably, you know, that we're going to continue to work on equity, which is sort of our longstanding thing. So everything is put through that lens. You know, I mean, those aren't like creating your list of new things. So, I mean, I just would be careful at this early stage to get people to jazzed up about anything like busing is a great example, right? Like where we're definitely looking at doing some new things with busing. That's about all we know at this point. Yeah. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Yeah. And, you know, for them to say, oh, you're putting a quarter million in for busing. So we just have to be, I think, cautious on how much we, you know. It's not that this isn't a public document. It's just that it's definitely kind of a throw everything out there and make sure everything's on the table, but it doesn't mean all these things will have impacts. Yeah. Jim, do we need to have anything summarized in terms of feedback to present at the 14th? Are we going to have time with that 17th meeting just to kind of share? Yeah. Or do you want to have things kind of combined? I think we can do it in the past, we've done it morally. If you want to be more organized than that, that certainly wouldn't be discouraged. But, you know, I want to make this easy. And I think that, you know, people come back with a pretty good sense of what they've heard. My experience in the boards in the past have been fairly generic in terms of the feedback we get. So it could be wrong this time around, but my guess is it would probably be, yeah, the usual stuff. Yeah. Better food, better busing. But the Roxbury piece is so important this time that we just continue to have our ear to ground on that. Like, how we doing, how we doing, how we doing? Perfect. Great. And we can check it out in the third of an hour. We're doing it, but I don't think I'll be able to do whatever because the press is from Bob Leslie, so I can point to that. So, policy readings, I don't know. So we've got budgeting, board superintendent relationship, board expectations, and superintendent expectations. So, let's start with budgeting arrived. Discussion, read budget policy, Virginia. Just one typo that I want to point out. Budget presentation format, the sixth bullet, I think it's supposed to be a configuration of the fifth bullet and not its own bullet. Oh, yes. This is gonna be me. The language quite a lot. It's TV, I think I'm hitting my face, but it's actually a lot. It's been cruising around. Yeah, I had an opportunity to end it, but I decided to do it. That's bothering us. I will pass that. Don't digress me over here, go ahead. Go ahead. First question, I have the opening paragraph. The final statement, the budget will be presented by the board for approval by the voters at the annual meeting of the district. Do we mean warned there? The budget will be warned for vote? Or are we talking about presentation as in us standing up presenting? I think we're talking about the voting day. Which, which I was, the budget. It's in the paragraph after the bullets. We're like, I felt like that was a little bit unclear. We talked so much about presentations later and it's like, is this just talking about us putting forward a budget to be voted on? That I think that is what it's talking about. Right. And you're right that because, and for Montpelier in particular, it's new wording because we didn't really call it a meeting before in Montpelier, it was town meeting day when it was at, you know, an election. Yep. It's still a little Australian ballot, so I don't know if people will realize that that really means that you show up to vote as you always have, I'm close to showing up to a meeting. But we're still presenting it to the voters or everyone. What if we said the budget will be presented by the board for approval by the voters on town meeting day? That would clarify for me what we're actually talking about rather than just another physical presentation of us. Scratch up at the annual meeting of the district in this book on town meeting day. On town meeting day. And related in our schedule, December and January, I would say December, the first budget presentation. Is it the first draft budget presentation or is it the first presentation of the budget? It's the first. Because in January we have the second budget presentation. Is that the second draft or is that just us presenting the budget for the second time? It's the administration presenting the same as us. Yeah. Okay. Superintendent and business manager present an initial budget in December. That's it. Yeah. Because it will be revised in there. That's, yeah, I could say, I knew that's what it was, but the way it was worded it made me think that it was just, this is presentation number two of the same thing rather than. A revised updated draft. Those are the only things that I thought were a little bit confusing. Further comments on, just for clarification, you asked for verbal clarification but it didn't make any editing clarifications. Do you think it needs editing clarifications after having to explain to you or not? Because it's the first presentation by, because I'm the only one that read it that way that it might just be a sequence of one or two presentations. It's the first draft. Like I said, I had. We can add the word draft in there. Like the first draft budget presentation? Yeah, budget draft presentation. Although being, realistically, it's implied because January after this to the board adopts the budgets and clearly the budget prior to that is not an adopted budget which would imply it was a draft budget. Right. But it could also be that the idea is that you're reading it three times. Like it's got to be close to final format somehow and that you're just offering multiple opportunities for everyone to hear the presentation and ask questions but that's not what we're trying to achieve here. It's kind of like the way we used to interpret the policy change policy. It's like, no, you can keep revising as you go. And I think it should be clear, either draft or initial I think would be said or something like that just to make it clear we're still in revision period. Right, until that final presentation. Initial revised or draft or... Draft might be easiest. I don't think it should say first draft because that's not true. You're working internally long before then. Yeah, but is it the first draft? Or is it the first... It's the first presentation of the budget. It's the first presentation of the proposed draft. Oh, yeah. How about this? That's good. The first presentation of the proposed budget. Yeah, I'm not sure that gets you there. Well, you have to change second period. Yeah, then you have to tell me about revision or revised or something in the second one. What if you don't revise it? I want it to be clear. We're in a revision period. That's all that really matters. But Jim, it's right that we technically could come back without a revision. Yeah, it's possible. Yeah, it's fine. What do you think, Grant? How about proposed in December? Yeah. Chris, it's fine that I know what to be there. I'm going to call him. All right, we have been presenting them as first draft, second draft, as we go along. So that's something we're going to be familiar with. That works out very good with it. My mind is more clear. So what does this agree on? You just have to put draft after first draft. Adding draft, not proposed. So that works for me, too. Can I make one other quick change for the recommendation? On the budget presentation format, the third bullet says, indicates anticipated amounts and sources of revenues from sources other than local taxation. The education spending grant that includes local and state. To me, it would just be, it indicates anticipated amounts and sources of revenues per period. Yeah. And guidance. Can that work? Other comments, questions? Concerns? Ready to turn to board superintendent relationships? Is this right to be adopted next time? I think so. I should be. My adoption one over there is tell me yes. So yes. Board and superintendent relationship? Comments, questions, suggestions, concerns? In 1.4, just because of the editing process, we don't have two sentences that say almost the same thing. I notice the same thing. I wonder if we could ask the person or somehow take what we love best for each sentence. I think if we switch the, if we transition to find the respective roles of the board and superintendent into that following statement, yeah, it cuts the length almost in half. Because I think that's the only thing that's really different between the two. So the proposal is to take the phrase define the respective roles of the board and superintendent out of the first sentence. Otherwise, acts the first sentence. And insert that phrase maybe as the second, second clause. So we're getting rid of the first part of the first sentence, moving the vine to. I think to after objectives of the district and to the board directed limit. Jim, when I was reviewing this today, 1.6 process for the board evaluating the superintendent annually. We at this point in time have a standing superintendent evaluation committee that isn't mentioned at all in this process. I think I don't have a recommendation on exactly what language to include. But I do think we need to have something that does reference the work of the superintendent evaluation committee will be used in our deliberations and the evaluation. So we're going to say the formal evaluation of the superintendent each year based upon the work of the superintendent evaluation committee and a scheduled adopted by the board is going to work. But I think just to have that reference would be good enough. So the recommendation of the committee. It might fit better in the second sentence. Just before we get the language, in the other committee we say, I mean, do we want to be consistent and say the board will create and charge a standing superintendent evaluation committee? So I didn't say anything about it from the budget policy. But committees is something that did get added and modified in the expectation policy that's coming up next. I feel like we're jumping between discussions now. But the way I drafted that change of the committee information and the expectation policy is that would be kind of the one shop location for these are our standing committees. I thought that it might make sense to tweak the budget policy a little bit. That would be assuming that we adopted the language that was in the expectations policy. But I think the expectations policy would be these are the standing committees. These are the structures for ad hoc committees. So we wouldn't have to have language scattered around the policies for the committees. But I'm just kind of jumping between discussions that I had thought about in the budget policy. But I think it's too relevant. So it's based upon the recommendation. Other suggestions? And just to follow up on that, we want to put in there specifically that the board shall form this committee. That's actually in the next item. That's helpful. OK. We'll have that in all of those. Yeah, the language. For my read of Robert Troll's and some of the policy examples, if you have standing committees, it's something that doesn't get played around that much. And having essentially an board's bylaws, this is where you declare that these are the standing committees for a board. All right. That's the move I had the first time. Other questions or comments? This also is interesting as a budget. No major substantial change. We're ready to move on to board our partition. Another question. Under B1, we had clerk-treasurer in the Montpellier school system, but in the merge system, we do not do clerk-treasurer. So we do have elected officers, not officers. So we do have elected officials. So we elect a clerk. We elect a treasurer. We don't as a board, but the district. Excuse me, but the district doesn't. So Shelly Quinn, Tammy Legacy are our clerk and treasurer. So it's not a board appointment into the election? It's elected by the voters. But I'm a little bit unsure whether that makes sense for us to define here what those roles are. Because I had actually asked Grant before the reading started this evening, I'm a little bit unclear how Shelly, as a district treasurer right now, really differs from a board appointed treasurer in the past who would have signed off on board orders and warrants, et cetera. So I'm a little bit unclear myself or what the difference is between a board appointed versus a selected official. And they're not. This section is called board officers, but they're not board officers, they're district officers. They're their own thing. Yeah, and they're not on the board. So it should be district officers. So I would be inclined to not have them here. Yeah, I know. It's a pre-chair of state law and whatever that responsibilities are. We can't trump them up. We can't trump it, and they're not really part of the board. So what do I want to do with them? I would just take them all out. And up to the board. Yeah, I think that makes sense. Did we appoint a parliamentary? We did. Yeah, I was appointed to part of it. Yeah, it's over. And I did get studious in the Robert's rules, in a sense. So there were, it's here. I have no idea. Yeah, it's a very dry reading for you. I mean, I'm a bit surprised, but it was funny, because Section B3 there, the responsibilities of the other board officers. We really fleshed out, it's amazing how much we've changed this policy and all the revisions. We've added a lot. After the retreat, we really added a lot in terms of the role of the board chair. And we realized that we neglected to include information regarding the other officers. So I didn't have, I pulled, the language that's in here now was essentially verbatim from what had been included in the mobiliar policy in the past, which was fairly generic and dry. And I know whenever Michela talked to me about the parliamentarian office, it was essentially the general occasional questions come up about the Robert's rules and motions and endems, et cetera, and occasionally the parliamentarian would fill in that information. And when I was going, trying to get more information for the actual duties and responsibilities of these different positions, I couldn't find anything about parliamentarians. And it turns out, according to Robert's rules, the parliamentarian isn't normally a member of the board. It's an outside counsel who's essentially hired by the board to serve as professional support. So it's usually not a board appointed position. That's why there's not a lot of information about responsibilities, because it's typically a appointed professional who can fill in detailed information regarding questions. It gets paid to read Robert's rules. Yes. It gets sent to a volunteer. All those things the parliamentarian will talk about as high school career day, right? So the vice chair, I think, was fairly straightforward in terms of just filling in behind the chair. But we don't, there is in that section B1, and then also the clerk on the quarter section, we haven't defined, I don't think, who our secretary or recorder is. I think it's been kind of by default, Heather's position. But we haven't actually declared who our secretary is who's responsible for making sure ministers are taking care of. I think it's fine that we have the superintendent's assistant do that, but it does make sense for us to declare who that is at some point. So I would recommend that we probably either elect from the board, a secretary, whose responsibility is to ensure that the superintendent's assistant is taking minutes or that they're posted, et cetera. But it does make sense for us to have somebody designated as secretary or recorder from the board. Should we be, we have to be careful about that in terms of our ability to supervise that position. It seems that we would actually appoint a superintendent to do that using her staff, basically. Sure. You know, so in other words, we turn it back as an administrative function rather than choosing an individual. Which I think it's fine, as long as it's declared at some point that this is, who was taking responsibility for that task. Really? I'm under the parliamentarian on four. I guess it's not clear to me that legally the parliamentarian can act in the chair's place. Isn't that, I don't have to check, but my recollection was that for the vice chair, that that's in the... Is it, do you know which statute, because I perform all duties legally assigned to the office? Yeah, I feel like I've seen that somewhere that it's the job of the vice chair to assume the duties assigned to the chair of the chair. Yeah, that's right. I'm not sure, I feel like if both the chair and the vice chair were unable to act, the board might have to look... Post-point of meeting. Or a point somewhere at the board. Yeah, and in turn, and in turn present it or something. Yeah, like I said, when I was sent to you guys' drafts on this, I was something that I dedicated. I honestly don't know what law this is referring to that, you know, the parliamentarian on our Lord Treasurer are more clear, but what duties are legally assigned to that office? Yeah, I was just gonna ask. Do we need some administrative advice on this? Like consult somehow with someone? I wonder if we could also... We're just gonna check. Draft a catch-all, which is, you know, if there are legally assigned duties of the vice chair have legally assigned duties of the vice chair and there's a catch-all, like other offices shall assume the duties appointed to them by the board, if there's not a law to find what the duties are. And it's not, you know, I was thinking, you know, if we wanted to be clear about why we have a parliamentarian, we could have language that just said something like, provide an informal source of guidance on, you know, procedural matters, you know. Because there are other offices that Robert Trolls would recommend, like Sergeant of Arms, some boards have like librarians, like durators, it's like, that's right. I guess that it is kind of up for us to decide, like which offices we want to include. Now, obviously you have to have chair and vice chair, but yeah, the parliamentarian, in my mind, feels like we should have a better description of. What is that person supposed to be doing rather than just filling a title? So, Ryan, you're not sure that parliamentarian is required under statute? And clerk-treasurer is not necessarily required under statute? Well, the district is, but that's not what we're talking about. Right, that would be bored, I don't think. Well, so all boards have chair, vice chair, and at least the secretary. Secretary has made it out of those terms, recorder, clerk, but it seems like those three offices are essentially required. Under statute for the board or for the district? So this is for the board? It's for the board. For any committee, basically. For any committee or board, I should say. For the board, yes. Any governing board or whatever. It seems like we need to do some research to figure out what's required, minimum, yeah. Does anyone know where to easily find the document that we adopted at the convening of the district? At first, when we had that first meeting of the district at which then the board was formed? It's in the minutes. So we declared that we were gonna operate by Robert's rules that night. We had elected district clerk, a district treasurer. I don't think I remember. We appointed board chair, vice chair. We went through appointments of offices that night, but I don't remember reading. Where do we keep the district book? District minutes book. Is that, does the school district? That would be Tammy Legacy as district clerk. Is that go on to our website just to confuse everyone that that's the district and not the board? I mean, I think that's once a year, right? Or something that the district meets? Essentially. But there's official things that have been decided and somewhere that should be accessible. Jim, is that something you could follow? Libby, can I ask, do you have any recommendations on best resources to go to for answering these questions regarding the offices? What's required of that? I would say the SBA would be the place I go to. Particularly Susan, I can't remember Susan's last name up my head. Yeah, you're talking about, yeah. Yeah, I'm going to be helping out Ryan, but good to do that. Responsive. And third. More on expectations, board of expectations? Because it sounds like this could be more work and stuff. Office of Discussion, before we leave, though, are you guys comfortable with the language regarding committees? I did get some clarification from Libby. The wellness policy does not include a board appointed wellness committee. So administrative role there, but the board does not have a wellness committee as well. Contract negotiation committee, is that a standing committee or is that just called into place during budget, during contract negotiations? It's a standing committee. OK, because I don't think it's listed here. I'm not sure we've ever decided one way or the other. I mean, it's a cycle that keeps going, so it seems to make sense. It's never been charged. And since I've been on the board, there were never a charge to it. Well, at August 5, you should say that. I think the budget committee is referred to as the finance committee in a couple of different places. It could be budgeted by the answer. It's called budgeted in finance. We just analyzed the policy. We did, and I think we called it the finance committee. And the policy we agreed on, they called it the finance committee. So just make it the same way. You can have yours where there are going to be negotiations. Yeah, thanks for having me. OK, last but not least, super intelligence expectations. Maybe an easy language change. 2.5, bullet number five. Instead of provide any significant other information the board requires, including anticipated, et cetera, et cetera, could we restate that into something like providing information that the board requires for any significant circumstance, including anticipated and actual media coverage, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know why I just found the provide any significant other information kind of clunky. Could you put other just in front of significant, provide any other significant information? Yeah, I'm going to do it. That'd be fine. But we need to change 2.1, bullet four, public communities in the public about the district's vision, not district's mission. Is that a mission-vision thing? Yeah. I think it was two meetings ago we approved the job description for the superintendent. Do you see these as two separate freestanding documents or should we like to align the two? Because the job description has a lot of overlap with that, with this, but it does not align entirely. Is that something that we need to add to the committee or have got it yet? Yeah, I'm fine with that. I think they should certainly not contradict each other. So I'm curious. Which commission tried to align the evaluation committee or the public? The superintendent evaluation committee is the one that created the job description. So it would be the one that makes sure that it aligns at least. I think that's fine. Just I need to know what to do with it. I think it should definitely align. I don't think it has to be verbatim. OK. But. And yeah, I think a job description could be more descriptive or more expansive in some ways. I think it certainly has to align with the spirit and certainly not contradict. Sure thing. So should we put this up for adoption? Would that work ahead or no? I'm going to make sure that happens first. Let's make sure it happens first. I don't see anything in here that does not make the intent to, but I want just to have a meeting and make sure it meets the spirit of the job description. So I'm going to spare it for those. OK. Anything more on two that should be ready for adoption? Yeah. Define some things out. And then also the sort of descriptive job description. I think that's it. Need a motion for executive session? In motion for executive session. And there's actually two things in the executive session? There's two things in the executive session. Do we need to invite granted? Do we need to formally announce? I don't think so. I think you can go on this. Do we have ever done that in the past? No, we don't. That doesn't have to be part of the motion. So we have contract negotiations, correct? Well, that's an appointment of a public official. And this bill is contract negotiations. Because it's different bullets. It's different provisions for executive session. One is to discuss or consider records or documents that are not public documents. Is it different reasons? OK. And I don't know why we're over six sessions. So which one do you want to go for? Is that good? Is that good? OK. It's documents accepted. And then we also need, I'm not quite sure, OK. So I move Mr. Board and her executive session for two purposes to discuss documents. Discuss and consider documents that are not public documents under the Access to Public Records Act. And to consider the appointment of a public officer. Second. That was a favor. Hi. Hi. First, I need an actual motion to go into this one, correct? No. That wasn't much. No, this is actually. Oh, that's fine. We don't need to. We don't need to fight.