 Good evening, everyone. We're coming to order at 6.35. Welcome to all. We have an especially large and an especially distinguished group here tonight. Thank you so much for coming. I'd like to say introductions for a little bit later, please, if I may. We have our usual monster agenda, which we'll try to go through in a manner both brisk and business-like, but also open, generous, and deliberative. So we're very grateful in particular for our legislators being here who will certainly help us with that second part of what we're trying to accomplish. In the meantime, though, agenda revisions. Debra, do you want to do an executive session? Oh, please. We would like to add or I would like to request the addition of an executive session for negotiations of the executive session at the end. Everyone OK with that? Executive session at the end for negotiations. Any other agenda revisions? Very good. Public comments, I should just let it be known that it's our usual practice when the board has a discussion, and in particular, the discussion with legislators, which we'll follow in a moment, that the board would have its discussion first, but would allow time for the public also to speak. So that is how I would propose handling communication or conversation discussion with our legislators. Are there any other matters on which the public would like to comment? If not, let us proceed to agenda item 2.0, discussion with Washington Central Area legislators. Once again, we're tremendously grateful for your being here. These are very challenging times for representative bodies at all levels of government, from the federal to the local and the state in between. So we're very grateful to you for the work that you do. And I can guarantee that we have also no small degree of sympathy for your laborers, whether they're the laborers of Hercules or the laborers of Sisyphus or however you may experience them. But thank you for being here. And perhaps what I should do first is have the board introduce ourselves, and then have you introduce yourselves. Mia? I'm Mia. I'm a senior here, and I'm a student representative. My name's Townes. I'm a junior, and I'm also a student representative. Dorothy Naylor from Calis. Chris B. Bay from Middlesex. Deborah Taylor, superintendent. Scott Thompson from Calis. Laura Biesmans, from East Montpelier. Libby Johnson, from East Montpelier. Jadiel Polskamp, Worcester. Jonas Hinovan-Fleet, also from Worcester. Bjorn Fletcher, from Berlin. And George. George from Berlin. Welcome, George. Janet, would you mind starting off the? Sure. Make it easy. Janet Ansel, I represent Calis, Marshfield, and Plainfield. But for this purpose, I'm from Calis. I'm Anthony Polina. I serve in the Senate. I serve in government operations and agriculture committees. I live in Middlesex. Auburn Pat, I represent the Lamoille, Washington District, which is four towns in three different school districts. And I live in Worcester, which is one of the four towns. And that's why I'm here at this meeting. I'm Ken Goslant. I'm a representative from Berlin and Norfield. And Donna Heughorn, Ken's district mate. Kimberly Jessup, I represent Washington Five, which is Middlesex and East Montpelier. Incomings, I'm in the Senate, and I represent all of Washington County. Thank you so much once again. What I would, we have something of a four course meal in terms of issues that are of particularly keen interest to us. And I think you may already have heard them from Deborah in your contacts with her. But Act 166, pre-K, getting that rationalized, Act 173, that is a big one on special ed. There is also related to that questions of dealing with the marked increase in trauma, incidents of trauma in students in our schools. Then there's the Hardy Perennial debt that is still out there. And finally, we understand, and this is a special interest of one of our board members, that there may be a bill on dyslexia being proposed during this upcoming session. So that's essentially the range of what we've decided to limit ourselves to. Although if there are other issues that you wish to talk about or ask us about, we're all ears, and we would welcome your thoughts as to, also, what is it important to you that we should be aware of as you start thinking about the next session? Well, I've got the heck out of here. People. We share your concerns. To me, there's two things that come to mind. One is this money in general, or three things, actually. One is money and just how we're doing in terms of budgets and how you folks are feeling about things. The other is to do with the amount of responsibilities that are being put on schools these days. Maybe that leads to the trauma question a little bit, and how would not only do you have to deal with it, but how do you deal with it and how do you pay for dealing with the added costs? The other thing that I was hoping to do a little bit, and I don't know whether we really have time for this tonight or not, but this group of people is much larger than it's been in the past when we've come to these meetings. And I know that we've obviously all together been through a lot of change in the last couple of years. I was going to say months, but it seems like a long time. So I was really also just curious to hear from you folks as to how it's working out, the new strife. And I don't want to open a whole can of worms and start problems, but I'm really curious as to just how folks are feeling about the direction things are going in now that we know where we're going. So the really question's more than answers. Thank you. Well, Anthony, when you said there's a lot more of us, there were 32 board members for our 1,400 kids, for whatever reason. Now there's 10 in one board versus the seven boards. So that is different, but there aren't more of us as far as board members, there's just more of us on one board. Right, sure. Does anybody want to, how is it going? I'd love to know that too. How's it going for you? I think we'd all like to know that. Okay, Anne. I guess just the issues you rose, and I think we had a chairs conference the other day. And I know that on the chairs agenda for the Ed committee is the whole special, and they did that, they know we've got issues, but it'd be helpful I think for us to hear more directly. And then I was told that the other body, the house is going to be doing focus work on the pre-K issue with the idea. So those two are definitely up there. Trauma. I know because I serve on the health and welfare committee we've done a lot of work about trauma informed, trying to get that in. We actually have put someone into the health and human services department whose job it is to make sure that people get trained in the area of trauma. It's a relatively new area and so we're just focused, so we're working on that. I think I can say that we know, I know that the schools are being asked to handle an awful lot that children are coming in for a number of reasons amongst them, poverty and opioids and homelessness, and the schools are being asked to kind of hold it together. It does get to money because we know that the mental health agencies around here, it's probably most of the time Washington County mental health, is having trouble getting personnel. Part of that is funding and we are the funder. And we've got extra money, not this past year but the year before, trying to bring salaries up there, but we know that's an ongoing problem. That you can't hire someone for a position that requires a master's degree and expect them to work for $35,000 a year, not when you're looking at the student debt burden that they're carrying. So, and we know that if they go to the schools or the state or the hospitals, they can add a couple thousand dollars to that the day they walk in the door. So we're working on it. I don't know what you're looking at at school budgets, but right now, we did make changes to the property tax, made, put all the sales tax revenue into the property tax and took out the state transfer. The report to joint fiscal this week was that the property tax is at projection. So it'll depend on what you do for budgets we're at least not anticipating a deficit in the fund at this point. So, I'm John Bannon, excuse me, the trauma question. I'm very interested in what the board thinks we should do on it. It strikes me that this is one of those issues where we could try to be helpful and we would be the opposite of helpful. And it's partly that trauma, as I understand it anyway, is really a public health issue. We're really talking about sort of the social determinants of health and those kinds of things, which I don't, I certainly wouldn't want us to try to do something in connection with education, which would add more burden onto the schools. So I think, special ed, I know is an issue and I know that there's a group of people trying to sort it out. I think it will be difficult. Pre-K is similar, I'm not as familiar with the issue on Pre-K as some others are. But I was struck that you brought trauma up in the conversation. And I think I would really, I feel like as legislators, we need to be cautious. There's money, we had this meeting yesterday about two days ago about one care and all the effort to change the way we pay for health and trauma and all the kinds of prevention services are all a piece of that. I certainly don't want to start imposing those costs on the schools. At the same time, I understand that the issues that kids deal with affects the work that happens here. So. I want to jump in on the same issue actually, because I guess three years ago now, I was on the Joint House Senate Trauma Commission and we actually went around, talked to a lot of schools, took a lot of testimony and came back with some recommendations which included the bill and reference that added a trauma coordinator in the Agency of Human Services just to make sure we weren't duplicating so that we got a handle on what was available or not. But at that time, I know that the first wave of children from the opiate epidemic were hitting kindergarten and first grade. So I'm assuming now that it's now third, fourth grade and on down that that huge increase in highly dysregulated troubled kids are hitting. I think one of the challenges the state faces is that in terms of mental health supports in the schools, we just sort of maybe discovered or noticed this past year that we had this huge increase in the budget for children's mental health services in the schools. But it was actually in terms of the state budget, it was a fictional increase because it's not state money at all, it's school money and we come up, we get involved in order to create the federal match to create that drawdown. So it's not actually any general fund budget, it's your budget and gaining the federal money. But what's happened across the state is that some schools have taken advantage of that for many years and have used those services. Others have not because it costs from their budget and more are facing the crisis and so a lot more are seeking out and using those funds which the legislature doesn't control because it's school board decision but all of a sudden we're seeing a big increase and the thing that we end up facing is and I think Janet started referencing that, we actually have a cap on how much Medicaid spending we can use under our agreement with the federal government, our global commitment, which allows us to spend money in more creative ways including our whole payment reform effort but has a cap because they want to ensure that allowing us to be more flexible doesn't result in us spending more. So when we get a pressure like that from the school side, that starts competing with those other Medicaid pressures. So I'm not throwing out any big ideas or solutions and just adding a piece of background in terms of some of that. I think we're just gonna be dealing more and more with the impact of trauma on mental health of our kids and it's something we all need to address and we are coming up against the cap. Right, we're coming up against the cap, we're getting very close and there's things that they're trying to maneuver in terms of what gets put in what bucket but if we hit that cap we don't, then it's all general fund, we can't use Medicaid money for other services. And the feds are cutting, pushing down. Right. I think Kelly Bushie, who is sitting behind you, is our special education person. So I'm Kelly Bushie, I'm the director of student services. So I'm trying to stay close to Act 173 and all of the things that are happening at the state level. And as all of what you just said, right, is one of our biggest concerns with Act 173 because currently right now we get a percentage of revenue for all every dollar spent within special ed and with the new funding formula under Act 173, we're gonna get a block grant. And so in the way that I understand it, if somebody understands it differently, please feel free to correct me, is that the AOE is gonna consider our spending from the last three previous years and give us an average for the following school year. So here in Washington Central, we all know right while our general student population is staying pretty steady, maybe gone down a little bit here and there, the overall needs of our kids continue to rise. We have done lots of research in terms of looking at the needs of the kids here in our system. And much of it is contributed or attributed to the trauma that kids are coming into school with every day. And so as we talk about Act 173 and this funding shift, and we're gonna get this block grant that's gonna meet the needs of kids throughout the course of that school year, when that money and that grant is gone, the whatever surplus that needs to be spent above and beyond that is gonna need to become out of our general ed budget. And so that is a concern with Act 173. I think the intent of 173 is positive, right? And that we're trying to catch kids earlier before they're eligible, before they need specialized services. But I think if we're not careful and we're not involved in how the rules are being made around this, it is gonna limit our ability to be flexible within the system. It's my understanding there's been lots of work in recent weeks and recent days at the agency level. We were all elated to get the memo from Secretary French this week about the funding between for independent schools and that they will all be special ed costs, right? Since last June, we were sitting in uncertainty as to whether or not we were gonna need to be putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into our general ed budget to support kids that need to go to independent schools. As of Monday, that is not going to happen. That will be put in the rules but alternative programs will be continued to be special ed programs. And then the latest is around rule making. Right in January, the special ed rules and regs are gonna open. There are some floundering amongst the people that are creating the rules from what I understand. There's the advisory council that has representation from lots of people, disability law project, Vermont council of special ed administrators. They've come to some agreements around what they're proposing the rules should look like. Meeting with, or being met with some resistance from folks at the AOE. But again, I heard just this week there's been some movement as well where people are starting to come together and to come to some consensus. It's my understanding the state board of ed has asked the agency of education to sit with this advisory panel and to come to the state board with one draft set of rules. But that is being, that is a challenging task at this point in time. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you. The other topic may I switch gears to on 66? Okay, excellent. It was mentioned that we have some ongoing concerns about Act 166 which we are in a sense very happy about the fact that we are able to provide education to our preschool students both within our schools as we've been doing for some time and also through highly qualified pre-kate programs which many of our students have been which we provide payment for up to 10 hours per week. However, there are some challenges with the law that we really need to address. And I wanted to highlight a couple of those and then I'd be happy to send you this in a more detailed fashion so that you can look it over and get back to us with any clarifications that are needed. So the first concern is that the Universal Pre-K which is what we call Act 166 really should benefit all students and regardless of their family income or situation, equity is very important to us here in Washington Central. And unless one has transportation and there are no opportunities for people to access the pre-kate program that is outside school. And just to be clear, we do provide transportation for our preschool students so I'm only speaking of those who choose to go to an outside provider. We also would like to strongly recommend and I don't know if any of you remember but since this act was originally proposed I think I've testified three or four times myself to various committees to let you know how important it is that a single lead agency take on pre-school here in Vermont. We currently work with both the agency human services and the agency of education. We have duplicate regulations that might not seem like something that's very important but it truly is a hindrance because we're asked to really look at our childcare regulations which don't necessarily apply to school settings along with the agency of education regulations. So there's duplicate criminal background checks for example. There's also duplicate requirements for training. I could go on and on but again I'll write even though we're about this in more detail. The other area of concern is that the bill is silent around special education and we are of course favoring early intervention and we have opportunities available in our schools when our students attend our home-based school-based preschool programs to provide special education services. However there's no direction or funding mechanism available for students who may be enrolled in a private preschool who are identified with special education needs. And that's an area we really, again could dial out about for some time. So I think that's enough for now because I don't wanna take up all our time on preschool but I will send you a note with more detailed information. As you can see there's some major areas that we really need to address but I did want to argue at least on behalf of the school administration here in the district that we strongly support early intervention and we would not be interested in a repeal of this law. We just need to make refinements and amendments that will make it more user friendly if you will and also serve more children, especially the most needy children from families that may be in poverty as well as those with special needs. Are there questions about that quick overview or are there any concerns about 166? I'll ask one that I'm probably hard to answer but you're right that part of the problem is that we've got two agencies that are responsible for this. Which one would you give it to? I think the fact that preschool is operating in the public schools and in most schools in the state of Vermont right now, it makes sense to have at least those programs that are school based to be overseen by the agency of education. Those that are overseen, that are incurring within a childcare center, it might make sense to have those overseen by the agency of human services as a thought but there are many ways of looking at that which we can explore. I guess I'm gonna ask you to talk a little bit more about what you, I think what I heard you say was that if they're going to the school based program and they have special needs that can be dealt with differently or more comprehensively than if they're in a private center, is that, am I saying that right? Correct. There's no provision in the law at all, it's just violent on the provision of special education for students that are not in our school programs. And there are different ways that districts have chosen to address that. Some provide the services off site at that location, others invite the students to come but there again, it's an access issue if the parent can transport the children to our school programs, they have those services available to them. But there is really the issue of cost of course arises when we're required to provide services to as many as 50 to 75 children that are not or a proportion of those that are in special ed that are not currently enrolled in our schools. So it's cost and accessibility and all those types of things. This is the student who is going to a childcare, qualified childcare, gets their pre-school education there. But they may not be trained or have the ability to do the special ed. Parents are working somewhere. So they don't have the ability to come home and transport the child to the school for the special ed services. But you don't provide the day long childcare services. No, actually we do. We have a program called Community Connections. So if a parent were to choose to enroll their pre-school page child in our elementary schools, there are, I think in 90% of the cases, there's pre and post childcare, a little bit of variability. So that is an alternative. For pre-school. So the alternative for us is that a child could stay with us for a full day. And we do provide transportation. But not all school systems provide that. It is where we've actually offered the childcare as a, to complement our pre-school programs for many years. Oh, I'd say maybe 16 or 17 years here in our district. But not all of our parents have those opportunities. I like to think globally when we talk about this issue. And I know that the child cares are struggling because the cost for providing service to a three year old is less just because of the mandated staffing ratios. And they have offset the cost of infant care with the pre-school care. And now the more students that lose to the school system, the more difficulty they're having staying open because people can't afford the actual cost of providing care to infants. So, all of these. We know you have a problem. There's a shortage of adequate quality childcare. Yeah, absolutely. It is, and there are plans. We did a lot in health and welfare last year. The state has some major plans for at least reducing the cost to families. And these are families with state subsidy, but it would be a major, we just working on, we came up with a significant amount of funding to do the infrastructure work that needs to happen this year. And hopefully by next year, we'll have some help for both the childcare and the families in the funding area, but that doesn't solve this problem. There's just a couple of problems that if we corrected, I think would help our children with access as well, and our families with access. But I'd be more than happy to provide you with more details on that topic. And then we had another, I guess, guide, which was a question of the legislation or dyslexia, which I'm gonna share these very, very quick. If you don't mind, thank you very much, Deborah. Deborah is just going to give you a souvenir of your visit with us today. It's a letter from one of our fellow board members who was on the road and couldn't be here. But she notes in the letter that Vermont is one of seven states left in the U.S. that have no law related to the specific needs of dyslexic students. And she notes there's apparently a bill, numbered bill H-406, that to require that students and public schools be screened for dyslexia and that teachers receive training concerning dyslexia. I just wanted to be clear. The board as a whole has not reviewed this or come to a position on this. We just want to make sure on behalf of our colleague that you're aware of her interests. So this is not coming with our official imprimatur or whatever. Curious, it doesn't have her name on it. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Oh. They should have her name on it. I think it, yeah. It doesn't show on it. Oh, yeah. It's from Marilyn Strachan. Marilyn Strachan. Yeah. I'm sorry. Marilyn Strachan. I'm Marilyn Strachan. I think it's for you. Well, if one of those two dyslexic brothers, I'm not certain you'll find this interesting. Good. I'll forward you a copy with a signature on it with the other teacher. I guess that's curious. Yeah, thank you for mentioning that. So, we still haven't answered Anthony's question. And then, can we go to the debt issue? All right. Do we need to explain to you about the debt issue in Washington Central? No. What did you say? I think I heard about it. I think you may have heard about it. Yeah, so I think it's OK. It's basically, all you need to know is that it may be buried, but it's not dead. So. I mean, it hasn't magically been solved. It hasn't magically been solved. No. No. So, is there any hope for solving it through the legislature? Can you think? No. Question. Is there any possibility that the legislature will take this up in relation to Act 46 to try and ease the many disciplines and the divisive issue? Because we have two towns with no debt, three towns with significant debt, but everyone shares in the debt now. And it's a difficult problem. Is there any chance of addressing it through the legislative action? We have to look at the committee members. I'm looking at Janet. I know Janet and I have put in at least two bills trying to deal with the issue. Right. I introduced at least a couple bills in the house. And I, excuse me, was able to get at least a sort of general agreement from House Education that they would be supportive, but only if the Senate, sort of, because the bill, the vehicle for it at that point, was in a conference committee, that some proposal needed to come from the Senate. And it's, anyway, didn't happen. So it's been frustrating. I think it's trying to find out what you would like us to do. And then we can have a bill draft. We're working on this specific proposal. We should forward it to Janet and to you, Ann. Yeah. Actually, revenue bill, yeah. I mean, both of us can put it in. We have the December 1st drafting deadline. So do we now. Yeah. You used to be a lot closer than we are. We have just December 2nd. Oh, mind you. Oh, maybe the 1st of the Sunday. So we are coming up against the deadline. So let us know how you would like to have it solved. We can. Because a specific idea helps. And then it may work from there, but it starts. And I really want to underscore that. I think one of the difficulties was that there wasn't consensus among the towns for a solution. And so there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm on the part of representatives of other communities that have gone through a merger to do anything. But it was easy for them to say no when we didn't have a consensus proposal. So a proposal from the board where there's general agreement would carry some weight, I think, without that, I think we came as closest. We might have come last year, and we didn't make it. Yeah, we talked briefly about supporting your proposal from last year, but we don't have a consensus yet. As a board on what to do. I didn't hear the first point. So we talked briefly about supporting your proposal. Now that we're all unified, it makes sense to not try to reinvent the wheel, but try to go back to your proposal and get behind that. I mean, there may be better ideas. I was coming up with my ideas sort of out of whole cloth because I didn't have. What bill was that, the bill number? Oh, gosh. I don't remember the bill numbers. I could get them for you, but they were going to end up getting folded into other bills. So I don't remember. I'm sorry. I think in general. Yeah. On the website, you can find it. But there was a proposal that I worked with Andy Perschlick on that was sort of the kind of last best offer, if you will. And that doesn't have a bill number. I can get the language. But again, if the board has a better idea or a different idea where there can be some agreement on board members, that's really what we need to work with. This really isn't something I should be dreaming up. Although the input of the folks here makes a difference because you don't want to come up with this great idea that doesn't get passed. So there's also the political reality. I know I'm willing to try to help, I assume everyone here is also willing to. In terms of an end-to-end question, I think we're still finding our way. We're getting used to working together. I think on hold, we do pretty well. We don't think we can buy at the end of every meeting. But I think on hold, we're getting along and moving forward. I think the big challenge will be the budget this year, because it's going to be the first time we have a unified budget as opposed to discrete budgets that were just added together. So we'll see you in a minute. But I think a lot of work you can think with each other, I think. OK. Thank you, Chris. I agree. Kimberly? I can't flat one issue that has come up via constituent calls in the last month or so. I'm sure there's been three. But for what it's worth, I'll put them out there. One of them concerns the transition to proficiency. And what I typically am hearing is that most folks are very supportive of the theory and where they are struggling is with the implementation. And I would note that Representative Gosland and I, in fact, were at another event with the governor. And one of the questions that came from the press core was how's implementation of proficiency going across the state? And the answer was uneven. And I think there's been some really good work done around the state about different models. I think there's been some very good work here in the school in terms of student input, in terms of reporting, in terms of cooperation with teachers. And I guess the plug that I would put in is that the board hear from students and hear from teachers. And I think it's just coming into the focus, because the class of 2020 is the first class that will be graduating. And I am hearing from some students who from the parents of students who are all of a sudden realizing that when they're going to fill out the common application or something else. And they're struggling with the merit-based aid and the calculation of GPAs. And I won't get all into the weeds on this, but I think it is something that we have this first class coming. And there have been, I think, a lot of improvements and a lot of areas identified. And I don't know how familiar the board is with some of the good work being done and where some of the outstanding issues may be. But I would point to that as another issue on deck. And then if you want me to throw out just a couple other random ones. I have had suggestions come to me. Could we consider doing driver's education during the summer months? That there's often a waiting list. And would that waiting list be sufficient to create a cohort that could take on this task during the summer? And that there are some families who can afford the extra money to go to private resources for driver's ed, but not everybody can. And then finally, the last thing I would just throw that I'm also hearing a bit about is elementary school level language instruction. That there, I don't know where that currently stands across all the elementary schools, but I don't believe it's uniform. And I don't know now that you're a unified board whether that allows you to do some of the things that were discussed around language and other issues that might be attractive to various constituencies. So I would just pop those out there as things that I'm hearing for what it's worth. Thanks so much. It's really a remarkable coincidence or not that you raise proficiency based graduation requirements because the very next agenda item after this will feature, I believe, Steven Bellinger-Pate and Jen Miller-Arseneau actually getting into the weeds a little bit, so on precisely that subject. So, and you're welcome to stay. All of you, of course, are welcome to stay. Anthony, did I notice, were you about to say something? No, yeah, no. No. Pardon me. Board members, anything else before we open to the public? With your permission, I just invite members of the public if you have questions or anything that you'd like to mention to our legislators. Mac? Thank you, I'm Mac Gardner-Morse from Calis and I'm a parent of three dyslexic kids. And I just wanted to read something that I've written up here. Around fourth grade is when that crucial shift from learning to read to reading to learn occurs. Yet, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 30% of our fourth graders are proficient at reading. This means that 63% are not proficient at reading. This also marks the 17th year of declining reading scores. I believe our students are as bright as past students. Our teachers are as good as past teachers. So why are our scores declining? Under Vermont's current wait to fail special education rules, of those 63% of fourth grade students who are not proficient at reading, only the students who are at least two grades behind in reading qualify for any support or assistance with their reading. Dr. Joe Targerson states in his article, catch them before they fall with one of our most compelling findings in our recent reading research is that children who get off to a poor starting reading rarely catch up. As several studies have now documented, the poor first grade reader almost invariably continues to be a poor reader. And the consequence of a slow starting reading becomes monumental as they accumulate exponentially over time. Dr. Sally Sayich states in an overcoming dyslexia, the human brain is resilient, but there is no question that early intervention and treatment bring about more positive change at a faster pace than an intervention provided to an older child. The sooner a diagnosis is made, the quicker your child can get help, and the more likely you are to prevent secondary blows to her self-esteem. Waiting rarely works and has serious consequence. Yet Vermont's wait to fail model flies into the face of this research. While verbal language is innate, reading is not. What is the best way to teach reading? Neuroscience research shows that teaching the 44 unique phonemes or sounds in the English language in a direct and systematic way is the best way to teach reading to everyone. Unfortunately, very few primary school teachers know these phonemes. How can these teachers teach these sounds if they do not know them? Why don't teachers know these phonemes? Because they are never exposed to them in their teacher training. Our state colleges and universities are not training our new teachers using the latest research and best practices. The state needs to work with Vermont's colleges and universities to include phonemic awareness in new primary school teacher training and include phonemic awareness on teacher's licensure test. To model these phonemes as the current curriculum does is not effective instruction for many children. These phonemes need to be taught in a direct and systematic way. The agency of education could and should be vetting curriculums to ensure that phonemes are taught with a direct and systematic method. Finally, consider dyslexic students who could benefit from computer technology. Software such as spelling aids, word prediction, speech to text and text to speech will support the education and life skills when appropriate instruction and guidance are provided. Students should be provided with these up-to-date software technology. House Bill 406 does include the early identification of students with reading difficulties, suggests early evaluation of these students and proposes teacher continuing education courses and reading methods. In addition, it should also address changing Vermont's weight to fail special education rules, including phonemic awareness in new primary school teacher training, including phonemic awareness on teacher licensure tests, better vetting of quote research on quote base curriculums to be sure that phonemes are taught with a direct and systematic method of providing assistive technology for students. I hope you will help improve and pass House Bill 406. Please let me know if I can be a further assistance as this bill moves forward and thank you for your attention. Thanks, Mac. Other members of the public who would like to ask a question or say something specifically to our legislators, I don't see anyone. In that case, I just want to ask this. You mentioned this bill H406, or what have you. Was there any movement on it last year, that you're aware of? No. Center committee and to sat there? Yes. I don't know if you're aware of this. That's available in Pittsburgh. Seems important. Before we set you free, it is or set you free to stay if you prefer. Is there anything else that you think we should know that that's going to be important to you in the upcoming session, where it's hard for me to imagine, but where we might possibly be helpful or at least not a hindrance? I really appreciate having this meeting now, rather than- During a blizzard. During a blizzard. And during a blizzard when basically, we've made most of the decisions. So good going in terms of timing, that's a good start. And I know I'm speaking for everybody. Please keep in touch with us. Let us know and if there are issues around the things that we've been talking about or other things, it's easy to, I think it's really easy to get in touch with us and we want you to do that. Yes. I was just, I'm sorry. I was just going to mention related to that. If you do go forward with something on the debt issue, if you come up with an idea as we talked about, it doesn't have to be all dotted I across T's. It needs to be a concept that could be given to the legislative lawyers to draft a bill, which then goes through changes as you all know. Nothing comes out the way it started, but it would also be important if we go that route, that you folks do what you can to communicate with other school boards who might be interested in similar, moving forward in the same together, because legislators will hear from us, but we're there all the time. They really will need to hear from you folks and from others who are in similar situations. So you have to do a little bit of outside organizing and agitating to make sure that people get into the state house to plead their case. Yeah, thank you. All right. I just want to echo something that Janice has said, which is that to the extent without making a whole lot of work that you can find ways and remember to communicate with us, especially when the whole board has discussed something and is close to consensus on an issue. For someone like me, when you're in the house, you're on one committee. And so I haven't said anything because I'm listening to everyone here and I'm listening to some of the legislators who have worked on some of these issues. And I work on completely different issues locked in our little committee rooms. So it really helps to not, and we all struggle to find out what's happening in the other committees of what people are working on, what things are likely to come out of the education committee or the Ways and Means Committee or whatever. So it really helps for some occasional communication that when legislation is needed, or I think Janice said at the beginning, or specifically maybe when it's not needed. Sometimes it's best for us to stay out of it and that's good to hear as well. Thanks. And Ken, I don't know if there's anything, any message that you have for us? You sent me your concerns. I just, he just really stated, I mean, judiciary and that's pretty full vote and I need to hear the concerns and then I can act on them or I can certainly do diligence and look into what's going on. The money issue, I'm well aware of that. I understand it or I don't understand. That's it. I hear your concern. And being, this is my first year in the house, I hear your concerns. Thank you very much. And they're justified. Thank you for the invite by the way. Oh, and thank all of you for coming. Well, you folks do all the scrum work all the time and we're not necessarily really special because what we're doing and what you're doing is really, really important and really close to the community and I really appreciate, I think we all really appreciate that a lot. It's not an easy thing you're taking on. It's very kind of you to say but I have been over there on occasion and I've seen what you do and I don't know how you do it. It takes a certain superhuman stamina, I would say, to be able to make it through what you have to go through. So, thank you very much and you're welcome to stay for as long as you'd like or I know you have busy lives so of course you don't need to and, oh, I'm sorry, Cindy. I didn't jump up quickly enough perhaps. I'm Cindy Gardner-Morse. I live in Calis. I just wanted to reiterate those statistics because I think you went over them last month when our last meeting when I wasn't able to come but those scores from the National Assessment of Education that only 37% of fourth graders are proficient which means that 63% are not proficient. If you picture those children that's, that's, I have this already to say, three children standing there that are not reading proficiently when six children beside of them are, no, I said that backwards. It's just not enough children reading proficiently and that's the goal of our school system. We really need to address this better and this idea that it's been going on for 17 years and our math scores weren't terrific either. I think we really need to look at what we're doing in our schools and do some direct education and direct instruction. So I just wanted to speak to that. Thank you. Thank you, Cindy. Any last words? Or otherwise, you'll have to forever hold your peace. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. Moving along. Thank you. How are you guys? It's always hot. It's always too hot. It's always too hot. Hi, everybody. We're going to go ahead and get started. For those who don't know me, my name is Jen Miller-Arsono. I'm the director of curriculum instruction and assessment. I'm Stephen Dellinger-Pade. I'm the principal here at U32. So we're going to co-present tonight about the state of our proficiency-based graduation requirements, or PVGRs. And I'm going to focus on the sort of pre-K through graduation systems level work. Stephen's going to talk primarily about the specific work that we've been doing at U32. We anticipate some questions and we're prepared to answer them. We think that some of the earliest part of this presentation will probably answer some questions. So we're going to go ahead and do that. We'll take questions a little later. If you have a clarifying question, the one you need to ask it by all means, ask it when you're ready to do that. So why is this work important? So we have our mission in Washington Central Unified Union School District. And our mission statement reads, WCU-USD exists to nurture and inspire, and all students, the passion, creativity, and power to contribute to their local and global communities. We believe it is our professional responsibility and our moral obligation to make sure that kids are prepared for post-secondary success. And our student learning outcomes and our expectations regarding proficiency-based graduation requirements are a manifestation of what we think kids need to know and be able to do in order to be prepared for post-secondary success. The world, as you know, is changing frequently and we can't even envision some of the work that our kids are going to do in the years to come. So we want to make sure that we're laying a solid foundation for them so that they can tackle challenges that we can't even foresee yet. One of the educator blogs that I read is by a man named George Coros who does work on innovation in schools and the innovator's mindset and there was just a blog post today, a quote on his site, by a colleague of his named A.J. Giuliani. And he wrote, our job is not to prepare students for something, our job is to help students prepare themselves for anything. And that quote of us thinking about tonight really resonated. Right, wrong way. So some of you might even wonder, this might be new, what is a proficiency-based learning system? This is a definition that comes from the glossary of education reform. And it's a glossary that is written really so that lay folks can understand it. So journalists, parents, community members. And we're really talking not just about grading or score, and we're really talking about pillars of a learning system. So curriculum instruction, assessment, grading and reporting. In Washington Central, because of the shift, we've also changed our lexicon a little bit. So we talk a lot more about scoring than we do about rating. But essentially, in a proficiency-based system, achievement becomes the constant. And it's time and place that become the variables. But our expectations for students are universally high. And we will do whatever it takes to ensure that they meet those expectations. We also want to remind you that we didn't just conjure this up at U32 or decide that this needed to happen in Washington Central, that this work is really grounded in a statewide context as well. So the flexible pathways legislation Act 77 passed in July, or went into effect in July 2013. The Vermont Education Quality Standards in April of 2014, state that all students beginning with this year's current senior class, the class of 2020, need to graduate under a proficiency-based learning system. Our board, formerly the Washington Central Supervisory Union full board, adopted our student learning outcomes as a full board back in 2016. And this new board, as we've been looking at our policies to make sure that they are aligned with our needs, adopted our proficiency-based graduation policy as a board of directors back in June. So we have been doing this work for a really long time. And in fact, we began the work of articulating what our kids needed to need to know and be able to do from pre-K through graduation before Act 77 and the Ed Quality Standards were even revised. We started articulating that work in about July, August of 2012. And for those of you who are here and in the system back then, at that point in time, we call that our non-negotiables, right? It was our attempt to articulate in alignment with national standards our guaranteed and viable curriculum. That work has gone through some iterations over the years and some refinements. Right now, we have articulated in alignment with these student learning outcomes our standards and performance indicators that clearly articulate what kids need to know and be able to do in each grade level or grade level cluster in each of these student learning outcome areas. So literacy, mathematics, global citizenship, science, artistic expression, financial literacy, PE and health and the transferable skills. I said earlier that this system needs to be more responsive to students' needs. We know that students don't all learn at the same time, in the same pace, in the same way. So we've been working hard to create some more flexibility in our schedules. The elementary principles in conjunction with the teachers all worked really hard to create designated intervention blocks in their schedules so that kids are getting supplemental instruction and we're not taking away from one thing to meet a need someplace else. This is a co-presentation and I said Stephen was going to talk about some of the specifics at U32, so I'm going to pass it on to him to do that. Yeah, and so similar to the elementary schools here at U32, we implemented some intervention blocks, but we called them different things, of course. So we have a callback that was introduced several years ago. I think it was my first year here, so that's six years ago now that that was introduced and we're now actually moving to version two of that, where we've expanded the amount of time that students can meet with a teacher or a teacher can call back students. And so that's one of the things we did, but we also have intervention blocks here at U32 as well. And so a student who struggles with reading or math could very well end up in what we call a reading strategies or math strategies program, particularly at the middle school level. And so we tried to not only assist them in gaining those skills they need in reading. We add that to their current curriculum, so they already spend time in core and then they have time in those classes as well to improve their skills. Now the nice thing about it, in the old system of intervention, kids typically were put into a class that would last all year long. What we've tried to do is at least break it into quarters. And so if a student moves to the level where they can do the work independently or more independently, we can move them out of the intervention class at any one of the quarter breaks, so that they're not there forever. Vice versa, if a student starts to struggle and show need, we can place them into the intervention class at the quarters as well. And so while it's not 100% flexibility, it certainly is a way for us to start looking at what can we help in. And that's really at the middle school level. At the high school level, while we still have some of the reading support, literacy support there, we also have what we call math labs. And that's in addition to their math classroom to try to increase their skill level at that point in time. I think an interesting point that was brought up earlier about by fourth grade intervening in that, we certainly know that the more interventions that are done at the elementary level, the fewer interventions that we would have to do at U32 overall. And so that's a conversation that we've had back and forth between U32 and the elementary schools long before we were one unified district. We were having these conversations about what are the interventions and what can we do that's common, what's common practices that we can do so that when kids come to U32, they've heard a similar thing depending on which elementary school they went to. So that alignment of our SLOs also is an attempt to align our interventions as well when we do that. We also at U32 have expanded our program of studies. So there were two things that were mentioned in the previous slide, Act 77 and the educational quality standards. Those two things together have grown into the proficiency system, but Act 77 was around personalized learning plans and multiple pathways of learning. And so that was a vehicle to get to the educational quality standards and having kids meet those. So at U32, we have multiple pathways. We feel like we have multiple pathways and certainly can develop more. But those are programs like our pilot program, our branching out program. We have students who take online courses. We have kids who do early college. So there are other things that students can do at U32 that are not just the traditional classroom setting. And so those are all in response to both of those things, Act 77 and the educational quality standards. So what we want them to learn, the educational quality standards, and how we're going to help them get there. And we'll talk a little bit more about the personalized learning plans as we get a little bit later in the presentation. So we've also engaged in a lot of professional learning opportunities for our teachers. This is something that we've been doing again, predating all of this work 2013-2014. But we have done a lot of work. When I first came on board as the early education coordinator, we had a big emphasis on literacy, making sure that especially at the elementary schools, we did understand all of those components of a comprehensive and balanced literacy program. We've been doing a lot of work in mathematics in recent years as well. We know that our scores have room for improvement, to say the least. Around this work in particular, we've been doing some work on project-based learning as a way to ensure that we're meeting kids' needs and are engaging students. We last year at U32 did a lot of work with the Great Schools Partnership. They provided technical assistance as we are working with teachers primarily to implement the proficiency-based learning system. Each summer, our teachers after school, after the school year ends, have the opportunity to join us in what we've called curriculum camp. The focus most recently, once we've articulated our standards and our performance indicators for kids, we really wanted to build learning scales to really think about what that projection was, what the progression was from just beginning to know something, to actually achieving proficiency or even exceeding our expectations so that we can give specific actionable feedback to students. So those have been areas of focus for professional development recently related to ultimately the proficiency-based graduation requirements. And in response to currently the Class of 2020, they're applying for college. As of November 1st, many of them put in applications for the decision early action process. And so last year we knew that our school profile, which is what colleges see about what is U32, what do we have, we took our profile to the college recruiters. So we actually last year invited them to dinner when they were here for one of our college nights and so we had a large group of them. We handed them our draft of it and we said, okay, does this make sense? Do you see who our students would be? What suggestions would you have? How can we look at this so that when you get an application from U32 and you get our profile, you're able to look at that and say, okay, I understand what they're communicating through their transcripts or about their students and what courses they take and all of that. And so we've added that through them and there's a link to our school profile that's on our website and that's going out to the colleges to explain who we are and how we do things. And then we also last year really worked on improving our course recommendation process to make sure in a proficiency system we have to make sure that kids have access to the courses or the work that they need to be able to graduate. And so we spent a lot more time last year talking about which courses do kids need to take in their junior and senior years particularly to make sure that they meet our proficiencies or have the opportunity to meet our proficiencies in the work that they do. And so it used to be if you took English one, you took English two. And that was real simple because then I just took English three and then maybe I got real fancy and I took the world authors or I took the, I'm really, I should know this, right? So the lit class, the other lit class. So there was a lot of kind of, well if you're this kid you should go to this class and if you're this kid you should go to this one. But really that doesn't take into account student interest as much as it took into account where we thought a student was. Now we look at the kid and we say okay what proficiencies do you need? Here are the courses available to you that can help meet those proficiencies. Which one are you interested in? Where would you like to go? Where would you like to learn most? And so they're able to do that. We also found, I mean in our course recommendation process because we had to look back at where kids were, we found gaps. We found three very significant gaps in our curriculum. One of them was statistics and probability. There just weren't enough opportunities for kids to demonstrate their learning in that. We found that in economics which is more in our global citizenship standard we found that economics was given short shrift and our kids were not exposed to it as much as they should be. And we found that engineering in our science standards was one that they did not have enough access to. What does that mean? That means you need to revise your courses, not tell the kids that they don't need to learn something. And so we've been revising our courses to meet those needs and to make sure that our kids have more opportunities to do those. Good evening. Let's take all parents for coming this evening. It is 7.45 and we do want to let our teachers go home and get a good night's sleep so they can come back tomorrow morning. So please wrap up the conference and drive safely. Those of you who aren't aware we have parent-teacher conferences going on today as well. I know some of you knew that because you were here. And so the course recommendation process also led to a course creation process as well. What were the courses that we needed that would give kids more opportunities to do the work that they needed to do. And then I already mentioned the callback process where we increased the time actually this year so the students had more time to be able to work with teachers to bolster some of their proficiency work. So that's happening specifically in geometry. If a student hadn't demonstrated full proficiency in geometry they might need just one or two things and they're using their callback time this year to be able to demonstrate that learning and not have to retake the entire course which is something that might have happened in the past if you did not score the appropriate grade. Talk also about the group that paints with the internship. Oh yes. Oh and then I also have my... That's with that one. So I also have a group of students who have been vocal about what works and what doesn't work and they've been meeting with me on Thursdays and now Tuesdays and it's actually grown into a student organization called Youth and Adults Transforming Schools Together which is a more regional grouping of students. And I've had a variety of students who have come to that and who have been a part of that and said, hey, here's what's working and what's not. We have revised some of our personalized learning plan processes as a result of those students. They were actually looked at the school profile as well and so they've been a key part of just getting feedback from them on a regular basis and I just mean just a personal note on that it's been a wonderful opportunity for me and I would say that because even two of them are here today but they really have been extremely valuable in bringing to myself and eventually the teachers what is working and what is not and so they've been going on now for almost two years that we've been meeting so it's been very helpful. All right, so now somebody has asked what do the students think about this? So we actually asked them two questions and I have a short little video of just a couple of kiddos but certainly we're going to see what they said so we're going to get to the video hopefully it works. Hold on. I'm going to pause. I think one thing that's very well from me is the idea of transferable skills that I think is really important in the future at the Dallas School. For positions you've been signing I really like how there are multiple standards like there's been many ways to get things right I also like that it's more project-based and like road-based they have time to like reassess and kind of like build upon what's more possible. And I think that works very well for me and I know there's a word for everyone but I think that is the perfect one. One thing that's working well for me with proficiencies is being able to reassess on quizzes. All right, so you didn't hear that last reassess on quizzes and work. So that was just four of our students I feel like you captured a few of the ideas and then the second question was what would make the proficiency-based system work better for you? I think what would make it a lot better would be knowing exactly what is really important and how do you think you're going to need to graduate and what classes we can use to get those proficiencies and stuff like that. For me the most basic thing I can do is just more detail than what you do before because I think it's too wide a range so you don't want to force them. I think there's a lot more specific things you can do, you know, increments and just putting, you know, someone could do something that deserves a higher grade and someone else could look at lunch and be free and there's just not much distinction between what's the actual grade and what's this there. Yeah, I think one more specific question. I think that one day I could make the proficiency-based system better for me is some consistency across the board for all the teachers I can fit on some teachers sort of a good job of implementing proficiency into the classroom. There's a lot of confusion around it and I think it's an argument of the classroom system. You could be so close to being proficient but you're still a minor to that. There have been many times I've gotten too much that I'm missing a small thing and I can't really assess on it because, you know, like I said, it's project-based and sometimes to build up to that project was stepping stones but when that's averaged out sometimes it can curve with final grade and I just wish there was a larger scale and I think that would also work better for GPAs too. Yeah, so we also were asking our teachers about their practice as well so we wanted to make sure, again, folks asked, what do teachers think about this? We want to make sure that we share some of the teacher voices with you and then maybe pause and see what questions you have at this point and then we'll talk about some more specifics and share the data of the class of 2020 and the class of 2021 with you. The implementation of proficiency for this learning has impacted my teaching in a way that I now can put students accountable directly for the content that I'm teaching instead of their work habits combined with the content and so it's easier for me to say what I'm not a student has met a sort of literacy requirement because I've seen their progression learn that standard and it's not being clouded by their knowledge during the work-on time or other transferable skills that we've now suffered. Without a doubt I feel like it's made everything so much more clear for me and for the kids so it provided just a ton of clarity in all of my classes. Well the first thing I think about media is the way that kids use the library independently to do their research and the way I collaborate with teachers are random and many transferable skills that are teaching. Being a really responsible library user and user journey is learning those life-long skills of learning to do things independently to collaborate and to think outside the box and to think creatively. So I think that a small sample of students and teachers captures some of the major themes of efficiency-based learning. Both the things that are going really, really well and the things that remain challenges for us that we are continuing to think about. Some issues around separating out sort of that knowledge and skill versus work habits is something we're talking about a lot and we'll talk about that a little bit more in the presentation. And again I think what the work speaks to for sure is our increased ability to be super clear with kids to establish learning targets and give them clear and actionable and specific feedback. And I would say you've heard one of the the boys that spoke in that was talking about things being clear. He's a senior. We weren't clear with them throughout all of their time. We got clearer as time progressed. I mean it was just a part of the process of implementing the proficiency-based system. And so you didn't hear as much a question of clarity from the younger two students who spoke in that. And I think that these are just four voices but these are sentiments that we hear a lot. Like those were not those weren't just those students saying that. These are the kinds of ideas that we hear from kids and they've been comments that we've been dealing with and issues that we've been dealing with for several years now. Switching the way that you score or grade students is a huge deal because we're all familiar with the system that we grew up in and this is a different system. And so there's a whole lot of research behind what worked and what didn't in the previous grading system as well. But because it was familiar to us we probably didn't question the faults in that system. But I would say that one of the faults that was a part of the old system is that with the D minus you passed a class and you were deemed ready for whatever the next step was. And that is a low bar in our opinion because that D minus included in the old system how you behaved in class. And that behavior is a wide variety of things. It's everything from participation to turning in work not necessarily what you knew demonstrated that you knew. And so those grades in the past were not just what did I know but how did I behave in class as well. What were those learning behaviors that I exhibited. And so a D minus didn't necessarily mean that you knew the material. A D minus meant that you might have been a compliant student who did just enough. And that is something that's just not available to a student in the proficiency system. And I would point to one of those student comments where she says you know I knew that I was really close but not quite there to a proficient well that's a difference in saying I just got a D minus as opposed to saying I needed a little bit more to show that I was proficient. And so I think she meant it more as a negative in the way she was expressing it. I do understand that. But that's actually a positive of the system. The system says that you have to be able to demonstrate this much knowledge and this much understanding to be able to move to proficient. And so if that kid knew that they were really close then good. That's a positive of it. Most of the time it was what's the minimum amount of work that I need to do to get by. And so I understood that she was not seeing it as a positive but from a perspective of a system I think of it as that. And so we want to stop a second. We've thrown a lot at you and now we want to see if there's some things that we can clarify before we get into a little bit more of the data to shift a little bit in what we look at. So is there any training for students as they come into the system like the 7th and 8th graders who are well. Training for students so they say I do understand that one student is saying well I didn't really know what we needed to do. One of the older kids. Yes. Didn't really know what we needed to do. And now that we're looking for more detail I think we have more nuance between one, two, three, and four. Correct. But so it's the students that constructed or trained and say this is how it works or is it they're coming into it? So here's the good thing about having a set of student learning outcomes that go from pre-K through graduation is the language doesn't change. So if I need global citizenship from pre-K to graduation it's the same language. It's the same standards. And so that is going to help us long term. So we don't have to train kids every years to the new system. So you don't come from elementary school and then go to middle school and say what am I going to learn about? It's the same things. It's just at a deeper level. And so that helps us a lot in terms of the kids understanding what's next. Now do they understand things like grade point averages and how those are calculated? Not as well and those are trainings that we start to do with kids now through their call back time. Their teachers understand it better. And so we're able to answer those questions better now that of course when that kid was a freshman. And so we don't hear as many questions coming from our freshman now as we do from our seniors. Because they've been seventh and eighth grade they've done project based learning they're focused on their transferable skills. They understand the language and they understand the concepts a lot better. And so I would say that the training actually is that they're in classrooms that are more adept at using this language. Can I have your? I'll split it into a couple more now. So a teacher, are they expected to give a class even in middle school as to expectations of how a child can receive a 1, 2, 3, 4? Because if it does exist, I haven't seen it. And when a teacher is entering a grade score in 2IC and it shows up as a 2 my understanding was they're supposed to be a comment there as to why. Whether it was a complete, turn it late, didn't give content whatever. And I don't believe I haven't seen where that's being done. So is there a follow up with staff on making sure that if we're doing communication kids don't understand why they're getting up to you when they're coming from the grade set for you now. My third part is a student is taking an AIC class as a senior. They're getting scored on the same expectations as a child taking a basic math class. There's no way to GPS there. Has there been more of a discussion on how they're doing that or science? So three big questions. So let's start with the middle question first. So comments to students on, so the student receives a score, how do they know why? I think that's kind of the heart of what you asked there. So we spent a lot more time in the last year working on the learning scales. So what does it look like for a student to move from knowing something to being proficient and beyond? So being advanced in that topic. So the teacher should be providing a rubric or a learning scale so those two things can be used interchangeably sometimes in language but they should show them some kind of scale of here's how your learning is going to progress. I will say that I have not checked every assignment but I have seen more and more of those used throughout these last few years as we do have more and more work on it. And so whether or not that comment shows up on the infinite campus piece I would say that probably not most of the time. But the student themselves should have a scale that they're able to show. Typically in a Google Doc or in a Google Classroom format is where we see a lot of those. I would turn to my students here to say where they see it and I see teacher feedback on what we could have done to improve and what was missing to getting a 3 primarily on the actual physical stuff that we handed in. On the paper, yes. On the Google Doc. Most of the teachers are using a thing called the Goobrich which you attack to the Google Docs. Which I find a lot more helpful than a comment I see because it can directly address individual parts that weren't developed enough or weren't complete enough. And isn't just a vague notion of what was missing. Most of the students have a basic understanding of what a 1,2,3,4 is if you're confused as to why you've got it to and it's at that point where you're confused that's the point where you go to your teacher and you ask. I've done that plenty of times and I don't think that having it put into I see a positive way to know why you have it to. I would say that I see I'm not going to convince words on this is not the best tool for communicating proficiency and proficiency scores. The unfortunate thing is there aren't a lot of things out there that do a good job with that. Most scoring systems that are associated with the bigger student information systems were built off of the old system tuned in well to doing those kinds of things. I will say that even tomorrow after school I'm meeting with both of my infinite campus people both of my support people for that so we can talk through how we can continue to improve this. I think the meets expectations and these assistance is really important too. You should be seeing that because sometimes a 2 is the best score that the student can get on that piece or is where they should be is sort of said by the teacher through that the students meeting the expectations if you see the SA that means that they need to seek assistance and go check in with that teacher during a call back for another time office hours. We ask the teachers to put in what we call a current course performance score of ME or SA so meeting expectations or seek assistance and it's updated every couple of weeks so that students know we also as TAs would know which students are struggling in a class and we can make sure they get to see that teacher. So that's one week so that's partly answering I know not fully answering but partly answering that second question the third question I can answer pretty easily so AP courses in the past at U32 were not given any additional weight in their grade point average there was no additional we have at U32 we've never had grade point averages so we've never given extra quality points we've never given anything else rankings either at U32 that's a past practice that we've carried forward into the proficiency system. I personally believe that that's the right way to go because the way that we typically honor student work is if they reach a particular level of work then we honor them that's the Latin honor system says that if you reach this level of performance then you get this honor if you reach this level of performance you get the next honor. The reason that that's a better system in my mind is that that does not preclude kids from getting into it if we only rank the top 20 there's always number 21 in the class who receives no accolades. I personally was number 21 in my class I walked across the stage of graduation to chance from 400 of my closest classmates screaming number 21 and so the top 20 sat in the front row. I sat back with everybody else. My grade point average was 0.01 below number 20. Those distinctions aren't important I feel like I've recovered from that moment. Not that I keep reading it up for anything but I would say this is that had it been a cutoff of grade point average then it could have been the top 50 kids in the class or it could have been the top three and so that distinction depends on the student and the work that they put into it and I think that's a much better system. So we don't weight our AP classes any differently their scale is I mean this is a college class they're expected to perform at a higher level and so their scale is pretty tough so students are not just automatically a four just because they're in an AP class although we find that their scores tend to be four range most of the time and they also AP courses tend to have standards that are beyond some of the standards that we have as a school already so they don't necessarily easily fit into the student learning outcomes as we've written them and that's something that we are working on it's like how do we make sure that we show those additional standards that kids may be working on as they move to an AP level class one of the things that colleges like to see that students engage in work in the hardest classes or the most difficult classes that a school offers and so we are very clear on our profile what those courses are so when someone looks at a transcript an admissions officer they see that a student took AP statistics they can look at our guide and see that an AP statistics class is one of the highest level math classes that we offer they can look and see that they've taken a we do chemistry two we don't call it AP chemistry and so if a student takes chemistry two we say that that is the highest level course that a student can take and so the students who take that course are therefore shown to be taking our most difficult and so we make sure that we communicate and that's one of the things we do on our school profiles make sure that we communicate that the hardest courses are these courses or the most advanced courses that we offer and so if those show up on a kids transcript that shows that they've done the more difficult work their scores hopefully reflect the work that they put into it as well I also want to go on the question about the GPA but because that's been in the news a lot recently a little bit of fear interpretation as this first class graduates under the Physician's UV system and just in the past week I've heard both a news report from UVM admissions officers and from Middlebury College admissions officers that it is their responsibility their job as admissions officers to understand where these kids are coming from to understand the school profiles and to understand the GPA as we calculate it here colleges now and for decades have always had kids from all over the country all different systems they've always sort of recalculated or reconfigured the GPA to meet their purposes so they can make good assessment along with other information other test scores and essays and letters of recommendation around college but just recently because this is so much in the news around the past of 2020 those admissions officers from two colleges have spoken directly to that point which I think is a point of fear and anxiety just because it's new for folks so the high school I graduated from had a five point scale for our GPA I've worked at schools that have had a fourteen point quality point average I never understood it and then our school actually was a four point three three scale it was not a four oh scale it was a four point three three scale and so colleges have to take all of these different GPA scales or quality scales or however they're done and figure out how to look at the kids what they typically do is they compare within the school within the class where did you fall what is your score how do you compare to some of your classmates in the graph on our school profile so that you can see any student that's from a three point five to a four this percentage of kids fall into that category and this percentage of kids fall into three to a three point five once again doesn't preclude you know we could have fifty percent of our kids and even one of those categories that's fine and so they can look at that scale and see where does this kid fall in relationship to their peers overall in the school that's generally true of most GPAs doesn't easily compare kids between schools we do know that there are issues around merit scholarships and pieces like that so the other thing I would offer is that our school counselors are making a whole lot of phone calls this year and we knew that going in but they are they're aware of it and they're moving towards making sure that when we have a question about a scholarship and we have a question about admissions and GPAs how do we address that and we call admissions people directly and so I know that we've spoken to admissions directors in Michigan we've spoken to them in Minnesota we've definitely spoken to a lot of them here in the Vermont area and in the northeast and as kids continue to apply to schools we continue to make those phone calls because we want to make sure that that information is there and in front of them so that we can make sure that those schools can make a good decision about our kids so I'm going to keep going you're going to have some more questions I'm sure and so so what students need to do in order to earn a U32 diploma there's actually a policy about this they have to be proficient in our SLOs so our SLOs are the literacy, math, science global citizenship PE and health, artistic expression financial literacy and transferable skills and the transferable skills are those things like problem solving, working independently collaboratively and there's several skills there and so the policy is written that our students have to be proficient in all of the standards of the SLO and in the past you had to have 22.5 credits in order to graduate so I took four English classes for four credits including one credit in comp and list and math I had to have three science I had to have three social studies three including US history PE was one and a half SLO was 0.5 fine arts was one credit financial literacy was half a credit and so that's what you had to do you had to take those classes you had to get a D- and you were good that's what got you out of U32 in the past and I know I say that a little like but that was it that was our standard for graduation take all of those credits and get a D- in those classes that was our standard math how does it look so I know this a little bit small but the class of 2020 at the end of their junior year 63% of them had met proficiency in artistic expression 61% of them in financial literacy 38% in global citizenship 6% in literacy 52% in math 73 in PE and health 45 in scientific inquiry and 22% in the transferable skills so that's the percentage of kids who have met all their proficient all the standards in each one of those categories one of them should jump out at you literacy don't freak out though because I want to go right back to the last slide and say how long did it typically take you to get through an English program in the way that we had it takes four years to get through a typical English program our kids are really showing that same thing it's through the end of their junior year they are not proficient yet in all the work that we need to do in our English courses in our literacy and so that shows but it also is there as well yeah Miran so in that 6% that shows the students who doubled up on English probably that's the few students that's probably three kids who had either doubled up or done something else to demonstrate that they met their literacy standards where you can see that like PE and health and I think financial lit is a really good one to show that's almost saying that 61% of our kids took the financial literacy class so there are some standards that are met really by one course and financial literacy and health are two of those where kids pretty much should meet their standards by taking the course and so you see that a lot of kids have already done that math where you see a 52% these are kids who probably doubled up or started algebra in the eighth grade and have just progressed through at a little bit faster pace so that we have those numbers and we can contrast this with our class of 2021 so this is through their sophomore year so this is the current juniors so through their sophomore year we see that 53% have met their artistic expression already 9% have met their financial literacy 0% in both local citizenship and literacy kind of makes sense mathematical content and practices that's 39% so through their sophomore year many of them have had there's about 39% of our kids who have had geometry and algebra 2 which algebra 2 is kind of the cutoff point where the proficiency can be met so by the end of algebra 2 you should be able to have met all of your math proficiencies PE and health we see that about half of the kids 18% in science and transferable skills is an interesting one because that 65% of them have shown proficiency by the end of their sophomore year we're going to put those side by side so class of 2020 only 22% met their transferable skills by the end of their junior year and class of 2021 65% I would say that this is us understanding our transferable skills a little bit better in the way that we score them and I would offer this and I'm happy to say it in a public forum but there are some aspects of this program that are the fault of us the school in them not reaching that moment remember those three areas I talked about statistics, engineering and economics we can do as much as we can but we can also not fault kids for not being able to do all of that work and so what we've gone back and looked at in some of those cases is how much work did they do in economics we've done several opportunities but not enough opportunities how did they do with that so we're having to re-evaluate to make sure that we don't hold them responsible for our curricular mistakes transferable skills is one of those areas we we never really assessed that stuff separately we just marked participation and completion but we really didn't talk about what are your problem solving skills like how does that rank on a scale so we never did those kinds of things you can see that as we can start to learn more about them and teach so many younger grade we tended to do better at our evaluation our assessment of those skills yeah I think that from you this slide points out to continuous improvement to in the system this was new for us and we have been doing a lot of work and a lot of studying and a lot of iteration and improvement as Steven just talked about I want to really go out to our teachers because they have been the backbone of the system they have worked so incredibly hard so as we're seeing trends and making adjustments it's our teachers who are going right back in and having those conversations and making adjustments to their courses and their programs and their assessment practices and we're seeing continuous improvement and I would point out here when you look and you see that well it's only 63% they need to graduate that needs to be 100% these things need to be 100% for every kid to graduate and so when we look at this those other kids that other 37% of the kids what we have to make sure of and we have been going through and double checking ourselves even this year the beginning of this year is are they in the courses that will help them meet those needs and we have identified a couple of kids were like you know what you've got a great schedule but next semester we really need to make sure that you finish off that artistic expression right that you do that before you graduate and so we have a couple of kids but when I say a few we're down to like the vast majority of our kids are taking the appropriate courses right now to be able to meet these standards because that was that piece I talked about all our scheduling really sitting down looking at that and we double check that here at the beginning of the year so Jen has led a lot of that effort but herself, myself the school counselors we've gone to and we keep looking at the kids are they taking the right courses are they doing the right things so that these all end up at 100% and so that's the best I can offer with all of that data what's the next slide? I would be happy to go back can you just give us an overview what is the process right now between TAs, counselors, teachers that you're going through to make sure that those transferable skills have been met and there's no between this two how much that impacts the score so the transferable skills don't contribute to the grade point average although there's a lot of discussion about how that should be a part of the grade point average and so those are work habits a lot of that a lot of this is talking with those teachers in the senior year and what we think we're going to be able to do where we're still putting it all together is that we need to have a conversation with the kids that are in this graduating class of 2020 that is a small conversation a kid, an advocate, whoever they want with them and a couple of teachers and say okay tell us where you met these transferable skills over your time here at U32 and just have them have the conversation about here's how I demonstrated my engaged citizenship here's how I demonstrated that I was a problem solver and do that I think our first class well I don't want to say we're giving them a pass they're going to have to have that conversation I think because we weren't evaluating this properly in those earlier grades we weren't getting enough opportunities to actually evaluate it but they were actually doing and so that was I think our disconnect as the kids were doing this kind of work they were engaged citizens in all kinds of things so we have kids outside of school doing all kinds of things that shows a engaged citizenship we weren't capturing that we weren't able to bring that together and so we're just putting together what's a process we can do here right at the beginning of the second semester so that they can have that conversation and we can check these things out so that we can make sure okay yes you have done a lot more work than we certainly recognized over the three and a half years that you've been doing and that will help here that's going to help our class of 2020 and we're just getting it better now as we move into our new year and so I think the conversations are something we want to hold that will be where the TA a classroom teacher possibly a school counselor and they're called academic conversations we've seen it done at other schools and so we've learned from and those are outside of actual Vermont but we've seen those that that's going to be our first go at doing it and I think that that will take care of a lot of it there's some kids in the summer I remember a couple of them said they were doing a summer school because it would help them get once they realized that they show up in these pieces now so those were kids these percentages may be in a little bit lower had we not had some kids come to summer school in fact that financial literacy would have definitely because we had several kids who did that when we talk about again trying to create more school opportunities and making the system less time down summer school was definitely a step in that direction so the students who participated participated exactly for these reasons and to keep other options open for them their senior year and I would also offer too that this represents every student in our school so we have some students who will move to our transition academy we have other students who might need additional time these numbers are never going to be 100% for one year because there are students who will require additional time for a variety of reasons and some of them are through no fault of the child or no fault of the system it's just they need more time and so I would offer that as much as we would love to see these be 100% right down the board the odds of that happening are almost infinitesimally small because we will have kids who need an additional year or additional two years depending on their needs and their learning plans so that's also part of the this is everybody so we want to just kind of get to a little bit of the data so the challenges are we facing so our graduation rate is held pretty steady you can see for 88 to 90% we do not have our 2019 figure verified yet we try and try and try if we cannot get back and then the other side of this is our college attendance rate and so so these are from the clearing house data so these are the kids who just go to college directly from U32 and enroll in their first year there's a lot of data that's a different discussion about college clearing house data that will have some time when things settle down and then we see that this last one was self reported in 2019 we don't have the clearing house data of how many kids actually went 65% of them said that they were going on to some format two or four year college beyond U32 so we wanted to throw this up there you want to so we engage in a lot of professional learning and last spring we had the opportunity to do some professional learning about designing adult learning and this concept came up around just challenges and fears that might come up when there's new learning and they're called scarf threats but sometimes when there's resistance or fear to change it's really about these things so sort of status how is this going to impact my relative importance with others what about certainty what if I can't predict exactly what's going to happen or autonomy a sense of losing a little bit of control over the way things are going how might this change impact my relationships with others my connections with others and what about fairness is it really a fair exchange is this going to take that balance out so those are some of the things that we've heard and we spoke earlier in this presentation already about some of the fears that we have heard about the uncertainty of the class of 2020 this is brand new we've been operating under a Carnegie unit system for a very very long time decades and decades but of course it's new and we understand that people might have fears and anxieties we've been working really hard to have direct conversations to do the work to roll up hour sleeves around proficiency based work and make sure that we're doing the very best that we can by our kids knowing that we don't know everything yet it's not going to be perfect yet but we're going to continue to ensure that our classmates are met and that they are poised for post-secondary success so what's next there's a lot so I mentioned earlier that we have a group of kids who have grown from just an advisory group to now they're called youth and adults transforming schools together that's GATS they're going to be collecting data on the school not just proficiency work but climate culture there's several issues that they're looking to explore and see what are students thinking what are they feeling what are staff thinking what is going to be coming out they're going to present that to you not adults, the kids will be presenting that when we get that data together that will probably be closer to the first of the year right maybe I'm looking at one of my kiddos for that and so we're doing that the role of transferable skills and scoring and reporting that's a big one because we've really started to talk about how should this get included into course scores how should this get included into GPA calculations there's some thoughts about how this might work and we're certainly having those conversations teachers and kids alike how to create more flexibility and increase access in the time bound system this is one of the hardest things that we're going to address over the next several years our structure looks very similar to the Carnegie system that we've been in before but is that the right structure our class is the way we've structured them every other day every hour and a half is that the appropriate way for us to teach in a proficiency system there's a lot of questions of should the day school day be a different configuration should it be longer should it be shorter should it be with online options there are all kinds of questions to consider in this this will be a discussion that takes us well into the next several years because there are all kinds of implications around busing and sports that we can possibly name at the school we are about to roll out personalized learning plans 2.0 so we've done a lot of work around that which will expand on how the transferable skills are also scored and we are starting to think about standards 2.0 which is how do we look at our standards now that we've done them for a few years is what changes need to be made what refinements do we need to make in those standards and what else I'm sure that there are other things that you could suggest that we look at next both teachers students administrators kids board members parents everybody's got something that we could probably address next so questions comments concerns what's next what else about the proficiency system educated about it and dealing with the challenges that's an awesome question because where you can find more information so we put some of it out there on the web we also created booklets we will hand out some of these booklets so the use of board have them we have grading guides we have a guide to the proficiency based learning pre K to graduation I had put out emails in the past we've got a newsletter that puts out some of that information our teachers are hopefully communicating some of that as well tonight was parent teacher conferences and they continue on Monday that's part of the comprehensive reporting system as well that's oh yeah you can come to coffee with me I'll actually be at Dodie in a week I think next Thursday morning so I'm reaching out to the elementary schools to do coffee in the morning at each of the elementary schools so the parents that have kids at both typically throw their high schooler middle schooler on the bus and then drop off their kid and stop by and ask questions we try to do some other things is there I'm just so this breakdown of like proficiency for graduation is there a proficiency for like you know freshman year standard like what would it look like the percentage of kids meeting what they need to learn freshman year then the sophomore year so you would look more at the course course so the distinction there is between are you meeting the graduation proficiency which we do on the beginning developing proficient advanced scale and the course score which is done on the one two three core scale so if I wanted to know if my kid was doing well on their freshman year courses I would look at their course scores more than I would look at their graduation overall like is the freshman class all doing you know those so we don't know I mean just to be honest with their course graduation we wouldn't know yet because those scores haven't even we haven't even done that assessment of where they are in their graduation standard because they've only been doing it for one quarter so we can look at our sophomores and do so we broke down our same thing yeah we can do the same breakdown we just did with our seniors and our juniors that was like the zero for the juniors from literacy because they're not meeting the proficiency for graduation but what are their are they meeting a standard for so how are they doing in their course work yeah in general we can look at that we didn't bring that idea with us but we can certainly look at yeah how are they performing in the courses that they're taking yeah it's another whole class not just stupid another whole set of data that we can bring in we've looked at as we can we look at regularity as well sorry it's very hard for me to I get it like we you're doing a great job I'm surprised you can speak about it we're trying I've had to do this a couple of times with some parents in this room and so yeah part of what we're seeing is that over time people are able to explain it better we phase this in and so one of the the problems with the phase in was that there are some teachers who primarily teach juniors and seniors and those teachers didn't have two years of working on this in the same way as a teacher who had freshmen thrown into this four years ago so our teachers who have freshmen primarily in the freshman teams have been doing this now for four years they're getting much better at explaining it the teachers who taught mostly juniors and seniors last year was the first year they really had to explain it and so that's where when the student says there's confusion that's primarily where a lot of that confusion comes in and while we know there's one or two ways to do it right everybody does it on day one or we phase it in we felt like the phase in was the best option for us but there are some drawbacks and that was that consistency and that confusion just hasn't been taken care of yet there's students in the audience and I wonder if they have anything to contribute to the conversations that they they're here for a different issue as well anything you guys want to offer you can go to the U32 Chronicle and see an article about these things right from a student perspective which I would highly encourage that you look at the school Chronicle there are several articles that students have written about this with some good research about where we're going and what we're doing thank you I mean there's going to be a lot more questions we're going to keep bringing some more pieces of this up and I think there's a question back there in the back you're behind the camera I think I've been having trouble with the proficiency system my son is a senior I'm not terribly good with it at this point I'm struggling like last year was the first year we're meeting with the TA she's like well you need these classes in order to meet the proficiencies I'm in these classes how do I know what part of those classes are going to make sure that he meets that proficiency I don't want him to have to go to school beyond this year he should be done I'm ready to be done okay so you know I see some of those statistics that you had up there where literacy was at 6% on that senior class and does that not cause you to pause I mean it didn't sound like you were that worried about it but to me I would be panicking why? it doesn't seem like it's a sense of urgency okay so why I'm not worried about it is the sense of urgency is that those teachers are aware that the students in their class those seniors in their class have final work to do to be able to finish up in a proficiency system just demonstrate that third paper on expository writing that second research paper those kinds of things that they do in their senior year that are a culmination of the work that they've done across their four years if I didn't think that my teacher my English department has been working non-stop for four years to make sure that the progression of work from year to year is making sure that the kids are going to be able to demonstrate that proficiency and that they're doing a really good job of tracking where students are in that process and I mean speak maybe a little bit to the fact that the department, Alden's one of our English teachers and he also teaches seniors so I think he could probably relay the sense of urgency better than I can I mean this is what we just spent this evening doing with parent conferences was communicating this and you're right to ask these questions and to be a little concerned but I'd echo what Steven said we've been really vigilant about keeping an eye on these students and I've had lots of conversations with parents to this extent already this year so as an English teacher I'm not worried about it so I could probably answer more one-on-one some specific questions about your own child which would be better than this forum and so I'd be happy to talk to you separately I worry with the statistic that we're there it's like can you honestly say that you know we'll say 90% of the class is going to graduate on time I know that my staff is keenly aware of the kids who are sitting in front of them right now who need to meet their proficiencies and they're meeting with them at call back and they're talking to them regularly and they are making sure we're not worried about some kids because we've seen them demonstrate across the years and we can see that they're taking the right classes so the kid who's not meeting them hard but has been a good solid student it's just going to take one more art class we know that that kid's going to meet those standards in the same way that we had kids who took English in their senior year for their fourth credit of English we weren't worried about the vast majority of them doing what they needed to do to pass that class and get that credit it's the same thing it just looks different when we say only 6% I mean we used to say about you know 5% of them had met their credit requirement and so they still think you know 95% of them still have one more credit to take and so we just never put that data up before thank you for the time we appreciate it I just want to tell you how helpful this is that the fact that we had it recorded so that people from our communities can also view it it's extremely helpful and the fact that it's also been the news quite a bit lately as we all know it's wonderful to see that we've been working for 6 years and that while we're not saying we've completely arrived we've made great progress and we have confidence in the situation so thank you so much we've devoted a lot of time to this but the time is really in proportion to the importance of it and I hope that it has at least helped a little bit to improve understanding and to clarify somewhat what can seem a pretty mysterious system and it's not the discussion is not over it's over for today of this subject but not over in general so 4.0 consent agenda and reports do I have a motion to approve the minutes of October 16 and October 23 please Chris and Vera any changes to the minutes I have one question on page 2 the special meeting I took those notes I realized that there is no notation in there about any decision or conclusion that we have reached whereas I think it was Lisa that was kind enough to point out to me on the 23rd that we did need to list though there are no details about what we were discussing on the 23rd does say the board made no findings but for the 16th special meeting there is no note in there about what conclusion we reached so if that's appropriate or not say the the board supported the administration's recommendation thank you sorry do you want me to add something to that please Lisa after adjournment before adjournment after the other the other way the board voted to accept the administration's recommendation other issues looks okay all right all in favor of approving the minutes of October 16 and October 23 please say aye any opposed none opposed great 4.2 to approve the board orders may I ask I haven't seen them I have the numbers here okay the rules that we approve ordered one million five hundred twenty six thousand three hundred thirty seven thirty seven thousand eight hundred six to four forty four did you pass that Lisa do you want me to send it back to you or not so Dorothy has moved thanks Chris second Chris seconds we had a chance to review these board orders electronically did anyone have any questions no I didn't in that case sorry I didn't scan like scan every time at some point maybe it's Lori can you give us five or ten minutes about how to read those documents not necessarily right now because I don't know yeah that would be great okay thank you okay that's a good idea great the board orders for the amounts that Dorothy cited please say aye any opposed none opposed very good so what we're going to do for the superintendent report and the leadership team report we're not asking the superintendent or the leadership team to say anything except in response to board questions so are there any board questions for in the first instance for Deborah on her superintendent report questions only I would like to thank Deborah for the section about the racism I thought that was a difficult read and an important read and I appreciate you laying it out in very stark terms thank you for that yeah I was wondering what the follow up of this will be like after we go into this training what you're hoping to do to accomplish what you're hoping to do with this information well I think this is an area that I have been studying for a number of years I think that we're approximately 10 of our staff members in you know a protected class we investigate that we have a full process of investigating that so our position is that we already can investigate any of these symbols as part of our current policy and that if it is causing a disruption or disturbance to the student then certainly we can take action our primary method of taking action is to educate and so our goal isn't to remove a kid from school because of wearing a confederate flag our goal is to help them understand what it means and why it causes someone else to feel that is a symbol of hate like it's harassment whatever those issues are we try to help the other student understand we have been successful in having students not wear the symbol back into school after they find out what it's full meaning is because when you ask some of the kids to you it is not as a hate symbol and that's why I understand the intent regardless of intent as a part of the policy but I would also offer that I've had students in my office who feel threatened because the Black Lives Matter flag flies over the school regardless of intent if a student doesn't feel comfortable coming into the school because of that this policy might tell me that the flag has to come down and I think that that's the furthest extreme in terms of example that I can give you right now but if a student came to me and said that they weren't comfortable because of it this policy tells me that the flag comes down I find that perverse I do too and I think this may not be the right policy but I think as we have these conversations we're adults and we're grownups in 2019 and I think we can distinguish between the actual actual effects of a Black Lives Matter flag and the actual real life effects of a Confederate flag so let's revise and edit the policy how we need to but I find I find that logical retreat to be perverse understood that I'm not putting it out there because I agree with it I just want to get the on the record right so I was going to say that you had me until you said the Black Lives Matter flag I agree that the policy on harassment takes care of what's going on now you said you do I believe strongly that those conversations as uncomfortable that it would make a student in that class and if it gets to the point that it's harassment it should be addressed as harassment but the more opportunities that we have to teach global citizenship through that because you're going to be contributing to the democracy so when you go out in the world this is going to be part of your everyday addressing bias all the time having to have those conversations sometimes those hateful conversations are better addressed by more conversations and I guess I'm more interested in you to engage in more of those bias training and you know teaching more about the civil war using every single opportunity to get everybody to to sit together and learn more about it and not we can we can just throw through put a safe guard around around ourselves because they're going to be part of that larger democracy and we want them to be strong to defend the democracy that's all that I have a question just in terms of procedure so if a student walks in wearing a swatka and no one and no other student came up and complained about that would that we would immediately address because I'm just concerned about putting the burden on the victim or the one student we address that when we see it so so what would prompt and address like that swastika is a very clear example would a confederate flag be a clear example of that as well? we've been addressing it actually the one confederate flag that a student was wearing we had conversations that was removed and now we actually have another one that is making its rounds a different kid wears it each day and part of that is in protest to the potential ban and so we have to address it with those students I mean it's a hard one I mean if there was an easy answer to this I would be happy to give it to you and we could move on but you know our primary goal as an educational institution is to teach our kids what's good what's not good but that's still subjective to those who are approaching it we try to help our kids understand through our restorative practice what you do has an impact even if it's not your intent and that's a hard thing to learn adults still have a hard time understanding the difference between the intent that they have and the impact that they have to say and where and so we're we're your front lines in trying to figure out how to communicate that to kids and families and I think that this policy I don't know that this policy affords us any additional tools in terms of dealing with these issues which is what a policy should do it should direct us as to how we can help solve a problem just simply removing something we can actually have a conversation about it being removed through our hazing harassment bullying process I don't know how it adds to our existing policies I have one more question Is it predominantly students of color that are asking for this ban seeking some justice I wouldn't have to I don't think in terms of the presentation I don't know I don't know if they're not at all in this that we classified it by that category from their perspective how they supported or so we wouldn't necessarily go directly to them to ask them what they thought because that that might imply a little bit of tokenism in terms of that response but it's been brought by a diverse group of students to our attention just the perspective the problem with doing that is you're asking a student to speak for their entire race and that's a really uncomfortable and inappropriate way to talk to the kids so we have a group of students who have this issue brought to us and that's the group that we engage with BLAM has been talking about it and I think we have some concerns with it too because I mean we don't need a ban that we don't want those kinds of symbols around and I don't think that this ban these problems exist whether or not you have the Confederate flag in the equation if you take it out they're still there that's not it and I think that this ban I haven't read the policy and I don't know if Coley would in details but I don't think it has enough of what Alden and everybody has been saying about the RP, maybe having more RP into it and having that discussion part of it because I personally don't think that the ban is going to solve any problems I think that it's not I was just thinking about wearing them in school but if we highlight or whatever but something that's going to bother what about bumper stickers on your car out in the parking lot or there are a couple of trucks that drive around central Vermont the really big Confederate flag out the back if it's parked in your parking lot is that as from this can that also be banned if it's on your bumper sticker or if it's on the bottom of speech or having a sign in my front yard I was thinking back to the take back Vermont type signs those were hateful signs I'm just thinking of a lot of things that I think the answer would be yes because it's on school property just as the shirt or whatever it is that a student has it on school property so that would be the extent to which the school would have to make that because it's a permission to park your car here in this any other comments so if you have some correction should we try see if there is something is there a sense of would to try and work with this policy in any way or to not adopt the policy is there a sense I actually don't support this policy for reasons that have already been brought up I think the more than the administration to teach and educate in this environment is the best way to approach a kid that does not necessarily understand what their women are doing at all times there are some young kids in this school it's not just my hotel and I honestly believe it there are times that kids do something that they don't know and to have an environment where they're being educated by administration here is a better form than just having a policy to ban something well I want to be clear this doesn't just ban it it says that you are then in violation of the policy on harassment, hazing, bullying which I believe then requires by statute and investigation and a whole series of events after that actually this precludes an investigation that says you are in violation so there is no investigation then it's just you're in violation it sets that machinery in motion that's probably not appropriate I don't think anyone I don't hear any support for this policy around the table but it does seem to me that Steven as you've mentioned you're in the business of trying to teach kids what is right and what is wrong and in some ways a school reflects the values of its community and in the few months that I have been on this board it's we are supposed to deliver to the school community what our values are and what the values are that we hope are advanced in the school system and I hope that it is the sense of this board that the Confederate flag is a hate symbol and has no place in our schools whether or not there is a first amendment issue or a gray area issue or a political issue I hope that that is the sense of this board also so this is a policy to ban just in finish you should fashion it as a policy to explain how hate symbols are and harmful and about that as the board policy to address your concerns sure because it would be specifically to hate symbols and recognizing the effect that they can have and that they don't reflect our values as a school being so just not a ban but a positive assertion of so it would be a policy in which it says that hate symbols are a bad example like a ban on reflection of what our values are would we then ensure that people would wear hate symbols would go through an educational process I think what I was saying in terms of policy would be directing the administration to address that with individuals wearing or being components of hate symbols so might I offer that the board it sounds like the board is not a policy but a position statement that the board would have but that's okay that's for you guys to figure out how you want to do it but I would say that in response to what Towns was asking about it might be wise for us to discuss the hazing harassment and bullying policy is what the administrative procedures are associated with that and so that way because your policy should be your policy and then how we address that policy that's something that we can say here's the administrative procedures that we have around that so if you as a board are comfortable are we addressing it to your policy so are we addressing this appropriately according to the policy that you've set is what it sounds like to me and if you have a hazing and harassment policy or we do we have to it would fall under that correct is there a specific part about race in the hazing and harassment most definitely well I mean like does it have its own out so if somebody if there's a hazing and harassment situation and it's specifically racial does it have a different process than that's the harassment it falls under harassment it's a protected category I'm saying that I think that this might instead of a ban it might be what some students of color might be looking for is a different process when you come forward with a racial racially charged situation rather than it just going immediately to a harassment facing and bullying situation do you want me to just review the definition of for instance of the policy no I understand that it fits under race I'm saying that the way that the administration goes about when somebody so if you come forward with a racial situation it immediately goes under that and that has a specific process of doing it I'm saying that there should be a different process for a specific racial situation how about we share like in a future meeting let's share what we do in that process and have a conversation about does it meet does it meet the statement that the board is making without making a formal statement yet about not wanting this in other words are we addressing the board's policy in a way that is appropriate to the board but Steven I want to interject about the HHB policy there's not a lot of wiggle room there's state law I'm not saying to change the policy just for me as understanding that we're required by law to respond in certain ways and so we don't have a lot of wiggle room around that but I guess what I want to sort of picking up and maybe I'm reading into what you're asking my concern is are there students who are feeling like for whatever reason responses to issues of race are not being addressed so it might be instead of what is sort of the specific process which is really mandated by law that's very prescriptive but is there is there something else happening sort of climate wise which is why I asked the question because I think it's what's how are students feeling are students feeling like it's getting a due process sort of what's the what's the question behind the question I guess is really what I'm thinking and maybe to get some talking and thinking about what is the feeling of a is there a feeling of a perceived lack of a response I guess no I don't think it's a lack of a response I think that sometimes people feel that so in a case of like a standard one you can say like oh that's wrong like you shouldn't do that and it becomes evident why it's wrong but a lot with racial situations you have to know why it's wrong and it's not immediately evident and I think that there has to be a more educational aspect rather than just punishment or education in the law I think I hear a theme of education yes that's surprising yes I think the resort practice is a good and I think that's a good step forward I think goes to Rebecca Holcomb I was trying to find out when I find out I'll send everybody she sent I remember her writing a really great back in 2017 this question and writing a memo with guidance and it was both I think it was around the time that Montpelio raised the Black Lives Matter I don't remember I'm trying to find it but I'll find it but she I remember making an impact on a lot of when everybody was going out to write policies and I know that we read it at some point I just don't I don't have it in front of me but it was really good advice for us interesting for us to look at I think I think you've heard this has been by the way one of the best discussions that I've heard in this board yet magnificent interventions at an hour when I can barely string together a grammatical sentence my own sense is that if you take back to the to your policy committee essentially what you've heard and different voices with different positions and you know sort of ponder it and see where it takes you and what more information or direction is needed for it to be either supported or taken so who wants to get a policy a positive policy I think it's a positionally recommend that we first examine and detail the current policy and harass before we make any amendments to it and I know the board has delved into it in the past within the recent past I think we need to be informed about what the state is retiring of us and see if there's a way to augment that including educational components I can say for certain that when there are issues that are brought forward and that a student identifies having violated that policy it's not only discipline but there's also restorative practices that we put in place to ensure that all of our students come to understand actions affected others and that's something that we're implementing in half or some time here at FATU32 I think there's just more to this conversation in terms of our current practice that we need to figure out before moving forward that was a suggestion I heard from several people let's hope we take time to write the policy oh sorry I completely understand what people are saying about the lack of an educational component that's really important but I would like to just people to recognize that hate symbols are an ongoing issue at this school and that I just want to impart people with a sense of urgency I guess that every that every week we don't address it is a week where students are hired and that I think that it needs to be policy and whatever it needs to be done well but that also being able to minimize the damage it also needs to be done quickly and so I just want to leave people with that so the next policy we have for consideration is the comprehensive sexual health program policy is 50 we have anyone who would like to address super speak to the policy I'm going to slow it down and I have a sprained ankle my name is Mike Faldi I am the middle and high school health educator one of them I also teach middle school living arts as well I actually did not come prepared not in the sense of let me take that back but of course I'm prepared I'm prepared every day and I will tell you that the two students that presented to the policy committee have done a great job and probably will do a much better job than I will this evening at this time but we simply proposed that our school has a condom accessibility policy that's put in place and I believe a year and a half ago we all had received a letter from both Dr. Chen at the Department of Health as well as at the time Rebecca Holcomb Secretary of Education simply laying out some bulleted points around the fact that as a state we don't have an explicit curricula if you will around sex education under the auspices of health education as many I'm not thinking of the word right now mandates so while a student is in public education they need to have access to comprehensive sex education and one of those components is that both birth control as well as abstinence birth control methods internal condoms, external condoms dental dams, lubricants etc are discussed in a health education class but the problem and the reason why these students came forward to the policy committee is the fact that right now there is not a policy that says that as your health educator or Peter Arsono the other health educator that when a student then finishes a class where the learning target is I can identify the benefits to safer sex practices I don't think I've ever done that I can demonstrate but I will tell you you're laughing but one of my former students in the room will tell you that yes thanks to the taxpayers money in my closet there are eight wooden dowels in the shape of penises there's also plastic vulvas in which we you can't you can't leave health education without showing that you understand the process you can do it through paper if you're comfortable after I demonstrate or Peter demonstrates after watching videos you know you teach the skill you model the skill you assess the skill and the skill here is how do I show that I'm aware of safer sex practices and so you know I've been here for six years I've been teaching for 18 I've never been out in a school district that has had a policy and when I came here Ben Heights and he's gone now but another teacher a social studies teacher in a dem roots class students had elected to cover this so this was seven years ago and they made a wonderful video just interviewing Kevin at the time who was our associate principal assistant principal they spoke to Tim they interviewed the current health teacher at the time Dan Gannon they interviewed students and they said hey why does U32 not have a common policy and it essentially ended with an ellipsis and then I got hired and I didn't find it to be the most appropriate position to come out guns blazing my first year so I came out my second year guns blazing and I certainly um I think I'm an advocate for my students I think that my students can actually probably do a better job than I can at you know is it 10 o'clock it feels like midnight saying that we're taught these things this part of life that we all have sexual health is a part of our overall health and Meg and Pete are showing us and teaching us the importance of abstinence and the importance of having making the decision around your own sovereign right to be a sexual human being the age of consent is 16 in the state of Vermont the state of Vermont also does not have an age in which a student needs to be to access birth control methods so just this evening parents of a sophomore said why are you telling my the funny thing is we're not in our sexual health unit yet why are you telling my student that it's okay for her to access Planned Parenthood I'm not sure if I said that but I certainly probably said that we have services in the area that students can access their birth control reforms I can't legally open up my closet where all of the external columns are located that we use on the phallic wooden penis models because the policy doesn't allow that so when six years I've lost count of the number of students is like but Meg there's one on the table I'm not willing to put my job at risk to say just take it you'll be fine because I want there to be more conversation and I don't want that kid out to take a free con I'm off my table it's up to them to have the conversation with the parents what I simply want to do with this policy is make them accessible but to open this hot topic and to say let's just start having conversations about sex with our children because some of these students are electing to be active whether we support it or not the law tells our students that at age 16 they can legally make decisions around sex and their sexuality the caveat is even 15 so the age of consent in the state of Vermont is 16 unless both parties are between the ages of 15 and 18 so we have some freshmen who are of age in which they can make those decisions we might not as parents and my children are three and six so I'm not there yet but we might not as parents agree with that decision but if this is information that's being taught as comprehensively as I possibly can in one semester of health for their entire high school career I want to ensure just like the math teacher that has the calculators or the grafting that they can say MEG or the nurses or the athletic director or the guided staff have these things that then I can take and I can either use this weekend not right now or I can say I'm not there yet but I know that when I do get to that decision where I become sexually active or I have my sexual debut I'm getting rid of the word virginity in my class the sexual debut that allows them to say I'm choosing to do this I consent to this and I know safer sex practices and just like my parents want me to wear a winter jacket so that I don't get it cold my parents also probably want to support using dental dams, condoms and lubricant so that I can prevent unwanted pregnancy and I can prevent the spread of syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea which right now in the state of Vermont it's a lot of questions so it's education I think one of the biggest things that came up through I had more parent teacher conferences this evening than I've ever had in 17 years of teaching and every single one of them the conversation came back to how do you talk to your kids how do you talk to your kids about health they're asking me what are some methods my 15 year old hates me I said she'll get over it and you will do what came up about this policy because they read it in The Times Argus and so I guess I'm simply here as an advocate to say some of our students are practicing safe sex currently less than 50% so the last youth risk behavior survey that we have a data that we have 7 through 12 indicates that less than 50% of our students identified as saying yes, check box I have had intercourse before I have a problem with that question of course because you're not including all humans with all sexual preferences so if we have someone who identifies as homosexual and they have had some form of sexual intimacy with another human in which bodily fluids were shared that's not intercourse but I still want to ensure that that student has the skills to prevent any spread of STI or unwanted pregnancy I don't know if I'm going around in circles right now for hours but I'm very tired and I simply, I know that this is clearly it's an issue that has been talked about since I've been here for 6 years and I will just add one big thing and that is because I think a lot of folks turn to the the what ifs okay Meg so you just be at the bowl are you going over style at the top of the atrium you get a comment, you get right I know none of those things I'm okay with bowls, bowls holds things that's appropriate but the major major piece is because they only have one semester of health education and let's say they have me their sophomore year and they're nowhere near socially, emotionally, physically, financially but ready for this and when they become 18 year old seniors they're like oh I remember this from health class or I remember and now I want to access those things I can go do that and even if I'm not choosing to be active in the next 4 years if I'm on my own in an apartment, if I'm in college I can get those things and I can have them so that I can prevent you know to cap all of those things I've just discussed the component that's missing is education and so it's we cannot do this in our silo that's U32 we need to communicate to parents and community members and we need to have evenings or I pitched at the policy committee that we have is streaming an opportunity maybe once a month to have conversations around how do you talk to adolescents and emerging adults about healthy happy sex lives yeah great thank you very much Chris what is your recommendation that we read the policy and there are so I just have a question that I have is policy talks about that a minor student has a legal right to reproductive health services so do you have a specific statute in mind that supports that statement and the reason I'm asking that is because the statutory sites that are at the end of the policy and I think what you referring to is 18 BSA 422 6 is not that not as broad as that statement is at least in my reading I think the the statute goes to if someone a minor has issues with alcoholism or venereal disease that they can seek medical treatment for those conditions and consent to it as a minor without parental involvement but that is the limit of that statutory authority is I read it it's not as broad as the policy languages so I'd like to see if there's other statutory or other legal authority that is support for the broader statement that I see in this policy I certainly don't know the statute I can do my research I think what I can simply add to that and certainly I would have to find in writing is just that students at any age in the state can access testing free testing and free access ability to contraceptives and so I'll be hearing you correctly am I understanding what you're saying just the way it was phrased it was like a legal right to access and I just I didn't see the statutory support for that proposition in the policy there is is there a law that denies that right not that I don't know where religious exemption the absence of explicit statutory prevention of those rights or denial of those rights and we say that those rights exist you probably say that these students could walk into a Walmart or a drug store and purchase condoms yeah and just like any other consumer so I just don't want to have policy misstate what the law is because I think that that part isn't there and that's what that's my only point about and to cite something that really doesn't this is more interesting the text itself it's an informational point that I'm trying to make there is an exemption for religious conditions parents with religious conditions can say no I don't want my students to be have access to condoms or in the policy and in the law and so that that is covered but it's not just condoms it's a broader based religious exemption for parents who who are kept so yeah I should just note that it's 945 but we do not have a policy against torture of board members in the industry I think I think I think our useful span of time is the window that's closing rapidly so any comments that you want to send our way the only other suggestion I would make is there's two parts that talk about convictions one includes the word religious condition the other just talks about convictions I think it's just an omission because just in another part I think religious conditions as well as that but convictions upon their own I think not and I think what I would want to do is also include a provision that basically directly informs parents of what the policy is and that they have this option an exemption option so so Chris would you be prepared to do a first reading and approve a first reading of sympathy given that you have or would you prefer to hold off on that until you can make more adjustments to it there will be two readings we can do a first reading yeah with any folks that have no time to review and comment where did it come from as far as it was everything it's called argument to it it's a bi-monthly group that meets during our callback but I have an actual writing of the policy so this policy is completely lifted so we got help from Andrea Nicoletta who is the education consultant at Planned Parenthood she sent us well I think there's 12 or 13 middle let's say high schools that currently have a condom accessibility policy I'm actually like the term accessibility I think Steven and I Steven we met with students probably a year and a half ago and I think the term distribution out of the policy and simply saying accessibility changes everything and so we elected the students elected to use the symbolist policy with four bullets there's four bullet points we U32ified it and that's what was purpose this policy that you're reading is actually a model from the state that's what I was wondering was it a alien model policy that was published in January from the regular last year that's just so you're not sure if you have oh no, so we a cohort of sex educators got together we're in the same steps of that stage and they gave us a variety of policies for us to peruse and to figure out you know today it's your policy so figure out what's going to work for your own know your community and then propose one that's going to work the best thank you may I ask if the board is interested in allowing the first reading of the other two policies the board and the library here I would unless there's controversy about either one of those which I didn't expect should we should we just move to approve them on block for the first reading before we do that I would like to say thank you for the work you did and all the information you gave us I've been totally on board with that and I think that this is a great thing to be putting into policy good alright I'm ready for a motion I'll make a motion for the first reading of the three policies that's perception very good floor moves Dorothy seconds very good any further discussion right all in favor please say aye opposed none opposed great should we tell you which one library do you know which it's the three that are listed yes okay we come to a fork in the road yet again it's so late it feels pretty good we did our homework I know we did our homework the we can extend on it would you be willing for because do you think we can have a quality discussion at this point it not right now yeah it happens everybody's saying we have you have to drive a long way you're not getting through the book it's true you're not going to forget about the book and read about it has anybody read all of everybody else's comments because I have not and I think that would be very very good good if anyone didn't have a chance to send them because they were a couple very good alright thank you so seven we're going to say oh at this point as the administrators look at me yes by all means absolutely thank you very much thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you for all the work thank you yes thank you ok for those for those I think everybody knows the results, very good. Everybody is reminded of the community mapping project. Great. Personnel, action, approve hires. We have, are these, can we approve these also? Is it batch? Were there? Yes, I have one addition that was in your handout that was listed in the bill. Did you mention that my name? Who is? Okay. So first of all, including the one that was added this evening, Julie McKimstree, to an additional 0.5 as teacher. This is in relation to this rant from the Title I School of Business that we discussed last night. We received approval today. So we can now proceed with the making of this recommendation for Julie. So I'll just show you the other side and then you can address them as you do. Yes? Yes, yes. Okay. So the others, we have a long-term staff, Fernando, for social studies here, age of 32. We have any school counselor long-term staff at age of 32, Alex and him for now we have social studies long-term staff and then the last but not least, Lisa Hodgson, who is going to be taking on the 0.5 third grade position that we discussed in our last meeting. Lisa is currently in place a half-time special educator at Calis and this will round her position out to full-time and it's a recommendation of our administration to bring her on for that purpose. This gets back to the 20 additional students we discussed in our last meeting and then need to expand our teaching staff. Wonderful, yes. Do we have a motion to approve the hiring of these individuals as mentioned? I make a motion. Linda moves. I second. J.L. Seconds, thank you very much. Is there any further discussion? Is it my, why is it from the, it's kind of backwards? Sure, it is a redeem of the contract and whenever we look at a long-term sub in particular we just pay them the five number of days that they're with us. An individual person happens to reach out early or say later, we have the flexibility to pay them for the days they actually work or if they need to become ill and can't work the entire time but it is based on the salaries that are articulated in that teacher. Thanks. Yeah. Any further questions? When I asked the questions of the people who have been on school boards before, have you ever had a situation like this where something came up and in the board discussion something bad was found or in conversation, it was decided not to approve hire? Is he never happy about it? No. No. It has been better to have gone into executive session and have great conversations about the house will be terminated. I was just going to say they're so well vetted. Yeah. Yeah. So many layers. Senator, can I ask what this broadly and what the concern was? I assume it really is. I've had come up in another school district and it was someone who had knowledge of and in executive session said I saw this or I read about this and they vetted it and found out it was no cause in the end but you know how people can be splashed in the paper? Yeah. And then it had come back that it was not substantiated and the superintendent had done all of that background check. Good. Anything else? Okay. All in favor? Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? None opposed. Very good. We'll make a motion to go into the second session. May I first mention how happy we are that the vote was successful yesterday I know I sent you all notes about it and I've also sent you notes today so it's really important to ensure an article but thank you to the community for coming forward and with very, very positively supporting the article amendments that we need for our operation. Yeah. And for the clear, concise and cogent article that was in New York admitting that time's artist on that subject before the vote. Chris, do you still want to go into the second session? Okay. A motion to go into the executive session? I'll make a motion to go into the executive session. Thank you, Flora. Second. And then these seconds? Very good. I'll go to the door. Yeah. Two doors now. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, everybody.