 Hi everyone. This is Carol Hinkel, president of Triple E. I want to welcome you all to our third Zoom webinar. I do also want to remind you that we'd love to have your questions throughout the lecture by hitting your Q&A button and typing it in. If you need additional assistance on that, we did include instructions yesterday in the email that Glenn sent out to you. So feel free to put on your thinking caps. I'd now like to ask Michael Orlanski of our program committee to please introduce today's speaker, Michael. Thank you. Hello everyone. Today it's my pleasure to welcome Sean McMannan. He's been superintendent of schools in Winooski, Vermont, since 2013. Before that, he spent 12 years at Champlain Valley Union High School in Heinsberg, eight years as principal. In 2010, the Vermont Principles Association honored Sean as the Robert F. Pierce Secondary Principal of the Year, and he's received many other honors and awards for his leadership. Sean has also taught in California, Alaska, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, mainly with students who have special behavioral and educational needs. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana, Southern Africa, he taught students and worked with Botswana educators to develop new curricula and methods. Sean earned his bachelor's degree at Penn State. He master's in education at Leslie College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And he carried out advanced studies in educational leadership at St. Michael's College. The title of today's talk is Education in Vermont Today, Challenges, Opportunities, and Innovations in our School. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Sean McMann. Thanks, Michael. And thanks, everybody. I wish I could see everybody, but these days we're kind of working with what we got. But I really appreciate your organization inviting me to spend some time with you guys. And I understand that the format is kind of lecture and then questions and answer. And I always love to have these opportunities be more of a conversation or a dialogue than a lecture. So certainly, if we're able to, go ahead and write your questions, as they've said, in the Q&A field. And if I can maybe even stay abreast of those as we go, I'll try to answer them as we move forward. So I just want to, I want to label the fact that we're in very unique and strange times right now. And I hope that all of you are staying healthy and active and that you and your families are all safe and healthy. I feel very fortunate to live in Vermont right now. And I think we have all done a fabulous job of combating the virus, and which is allowed for a lot of healthy activities for us to be able to take advantage of and to maintain our physical and our mental health. And for our ability to get our students back in school, and particularly for our youngest ones who are growing just exponentially all the time. And so the ability to get them back in for their academic and their socialization is just of the utmost importance. And it is a concern, you know, some colleagues of mine, you know, we've been meeting as a regional superintendent's group. And, you know, now that teachers have been back for a few weeks and meeting with students, you know, we're finding that due to remote learning for a couple months at the last at the end of last school year and then, you know, the summer and the beginning of this school year. We are finding that students have not made as much progress as we would have expected and so that's very, very concerning to us. So when we talk about the challenges opportunities and innovations in education today, I think first and foremost that's going to be one of our biggest challenges right now is how do we get our arms around what students, what progress students have made and what they haven't made and then design learning to try and meet those needs in a very responsive way as we move forward because what we've learned, particularly in the last 15 years or so of education of research is that we need to meet students where they are is no longer are the days of we walk in front of a classroom. We teach and we hope that students get everything that they need and then they pass a test and they move on to the next unit and eventually on to the next grade. We've become a lot more responsive in our instruction in our assessment and differentiating for students who are have different levels of understanding different backgrounds. And so we have a lot of work to do in that area and in this year in particular it's going to be pretty challenging as we are still navigating a pretty fragile system. Giving staffing challenges during the pandemic and heading into the winter season and the flu season and so forth. So I think that that's kind of most of our most of our immediate challenge. I did want to back up a little bit and I just wanted to, I appreciate Michael's introduction and I wanted to add a little bit of meat to my background and then I wanted to talk about the Winooski School District and some of our demographics and our unique qualities and characteristics. But I think a couple of things that I wanted to share with everybody that don't necessarily come out in a resume are that I feel like some of the people in the places that have shaped me as a person and a learner. You know we're listed in that resume but and some of them weren't but the people that have been the most integral in my life are my parents and you know both my parents came from abject poverty in and around Cincinnati, Ohio, and my father made his way to a undergraduate business degree at the University of Cincinnati and eventually a master's business administration through the GI Bill. He became an Army Ranger and was in Vietnam. And you know my my mother was one of 10 children lived in the house that her father a carpenter built, which is far too small for all of them. But growing up with parents who moved from from poverty into middle and eventually upper class socioeconomics allowed me I think to be taught those values of remembering where you come from caring for others, doing choosing to live your life in a purposeful way that contributes to the world and makes it a little bit better hopefully. And, you know, I remember my mother, you know, she never got her undergraduate degree she did a couple of different things she was a kind of a radiologist assistant, she was very successful real estate agent. And she was always involved in in the church, and she was always involved with single moms and their families, and she, she always knew that that was a way that she felt specially connected to giving back to her community. And so those were just some of the values that I've really taken with me and tried to also bestow upon my two daughters, Ani who is 19 and in her second year of college. And she was in her first year at Ithaca and has decided due to the pandemic to live at home and save some money and go to UVM. So we're happy to have her at home this year. And then my oldest Brenna is a senior ambassador. She's a neuroscience major, possibly going to med school. And, you know, my wife and I have tried really, really hard to instill some of those same values in our children, even though they've grown up in a fairly privileged environment. And so those are some of the some of the key people in my life that have really influenced me and shaped me and continue to some of the places. So I think that the growing up in the suburbs of Detroit and learning about Detroit in different ways through my own white privilege where I was taught that it was a dangerous place. While at the same time doing community service and being brought up with parents who brought us down to the soup kitchen once a month to actively participate in helping with meals. That that really had an impact on me, both from the desire from from seeing how people were living so differently than I was and the the needs that were happening not very far from my very comfortable home. And it fueled that desire and me to to want to help others. And so the other place that was really, really pivotal for me was being a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana in Southern Africa, and that was, it was just an amazing experience. And it was I was, it was my first teaching job. So unfortunately for the students I served. I wasn't a seasoned teacher yet made a lot of mistakes, but they were very patient with me. And it was one of the first times in my life that I was ever a racial minority. I lived in a village called Kanye of about 10,000. And I was one of about five white people in the village. And so I learned a lot from that experience. You know, and I had the luxury of, you know, being able to move. I had the resources to be able to have that experience and go somewhere else and enjoy the, the, the advantages of my own white privilege in America in particular. So those things have, have really shaped me and I think a lot of those pieces have influenced how I've decided to spend my professional career. I was at CVU for about 12 years. I first entered education as in special education and wanted to help students with disabilities. And students with disabilities will continue to have a special place in my heart as they kind of fight to overcome a lot of challenges that many people don't have. And I ended up in a wonderful place at CVU with a fantastic high school and great community. And I began to miss the racial, the linguistic, the cultural diversity that I had experienced when I was in Botswana. And when I was in White Mountain, small village up outside of Nome in Alaska. And it's hard to find that in Vermont as we're the second or third white estate in the country. So I had always kind of kept my eye on Winooski in Burlington and hadn't really thought about making the move to becoming a superintendent because I'd always thought of myself as, as more of a building leader and someone who wanted to be in the day to day, a little bit more. And through some various mentors, I was encouraged to look at this and in and Winooski school district is unique in that way. And that we're a pre K12 district, all in the same campus. And so that felt really good to me because I can still have access to students to teachers and staff and stay connected and visible to people. And that's really where I get a lot of my energy from. While at the same time moving into superintendency, having my background of a business degree. And actually having an interest in the law when I was in undergrad. Those things have been very, very helpful in the role of superintendent. So now that I've kind of moved towards Winooski, I just want to share some information with you about our school district to give you kind of paint a picture of the landscape of who we are in Winooski. The city of Winooski is about 7000 people. And in our school pre K12 single campus, we have a few years ago, we were up close to 900 were hovering around 800 right now, and that is specifically because of federal immigration policy. And that they've not been resettling refugees, hardly at all in the last couple of years since the Trump administration took over. And that has that is a regular refugee resettlement is a regular contributor to our student enrollment. So we are, we are hoping that those resettlement numbers will go back to the normal rates that they had been for over 20 years, and that we continue to be a refugee resettlement community to the levels that we have been in the past. And about 40% of our students are English language learners who speak over 20 different languages. And when I say 20 I mean languages kind of primary languages and also several dialects within that. We really have some primary languages and we have cultural liaisons who act as interpreters and translators in those languages, such as Napoli Somali. Arabic Congolese and Gala. And many, many other languages, Burmese. So, we're fortunate to have all those folks the the linguistic and the racial diversity that we have is so different than any other place in Vermont and that's really what attracted me to coming here because I wanted to continue to learn about different cultures it's very fascinating to me. And I empathize with the levels of poverty that are in our community the levels of food security. Transition of a refugee coming to a new country and settling in and all of the things that are associated with that. It felt to me that it was a great move in my career to get back to the original purpose of why I really got into education in the first and I'm in my eighth year now in Winooski and I can say with 100% assurance that that is surely the case it feels very very purposeful. There are challenges all the time, and there's lots of new and interesting learning that happens all the time by being surrounded by all kinds of different differences that happen whether they're religious cultural racial linguistic socio economic being in that dynamic environment is is really amazing. So we're also our students the way they calculate kind of the de facto poverty rating is what's called free and reduced lunch. And we're typically around 60 to 70% of our students qualify for free or reduced lunch, which also gives us some additional federal funding to support students living in poverty and their particularly their math and their literacy needs, which we use. We are also about a quarter of our students have disabilities, which is a higher rate than across the state. The state average I believe is around 16%. So we're pretty significantly over that. And you tend to see higher rates of people with people with disabilities in lower income environments, and because Winooski, the city has a very high rate of affordable or low income housing. You know, I think that is that's that's part of the reason that we see that that rate. We also under the leadership of Robin hood who has been in our school district for nearly 40 years starting as a teacher, and is now our special services and community learning director, we get countless plaudits for serving students with disabilities and our staff and Robin go above and beyond to to meet the special needs of of our students and families. A couple of the things I point out about our district are Winooski school district and the city were actually coming out of some in 2012 2011 to 2013 or really in the midst of some chaos leadership chaos. There was a lawsuit brought by a city manager against the city. There was threats of teacher strikes. There was angst between school board members and the staff in the school. There was angst between the community and the school and local government. There was a couple of different things that that started to turn that around. One was deep to Carl became the city manager. Also we had Mike to Carl deeks brother and then Tory Cleveland, who came on to the school board and helped bring in policy governance a model of governing in 2012 2013. And then fortunately I was hired in 20 in the spring of 2013. And so there was a turnaround in leadership that was starting to happen. And so it was really exciting to be a part of that because I saw so much potential in the Winooski school district and in the city, being that we're relatively small a mile square and we can kind of get our arms around each other and we can really create some challenges that we have and really bend the curve on some of those things, whether it's food security, academic expectations homelessness. I feel like there's a real way for us to do that when we when we band together. And so in 2014, our board was given the Vermont school boards award for exceptional school board leadership based on their work through policy governance. We have stable I think in visionary administrative leader leadership across the school district and the city, Jesse Baker, a wonderful city manager is now been in place for a number of years. The city council is very high functioning. We work very closely the city and the school district to try and be really consistent in our approach to the community and keep our communication very consistent as well. Also, in starting in 2013 and beyond we've had the opportunity to really grow from a learning perspective, we partnered with Burlington school district in an LMA education foundation grant that was really around equity through proficiency based graduation requirements as we were moving towards the requirement in Vermont to graduate students based on proficiencies and we have been viewed as a leader in that work across the state and even across New England and continue to do that work we had our first graduating class by proficiencies in this past year, which was fantastic and so we're continuing that work. We also currently have a grant from what's called the bar foundation out of Boston where we're working on widening what's called the learning ecosystem. So we're working on community based learning. In a couple different ways, having our students get out into the community which is a bit challenging right now during a pandemic, but also connecting with community partners and having them either come into the school in person or virtually we work with our students and apprenticeships in being able to come in and do interviews and find out about careers, do short job shadowing stints and so forth. And so we're in I think year three of that grant we have three more years and we got $500,000 to do that work so we're very excited. And also we have another grant from the Roland Foundation. And we have one of our high school math teachers Luke Dorfman who is really working on equity and anti racism right now. So we have a lot going on in the school which is very exciting. A couple other program notes that I would about the school district, we were an early adopter for preschool, and we were trying to grow our number of preschoolers that are accessing program about six years ago, we were at 29% and we were up as high as I think a low 70% two years ago. Due to our construction project that I'll talk a little bit about later. We have had to decrease the the number of slots in the last year or two but we will then go back with our building is complete with the renovations and double our capacity. So we're really excited about that. The other thing that we've been doing over the last six years is we've been focused on a growth model for our students. So, instead of looking at the standardized testing, like the aspects as the end all be all, they are still an important metric for us to consider. But we meet students where they are and we want to ensure that they are making at least one year's growth every year in literacy and math. And so we track that locally. And we don't have data from this past year because of the remote learning environment for the last three months but in the prior year, K 12 about 74% of our students made at least one year's growth and reading and two thirds. We're making that growth in math. And so we're watching that we have that data for every individual student over time and we we track the student and many other metrics in a very personalized way as they move through our system, which we think is really unique because a student can come to preschool here and all the way through graduation and stay on the same campus. Another piece and then I'll get to the construction project. So wellness has been a really important part that of my leadership since I've come to Winooski were the only well I think now there are two or three school districts in the state that have a wellness coordinator who really focus on dimensions of wellness for staff and for students and our theory of action on that is that if our staff members are well across those dimensions physical, intellectual, mental emotional spiritual dimensions, then they will be much better equipped to serve our students and their great models of wellness for our students. We've done a lot around food security underneath the umbrella of wellness. We're a community eligibility provision so all of our students receive free breakfast and lunch. We have fresh fruits and vegetables for K through eight every day. We stuff backpacks for students that are in need on Friday so that they have food for the weekends. We work with a wonderful Vermont food bank and have what's called veggie van go every other week where families and students can come and get bags of fresh vegetables to take home. And we've been we've been noticed by the Vermont business leadership, wellness award and worksite wellness awards for a lot of that work. So I want to talk a little bit about I'm going to try and look at the Q&A while I'm doing this about the capital project. Great questions. All right, I'm going to I'm going to answer a couple of these questions while I see them. And then I'll talk about the capital project. So, Glenn thanks for your question that says should a candidate to be a principal of a school be required to have had a teaching a classroom experience. I think so. You don't necessarily have to have that and it differs by state. But what I have found in my role as kind of an assistant or a house director at CVU and then the principal was and now a superintendent when I can talk to teachers and staff members about my experience. That builds a lot of credibility and it helps. And it really helps to build that trust in that relationship. So I think it should be required. Thanks. Are there teachers in Winooski exploring using curriculum from the 1619 project, not specifically right now. I would say that we definitely do have teachers who are Incorporating more History and humanities types of curriculum that go beyond the typically narrow curriculum of how we present our history and to include more perspectives of indigenous peoples, but the 1619 project specifically know And then what was different about the class that graduated due to proficiency compared to prior years with different graduation criteria. So the old way was what was called Carnegie units or credits. So basically if you took a class, you went to class enough, you passed the tests enough to get at least a D minus on a Some sort of a grading scale and you accrued enough credits, then you got a diploma proficiency is about Showing very specific skills and content understanding and having very specific descriptors in what we call scales or rubrics that describe how How people how students show those skills and those content proficiencies. So we have those scripted out everything from communication to financial literacy And students have copies of those so they know exactly the descriptor that they have to meet to meet the minimum proficiency and then once they've met that they can continue to grow and head for Areas of what we call distinction well beyond that So it is a big transition. We certainly do not have it perfected, but I think it's a much better way of learning and graduating students so that they will be better prepared Not only for post-secondary education but for career and and for life in general, because they have to have to get to a much deeper understanding as described by these proficiencies Okay, so I want to tell you a little bit about our Our Capital project, which is really exciting In large part because right now I see myself having really three big priorities and they are seeing this capital project through which started the middle of June and runs through August of 22 And then The second part is is navigating the reopening and the continuation of learning throughout this pandemic whenever it may Conclude and then the third thing which I'll talk about a little bit later is our commitment to becoming an anti racist school district So a little bit about Our capital project so we spent about two years evaluating our facility having people come in writing reports Looking at all of our systems such as HVAC, you know our water systems everything and this building had been pieced together Over many many years starting in 1957 and then having about every 8 to 10 8 to 12 years another additional project on the facility itself and it wasn't all connected very thoughtfully So So We started doing all that work we assess the need and then we gathered together a group of stakeholders and we started talking about what what do we want the building to to look like In the future and not not just for the next few years but when you're you're renovating a school building you're thinking about the next 50 years and how do you how do you Create a building that's going to be useful well into the future And so we did that and then and we worked with some architects and you know priced everything out and the board selected an option to bring forward to the community that was that price tag of $57.8 million And in May of 2019 the city voted and we passed the bond very narrowly and so then we began the next layers of work which then resulted in the project starting this Past June and we're very excited about it. Some of the new pieces will be a new middle school a new gym a New cafeteria a new entrance to the building and some additional elementary pods Classrooms and we built the middle school and the elementary pods around the idea of flexible In collaborative learning environments where we can integrate our English language learning and our special needs support services our literacy and our math support services all right into The classroom so we're very excited about that we had great news recently in that we got a USDA loan for the full amount which means that we believe we're going to save close to $11 million over the life of Of the 30 year bond, which is a tremendous boon to the to the taxpayers of Winooski and but it's going to be a big job Over the next two years to ensure that that project comes in on budget and that we we get the product that we want for for generations in the future. I'm going to go back and take a look at some of these. Okay, so this is a great question and I think it will get us into some of the the anti racism pieces that I wanted to talk about it says When Winooski students interact with those from other schools in Vermont as in sports science fairs and so on is the diversity of your students led to any challenges difficulties that are opportunities for learning and growth. So I'll start with that one absolutely. I think in general it has led to Good relations, but also I know directly from some of our students they have They've experienced racism, particularly during athletic events. And not just from other student athletes but also from coaches and from parents fans So that's incredibly Distressing to us when we hear about it. We try to we try to let our students try to make sure that they're comfortable so they tell us about those things when they happen And then we report and work with the other school districts and to do the best that we can to hopefully Repair the harm that's been done But also there's been a lot of really positive experiences that our students have had we have a lot of exchanges you know there are many Other particularly high schools who are very curious and want to learn about the different cultures that are represented represented in Winooski so it's pretty common over the course of the year That we host other high school classes and they will come or we will go there and and and have student to student conversations about their refugee experience or Their experience of being a student of color in Vermont And then the next part of the question is can you point to examples of success in bridging ethnic and cultural divides either within the school or in the community So that yeah this question really I'll give you one very specific example that happened very early after I arrived in Winooski was In the high school there was there was a cultural battle going on amongst high school boys because there was Somali students and what's called Somali Bantu students And they were not getting along at all and it was resulting in physical fights and altercations And the way that we bridge that was we got the Somali elders involved who are primarily men and we spoke with them about what was happening and we asked their help And you know this is a very deep issue for Somalis because it goes back generations for them in their families across these different groups And but what they decided was that education was far too important to allow this to continue And so they got together and they made it clear to all of the parents in their cultural group and the students that were involved That this needed to stop and it was their expectation that it was going to stop and it did It was just such a powerful moment of engaging parents and elders and community members in the value of education and coming together And so that's an example I always think of Let's see Okay, so I'm going to talk a little bit Okay, so here I'll answer a few more of these questions and then should teachers principal superintendents live in the communities where they teach So I think that's a bit of a double-edged sword. I have not lived in the community. I live in Colchester And I personally don't think that it should be a requirement Because I think people have different circumstances as a principal and a superintendent I spent a lot of time in my communities already And I feel like for me it would it's already it's already hard sometimes to protect some of my personal time And I enjoy part of it whenever I go down to church did I run into a lot of my old CVU students and it's wonderful to catch up with them And there's moments where you know I don't want that I just want to be with my wife and have a date night and not be stopping and talking to people all the time So I think it depends on the people I don't think it should be a requirement, but I think there's certainly some benefits We have a number of our teachers who live in Winooski and they are just an integral part of the community in many many ways And it helps them build relationships not just with their students but with their parents and other people across the community that that that really bring us together Homogenous or heterogeneous grouping and class size. So we kind of have a mix. We have some homogenous groupings in that we have What are called newcomer programs. So our students who are learning English Are grouped together and get intense instruction to move them as quickly as possible to to English literacy so that they can Gain social and eventually enough academic language that they can get into their to the regular programming Another example of homogenous grouping would be that we have students with emotional and behavioral disabilities and we have a therapeutic classroom at each level elementary middle and high That is built to meet their therapeutic and behavioral needs and learning needs And then we have a lot of heterogeneous groupings. So in regular education all of our elementary middle and high are heterogeneous Teachers will sometimes break out student groups in different ways. So they may break out based on reading level and do it more homogenous or heterogeneous But that gets done at the classroom level and then class size. We have worked really hard because of the complexity of our student population I know for example, you know a second grade classroom. We try to keep those numbers below 18 And when you think about a quarter of those students having a disability 40% of them having English language learning needs And 60 to 70% of them living in poverty that brings a level of complexity for the classroom teacher That that can be really challenging. And so that's why we've really chosen to commit resources to keep those class sizes lower I think we're getting kind of close to I think what's 245 will go so And I see a question about how the group called Winooski students for anti-racism brought significant proposals to the school board and has accomplished many of their goals. So this was a very interesting process that is continued. So With the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery You know the the national state and local narrative change and there was so much pain in communities of color And we certainly felt that here and what happened originally was our staff. We started to work together on this and so right after graduation and in later June We had staff coming together and talking about that. First of all getting together just to process what was happening because all this pain and racism that was happening during a pandemic People's emotional states were pretty, pretty fragile And people wanted action. They wanted to do something and change things. So as a staff we started getting together and working on that and identified some areas that we wanted to work on And while that was happening a student group, the Winooski students for anti-racism started mobilizing And then they put together a list of eight demands that they presented to the school board And if any of you have been following what happened was our governance processes at the board level kind of fell apart It was a combination of virtual board meetings where there was not enough controls around the meeting itself I think board members myself being influenced by the emotion that students were conveying and also wanting to support students in this work because they were bringing it forward with such passion And so we floundered the board and I we floundered for a number of meetings trying to figure out what's the best way to go about this And so I think that we've gotten to a good place recently and we actually have a board retreat with Winooski students tomorrow And with my district leadership team in the board where we're going to do some restorative circles about some of the harm that may have happened during that process And then we're going to mobilize and create committees and structures around the demands. Six of the eight demands were accepted by the board And they're things like recruiting staff of color and putting resource and time and money into doing that properly. We had started to do that a little bit, but it got waylaid during the pandemic We're talking about implementing restorative justice practices, which we have a new grant with Spectrum family new services. So a couple of these things we were already kind of in motion And the board is committed to dedicating resources towards these means. The other thing that In the demands that students want to do is they want to create a comprehensive mentoring program, particularly for ELL students but for all students to make sure that they have Adequate adult leadership in helping them move towards their goals We're also looking at like an audit of our policies procedures curriculum Our building doing student and staff and parent interviews to see if our all of those things reflect our student body or not, or if we are kind of continuing to Write policies and procedures and implement curriculum from a more traditional Eurocentric perspective and I know that we will certainly find some things that a lot of things that will need to be changed And I think we have changed some things along the way So I'm I'm I'm so amazed at our students have done an incredible job of leadership in this respect and we have shifted this year in the high school to what's called integrated and thematic curriculum And one of the themes that half of our students will be working on is is social racial justice. So they're going to be able to continue to do this work as part of their curriculum as part of their proficiencies moving towards graduation. So it's not just an add on to what they're trying to do to meet the requirements of a proficiency based diploma So I'm really excited about that that we've created it has created a lot of, you know, so in addition to trying to get school reopened during a pandemic and managing 57.8 million dollar capital project and then having this very important and very emotional work on top of that I think that we struggled from a capacity perspective to be able to do all of this work really well and we're in the process of really trying to prioritize it Delegate it properly so we can get a lot more people working on it. Let's see have any here's another question have any issues or concerns or risen with particular regard to the education and overall school experience of girls and young women who are from diverse ethnic cultural and spiritual backgrounds have families objected to some classes of due to gender. So that last part I have not heard of many objections to class or attack activities I know from my experience I started about four years ago with some other staff members we started a spring soccer program. And I coach the girls side and some colleagues of me coach the boys, and we wanted to give them a spring opportunity because for a lot of our students playing club soccer was was not necessarily accessible because of cost because of transportation. So we wanted to bring it to them, and we had a nice partnership with the Nordic soccer club to do that. And I did find some situations where I had some some young girls who really wanted to play, but their parents would not let them play for various reasons sometimes it was that they needed to come home and take care of their younger siblings and make dinner. Sometimes it was because girls in that particular religious or cultural group did not play sports that there was not a an allowance or an expectation that they would engage in in athletic activities. And so there were times where I would, I have gone and talk to parents with some of our interpreters and advocated for students to be a part of a soccer program or something else. And I try to balance respect for folks beliefs with the fact that we have a lot of opportunities great opportunities for some of our students, and they may be new to parents. But it's important to support their students and trying trying new things and engaging with opportunities and that's a part of students overall health. It's a part of our overall programming that's available. So there's there's certainly been some of that. Yeah, I'd say that's, I don't know that we certainly have had some situations back to some of the difficulties. You know we had a specific situation where a Muslim girl was on a softball team. And the, the umpire was telling her that, you know, she had to take off her hijab, or she had to talk it in, make sure that it wasn't flowing around and, you know, getting into these discussions in the heat of an athletic event. And sometimes with people not having the proper background on why a young woman might be wearing a hijab, what the meaning of that is, you know, so we've certainly had some of those issues and we try to do two things we try to both protect our students and make sure that they feel cared for and supported and we try to also educate people that we come upon that that may not have all of the learning about these particular cultural and religious things. All right, let's see. Yes, so are the the f-35s taking off and landing over when is the affecting learning and has the construction project taken the noise levels. Yes. So the f-35s I just met with the National Guard a couple weeks ago, where they shared kind of an overview of their schedules, but in the spring and in the fall or the most disrupted times and they're loud and they fly fairly close to our school. And so they do disrupt, you know, it's not uncommon during those warm months when windows are open or if a classroom is working outside, which we have a lot of outdoor classrooms. We have, we set up tents to have eight outdoor classrooms right now. We set up, you know, for a minute or something because you really cannot hear each other. So we do our best working with the city, working with the National Guard and even working with the airport because we found, you know, that some of the commercial patterns, flying patterns were affecting noise as well. And the construction project also. We did a lot of the site work over the summer. But there will be times where the noise levels certainly go up due to the project and we do everything that we can to mitigate that to try and do it at times where it won't impact learning as much. Well, let's see. Could you explain the debate or over whether to have an armed police officer and the Winnieski schools this year and its current status. So the current status is that our school resource officer. Jason Cider he is in the school. He is doing his job per normal. What happened was, there was kind of going back to that the governance issues that happened with the board around the student demands. There was there was confusion about whether or not the demand document was kind of a strict and literal policy document or whether it should be coupled with the board discussion about it and should more be taken as a writing document document with the spirit of it and not the literal interpretation. So we ended up going back and forth on that, unfortunately, which, which caused some angst for for all involved. But it is part of a memorandum of understanding that the board has with the city to supply a school resource officer we've had one in the Winnieski schools for over 20 years. Since I've been here, I feel like it's been very successful and integral part. I am open to the discussion around, could we have, could we meet the same needs without having a gun on campus. And we are committed to in the next few months, holding some community education engagement and voice around school safety and security from a broader perspective to hopefully get the community engaged around what does it mean to feel safe and secure in the school, and even in the broader community, and what are we doing as a whole community as a school to ensure that people are safe and secure. And can we do it differently. You know, if in fact there are members of our community, which I know there are some that feel unsafe because there is a gun on campus, are there ways for us to look at that differently. So we are definitely going to be doing that in the next couple of months we're working out a process right now, because the board needs to notify the city during the budget cycle, you know in December, whether or not they would like that service of a school resource officer for next year. Let's see. I think that the culture of the international students can be shared with a larger school population. I'm not sure if you mean larger school population outside of Winooski or even just within but I'll take a stab at it. Yes, there definitely are ways to do that. We do do that within our community in that we have students who go down a couple times a year to our senior center. They have a cultural luncheon where they bring foods and talk about, you know, what they are and the importance of them to their particular culture. They do dancing. Napoli dancing in particular. And so that's kind of a way we do it across the community. We do have some also some celebrations that happen sometimes at the school, sometimes in other places in the community to recognize some of the different cultural celebrations that happen. The part that I think we find is sometimes because we are so white in Vermont, we constantly get requests for our students to share their cultures and it can become a drain on them, you know, given some of them, you know, their, their, their family needs, their academic needs, and to continually ask students to be kind of the representatives, you know, can take a toll. While many students and families will, you know, love to share their culture. We also really work with them to make sure that they're feeling respected, not only of their culture but of their time. So that they can be in control of making those decisions. Yeah. Okay, school wide discipline policy. So yes, we do have a school wide discipline policy. Everybody, you're required to have what's called a school conduct policy school discipline and conduct policy which we do have that's pretty broad. And then underneath that we have across our school we have school wide expectations which is the acronym heart. And within each one of those there are very specific expectations for honesty engagement and so forth. And then we have what are called major and minor behaviors. And so teachers are trained to deal with all of those behaviors but particularly to have strategies to deal with the minor behaviors in the classroom the expectation is that teachers are skilled enough to deal with most of those and to keep kids in the classroom so that they're not losing time learning. And then when they get to a point where they need support we have what are called behavioral support teams, we have a behavior coach and a couple behavior interventionists at the elementary and at the middle high. And so they work with teachers they work with parents and directly with students to wrap around and to help. And we have a progression of that because the goal is always to keep students in the classroom, getting the first best instruction. And then we have a variety of ways after that if those strategies are not working to keep trying new things engaging new people in the process to try and meet the needs of those students and then of course we unfortunately then as last resort we we do have a suspension we rarely suspend students, but it is a part of our policy. Sean this has been wonderful what a great window, not only just into the schools but into the community of Windows cake. We really really enjoyed you. Thank you so so much. We hope you'll come back sometime. Great. Thank you so much Carol and thanks everybody for for having me it was it was wonderful to talk to you and great questions. Thank you. Thank you everyone see you next week. Thanks Carol. Thanks Michael. Thank you so much Sean it was great, really appreciate it so much and we learned a lot. Oh good I'm glad. We'll be in touch. All right take care. That's to Chris to do. Yeah, I will. Thanks.