 Everybody knows Orca Media is here because they're here for the board meeting anyway and they asked if they could come to take this too, which works out wonderful for us. So it will be connected to the board meeting pieces, although not technically a board meeting. It looks like we have lots of our board meetings here. I'm going to apologize if there's a squeak in the background. That is my dog who picks the good time to play with his favorite toy. So we're here to talk about this ESSER funding. Let me present here. So I can give the community a sense of what's happening, what we know, what are our guidelines around here to see significant guidelines, and then just to brainstorm a little bit. It looks like we have about 25 people right now, so that's a really good group. I have a Google doc that I will see here. Actually, let me put that in the chat first before we do anything. Sorry, just want to put that in the chat first. Got the link, let's go back to Zoom. It's also in the slideshow, but I wasn't thinking it's at the end of the slideshow. So that's a Google doc with just some opening questions. And as we're going, feel free to use that as like the community brainstorming document. So feel free to, it's meant for you all. So write in it and I'll use that. We use the same process with our staff a week ago. So please, there's guiding questions in there, but those are just that. They're guiding questions. They're not necessarily ones you have to abide by. So please put other ideas and links or whatever you need into that document, because we're going to use those to do some triangulation of data. So let me go back to presentation. And Anna, maybe if you, if people keep coming in, maybe if you could keep putting that link in the chat so people can see it, because I know that when, if people weren't in in the beginning, when I put that in the chat, they may not see it, that'd be great. Okay. So let's get back here. So I have a very quick presentation and then we can talk a little bit more about this money. So this is all about the ESSER funding community forum and what that money is all about. So the state has put out, as you've probably heard, if you've read anything about this or followed any of the press conferences, what they call a recovery plan. I put recovery and quotes because I don't think we need to recover a lot. I see this as how do we move forward and how do we innovate for a different school district perhaps. I don't want to recover what we had. I want to think forward from that. And I think recovery is a very detrimental and defeatist kind of term. So I'd rather have a much more optimistic route. So, so many of you have talked to me about this and I always put recovery and quotes and that's why I think we could have come up with a better name than that. But that's what the agency of education is calling this. And there is a link. Anna will share this presentation. We can share it on our website so that you can see that link. But you can also just, that took those words right from the AOE website. So if you Google Vermont's education recovery, you'll get the documents and all the guidance that we've gotten. It's all up for public use on the AOE's website. But their recovery plan is split into three different buckets. The first being social, emotional health, mental health and well-being. And the quote there you see is straight from the guidance. So it's basically an idea of how is the AOE defining these things because in certain places they define these terms very differently than we would define them in the district. This one is pretty right on those students internalizing externalizing challenges both inside and outside the classroom as well as nutrition, physical health and family functioning. And then the second bucket is student engagement and truancy where it's all students are fully engaged in learning and academic progress regardless of the extent to which they experience remote or in-person learning. This is the piece that has a bit of difference between school districts and the AOE. When the agency of education primarily talks about this budget of student engagement and truancy, they're talking about attendance. And that's pretty much their line in the sand. I think of many other things when I think of student engagement, but the agency of education seems to be defining this primarily as attendance. And then academic achievement and of success, of course, identifying the extent to which any students have fallen behind as well as identifying students who have excelled. I will just to Main Street Middle School's horn a little bit. We had our day-to-day today at Main Street Middle School, which was phenomenal and their data does not show that there's a whole lot of falling behind of students. So that's phenomenal work that they're doing over there that is fresh in my head. So there are buckets. So when we, we now have what's called ESR money, oops, I'm missing some E's there. Grant will point that out to me. Sorry, it's the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds. So we've gotten thus far a lot of different federal fundings. So when we first came in the form of the CARES Act and that was right away emergency funding. So when we had to buy tons of PPE, tons of cleaning materials, thermometers, everything that we have purchased for the health and safety of our startup this year, we were able to get much of it reimbursed by CARES funds. We also put up a lot of money for childcare and worked with our after school program part two to provide more childcare. And we paid for that out of CARES money. So that was kind of the first round. The second round was ESR one money, which was not significant and had a very short turnaround time, which we used to buy computers. We used to buy Chromebooks and we used to restock and really look at Main Street Middle School libraries, which our data is telling us that Main Street Middle School classroom libraries needed some reboots. So we spent a lot of money on classroom text for Main Street, Main Street Middle School. ESR two and ESR three, though, are quite significant in terms of the amounts that we're receiving. And ESR two, the application is open now. So we know more about ESR two than we know about ESR three. I was in meetings for about four hours today around these two sources. So I was talking about it for a lot today. ESR two is approximately $935,000 coming to our district. The application is due in November of 15, November 15, 2021. But we can only use this money through 2023. It's an end date, a very clear end date for how long this money is available to us to use. So it's non-recurring. It's considering emergency aid, which is important and we'll talk about it in a little bit. Some examples that's from the Agency of Education Guidance. We could use this money from ESR two for construction and renovation, but that construction and renovation has to be directly linked to the recovery plan. And remember, the recovery plan is those three buckets. It's social-emotional behavior learning, it's student engagement and truancy, and it's academic growth. So if we have construction with ESR two, it has to be directly linked to one of those three buckets. So we could purchase instructional materials with it. We could pay for professional development. We could acquire property, which I thought was funny, is one of the examples the Agency of Education uses for this. But for some school district, that might be a reality. For ESR three, we know less about ESR three. We know how much we're going to get. We're going to get 2.2 million. We have to use this money by 2024, September 30, 2024. This is also non-recurring emergency aid. So it will not be there forever, just through September 30, 2024. There's a caveat that 20% is mandated to address learning loss, so that equals about $440,000. We haven't received much more guidance than that. The Agency of Education is expecting the guidance to look very similar to ESR two with a few little caveats, like the 20% piece. And the Agency of Education, because of the amount of ESR three money across the state, they're expecting a lot of construction and renovation projects that they are tying to health and safety. But other than that, it's very similar to ESR two money. So the decision-making process on how this is quite a lot of money, as everybody knows, and it's an opportunity for all of the districts across Vermont, including Montpelier-Roxbury, and that's how we're viewing this. How can we take this money and use it to our advantage the most? And so when we're thinking about our decision-making process, just at a very general stage right now, we're in the brainstorming phase and we're looking for input from a variety of people. We've talked with staff, we continue to talk with staff. We started the conversation with the community tonight. Obviously, we've talked a lot about this in the leadership ranks and we've started talking to our external partners, particularly part two, the after-school programming, because I have a hunch the AOE has eluded but hasn't put it in writing yet that they will be looking for us to use some of this money for after-school programming and daycare for students or childcare for students, because the state has put a huge push on that and is promising a lot. This is their vehicle to do that. So I believe that there will be a big push for after-school. So I was on a phone call with Jeff O'Harris who runs part two just the other day to talk about some different ideas and open up that conversation with him. Once we have lots of different input from the variety of people, we'll triangulate that input. What are the themes that keep coming up? And we'll synthesize that all together and we'll start to combine that data, that information into the themes that we start seeing based also in the recovery plan. So how do those themes connect to our recovery plan that we have to connect these dollars to? And then we'll prioritize. We'll reach out to experts in respective fields and within our staff for feedback on any planning we have. We'll begin and Grant actually has started to do this already, attach real dollar amounts to ideas so that we just know what ballpark we're in with our ideas and then make some decision. Our goal is to have the application for S or two, because S or three isn't open yet, but for S or two, the $935,000 to the agency of education prior to June 30th, 2021, so that that opens up the funds. We know that that money doesn't have to be in until November 15th. However, if we're thinking about summer programming, if we're thinking about anything that we want to have happen starting at the start of school year next year, we have to get those funds approved prior to that time so that we can have it in place and so that we can do our due diligence this spring and summer to get things in place. So we're really looking to move our deadline up into applying for S or two. S or three, we have some more time. There are some parameters that when we think about using one time money that we have to think twice about. So when we're thinking about one time money, we really want to think twice about putting any type of new position or using this money to pay for any kind of new position because the money for the position will only be available for two years. So unless there's an end date for the work of that position, we really need to be cognizant that at the end of two years, we either have to move it to our local budgets or we have to riff that position. We have to get rid of that position which is always hard to do once you have somebody really good in that role. So we have to be really cognizant about any type of position that we think about here. Construction projects, any kind of construction or renovation, they have to fit within federal parameters. So the feds have put these parameters onto us around the recovery planning the agency of education has as well. So any type of construction project has to fit into one of those buckets and we have to go through a significant approval process in order to get our construction projects approved. We have to go through about three or four rounds of approval with the agency of education in order to get construction projects approved. So that's gonna be significant and it's something we're definitely working on because we will be doing some construction with this money. However, it's just, it's something that we have to think about they have to fit in the buckets. Consumer or computer software, we wanna think about that with any kind of recurring expenses that's significant because we'll have to pay for it once, if we still want it, we have to pay for it once the money is gone through our local budgeting process. And then ideas only the agency of education ideas that have a very strong evidence base for success in those three buckets for the recovery plan will be accepted. So we really wanna be thinking strategically about how we can address the buckets that the agency of education has asked us to address through this funding. So those are really the parameters that we have that we've considered as we're thinking about using these monumental funds that are coming towards us. So on this Google doc, you'll see these types of questions. What types of summer programming is needed for our students? What innovative programming might we wanna think about for our students that we need startup funds for? Where are the gaping holes in programming that became more apparent throughout this pandemic or before the pandemic? What significant renovations or construction could be considered for health and safety? What ventilation projects do we need? What heating and cooling projects do we need? That kind of thing. And where are upgrades to our properties needed that can fit into one of the recovery plan buckets? So those are the questions I put on that Google doc and there's the brainstorming doc. I'm gonna stop sharing my screen so I can see you all. And the chat is open too. So if anybody wanted to, we can open this up to conversation. It looks like there's not, we've got 29 people on the call here. So, and I think two of them are Orca. So we can open this up to conversation if you wanna use the raise hand feature, which is if you go into participants, let's say Jim Murphy, you're the king of this for board meetings, it's in. So if you go to, if you hit the participants, like a little column comes on the right hand of your screen. And down at the bottom, there's a little raise hand button next to invite and you. Yeah, there you go. And Jim, did you wanna add on any comments about, I kind of just went off for that, for just the parameters and some definitions of what we are looking at. Did you wanna add anything to that? Not much. I mean, if even if that has a job of kind of laying out what I think is really unique and wonderful opportunity. And I also just wanna say that, one of the reasons I think we can be creative and toward looking with these funds is because of what a fantastic job the administration did of managing our assets during this pandemic. I mean, I think we are really in good shape and in a position where this can be additive rather than where I think some districts are, which is in a true recovery mode. So I just wanna thank the administration for all the hard work they've done to put us here. And then also say that in kind of addition to the parameters that Libby put on, I think really thinking about the community and the district's values and what we can do to promote those and to do some things that will kind of take us to the next level on advancing some of those values and priorities as a community. So I think other than that, nothing to add and thanks for the well put together presentation. All right, so you can put questions in the chat or you can use your raise hand feature. I see Cassie, was that you? I'm gonna miss this, is there a recovery team for MRPS? Vermont afterschool, sold you out there. We do have a recovery team. Again, put that in quotes. So the, we were told to form a recovery team within a week to have it in. Now we have teams, we have guiding, we have guiding coalitions in every one of our buildings, which are leadership teams composed of teachers, IAs and principal and assistant principal. And we also have our district wide leadership team. So we were told to put together a team without knowing any information. We didn't have the guidance as to what we were supposed to use the team for and we had a week. So we just put in our leadership team as our technical recovery team. And as it turns out, as we got more guidance-ish from the state around recovery plans, what the state did, and I appreciate them for doing this, is that they followed the same planning as the continuous improvement planning that we're mandated to do with our federal fundings that we do all year long. And so that's what they've asked us to basically submit is our continuous improvement plan over again. So while I recognize that it sounds like from the press conferences and things, that this is a grand new team and a very large scale, what they've asked us to resubmit is our continuous improvement plan. And the only change that we've had to meet because your continuous improvement plan have to address SEBL and academic growth. The only piece that was additive to that was the truancy piece and how we would address the truancy piece and absenteeism, which quite honestly we haven't had, we've had a bit of, but it is not anywhere near some of my colleagues, it's not a tremendous, our absenteeism and truancy is not much greater than what it is on a typical year. What are your plans to hear more widely from communities? So we're trying to put out for the community to get in touch with us about different ideas that they might have through this type of work. Once we have a lot of different ideas, we're gonna work on reaching out to people in the community to say, hey, what do you think about these? To get some more feedback on it. Yeah, and I'll also add, the board has public comment at the beginning of each session. In addition to other organized forums, that's another opportunity to plug into the first few minutes of the board meeting and weigh in. Yeah, and I know that our principals also have, UES and MSMS have parent groups that they meet with often. Yeah, and email as well, dropping ideas to the administration copying the board all good ways to weigh in and we'll definitely do more reach out as well. Julia, you have your hand up, go for it. Yeah, so in regards to that, I just wanna put a plug in for doing specific outreach to marginalized communities, to BIPOC families, to families with students with disabilities, families with LGBTQ students. Cause I think it's good to sort of cast the wide net and open up for the feedback, but what we're learning, I think over and over again, is that we really need to specifically make an extra effort to hear from folks and we know just from all the things we know about how our country works and how our culture works and how our local situation works but when there are gaps in anything they are more likely to affect the more marginalized folks in our communities. The other thing I just wanna put a plug in for tonight is I am really concerned as a mental health provider, really concerned about the system, the existing resources that we have in place for students and for children, for everybody actually. And I'll just say, it's not necessarily solely a school problem, it has to do with the whole ecosystem of mental health resources, but that will definitely impact our students and our families. And I would really love to see, I just sort of by way of pointing that of saying what's going on, I have been in private practice in this town for six years and it's always been a little bit hard to make referrals, it's always a little bit hard to find spots for people but all of a sudden right now I am getting multiple calls a week for intake requests and not only am I full but everyone I typically refer to is full, even the practices where it's like I know they're gonna have a spot are full and I just spoke the other day with somebody who runs a practice like that, it's a group practice, there's multiple clinicians there and she said she's trying to hire more clinicians to try and meet the need and can't find people. So I know Libby that I've heard you say publicly that you're on Vermont Edition that mental health resources are not an issue in our district, but I do think that very much, and I think that the mental health folks that we have on board, the social workers, the guidance counselors are amazing and I think their plates are already too full and they're gonna get more full as the community is less able to support kids outside of school. I would really love to see a short term, like a contracted two year position to have somebody really work on strengthening the network of mental health supports and are both informal and formal. And I think one example of that is the referral network that has cost nothing, it's been free that we've created to help to support the school staff in referring matching kids with open spots. I think there need to be creative solutions like that and unless somebody's funded, unless there's somebody whose job it is to do that, it's really hard to go beyond little projects here and there, but I mean, I think there are peers, family peer support type things that could get put in place. I think there's kid peer support things that could get put in place or even just creative ideas like that referral network that would really take advantage of the amount of caring and sort of community spirit that we have if we could really harness that and organize it. Yeah, great. So I would encourage you to put down real specifics on there at Google Doc or on a separate Google Doc and make sure you email it to me and if you have a proposal and a plan. Absolutely. Bridget, go ahead. Hey. Hi, my friend. Hi. Thank you. Before I start with some thoughts about this, I do just want to say a big thanks to you personally, Libby, and to every single person that works in this program for how successful this year has been under incredible circumstances. So thanks. Hey, on the funding issue, my recollection was that before pandemic hit that you and the leadership team were working very hard on rolling out district-wide efforts aimed at equity and at curriculum development across the district. So I just wanted to put in a pitch for using some of this funding to get that work back off the ground that was interrupted by the pandemic. And I know hiring additional staff long-term is not the greatest use of one-time funds, but surely adding some support for you and Mike Barry and the principals to do some of that work, the K-12 science curriculum, the health curriculum is something that could be done on a two-year basis instead of forever. So that was the pitch that I wanted to make, particularly on the science side and whether that could be combined with makerspaces and lab development on the construction side. That would be awesome. That's it. We got those ideas. We actually stay tuned for the board meeting on May 5th. I think that's the right date, the first March-May board meeting, because we're going to talk continuous improvement. That and the plan that Mike has put in place for curriculum development in particular is well, it's going to be well-established. Yeah, so pay attention to that board meeting. Great, thanks. But you brought up one thing that made me think today, Andrew Grant and I, Andrew LaRosa, our director of buildings and grounds, Grant Geisler, our business manager, myself after a meeting with the agency of education today and other superintendents across the state around this. We're bringing up Main Street Middle School. We had that board committee and we have lots of data around Main Street Middle School and the needs there. And can some of this help solve some of those challenges that we have there with that building? We're spending a little bit of time, particularly in terms of the kitchen and the cafeteria and eating space and do we have enough room there for kids? Is there a way to redesign that space that we have more room for cooking and kids? And also the playground and also the science labs. Those were the biggies that came up during that committee meeting. So that data that we have already collected from community and from teachers over in that particular building, we have that in front of us is one of the data sources that we're using to as we brainstorm right now. Cassie, Tuver and Upper, is that from before? Yeah. Hi, how's everybody doing? Happy beautiful Wednesday afternoon. I will enter some ideas into the Google Doc. Lots of thoughts around after school and summer and lots of supports that my organization can provide. So there's a lot of opportunities in there. And something else I've been thinking about is around outdoor education and outdoor learning and how can the money be used to support that moving forward? And I'm thinking of this through the UES lens because my daughter is in first grade and she loves eco so much. But I'm just trying to, I don't have an answer here but I'm just like, how can we put money towards that to make it even more awesome than it already is? And it already is really awesome but I know we don't have space for outdoor classrooms but what is it that we, that teachers or students need for more outdoor learning? Is it curriculum that can be written and is ready to go for them? Is it other supplies? I was just talking with a friend who does the kind of consults and does about 10 hours a week at Wadesfield Elementary School on their outdoor education program. And I was like, this is just such a great opportunity because there is evidence there. I mean, it's like, and it touches on the mental health. It supports learning. It helps our students recover. So I think it fits in perfectly to me with some of these goals. And I'll just have to think a little more creatively about like what specifically, or maybe this is a really good ask for teachers. Like what would they need? Yeah, to like take ego to the next level. But I will, I've got lots of other things that I'm not best at right now. And if you don't want to have a like for the Google Doc you can send me any kind of email whatsoever. Great. And then there's some things in the chat. Jeff Fitzgerald. So I know Ken Jones is going to be presenting later this evening. Yes, about the schools and net zero goals of the city. There are HVAC issues that can be coupled with energy efficiency. This is a great pot of money to use, absolutely. And I can talk about the HVAC specifically another pot of funds that came our way but I didn't mention earlier was grant money to Efficiency Vermont which you may have heard about also from the news. And Andrew LaRosa did a phenomenal job of jumping on that right away. And so our HVAC actually works to the top of its capacity right now. So he, because of that grant money that work was done prior to this school year in getting ready for this school year. So HVAC is in a really good spot right now. We were talking today, I'm gonna get the wrong acronym. I don't know if Andrew's on this yet or not but he can talk about it later. Ford members, make sure you ask Andrew later about maybe DDT knobs and switches. Grant, what was it? DDC, digital data controls. It was a new term for me. Digital data controls at MHS in particular which has to do with the heating and the air the amount of outside air that the system allows into the classrooms. And at our older buildings actually we have a pretty good system in place but we don't have one surprisingly at MHS that is working as efficiently as we want. So that's another piece that we're looking at that has to do with this type of HVAC kind of issue. Grant, do you wanna say anything more about that? No, I think you got it. It's a newer school but that system is an older one because we've replaced it at other schools and it is about fresh air and CO detection and all kinds of good stuff. And we were actually thinking we might use some fund balance but we could save that and use this money instead. Other thoughts, Bridget, is your hand up from before or is it up for another idea? It was up from before I'll take it down. Okay, just making sure. Other thoughts people wanna add into the conversation. Oh, Cassie, Cassie is like a money. I know you're an after school person, I know. Can the funds be used for all for teacher staff bonuses? Are we allowed to announce that? It's a dumb deal. I don't know if we are. Although you kind of maybe just did that. I know. Don't worry, Cassie, we got you covered. It can't be, this money could not, to answer your question, this particular money could not be used for that purpose. However, we got you covered. Tony, you gotta unmute yourself, Tony. Someday I'll figure it out. My kids are picking on me now. You were talking about facilities at MSMS and I'm just wondering if the track at the high school is sort of in the mix of ideas. That has been brought up as, yep, that is on our brainstorming documents. Yep, that has been brought up. But again, we're triangulating this data, right? So we want, if it's a priority for members of a community, then we should put that down and put it down. It's no harm to put it down to it. Nathan. Thank you, Tony, for that nod to the track. That's a high on my personal wish list. We have 50 kids signed up for middle school track right now and we had a bunch of kids staying late beyond the track practice because they're having so much fun. My question is to Libby or Grant, I know that Congress has not come close to passing the infrastructure initiative, but it seems like there's another potential wave that could affect a number of these areas and I would imagine given the strength of our team that you are thinking strategically about, okay, given how we're reading the tea leaves in Washington, maybe this project fits into that, et cetera. Are you hanging out by my window of my office around four o'clock today? Because Greg and Andrew and I were talking about that exact thing earlier today as we were talking about all these projects and we're like, there's an infrastructure bill that has education funding coming in. So what would be under infrastructure for education? Because Biden's widening the definition or at least trying to. So we were literally talking about that for an hour today. And then my other follow-on to the track facility conversation and I would broaden that to like outdoor basketball courts and other things is that I remember when we did the work on the UES playground, I think we realized in the initial stages before we had all the other complications, I think we realized, oh, wait a minute, this is a green space that will be used by many members of the community. Could we collaborate with the city on funding this? And I think that from my perspective, watching the number of people who use the track or the tennis courts or things like that at the high school, really thinking carefully that these are really community resources that happen to be located at the high school. And then for far enough ahead of this, I think we have a really collaborative city council right now, I don't know if there's a history of working together with that body and thinking collectively about capital improvements. Thanks. Yeah, it's definitely something, Andrew LaRosa has a very strong connection to the city leaders in terms of this kind of thing. So he's gonna be working, be there at the board meeting tonight with Ken and all of that kind of stuff. So I know that Andrew being a community member himself, he's very well-versed of the people and he knows the people and so I think that will be on his, he's our liaison between the two, but you make a very good point because I can imagine the city of Montpelier will be getting some federal funding as well for projects for the community and is there a way to combine like the tennis courts I'm told were a few years back before my time. Yeah, and I would argue that just given our location as the state capital, the fact that we have so many state employees here who sometimes use things after work or during lunch, that it's beyond a community resource. Some of these are region wide statewide resources. Yeah, and the feeling about like the athletics fields, I see Catherine's putting in the baseball field and we got an email about that tonight, I think from Heidi around the baseball field. Those are also things that we've talked about absolutely. And if we could get our outdoor spaces up to par, I'll just put it that way, at the high school, then you also invite, I mean, I hate to put it in this way because it's so great for kids, but it's also a revenue source in terms of, we're right off the highway. We have a big parking lot on the weekend, so there are other things to consider in that vein as well. Jill Remick. Hi everyone, just real quick, because this is not my time to take up, but a board meeting or two ago, Andrew LaRosa walked the board through and the public through a really helpful document that summarizes all the various facility needs at all four of the school buildings. Some of that stuff might not seem particularly exciting like windows or roof or drainage, but field maintenance, things like that, but that list would be really helpful to continue to sort of look at in this context, because I love that we're like dreaming big, but I think he did a really fantastic job of listing objectively the ups and downs of each of the buildings, the recent work that might have already been done that we didn't necessarily know about, and then sort of a wish list of things if we could or if we had the ability, even just things like windows can have such a significant impact on air quality and heating costs and energy efficiency and wasps at the middle school. So I encourage folks who haven't already to check out that list. Thank you. Yeah, and Jill, you make a good point because one of the things that we're talking about is because there's guidelines and parameters of this federal money, are there things that we've been thinking of doing through our capital fund or through fund balance or just through regular maintenance that we could move into as such that fit under the health and safety ventilation kind of piece like the windows, which is a huge ticket item, which would free up those other monetary sources to do other things that don't have, we don't have to go by the guidance to you. So those conversations are well in hand and may come out as like, the community says, wait, what they're doing windows but that would be the reason because if we can use this federal funding to do things like the windows which fit under ventilation and safety, then we can have our money that's already budgeted or in our coffers to do other things that don't have to follow the guidance. I see it's 612, but Kara, you have your hand up. Go ahead, Kara. Yeah, I'm going to join the choir on energy issues. I know that our communities feels really strongly about climate change and that any way that we can reduce our energy costs over the longterm will leave more money for education or the longterm. So if there are pieces of this money that can be put towards health and safety and reducing the energies of those schools, energy burden, then we can have more money for the longterm. There's also the ability to take some efficiency improving projects that we had in our capital fund and perhaps move those to this and then free up further projects for capital fund as well. So I think there's definitely an opportunity to make a headway there. Heidi, I see your hand up. You might be at baseball practice right now. I'm here right now with these boys and they actually wanted to talk to you guys for a minute if we can do that. Yeah. I just pulled them out of practice for a sec. Go ahead. Okay. All right. Can you say your name? Yeah, sure. All right, so my name is Willem Talbert and I'm a sophomore at Montpelier High School and I'm new to the school this year and I came in through the lottery program. I came from Cabot. It's not really that close to Montpelier. I commute in every day. I came to Montpelier for its academic offerings and social opportunities and for its sports programs, specifically baseball. Like others on my team, it's one of my favorite things to do and my goal is to be awarded a scholarship to play for a college or university when I graduate. It's important for me and other members of my team to have the equipment and basic facilities required to play. I hope you'll consider funding your improvements. My family and I value the school so much. I drive each day, sometimes twice a day to Cabot's Montpelier to get to school and practice. Please help support baseball, not only for me but for younger kids who might want to play for MHS in the future. Thank you, Will. Yeah, no problem. And I have one more. Here's Taylor. Hi, my name's Taylor, not only. I'm a junior at Montpelier, also on the baseball team, as you guys can tell. Yeah, I don't have anything scripted like Will did, but knowing that there's money in our possession now of the school district, just the possibility that we could upgrade the field any bit would be amazing. I know it would make all of us feel like we matter to the school and just because as of right now, we don't really have a whole lot of things that other schools have as far as the field goes and fencing and all that. And yeah, it would just be a huge help for not only our program now, but it would continue to be processed for the program throughout the coming years. And I feel like it would really encourage younger kids that might be kind of on the fence about whether or not they want to play in high school. I feel like it would encourage them to really and give them that drive to be like, yeah, I want to play because obviously the school actually cares about us and it's just, it would make it a better program all around. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thank you so much for listening. No problem. I love it. I love that you're actually at practice. Well, I love that these high schoolers felt strongly enough about it that they would do public speaking. Right. You know that's a big deal. Yeah, our baseball players do do that for our new scoreboard that's coming at them too. Absolutely. They're so happy about that. They're so excited. Yeah. I hear it's coming soon. It is. It is, yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Heidi. It's great to hear from the student. Thanks. All right. So it's 616 and our board members have a meeting right at 630. And so we had the 615 time off. So, so board members could go and maybe get a bite to eat before the meeting or inhale a bite to eat. But if you, if you're on this call or you have friends who want to, or friends or other community members who want to weigh in, feel free to email me. I can email any of the board members. You can, we'll put this Google doc up live on our website so people can keep adding to the Google doc. But I, as I get emails around this, I print every one of them out so we have a stack so they don't get lost in Google oblivion. But we're taking all the community feedback we can get right now. So encourage others to just get in touch. And if they want to have a phone conversation, I'm happy to do that as well. And we'll get this presentation up too because there are definitely parameters we have to be looking at. It looks like too Jill just posted the, the Angel Rosa facility report up there. Thanks Jill. There's anything in the future. Please get in touch board members. I think Anna, this is the same link for the board meeting, right? Yeah. So board members, I think you can just shut off your cameras and your, your mics for a second. Go and hail some dinner. And I'll see you at 630. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Lily really quick. What, what. Would be like a deadline for the, this, this phase of community input. Is it like this Friday or Wednesday? No, we hope to have, you know, we'll be talking about this through, through the rest of this month. And we don't have to, it's $935,000. My understanding, I could be wrong. But my understanding is, is that we don't have to put an application for all $935,000 of it. We don't have to put an application for all $935,000 of it. You know, like, so. Yeah, we can add amendments as it goes. And ideally that's what we'd want to do is we find out more needs as we get the kids back in next year. Right. So. So yeah, this is, this isn't an end date process, but we definitely want to have some steps going before the end of this year. So we can move on on those kind of things. That makes sense. Okay. Thanks. Okay. All right. Thanks everyone.