 call the meeting to order 6-0-4. Can I be calling you? Can you hear me? We have any adjustments to the agenda? Hearing none, we'll skip the sign times and timekeeper. We'll just try and keep things quick. Move on to the consent agenda, approving the minutes of Tuesday, March 15th. I'd make a motion to approve the minutes of Tuesday, March 15th, 2022. All second. All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's all right. It's approved. Do we have any public comments at this time? It's Bridget. Bridget? Can you hear me? Okay. This is Taylor, South Royalton. I'm having technical difficulties. Sorry. I just wanted to make a public comment commending the high school students on their presentation of Mamma Mia, which was the second musical since the pandemic and the first one, which really was able to be back in the gym. And it was really nice to see. It was nice to see a full house for two nights. I think it's evidence that as in the past, we could easily do three nights. I want to underline, as I have since before the consolidation, that these performing arts opportunities are more than just a chance for our children to show off what they can do, though that is spectacular. They are also recruitment activities for other students. They instill pride in the community and the community connections, which Bethel and Royalton both voted for when they voted for this consolidation. And I was really glad to see us not hiding our lights under a bushel. It was wonderful to see promotion for that and for the Music and Art Festival on Facebook. It was nice to see it up on the bulletin boards for both schools, which had not happened always in the past. And I really hope that that trend continues. There is no reason we shouldn't be just as proud of our performing arts kids, which are often the same as our sports kids anyway, and our academic kids and all the things they do. And it was really nice to see us really encouraging that. And I would love next time to really see more of the school administration driving the bus on recognizing those kids and shouting out those kids and really giving them the attention and praise they deserve. It was just wonderful to see these last two performances really get a lot of light and heat, so to speak, in a really good way. So thank you. Thanks Bridget. Is there any other public comment? Okay, well we'll move into board comments. Any board comments at this time? All right. The celebration of learning. What do we have this month? There's nothing this month because of school break. We attend to be planned on pathways, but I didn't want to bring teachers in over break to do that. And I think that should happen in person. So a plug for the board that we do plan on having a pathways and personalized learning presentation next month. And that will also incorporate our community schools grant so that folks can see the alignment middle through high school around what we're doing in pathways, community based learning and the community schools grant. And so you'll have a presentation on that next month. On that case, we'll move on to the superintendent's report. So good evening. You have my report in hand. There's gonna be a community letter coming out on Friday to just give a bunch of updates about what's going on across the SU. And also my plan is to update on COVID numbers across the SU that we've been able to track. Of course, not everything's always reported to us, but what we do know, I'll report out on Friday and I'll get the habit of incorporating that into my bi-weekly letters. So that is forthcoming. The other thing I just wanted to highlight is some of what's occurring in the legislature in my pill years. So some of the bills that I'm keeping a close eye on is one, universal school meals. We're following that one closely. We expect that that's gonna be passed for a one year extension of universal school meals that will use some of the ed fund surplus to cover that cost. There's been disagreement in regards to how to fund that permanently. And so I am pleased to know that Montpelier is not going to take action on universal meals without trying to solve how we fund that. As you know, in the past, sometimes things get passed and then it gets turned on to local districts to figure out how to fund it. And it seems like they're gonna try to address this one in Montpelier. But I do expect there's a lot of momentum on universal meals that that will be funded for next year. The other thing that we're following closely, of course, is the weight study around equalized pupils. And so either there's two proposals I've been talking about. One is more of a block grant where certain pupils would equate to the district receiving a certain sum of money. They're weighted. The other one is the weighting study weights equalized pupils differently. So it takes your average daily membership and it assigns different values to that average daily membership, whether a student qualifies for ESL, whether the student would be qualified as free and reduced lunch, whether the student attends a high school. High school students would count. And middle school students that actually get a higher value than they have in the past in the weighting study. For us in White River Unified District, either way, it actually results in a decrease in taxes. So it's good news. This is to provide further equity as the concept across the state, which Act 60 had originally set out for. And so I do expect some movement on that bill. I think that it could change at the 11th hour. And so there's gonna be what I believe is a lot of action here in the next three weeks. Around negotiations in my pillar. And that will be what I expect negotiations on. Also special ed funding will take effect, the block grant. This coming July 1st, there was a push to delay that. My understanding is that there's been real good momentum now not to delay. So there won't be any action there. There will be action taken to just change how we qualify students around some specific learning disabilities that will be phased in the following year. But financially the way we budget, we budget at the SU level for this block grant to take effect, and it does look like it's going to. Tara put in our report, there's been an adjustment to the yield based on the house. An adjustment in a positive way for White River Unified District based on the budget that they passed. Tara can talk to you more in her report. About what that did, but it will decrease taxes a little more. And the other legislative action that we're following is just the miscellaneous ed bill. That sometimes things can slip into that at the last minute. So we're following that closely as well. And I'll give the full board an update on all that on a Monday night as well. How things play out over the next upcoming days. The other thing I just want to put in a plug is the full board on Monday night, we will be back and doing our board development series. And the focus this coming Monday is on board protocols and process. And so if you can't attend, we will videotape it and push it out. I highly encourage all board members to attend. It's at the start of the meeting. It'll be about 40 minutes. And the last thing is board chairs will be joining me over the next four upcoming Mondays for the required by statute board and superintendent annual training. Go ahead, Shannon. I'm sure this will come up in the hopefuls report, but on Monday at least I will be attending the We Are Wildcats celebration at the high school. So I'm glad that's being recorded because I'll be down at the high school. Yes, and that was, yes, Shannon, thank you. That was the first thing I was going to highlight, but I'm sure the principals will too. I just was also meeting with incoming principal Thomas. I meet with him on Tuesday afternoons at four. And I know there's a lot of excitement. Principal McCracken and I joined students for lunch in the fax room on Thursday that students put on. And there was a lot of buzz around this work and students have taken a huge leadership role in the planning of this night, which is really exciting in teachers. And I've actually had some folks reach out to me from other districts saying that they do plan to attend. So that's really exciting news. And we opened it up for our students as well, of course, meeting Rudd students. All right, are there any other questions for Jamie? All right, thanks, Jamie. We'll move on to the principals report. Well, good evening. Good to see all of you virtually tonight. One of our big pushes in the coming months will be taking this successful student led conference model being used at the middle school and figuring out what that looks like for our fourth and fifth graders as well as for our high school students. So we began looking at the middle school model and some other models for high school at our last large leadership meeting and we'll be continuing that work in the months to come so that when we come back to school in the fall, we'll have a different look to our conferences. Hi, everybody. I'll just also add that Mr. Bradley's not here tonight. So I know you've gotten the report, you can all read. But I would just add, it's a goal one I should have added earlier that our student support team is gonna be attending not virtually in person, which is super exciting. The PBS coordinators and networking and learning series may not, so that's exciting. We'll continue our work there. I think the other few things I would highlight for myself is just the really wonderful Taiko came to the Bethel campus and the elementary was able to benefit from that. They were really coming from the middle school but they had some open windows of time. So that was wonderful. And the other thing that didn't make it into the report that should be highlighted is the small, really very altruistic group of kiddos on the Royalton campus who have been doing a lot of work to raise money for the Ukraine. So I'm really proud of them. And I just want to share that they're raising so much money it's making their classroom teacher nervous. So that's a good thing. Go ahead. As Bridget noted, many of our pre-pandemic in-person community activities have resumed with the concert and musical last month. We're going on field trips again, which is super exciting. We're having morning meetings together in the gym by class again, which gives school in our community a whole different feel. So really looking forward to the last eight weeks of school coming up after our break. Any questions about anything that's happening? We will talk more about our second goal, proficiencies and flexible pathways and personalized learning more in the presentation next at the next board meeting. All right, thanks guys. I think we're on to Tara. Good evening, everyone. You have my report, which outlines all of our due dates for the month of April. Couple of quick things on that. Our pre-audit is scheduled for the week of May 9th, and then the actual audit will occur the week of September 19th. So we're still on target as we were in FY 21. And then as Jamie mentioned in his report, back at the end of March, the house passed bill H737, which increases the yield to $13,742. Parker, can you put up the tax sheet please? So with this new adjusted yield, if it also passes the rest of the chambers, it will result in a reduction of the tax rate in Bethel of 8.33 cents and in Royalton, 16.6 cents. It also reduced the non-residential rate to 1.4490. What was presented in your budget and in your mailer was a decrease of 2.2 cents in Bethel and 10.35 cents in Royalton with a non-residential tax rate of 1.4820, which again was based on the December 1st letter that we received from the tax department. So those are my updates tonight. If there's any questions. That's great news. Thanks, Tara. Yes, thank you, Tara, for always bringing lovely news to the board at least this year. All right, do we have a policy committee update? Ronnie, you wanna take that one? Or do you want me to go? Why don't you go ahead, Jamie? Okay, so Ronnie's on the policy committee and Ronnie, thanks for attending, he's been a valued new member. We've got two policies we're working on currently right now. One will affect you as someone who receives tuition students to assist us, but it's really to tighten up our residency verification for payment of tuition students. This started out at Granville Hancock where we have completely school tuition, like totally tuition out everyone. And so we looked around to see what other boards have done that are tuition sending towns around having clear policy the steps we take if there's a question around residency. And so what we have is a draft that I do expect to be adopted by the Granville Hancock board that they brought to the full SU board policy committee who has interested in being that five out of our six districts do have a school choice. And for some of those districts, that's a new process like in Chelsea and Rochester. And so it does incorporate an affidavit process around it initially that gives us a lot more details around their residency. And it really is, it makes certain that we don't get in a situation where folks may have second homes. And especially now with COVID, we know a lot of folks did possibly move into state and then looking for tuition, but may not actually be legal residents of that town. And so it spells that process out. And then the other one is we've got a draft of a social media policy that we're looking to adopt that mostly focuses on personnel and the use of social media by personnel. And so that is gonna be on its second reading by the policy committee next month. And the full board should expect to see drafts of these policies next month to give some feedback as well. They'll be at the May full board meeting and then in all the local district boards in June two for a reading. So those are the two policies that we currently have underway. And like I said, they're in, the one is in like draft three, the social media policy, this will be draft two of it. And it's a policy that had been drafted prior to COVID and then put on the sidelines while we were addressing COVID. But I think it's a really important policy that we get back in place prior to the start of next school year is my optimistic view on it just so that we have it as it can be part of a new teacher orientation and things of that nature. All right, thanks. Any questions about the policy committee? We'll move on to the Supervisory Union Board updates. At this one, Andrew. No, why don't you go ahead? Forget all this. The, so the SU board has been looking at how can we create a meeting schedule that results in productive meetings but also results in sustainability specifically for the superintendent, but also I would say for our business manager and other SU staff. And so in February, we had 20 meetings. Now that's a heavy month, but in general we're averaging three and a half meetings a week. And so what we're looking to do is create at least a regular meeting schedule that could result in one night out a week and then allow another night a week for committees. And what we've been having is often I've been having to even cancel committees because we've had two or three meetings scheduled on the same night. Last Thursday was an example of that. There was a superintendent evaluation committee, energy committee, and I had a special meeting at Stratford. So we had to cancel the energy committee. And so this new proposal would look at having districts team up and one district would start at 530 and other district would start at 630. We would warn virtually and at a meeting location. So Rochester Stock Bridge, Granville and Hancock would be an example of two districts that would meet on the first Tuesday of the month. One of them would start at 530. We would plan the agenda such that the work that needed the SU office staff support would be at the front end of their agenda. And then that would allow the SU office to then turn over to the other meeting that starts at 630. And meanwhile, that first board that started could continue to do work that they have that's board work passed, meeting the central office administration. And my thought process around this is that it would work well for August, September. Once we start to get in budget season, I think that we may see that we need to break back off until we get out of budget season. And then we could, again, start it after budgets pass. And Granville Hancock's on a different budget schedule than the other districts and the other four. So actually it would still limit some meetings even when we break out. And so there seems to be good feedback in most districts around this. The thought process is that White River Unified District would partner with Sharon, just so you know, is currently what's been proposed. And Sharon tends to start early anyways. They start at 530. So if it does work out, this is on the agenda again at the full board, then I think the thought process would be, and I know Peggy, you had asked for later meeting starts as well, and Andrew had indicated that might work well for him at rework. So it may be that Sharon starts at 530 and this board was starting at like 630. So that's the thought process behind it. And I think one of the goals for me is to make certain that we get our house in order so at some point when I do move on to a different position, which that's not in the foreseeable future, but I want this to be a desirable and sustainable job. And our competition in general up the 89 corridor are one district supervisory unions at most two. And so I do think if we can put some structures in place to make certain whatever incoming superintendent was to come in after me, that they're not out three or four nights a week. I think it would behoove the board to look into that just so they can market themselves even better. So does anybody have any dots or questions about the future board schedule? The schedule? I would just say I agree that we need to make the superintendent's job more manageable and appreciate Jamie everything that he does already, but that this is just the start. We're still looking for other ways to creatively slim that down a little bit so that he's not at three and four meetings a day, three or four nights a week. So, but thank you for all your work. Thanks, Shane. All right. Well, we'll look forward to starting that in August. Okay, so we're gonna move on to our discussion items, interviewing candidates for the vacant board positions. I guess why don't we start with Boylton? John, we received your letter. Would you like to? Yes, thank you. I think most of you folks may know me from my previous work together. I did have a spell on nine years on me, then stopped working school board and actually started some discussions with our friends up in Bethel about joining while I was in my early terms and sadly we didn't finish it then. And it would have saved a lot of headaches that we went to the second round. And I think everybody is aware that I was involved in the remote efforts to create the consolidated school district that we now have. And I look forward to an opportunity to continue to bring service to the both communities and on the board and take on that role again. And I think I have a lot to offer. What I will tell you is I don't come in with some type of agenda. Oh God, I have to fix a bunch of problems or something. I think that things have been going along very well, not without some challenges here and there. And I look forward to helping with some of those challenges but we've had some great success. You've had some great successes too. And I look forward to building on that. And I understand we have a change in principalship with the high school with our consolidated high school. And I'm looking forward to being part of those discussions as well. So that's what I would have to offer. Anybody who has any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them. Does anybody have any questions for John? All right, thanks John. So let's go to the Bethel position. Chris, would you like to? Yeah, so for anybody that doesn't know me, I'm Chris Jarvis. I've lived in Bethel for 16 years. I moved to this area here to take a management position at a large company, which I'm still in. So I have a lot of dealings with people and budgets and everything else on a day-to-day basis. I have two daughters that are middle school. Two youngest, oldest one graduated a couple years ago. I'm very active in the community. If it's not school or town, it's something else. And I got on the select board about seven years ago and mainly it was just kind of, the town needed some support. And so I got on the town select board to look into budgets and stabilize our budgets and look at futuristic ideas and things for the town. So I've been serving in that capacity since then. Kind of why to get on the board. I mean, I've always believed that, everybody's civic duty to play a part in the role of either committees or boards throughout our community, especially when they're in need. I do bring pretty extensive budget awareness to it, seeing accurate responsible budget to be put together as well as try to eliminate the peaks and valleys of our budget process and try to keep things steady, tax rates and things like that. And we always can improve no matter what we do in life. And same thing with the school. And when it comes down to the three A's, academics, arts and athletics, I mean, there's always ways to improve our school system. And just like the other gentleman just mentioned, we have had some challenges in and around the community's Alaska beers with some new principles and things like that. So coming on board to help stabilize the community. During the election, I ran on a write-in ballot vote during election time. And when the unified district was put together, they encompassed the voter list for both towns. So even though I'm a Bethel or was going for the Bethel board position, when they figure on the formal minority vote that you need to get, it didn't qualify. So the way things used to be, if I was just in Bethel and Bethel voters were voting, then I had enough votes to be on board. In this case, because they take the two together, then I fell short. Even though it's interesting that a majority of voters when they go to the polls, the Royalton voters don't vote for the Bethel voters and the Bethel voters don't vote for the Royalton ones, they usually leave them blank when we're counting votes at night. But this is the way the charter was driven up. So obviously I wanted to, it wasn't just the write-in campaign, the write-in campaign, it was serious about the position. So that's why I'm here this evening. Thanks. Does anybody have any questions for Chris? Okay. Well, we have one candidate for each position. Do people feel like we need to do an executive session for this or? I'd like to go into executive session. Okay. We have a second. Can you guys just definitely invite for personnel? Yes, I'd like to go into executive session for personnel and invite Jamie as well. Okay. I'll second it. Gone out of the room here. Thank you. Will you do a, yep. So just the current board members of you? Yep. Yep. All right, cool. That's easy enough. My line is beautiful. All right, we're coming out of executive session at 642. So we're ready to appoint members and I guess I'm waiting for a motion. They have a motion for appointing. Go ahead and make the motion to appoint John Olmsted to the position of Royalton school board member and Chris Jarvis to the position of Bethel school board member. I will second that motion. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. I'm going to abstain from the vote. Okay. I'll vote aye. Okay. So we're going to appoint John Olmsted. Just a second. No. Andrew. Well. I apologize Shannon and I shouldn't have mentioned this. You can't abstain because you're a board of six and we need a free. So we need all four. Yes. To take action. All right. Then I'll revise my vote to a guy. Okay. All right. Welcome to the board. Chris and John. I will let John know he's downstairs bowling with the boys at this point. And Shannon just in Chris is here but let John know that I'll email them tomorrow. And as soon as they get sworn in, we'll get them set up with emails, school emails is how we should do business and I'll send them some documents and set up times to connect with them. Okay. Thank you. So the next order of business is to see Chris, do you have interest in joining any of the subcommittees that we have? So we have facilities to look at maintenance issues and there's the finance committee for looking at budget and things like that. Do you have interest in either of those? Is there one or the other that's in more need than the other? Or I mean, I probably could serve in that capacity. So I guess probably the finance committee or not the finance, the facilities committee. It's a, I was kind of taking that one on, but that was one that people vacated that would be, I would appreciate somebody taking on so. Oh yeah, I can handle that. Okay. Do you know if John is he coming back or is he? He's not coming back at the moment and but we can discuss subcommittees at the next meeting. Okay. But I would hope, Andrew, that you don't come off the finance subcommittee. No, no, I'm gonna stay on the finance committee. Yeah, Tara, was there, did you touch base with the other members of the finance committee to see if they wanted to stay on? I have not heard back from our two community members since the email, Andrew, but I know when we did discuss it, I believe it was two meetings ago read, correct me if I'm wrong or Peggy, that Louise did indicate that she was interested on to stay on and Robert wasn't at our last meeting. So I don't know his thoughts on it. All right. Well, I guess we'll keep the current topic. Yeah, I'm still. That's great. Thank you. Okay. Yes, the next discussion or action, potential action item would be the, or discussion item is the, no, this is an action item, whatever. Ground maintenance contract. So I will take the lead on this one. We went out to bid for the spring mowing of the grounds and the fields. We received one bid back and the bid came from the current provider, which is Green Mountain Mowing, LLC. I have submitted a bid waiver request to the agency of education, but I do not have approval on it yet. So if you would like to proceed, you can make a motion to accept this bid, pending approval from the AOE on the bid waiver. And Jacob's proposal was for South Royalton campus, $25,300 for the year. And the Bethel campus, $22,450 for the year. The FY22 contract that he did for us was $23,450 for Royalton and $21,450 for Bethel. So a very small increase on his contract pricing. All right, that seems reasonable, especially given gas prices and everything else. Is there any discussion on the maintenance contract? Grounds and maintenance, whatever it is. I wanna suggest maybe next fall, when we go out for our plow bid, that I think that Jacob would be willing to negotiate on combining those two contracts into something that's more favorable. And has he shown to be really the only one interested in bidding on our contracts? It might make sense to go to a longer term contracts that we're not doing this twice a year. Okay, that sounds good to me. Any other comments on the contract? Do I have a motion? The motion would be to approve pending of the waiver from the agency of education. I was gonna ask, Tara, is there a specific language we need in this motion? I'm gonna type it in the chat. Thank you. All right, so I would make a motion to accept the bid from Green Mountain Mowing, LLC for the spring, summer maintenance pending approval from the agency of education on the bid waiver. Thank you, Tara. I will second the motion. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Chris, were you voting on her? I guess we need to wait for you to be seconded. Okay, next, okay, that passes. Okay, what's next? Now we'll move on to the discussion about extending next steps in extending childcare and programming for summer and school vacations. Yeah, so this was added to the agenda last month, and I put it in my report. My recommendation to address this is much like how we address being able to add pre-K and address our marketing efforts, which I think we've been fairly successful. We were able to add a fourth pre-K for next year through the budget process and based on the recommendation on that task force. And I do think we're doing a better job marketing. I think we still have a room to grow, but I do think we are being gaining traction. And so I think that this is a concern in this district, specifically because we have limited childcare options. I think it's a concern across the SU as well, but I think there could be some things that we can learn from what happens here in this district. And the other thing that's currently happening is that Carrie McDonald, who has been our one-planet coordinator for a long time, has indicated that she is looking to move on at the end of this year. And so we're currently in the process of trying to find a replacement for her. Carrie's been with us 16 years. And so we're also gonna be transitioning in a new 21st century coordinator. And as you know, we just brought in a new assistant coordinator last year, because Bill Bosz and you are moved out of town. And he was our assistant director. So we've been a little bit influx here with one-planet. So I think there's an opportunity though, with new leadership coming on board, to get them involved in this task force. And so I think it makes sense to have a task force created that includes certainly community members and parents from both towns that we would look to get volunteers to join. In addition to, I would say that we should definitely have board member present. I think that that principal Bowen should be present. And then I'm also gonna encourage that both our building-based coordinators for one-planet at Bethel and Royalton are involved in this task force, along with whoever we bring on as the new one-planet director. And then what I think the task force would do is, they're gonna need to set out to say, what other community stakeholders do we wanna get involved to tackle this concern? And I also gotta remind the board that we do have a significant community schools grant that we received for the two and a 750,000. And I think when we think about this project, to me it's at the heart of community school, right? This is the need of the community that we need to solve in tandem with our school because childcare is affecting our community. And I would say communities, but certainly this White River Unified District community. And so I wonder is there an opportunity there too to look at partnering with some of the folks that we have as stakeholders within that grant, at least in the Bethel community, and look to extend that work across into Royalton to try to solve this problem. I think the collective genius is certainly greater than the few. And I think that forming a comprehensive task force that has multiple stakeholders involved in it could be a way that we solve this problem. Because I don't think just the school's gonna solve the problem, frankly, I think it's gonna have to be a partnership. And I think that that's why leveraging that community schools grant, when you look into the community schools work that Montpelio was looking to have, it was to tackle these type of systemic issues within school, within communities and saying, how do you partner community with school to do that work? Shannon. I'd like to add to that, I think one of the main stakeholders, and I know there was a lot of interest in working with us in the past, would be Magic Mountain Daycare Center. And I'm not sure what the interest is now, certainly I haven't had a kiddo there now for four years, but they still now have a wait list. And I know in the past, their interest was in letting us really take off more with our preschool program, because, and so I'd like us to look not only at our school-aged kids, but what are we doing for those kiddos who are three and four who have no care when they're on breaks, who still don't have care in the summer, who end up flooding that Magic Mountain system, if possible. So I'd like to make sure that that is a group that's not forgotten. And if we can work with Magic Mountains that we're taking more care of our older kids and they can open up more spots for small infants and toddlers, then that's a real win for our communities. So I just wanted to point that out. Yeah, the task force idea sounds like a good one to me. And all the things that you said sounded good. What I'd be a little bit concerned about is just the timeframe, like we should make sure that we're targeting, like is the idea to try and get something in place for this particular summer? Or if we have a large task force that has many meetings, that might make it difficult. So if we're gonna go for the task force, I think we should make sure we have a focused end goal for when they're going to report. You know, my answer to that, Andrew, is like if you directed me to run a program all summer right now, I don't know if I could do it. That would be my answer. If you directed me to run summer programming right now all summer, I don't know if I would have the staff to do it. And so I really think we need some creative thinking with more heads to help solve this problem. I would tell you that if I knew how to just extend summer programming all summer right now, I would do it, but I don't know how to do it because I don't know how to get the staffing in place. And so that's what I'm saying. I think we need to look to our community partners to help us solve that problem. If it was as simple as just me having the workforce, like we have the budget, right? We have funds to do this. That's not the problem for me right now. It's that with child licensing and those requirements, I don't have the able bodies that are willing to do it. And so what I need is help around how do we think differently about it so that it can be really successful and sustainable? And so I think that the task force, the first thing for them to do is say, what's the need? And then what are the priorities? And then how do we start thinking outside the box to address them? Right, or I think you could have like a, what is possible this summer and then what are we going to do long-term as- Which is sort of what the pre-taped group did. But you know, the truth is like one planet may be run by me this summer in Anda if we don't find a director, right? And so I just think the reality is like we don't have a ton of, I'm a horse guy, like horses in the barn right now to staff these things. So I think that's where we get a call on community to help us. And I think we need to like get a grassroots effort around like this is a need. And I think also, if we want to attract young families, like we have to have a answer that's yes short-term but also long-term. And so, you know, I really do feel like that this is an opportune time, especially with that community schools grant to really dig into some of this work. And so that's sort of my reasoning around the task force so that it also, it doesn't result in like watered down childcare that folks aren't happy with as well. Go ahead, Karen. I guess, can I talk right now? I didn't know if I was supposed to do it during the public forum or if I can do it now. I think you can go ahead now. Okay. I'm so glad that we're talking about this. I really appreciate it. I have started a petition and I'm hoping that that started a lot of conversation in the community. I think a lot of people have been talking about it now. I'd be happy to be a part of that committee. I'd be actually excited to be a part of that committee as the parent voice because it's so needed. I have been talking with the family place and they said they would be happy to be part of, you know, come to a committee, talk to us about how the grants work, how other communities are doing it, how they're operating, how they're making it work, how they work with rec departments and other community members. So that's a resource I think that we could tap into. But anyway, I can help. I'm happy to do it. I have started a petition. There's need, people are supporting it. This is wanted and I totally appreciate everything, Jamie, I get it. It's not gonna start tomorrow. But I do feel like we need to get this committee up and running like ASAP. Thanks, Karen. Yeah, I agree. And family place is a great resource. I just wrote that down. So what as a board would we need to do to set up a task force or does anybody else from the board wanna say anything about what we should do here? Is there consensus that we should set up a task force? Yeah, I mean, I would say it's definitely a need for the trial case. It's something that's on a lot of people's minds and we definitely need to do something and whatever it takes to get it done. All right, do you need us to actually set up the task force or? Yeah, I think it's good for you to move that we form a task force. That and then if you had a board member that interested, I'd like to have you appoint them to serve it. And then this would be a standing agenda item until the task force really delivers their report. I think that they should be reporting out monthly. And my thought process around the task force is like, I wanna be all inclusive, like any and all folks that are interested in pursuing this, I wanna invite them to these meetings. They'll be, we'll certainly publicize it, we'll reach out through our school newsletter to gather interest, but we'll also like do what Karen just said, like the family place, invite them to the table. And so, like I said, I've already identified some key components within the administration around our site coordinators at both Bethel and Royalton, our elementary principal and our incoming one-planet coordinator in regards to addressing, making certain that the school is there working diligently with the task force to address concerns as they're coming up. And again, I think it's prioritizing what's the need and what's the short-term fixes that we can put in place. But in general, I really hope that the task force continues to meet till we come recreate like a long-term proposal and plan to address this in general. Okay, I can, Karen, if you want to say one more thing. Could we in the meantime start, I mean, I would love to start hearing what people need. Like, is that something we could start surveying in the meantime while we're getting a committee together? So we kind of know what we're working with once the committee's together. Like, what are people looking for? What do they need for care? What do they need for support? You know, what does that look like? Is that something? Karen, my thought process would be that we'd start having that committee meet in the next two weeks and then probably the first order of business would be that, to generate that survey. Okay. I'd also comment that this is not unfortunately the first time this has come up at the board. We've been talking about this. We've talked about this over snow days. We talk about this over, you know, what is it that is tough for parents? So there's a lot of knowledge at the board if there haven't been a lot of solutions. So Karen, you're not alone. And it's not, you know, the first time we've unfortunately thought about this. So we'll put our heads together. Our resources have even decreased even since the pandemic. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. It's always good to have, you know, parents come in and really push for things because, you know, that's how things. I'll keep coming. Squeaky wheels. This has been the most stressful school year ever. Like, yeah, I'll keep coming. We need childcare. Yeah. Well, I'd entertain a motion to start a task force to address child care, extending child care, programming for summer and school vacations. So moved. Awesome. All right, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. OK, is there anybody who is particularly interested in joining the task force from the board as a board representative? I really would like to. I'm going to put my hat out there because I think it's so important. I'm already on one task force, so it's a little bit of a stretch. But this is super important. And I've been probably the one most angrily yelling for something for a long time when I was trying to get down to my job and snow days for preventing that. So I'll take this one. Great. Shannon, you must be happy that I'm a stickler about calling snow days. Jamie, do you have any? Remember last time you were like, I'm going to go call that snow day. And I'm like, if you do, I am sending my eight-year-old up to your house. Do you have any idea when I got the email 10 minutes later how first your name was in my house that night? All the rest of the people on the board were like, oh, yeah, we're so excited. I'm like, oh, God, I did not have time for him to be here all day while I work. The rest of the time, we adore you, Jamie. But when you call snow days, you're not my favorite person. Only one this year. That's a good thing we didn't have school today, right? That's true. Today was rough. OK, well, go ahead, Peggy. OK, I was just going to make a quick comment before my battery runs out. There are really two extremes here. One extreme is that as parents, you are responsible for your children. The other extreme is, as a society, we are responsible for the children. And I think when we go to town meeting and look at budgets, et cetera, we're going to be hit with both of those extremes. And we need a task force that can help work all of that out. I agree, Peggy. I also think there are very financially sustainable ways to go about some of this. And I'll be looking for those. But there are ways to make this work and not drop it in the laps of the taxpayers, too. Unfortunately, the families that are hurting are pretty used to paying a dang pretty penny for childcare. Yeah, I think this doesn't have to be like a free everybody can send their kids. It's how we can at least have an option for parents. But thank you. I'd be happy to pay, right? Yeah, I think a lot of people would be happy to pay. OK, well, we look forward to hearing from the task force next month that are about what they've been up to. So glad we're getting that started. Thank you, Shannon, for volunteering to be part of that. Thank you, Jamie, for setting it up with the employees. And thanks, Karen, for pushing for it. So move on to the new hires and resignations. So the only official new hire that we have at this point, I know there's a bunch of interviewees in the pipeline for me to interview is that Kendrick Cole who has served us in multiple ways over the last two years as a sub has officially decided that she's willing to commit to the district for next year. And we think maybe a little longer than that, possibly two. But we've been on the search for administrative assistant at Wilton for quite some time. And Kendra's been filling in an admirable way all year as a sub, but not wanting to apply, thinking that she may be leaving the states. And so Kendra is going to be joining us as an administrative assistant for the remainder of this year and next. So we're happy about that. And then we did have a resignation in the front office because we had hired someone as administrative assistant and they had to have decided to leave the state. Andra or Reed, do you want to just talk about that? Yeah, so this is an employee who was connected to the law school and for personal reasons has had a change in plans. So she's moving in a week, week and a half, but we've got a plan to have her work remotely to help us keep up with office jobs through the end of the year while we try to find her replacement. So that's what we got. And then I know, Andra, if you want to just discuss, I haven't interviewed candidates yet, but we will definitely have some candidates coming forward for next month around filling some elementary positions. And do you just want to talk about where you're at and the hiring process for a few of those? Yep, so we've had a hiring committee working on filling preschool position. I believe that candidate's going to be interviewing with Superintendent Canary this upcoming week. We've been interviewing for a couple different elementary positions. I have a candidate coming to visit this week. She's on vacation, so she's coming from New York City to come visit the school and give her a tour. And while she's here, she's going to meet with the superintendent as well. We have another candidate that's coming to do a model lesson on Monday. So lots of meeting and greeting and getting to know people and seeing if they're the right fit for us and where are the right fit for them. So more to come on that. All right, thanks for the update. Do we have any more public comments? All right, then our next meeting date is going to be Tuesday, May 17th at 6 p.m. on the Royalton campus. And I think we've finished our agenda. Have a great rest of break, everybody. Entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All right, thanks, everybody.