 Great, hello and welcome to Town Meeting TV's coverage of Town Meeting Day 2024. This program, we're bringing you in advance of voting on March 5th, Tuesday. Town Meeting TV hosts forums with candidates and about all the ballots on all the items you'll see on your ballot coming up, that's why you don't read. You can find us here where you're watching either on Comcast Channel 1087, Burlington Telecom Channel 17, or on YouTube.com, backslash Town Meeting TV. If you are tuning in live, we welcome your questions here at 802-862-3966. So let's get started. We're here tonight with candidates for the Winooski School Board and we have Isaiah Donaldson, Ilam Pessi, Nicole Mace, and these, you all have three year, two year, and the remainder of a three year seat and you're all running uncontested. So we can have a conversation together about the Winooski School Board and why you are running and we were just talking about why it is actually kind of fun to be on the school board. So we'll start, Nicole, you've been on the school board the longest, is that correct? No, technically. Oh, Isaiah. By one month. Okay, Isaiah, sorry. Isaiah, we'll start with you with kind of your opening statement, why you want to be on the school board and why do you make a difference to the city of Winooski? So for me, being on the school board has been a goal of mine, pretty much my entire life, honestly. Growing up, my mom was an educator and I knew from an early age before I decided I wanted to have kids, but once I had a kid, I wanted to join the school board of whatever district we were living in. And then when my daughter was born in 2016, I was like, cool, plugged, let's do this. I'm going to make it happen. I found Winooski. I've been living in Winooski now for eight years. So my daughter's seven now and she goes to JFK Elementary at Winooski. And being on the school board, so I'm currently on the school board and being on the school board as of last June has really just been, I don't know, just the best experience. I've had such a fun time and being on it just in the district of my daughter's in is a big part of it, but also I love where I live. I love Winooski so much. We are so diverse and crazy, to be honest with you, like there's so much happening in that little teeny town. And then the school, being in the schools especially because it's a brand new school, we just finished our capital project about a year ago and just being through there and learning how the kids operate and also how the staff operates and just like the camaraderie there is like really phenomenal. Yeah. And the fact that we're so focused on becoming an anti-racist school is just really like that's what hits home for me. Thanks Isaiah. And so, tell us why you want to be on the school board for another two years. You're currently on the school board? No. You're not currently on the school board. So you're brand new. And what will be different for the city of Winooski with you on the school board? For me, the reason I'm joining is because I've always wanted to know how the school was run. Because my kids, they grew up as a new American and I really don't understand the American school system. So I really just want to know, get the knowledge of it. And since I had like a language, a little language barrier, I didn't know like if I really wanted to join or how big it is of a task or the job it is. So they were looking for what do you call a new member to join and we were in the interview process and she got elected. And then we met at like a gathering and she asked me to be her budget body. So I said yes. Oh, great. Yes. So, and being a parent, I really wanted to, in motor cultural, I want to see somebody else on the board who is motor cultural, not just like American, but also I wanted to join also. Great. Bring your perspective. Thank you. And Nicole, tell us about why you're running again to finish this three-year seat. So I was appointed to fill a vacancy, which is why it's the remainder of a three-year seat. And like Isaiah, I love the community of Winnowski. I've lived there for about 15 years. And I feel like the combination of my professional experience, I was the executive director of the Vermont School Board Association for quite a while and have a pretty in-depth knowledge of the education funding system and sort of the role of the school board and how to effectively govern a school in order to achieve results. So, and I also had the privilege of serving as the school district's finance director for a few years. I've since transitioned to a different role, but I feel like I have a unique perspective of having been an administrator in the school district, really understanding how the school works, but also understanding how the board can support the great work that's happening and continue to move the needle in terms of outcomes for students and support from our community. Great. I'd love to get into that a little bit more, just like what is the role, how does the school board function and the role of the school board and, you know, how do you impact the day-to-day functioning? I mean, one of the big parts is being part of setting the school year's budget. And so we're going to get to the question of the school budget and how you support or not this year's school budget. It looks like $31.97 million. I don't know what that translates into in terms of a percentage increase for Winnowski. And we're going to start with you, because we'd kind of go around in the circle and you're the next in line. I'm just going to move your mic while you're... Okay, sure. Go ahead, yeah. For me... You keep going, how do you support the school budget and why? For me, being a budget buddy, I got to learn how the process behind the scene of selecting the right budget for the school. And I support it because they focus really on not raising too much tax for the Winnowski residents and also to support the school at the same time. So that's why I support it. What is the increase? What is the percentage increase for Winnowski going to be? So the budget increase is 26%, but because of the changes to the education funding formula that were designed to direct more resources to districts with students who have higher needs, we're projecting a tax rate decrease. We're also happening to be in a reappraisal year, so we can't necessarily translate the tax rate to a tax bill because folks' home values are likely going to increase substantially. But like Aloma, I support this budget because I do think it balances both the need for critical investments that were intended by the new funding formula. We're expanding pre-K into four classrooms, full day pre-K, all eligible. All four-year-olds will be eligible to be served in Winnowski in the program and also retaining a lot of positions in our multilingual department that had been added with ESSER funds that of course are going away. And so really being able to retain and expand in some cases those critical positions while at the same time being able to present a budget that has a projected tax rate decrease feels pretty good. And I would love to explain that to me like I'm in pre-K, so Isaiah, you also you're nodding about the tax increase, but the tax rate decrease to support the school budget, and what are you excited about it? In complete support of the budget, you know, it's like Nicole was saying, it's a weird year for Winnowski itself because we haven't done a reassessment on properties since 2007. So that's kind of crazy. So a lot of folks are, you know, they don't know what their house value is, quote unquote, to the town's assessor, which they'll learn early June, hopefully. And then July 1 is when that switch happens. With the tax rate decrease, I hope that'll bring some reprieve for sure. It's definitely going to bring reprieve for income focused tax bills so that we can say, yes, your tax bill will go down if you're income based. If it's purely just on the value of your home, we can't really tell you where it's going to go because your house value will increase for sure because the times we're in. In terms of the budget itself, I'd say what I'm most excited about is the preschool. So the fact that we can offer ahead of the laws for the state one fiscal year ahead of offering four full classrooms, five days a week, full day is amazing. As a dad who had to seek other preschools when my kid was in preschool age, I just think that's an amazing thing. I wish that my daughter went to Winnieski preschool, but it just didn't fit my schedule, to be honest with you. So that must have been built into the planning of the new school. We built four classrooms. Yeah, built these classrooms in. And maybe one of you just can give me that, explain what's going on to me. There's a new legislation that lifted the cap on education funding. Give it to me like I'm a five-year-old. So as I mentioned, the law that was designed to direct more resources to students who have higher learning needs, recognizing that full implementation of that change would have a negative impact on some districts. The legislature two years ago instituted a 5% cap for districts that were sort of the losers under the law. And as this budget season played out, it became clear that some districts were, the education spending was increasing substantially. And some districts who were benefiting from that cap saw pretty significant increases in their budget. And it sort of disrupted the relationship between your spending increase and your tax rate. And so the change that the legislature made is intended to more closely align the loss in pupils with a tax rate, but not totally insulate folks from the decisions of the budget process. Winooski supports the law that the governor signed today, I think. Because the impact of increased education spending with no ability to raise tax revenue from those districts protected by the cap would mean that our tax rates would have to go up and sort of flip the whole purpose of the law on its head. So we're supportive of this tweak to correct, I think. Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of what you're saying with pupils, the new formula is called weighted long-term membership. And Winooski itself, that formula goes into how much it costs to educate said student, right? Depending on age, what grade they're in, if they're living in poverty, if they're multilingual learners, there's a whole algorithm that they put together and each student equals a percentile, if you will. And a big chunk of our students in our district are really two and a half kids that's how much it costs to educate them the right way. So we benefit from that, for sure, because we have a lot of extra things that we need so we can supply for our community that we have. Great. Thanks for that. I know that it gets complicated. I'm sure it gets complicated for all of us, trying to figure out and brings us to the next question of challenges. What's the biggest challenge facing Winooski schools in your mind? And how would you use your seat on the school board to address this particular issue? Yeah. I'm going to start. You want to go out and spin the call. Yeah. I think. So I think there's external challenges and then internal challenges. And the external challenge that we've talked about quite a bit as a board is housing. And we're seeing a housing crisis impacting all of Vermont, but in particular impacting families in Winooski who are being displaced by landlords raising rent, by the conversion of rental apartments into, you know, long-term rental apartments into short-term rental apartments. And the fact is the new housing stock that's being built is not large enough to house the families that live in Winooski. And so we're concerned as a board about the disruption to students and also just the displacement of families who have a really close connection to the school district and have come to rely on the supports that the school district provides. So we put together, we adopted a resolution on housing a couple months ago and I think we all are committed to continue to advocate for housing policies that support family housing. Internally, I think our biggest challenge and it's again something I think we can work on as a board is measuring how well we're meeting our end statement or our objectives we have as a school district to make sure students are college and career ready. And I think there's a lot of, that's a hard thing to do to come up with how are we going to measure that but I think in the absence of some clear metrics and some benchmarks and progress monitoring, we, you know, we asking community members to make a big investment in our schools and I want to be able to say not only are we producing results but we're producing equitable results. Thanks Nicole. Yeah, for me I'd say the biggest internal struggle that I see and that's something that I'm definitely putting in a huge focus on while I'm on school board and Nicole and I have talked about it a bunch is just overall enrollment. So over the next five years we're projected to see a decrease in enrollment for students in terms and that leans on to the housing, right? That's, these are all connected items and we're projected to see a loss in enrollment for amount of kids and I really want to focus on how do we get more students, right? How do we make sure that we can house those students in that way? Something that is in our mind is we have these amazing facilities, we have this amazing multilingual program. What students from other districts potentially aren't getting what they need at their district and how can we potentially bring them to our district? So we've chatted about that a little bit. What is the status of that? What is the status of exchange students moving from Winooski, Burlington, South Burlington right now? The status in? Like how many students move around district to district? Didn't we just do it, we did the policy change. So I think we've got four students going out and three coming in. We set a new cap for a policy but that's a low number where we have a high cap and we're really only using a small percentile of that and I really want to see what can we do to get more folks in and then what can we do in the future to potentially change that to make it even more fruitful for the school. So that's my measure on what I think is the biggest internal struggle. Externally, I mean I'm gonna lean on what Nicole said. Housing is a big issue. I mean that's what my life is literally about. I'm a realtor. I help people buy and sell homes and it's a huge focus for me to change people's lives in that sense like get them a house that they can afford or have a place that they can live in that does suit their needs in terms of families. And Nicole was saying family homes because we're seeing tons of units being built that are one bedroom, two bedroom. It's not a family. You can't live there. Like if you have four kids, five kids and especially in our community, how diverse it is we have a lot of families that have large families. A whole pro-generational family. Exactly, yeah 100% and that's a huge pin point for me too in what I do in my job but also just me as a community member for sure. Alon, what do you see as the biggest challenges facing Winooski schools? How do you want to use your seat to address this? For me I want to see the biggest challenges for getting the students ready for a sort of school when they finish high school to be college ready and like life ready. Yeah. I know we have like the educational ready and readiness and parental readiness but I feel the school has a bigger role to play in their life and education they receive so they need to, I want to see like the right education to be given to them, to have them prepare for financial, having the knowledge like a mathematics to write essays, to be able to know how to take tax test or quizzes because college is different than high school. You have to be sitting in a classroom and taking notes on your own and try to figure things on your own it's not like high school where everything is a little bit easy so I just want to have them to be strong and ready-minded and have the knowledge to face the outside world when they go out there on their own. Yeah. That brings me, I mean that's a good segue into neurodivergent students so this is the question how can Winooski schools best support neurodivergent students and Isaiah I'm going to start with you on this one. I'm going to be honest with you I don't know what neurodivergent means. Generally it means people who think and process the world in different ways and so everyone. But you know there's a sort of strong feeling that school is built for a particular kind of student learner and we recognize right with mental health challenges especially a group of students that you know really we changed how we understood student learning through COVID. Yeah. So I mean just to speak on neurodivergent you know learning in the Winooski school district I'd say we are killing it but I'm being really honest with you. We have so many different there's there's a whole department for that and we have sensory rooms within you know each school because there's three schools the elementary the middle and the high and I've walked through those sensory rooms and they're amazing like they have different situations for students for every different type of person like a lot of the like all the tables that I've seen in the elementary side which I love and in the sensory rooms every single table is a whiteboard table. They have these really cool chairs that some kids need to sit in that aren't just a normal standard chair like we're sitting tonight today and that now everyone has the the ability to even just sit in a chair like that and then in terms of what some other facilitators are doing in the school it's just they we have a lot of support staff that are really focused on maybe an individual or a couple individual students and really harnessing towards their learning needs but I mean I'll be honest with you I mean I still have a lot to learn about the school my daughter's in first grade and I've only been on the board since June and what I've taken in has been a lot and I you know this next three-year seat that I am looking forward to is like another three years of learning and like I'm so excited about it yeah yeah Thanks. Alom, do you have thoughts on this? For me I think they need to for me I have a strong belief in multistionary type of learning environment to have especially for elementary students because they just they're learning the beginning of the life and I think if they have a set of multistionary environment in the classroom so each child can figure out what works for them like a multi-learning yes multi-learning not just studying like okay you gotta know your ABC your numbers you know not everybody's gonna have that focus so they need to have maybe have more teachers and more training on like maybe some case with more difficult challenges they should have teachers to focus on those children so they know are all mixed in the same classroom so that's for me I think that's what they need to see yeah this is I think where I'm a little bit I benefit from having worked in the school for school district for a few years and I do think the new building and the new spaces are going to serve us really well in the term in terms of better meeting the needs of neuro divergent students I because we have sensory before we used to have to deliver therapeutic services counseling services in closets you know or out in the hallway or it was not a space we did not have a space conducive to supporting a diverse array of student needs or to have you know we we contract with you know the Howard Center outside groups to come and provide therapeutic supports and there's no space so so I do think that and I also think we have a commitment to a comprehensive system of supports for students to really have teachers looking at what are each students strengths one of the things this budget will do is create more planning time for teachers and we also at the school board meeting last week gave the green light to a later start time for the school day so that teachers can meet as per first professional learning communities to really start to look at data and make a plan around each child and I think that that would feed into what Nicole was saying earlier when we know how we're how are we gonna track and have the metrics of how we're doing college ready right how are we doing so that's gonna help that metric teachers will have more time we can't ask for data if teachers don't have time to look at data and make sense of it and do something about it that's a concrete way and maybe just talk about that late start time what does that mean and this is a you know I'm trying to think of like how does the board get involved in a way because you're not micromanaging right what's happening in the school or how teachers are working with students etc but you're really providing a space you're providing the supports that they need to be able to do that work talk about the late start time and then how how does the board get involved on this yeah I'll chime in right away so I mean currently our start time is 8 a.m. we're pushing it to 8 15 doesn't seem like a drastic difference but it's going I hope it's gonna make a difference and it's not like we're extending our day another 15 minutes we're just shortening the day 15 minutes quote-unquote for the students and in terms of kind of how what we do in terms of how we manage the school right really our employee is the superintendent obviously and we're policy governance that that's how our board operates and every board meeting that we have our superintendent gives us a monitoring report and we review that monitoring monitoring port and you know check compliance and see what you know what really the school's been up to how things are going and I think we're very blessed to have the superintendent that we have Wilmer Javarria is phenomenal he's an amazing person but also and a really amazing at what he does and he makes things more digestible and easier to read so his formatting in the way he's presenting it to us is digestible yeah digestible that's the right word so that's kind of how we on a monthly basis you know you would say quote-unquote manage the school if you will through the eyes of the superintendent and then myself I am also the secretary clerk for the board so I mean I'm kind of more involved on a weekly basis if you will so I go in once a week to check the payoffs and where money's going and I love it cool and I'm doing it line by line like Nicole asked me a couple months ago like do you actually read these and I'm like yeah I found a mistake a couple months ago so like me knowing where money's going and understanding it and like you know oh I see you missed something you know so it's kind of cool to be a part of that in a sense great our next question is on public safety a lot of you know a lot out there about police presence in schools guns weapons safety public safety as a whole issue so in your role on the board how do you think the school district is best ensuring the safety of students and teachers in our school and the community is it me yes we're going to have the right I mean you were involved during the process of our change right so first of all I would say in general I think the Winnowsky schools are very safe and welcoming we have had an agreement with the city of Winnowsky for a school resource officer to be sort of on a hundred percent not a hundred percent but I'll spend a lot of the school day in the school and there was some community conversation about the appropriateness of that several years ago and there was a public facilitated dialogue that led to a set of recommendations for how the school district could move away from having a police presence in the school to having a safety officer and they looked at several models around the country where that was successful and so for the FY 25 budget we're moving to school safety liaison position which is not a law enforcement position and the police department will continue to serve as a you know have a an officer who is a liaison to the district but won't be on-site be more of a support or role which I think is the direction that the community really supports we also have I think a pretty high functioning safety committee who's done taken its responsibilities around emergency planning conducting drills a response to there were a number of new requirements passed by the legislature last year so I think we're feeling pretty good about both continuing to staff school safety but doing so without a law enforcement presence on the school because that's the decision of the direction the community wanted yeah can I chime in on safety so I'm involved with the ARSE which is the anti-racism steering committee so that's something I do as a board member and we meet every other week but something that just got implemented and we're currently reviewing the results and the data of this so we just implemented the survey from made from the students of the ARSE we have about 37 students in that committee and about seven adults so it's student run and it was initially started in 2020 by students which is amazing and I'm grateful to be a part of it but this new survey that we just released is the students we made up this list of questions about 30 questions whatever really related towards how each student feels in the school you know whether it's based on safety just having some of the talk to you know feeling comfortable but then we kind of also tied it in with the city itself comparing how they feel in the school versus how do they feel just in the community so I don't have results of the day of that yet because we just finished that and we're gonna go over that in the next couple weeks so it's I love that you brought up safety because that was a big topic with the ARSE and we're trying to do a big push and how can we adjust as a committee to really tone to what the students maybe aren't getting that they should be getting and get here their voice more so yeah he said because because honestly they're gonna be there for the students and the faculties so I think they need to have the students say in the decision-making of their if they want the officer or safety person to be there and have parents also like they should have a little gathering or meeting to discuss and parents really need to show up because sometimes we have community events to discuss and parents don't show up and it's really disappointing so parents really need I want to see more parents get involved because they do supply interpretation so I want to see more parents get involved in decision-making for the student or the children safety at the school and get and get the students input in making the decision yeah I mean safety has a big it's a big term and we sort of tend to think of it narrowly relating to police but the way you're talking about the survey it sounds like the survey is talking about the bigger idea of safety do you feel like you belong do you feel like you're gonna be listened to do you feel like you're gonna have an impact the social mental aspect yeah interesting so great on that I'm gonna do sorry Jordan I'm gonna switch really quickly just to follow up on a lump's position here about the language access question which is how can the Winooski school district meet the needs of students and families whose primary language is not English because you mentioned that in your thing and I do want to start on that yeah great yeah so for me I think I think Nikola was disgusting and she said they they have some kind of program we do a teaching the parents English and also the students so because for me I have also struggled with being English as my third language and trying to teach my kids our native language and it's really it's been tough to keep to teach them my native language so English is always just like taking right up just coming out of nowhere so I think we need to really focus on that so the kids don't lose you know their native language and also have be flowing in English at the same time it's awesome I mean because immediately I read this and I think like interpretation and supporting people and the way that you're coming at it is support families to maintain their own cultural heritage and their own languages yeah because even the students when they hang out with their friends they end up speaking English instead of their native language and they tend to lose it like for me I was fluent in French when I came here but I have to learn English and I didn't have anybody speaking French for me so I kind of lost it a little bit so yeah that's me to work on that a little bit yeah and Nicole we hear from families a lot about concern especially you know Ellum's English is fantastic and there are some families whose English they really struggle to communicate at all with their students so it's not it's both a loss of sort of the cultural identity for their next generation but also a real barrier in terms of just communicating between parents and children and and between parents in the school and so the program Ellum is referring to is we call the heritage language program so the Winooski School District has been providing interpretation services for years and but what has been new in the last couple years is hearing from families saying actually we need help we need our children to speak our language and so that piloted with a grant and it's being run as an after-school program right now but I do think it's really important that we're balancing the you know the the drive to sort of acclimate to our educational system and our dominant language with the need to preserve folks identities and the connections that they have not just to their parents but to other generations within their families. Great. And Isaiah do you have more to add to that? Yeah I mean I'm just you know not in terms of that but like something that the district does do that I loved you know Cole and I did the our you know first really budget presentation months ago and we invited community members to come out and what the school provides is interpret interpreters so headphones that they're wearing while we're live presenting speaking English but then it's in real time interpreting it into their native language which is amazing and you know I kind of leaned it on when I went to school you know I'm 33 so I haven't been in high school for a long time but I could tell you right now Saugarty's High School in New York definitely would have never done that back then I don't know what they're at today but it that to me is just such a cool shift to say great like you're a community member come to our school let's talk about this and we're gonna make sure you understand it and not just be you know speaking gibberish because English could come as a gibberish yeah and it's it requires a whole new presentations now right we learned a lot of you have to learn to pause after that translation so but yeah and so that was cool let's try and look like the you know the summit when the presidents go to a different country and they wear those yeah that's what it looked like yeah well and I so that same pause like when we try to meet the needs of the many I think we end up meeting needs that we didn't even know we had and so that impact the potential impact of students who are born speaking English in the United States to be able to hear other languages and to be able to learn more quickly other languages is also pretty amazing and also it's good for everybody to slow down right you're talking about the budget course lose most of us it's good for all of us to slow down just in general yeah we live in such a high like fast-paced society and it's you know I've learned in my adulthood to just slow down a little bit and really make sure that you're making the right connection with the person who's right in front of you it's so easy to just get distracted look at your phone and or look at the things that are walk crossing right by you but it's like no like let's focus on literally what's in front of me yeah well we're gonna go back to the measuring success question on that yeah that's where our world speeds up a little bit the data so last year standardized test results suggest that the proportion of Vermont students proficient in math and English and that means doing okay right decreased during the pandemic and has not made significant improvements since is this true I guess one is is this true of when you ski and how do you measure the success of the school district is this a decent way to measure success there's a lot in there yeah and I guess we'll start with Isaiah yeah I mean if I'm correct I believe the test scores were lower than the state average yes correct cool look at Nicole because we looked at the sheet together yeah so the based off of what you just put up there you know math and English math and English yep so the test results for when you see seal district were much lower than the state's average in terms of the testing do I personally think it's the right way to measure things no I don't because like we said before every single human is different we all learn different ways you know when I was asking you what nor of it divergent meant I didn't know but you told me and I learned but like that when you said the example I'm like that's everyone yeah we all learn so differently we're all so different and I personally don't think standardized tests really give you true results of where that particular student really is and aside from just maybe they know the answers but let's say they're test stress you know we all you know portray our knowledge in such a different way and I just think tests personally I know we have to measure things and I know we have to have those results but I feel like at some point we got to figure out a different way to how do you do those things how do you measure the success of the school district what would be I mean how do you know what would be one of your favorite if I'm being honest I mean I'm still learning all this stuff so I know with the Middle High School they've changed the whole grading system and the way students are marked essentially and I know they were going through a big change over the last few years for that implementation I'm still learning a lot about it we had one of the school counselors sit in one of our board meetings a few months ago and they kind of talked about when they made that switch for students that were graduating and you know the college when they're talking to the college counselors like you know understand the grading system even some of the colleges were like you know how do you like explain this to us right but then a lot of them are like oh this makes way more sense than a you know 65% you know 85% scores you know and it kind of it's kind of cool to see that and I really am eager to learn more specifically from Gene who's one of the co-principals of the Middle High School and he really kind of talked about that more like a lot in depth in that meeting and I personally want to learn more about that. An alum how would you met how do you want to measure the success of the school district what's your vision and if you want to speak to the standardized test results in whiskey. I don't know much about the the results but for me I remember when I was a good high school they used to be A, B, C and D grades or minus A so like for my kids they bring the home there or they send home their report I'm like I don't get this 3.2 I really don't understand it so I really want to learn more about how we can have a better understanding of the grade results. So you think there's more that can be done to help families understand this particular grading system? Yes. What would tell you that when you ski school districts are doing a good job? I think having the test for each grade on a certain like you say math and English I think is more really important to see where student are in the level because there's a different you know English a second language they might not do well on those so then if they test them they'll see where they are so they can help them achieve and get better. So a measure of success might be that you're measuring and then responding and fixing or changing and Nicole for you how do you see what's going to tell you when you ski is doing well? So I talked about this earlier I do think you know we're a pretty new board and so with a brand new superintendent and I think we have a great opportunity to really clearly define the metrics that we use and I agree with Isaiah in the sense that standardized tests is not the only way that we can measure student success I do think it's an important metric because it does compare our results across to other schools and students across the state I know we have local assessments that we use like the star reading assessment and some other math tools that teachers really have you know it's more connected to the teaching that's happening in the classroom and the curriculum that we have so those are important for us to see and I agree with Ilom for me it's more about growth as opposed to you know you've met a target or you haven't met a target it's how are we moving students to increase their proficiency and then I think health and well-being is also important that you can't get off of a standardized test and and surveys like the one Isaiah talked about could be an important tool that we use there's like school climate surveys there's other ways that we can get at that question of do students feel a sense of belonging do they feel valued so I think that's the work ahead for this board to really figure that out thank you all for joining us here today and speaking directly to voters in the city of Winiske any last closing comments for folks get out on March 5th I guess yeah I mean thank you for tuning in thank you for having us I really really appreciate it March 5th come like just vote you know at the end of the day it's like we all live in that town we all love it and even if you don't still vote because you have a voice and you should use that voice great that's where I'm at there is a budget presentation on March 4th we also did one here so not only vote but get the information you need in order to cast your vote yeah yeah we will be live streaming that budget presentation I think maybe Jordan can give me a thumbs up on that no we're not doing the last but we have recorded here and so thank you for tuning in to ongoing coverage of town meeting TV forums you can watch this and other forums repeats at cctv.org backslash 2024 or again on YouTube.com backslash town meeting TV and don't forget to vote either you can walk in now to the clerk's office and vote or you can vote on March 5th from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and we will be doing our local election results show here as well so tune in at 7 o'clock on March 5th and we'll bring you the numbers as they roll in so thanks for watching