 We'll get started because we have quorum and Carrie is going to join us in four minutes. So the first order of business today, first is 504. Welcome to this beautiful day and unfortunately you're going to be inside with us for a little bit but hopefully we'll keep it productive. We're going to have an executive session today. I got a question from Lindy online so I checked in. So if somebody could make a motion to go in an executive session for negotiations and for the purpose of discussing the appointment or employment or evaluation of a public employee, please. I'll make that motion that we go into executive session for the purposes of negotiation and that text that Floor wrote that hopefully we can get to Lisa. Can I just interrupt for one second? Yeah. So if we're talking about the employment of a public official, that's not what was warned on this. And if it's talking about my employment, I would prefer to have legal counsel. It's an evaluation, Brian. So it says the way that the law reads, so I check in. So as VSA section 313, if you want to check that, A, number three, and it's just the whole sentence is appointment, employment, or evaluation. So that's what I read. And that was from counsel, so I didn't make that up. So could I have a second for that? So Jonas moves it. Floor, could you cut and paste that verbiage into chat for me so I can make sure I get it? Yeah, I will do that in one second. I think I have to email it to you because the chat goes to Jim. Yeah, the chat will come to me. I can take that in verbatim, bring it over to Lisa. That's no problem. Okay. And I believe Stephen is seconding the motion. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? So the motion carries. Let's move into executive session, and I'll send you this language. Listen. I think we have to say who's going in. I have the list here so far. Is there anybody besides the board members that are going in? And Brian? Yeah, I'd like to have Carla and Laurie, if you're here, there's no reason not to have you in to talk about the negotiation stuff. Sorry, we're a few minutes late. We'll get started with our meeting. It's 1809. So I would like to welcome our guests. I see we have about 93 people including the board. So it's about 84 people. So wow, this is pretty exciting. Thank you for joining us. We have 15 minutes exactly for public comments. And I'm going to ask Jim to keep track of the time for me if that's possible. And if you could raise your hand, we are going to start with public comments today. And that's a change in our agenda. And I see Chris Winter. So I'll let him go first. Welcome, Chris. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you. Thank you, folks. Thanks for giving me some time. I've sent everybody an email so I can be fairly brief. This is regarding the proposed cuts to the Berlin Arts and Music. And I just wanted to say that we're all learning now how our newly consolidated district is going to work. And I think it's to be expected that there'll be some growing pains and maybe some mistakes along the way. Getting all the schools and communities of a formerly separate boards, growing in the same direction, I know requires a lot of hard work and a new way of doing things. And it's different than what my experience was as a board member when I was on the Berlin board when it still existed. So I appreciate the efforts you're making and how much work it takes. But one area that was always a concern when we were talking about consolidation, as many of you on this board still will recall, was the loss of local feedback and decision making. And I think the necessary delegation of more decision making to the central office, that's bound to happen under a consolidated board and district. So again, I know it's hard work to keep those lines of communication open and the decision is transparent, but it's work that we have to do if we're going to maintain trust in our communities and trust among the staff members across the district. So I'm asking that you please reconsider the decision to cut hours from the Berlin Music and Arts program. Taking away those hours now without more community awareness and more input would be a mistake and would send the wrong message about how this board and this district plans to operate in the future, especially as we come off a highly unusual year where we've already lost valuable art and music learning time with our kids. Now's not the time. So at the risk of using yet another bad metaphor, in addition to the one I sent you by email, if one school has a slightly bigger ore than the others, perhaps the others need bigger ores too to balance things out. And it seems to me the immediate reaction should be to analyze the needs of all the rowers rather than downsize the one outlier. And I also don't think we should use a formula to hand out ores. Ores that are one-fifth the size or two-fifths or three-fifths the size of a full ore. So bad metaphor over. I really hope we have a district-wide conversation about equity and the value of music and arts programming, programming that as we all know is so much more than just art and music and goes well beyond those classes to integrate with all the other learning and enrichment within the full educational environment. This might seem like a small scheduling decision right now, but it will have a long-term impact on our kids, on our communities, on our schools and the very important relationships that make us a unified district. So I thank you for the time tonight, whether you call this scheduling equity or cuts, whatever you call it, please reject any proposal that reduces hours at any school without full transparency and buy-in from the communities. Otherwise, I think you'll be using exactly the same process that we were afraid of as we were moving toward consolidation. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Lisa, Hannah. Thank you. I've written down some of my thoughts to say concise, so I apologize if it sounds like I'm reading. So as always, thank you to the board for all of your work. In my following of board activities this year, I've been especially tuned in to the ongoing conversation that you've been having about the need to elicit more stakeholder voice and to find more opportunities to hear from the public. I agree with you that this is the foundation of local governance. The discourse between you, our elected officials, and the stakeholder groups is critical for our success as a community. And while the structure of our school board has changed and now has a wider berth, I hope that this discourse remains at the heart of our belief in what local governance is. With that vision of increased participation from our community in mind, I hope that you consider the recent vote taken by teachers and staff and subsequent data that was shared with you as participation from your board. Our collective reaching out to you, our local officials with critical information to share. I hope that you see it as an opportunity to value the voices of teachers and staff and to ask questions, engage in dialogue, and to truly hear the concerns of a significant group. And more broadly, I hope that you see this as an opportunity to frame how the whole board can respond to and honor the voices of any group of stakeholders, whether it be teachers and staff or parents or community members or students from any of our unified district communities. I ask that you embrace this as a critical moment when our voices can be valued or our voices can be dismissed. And I hope that together we can choose the former. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Alison. Oh, Alison Levin. I wanted to speak on behalf of my husband Matt and two sons who currently are attending Berlin Elementary. I'm asking tonight that you reject the recommendations you have received from the administration regarding the arts and music staffing cuts that many of us have just recently become aware of. I believe you should reject the recommendations for many reasons, but I will, but I know time is limited, so I'll just mention one tonight. It is not clear to me how you as a board members can make a fully informed decision on this issue, important issue when you have not been presented with any alternatives. They have been, they have not provided you with information about what choices you may be able to choose from and any or any plan B. The memo in your board packet does not tell you anything about the financial impacts of the cuts or what it would cost to reverse these cuts that would impact the lives of many, many children in the coming years and in the coming year and for many years to come. I urge you to reject these cuts and reject the recommendation of the memo. You have the money, you have the opportunity, you have the choice for plan B, even if the administration has not provided you with one. Please restore these positions for one year so we can have a real discussion about how to achieve a positive equity in all of our schools in our newly merged district. Thank you. Thank you, Alison. Kate and Drew, you're on deck and then clear. Good evening. I hope you can hear me okay. I'm Kate McCann, a math teacher at U32 who's proud to be the co-president of the recently consolidated Washington Central Educators Union. I'm here tonight to vigorously oppose the decision to cut allied arts programming. As educators, we know the value of the arts to our students, especially at a time when they are needed most and we stand with parents in opposing these cuts. Sadly, this is yet another example of why we have lost confidence in the superintendent's ability to lead our district. Indeed, Brian Olkowski's lack of transparency with us and parents, his poor communication skills, and his failure to work collaboratively with our school community leads to decisions like this one. It has been a tough year to be a leader in any organization. That said, when things are hardest is when we need the strongest leadership. Unfortunately, that is not what we have seen this year. Mr. Olkowski has failed on a number of fronts, failed the faculty, failed the board, failed parents, and sadly failed the district's students. And let me be clear, these failures are not because of the unprecedented year we've been through. Brian Olkowski has single-handedly worked to undermine the collaborative and equity-based culture that our district has spent years developing. His record this year reveals someone not interested in listening to others, but who is instead intent on disempowering administrators, teachers, parents, and students by pushing his agenda as the only way forward without any process for a student-centered approach. As a result, our district has lost several top-notch administrators, teachers, and staff this year. I don't have to tell you that this translates to huge losses for our school communities at a time stability is so critical. It is glaringly clear to us that the superintendent's approach leads to decisions that are bad for our students. The allied arts cuts is one such bad decision. Each one of you represents all 10,000 people in the five towns of our district. We know that you are dedicated to our communities and to our schools. Today you can overturn a decision that is harmful to our students. Please do not go along with these dangerous cuts. Show the parents and students of this district that you stand with them. Thank you. Thank you, Kate. Hello, I'm Drew Jenkins. I'm a co-department head at U32 for math, and I just wanted to speak towards the leadership of the district at Central Office. I believe that this community we have in Washington Central Supervisory Union, I believe it's on openness, communication, and willing to collaborate. I haven't seen that in multiple circumstances, starting from the beginning of the year when one of my teachers in my department had to decide between having a job or protecting our family, and that decision was almost made without talking to people, and that makes me fearful. And then another case is with the curriculum review. The curriculum review was not a good reflection of our learning environment that we could provide. We were trying to do our best with a pandemic, and I feel like making changes based off of that year was not thought through. And the last thing I want to think of is making these proposed changes without communicating to you, the board, the community, or the teachers. I looked in the notes and I saw the notes from the board meeting April 27th, and I saw that there wasn't clear communication, that this was going to be the case, and that cuts weren't even being talked about. And I think that's sort of fearful for me. So I feel like in order to have a better leadership experience, I feel like there needs to be way better communication. I know I am one of many teachers that have felt alienated by what's going on, and I'm fearful of what might happen. Thank you, Drew. Claire and Cara, and I think that would make time. Hi, my name is Claire Gallagher, and I am a fourth grade teacher at East Montpelier Elementary School. And I am speaking to, a week ago, I was given documents that stated the number of literacy and math hours, and this was a district document, and so it was higher than years previous, and including other districtaries about increased mental health support and services in the classroom. So like many professions, you know, there's only so much time during the day, and it feels like there is the added pressure of more literacy and more math. And I don't value that as an educator. I value a well-rounded student. I use Gardner's Multiple Intelligence as the means to guide my instruction in the way that I interact with students. So the question is, what do we need more of? And we need more collaboration with our allied arts teachers and more opportunities for integration. And that doesn't say that literacy and math is less than the arts, or the arts are, you know, that there needs to be a discussion about which is better or which is worse. But we value having a well-rounded education, and that's what I love about this district, and the cuts concern me as a means to diminish those opportunities to connect with educators that have expertise in the arts that are different than my expertise in literacy and math. Thank you. Thank you, Claire Ikara. Thank you to the board for having public comment be first. We all appreciate that. I'm not going to speak to the cuts. I think many people have done it eloquently, and I'm mortally certain that you guys are having really good conversations behind closed in your executive session. What I am going to speak to is the issue that I've heard and read about as this issue being somehow framed as teachers are against consolidation. And one of the things that I think is really important to be stated really clearly is that this is not about consolidation. Certainly what we've heard is that this was a concern that was raised when consolidation happened, but this is not about teachers being against consolidation. We all understand that tough decisions have to be made, but what we want is a transparent system. We want leadership that uses transparency. This is I am, and I didn't introduce myself properly. I teach at U32 at the high school. I'm also on the negotiating team. One of the things that on the negotiating team between the teachers and the board, we all value is our transparent process of interest-based bargaining. That's something that we have intentionally, the board and the teachers have embarked upon. One of the core principles of that that the mediators who train us each year emphasize is transparency. We all agree. We all have to agree to engage in a transparent process. That's not just about that. That's not just about negotiations that works in a classroom. It works between adults and it works in a school system. One of the reasons is because transparency, and I talked a long time with the federal mediator about this back in December when we were just had some questions about how things might work in interest-based bargaining. The thing that she said is that trust is paramount and that the only way that you develop trust is by being transparent again and again and again and again. That is also true in a school system. The only way that you engender trust is to be transparent again and again and again and again. To show that you're acting with common decency and with concern for community. Those are the things that will make people want to go to the wall for you. Frankly, teachers who are always going to be working at night in the morning whenever they schedule their work outside of school, they will be working outside of school. You need them to be. You have to have teachers who are willing to go home and do their work. The way that you get them to do that is by treating them with common decency, with concern, by treating students with concern, and the community with concern. That's how you get people behind you. These are the things that I am really concerned about as I see this conversation. However, this particular conversation shakes off in the end. These are the things that concern me in the larger picture. Thank you very much. Thank you, Kara. I believe that concludes our public comments for today. I don't see any other raised hands, so we're going to move into reports and discussion, but we really appreciate you coming today to give us your input. Thank you. Are our students here? Yes. Anna might not be here. She was going to be a little bit late. If she pops in, then she can join me. For right now, it looks like I'm going to be doing this by myself. Awesome. To start off, last weekend, maybe the week before that, yes, there were SBAC testing for lots of grades at U32, which I'm sure every student enjoyed greatly. We're right in the middle of AP tests happening, which our students are also enjoying greatly. That's been a great test combination. The school year is almost over. There are actually only a few more in-person weeks for the high school before the end of the school year. People are preparing for the end of the year. There are finalizing plans for graduation, and there's even going to be a senior prom. In some middle school news, the middle school fire core created an interactive and visual educational museum about the civil rights movement. Talking about U32, which is a very engaging, creative project in the middle school. Seventh graders are building solar cars and salad utensils. It's kind of a part of a hands-on learning and diving into that. The final thing, I guess, is that the U32 Chronicle has been, you know, posting articles and documenting this year, and some of the many interesting things that our school and in our community. If anyone here wants to read some great student journalism, check out the U32 Chronicle. Yes, and I think that's it for the student report. Any questions? Thank you, Towns. I'll open it up to board members. Do you have any questions? Okay, seeing none, thank you Towns for being here. Okay, let's move into the superintendent's report. So COVID update, Brian? Yes, I'm going to turn this over to Elizabeth Worth, our COVID-19 coordinator, who has done just an outstanding job this year. And we're still so happy to have her continue to do an outstanding job. And she has some important updates regarding COVID-19 and vaccination clinics. So Elizabeth, are you there? I'm here, yep. So, you know, there's always something new. That's been what the year has brought. But right now we're really working on getting ready to do a vaccine clinic at the high school next week, which was a great opportunity, I thought, to get some of the students, the younger students who just were approved to get the vaccine in a simple way. Right at school, they can have a vaccine if they want to. And so far, as of yesterday, there's about 80 people who've signed up, all students, two adults, one mother and a grandfather. But that's all. So it will all be you 32 people. There could be walk-ins. But I'm really encouraged by just being able to offer that. And there's so many clinics available in the area that people signed up immediately as soon as it was opened up and they got a vaccine that day or the next day. So I'm hopeful that, you know, by the beginning of next year, the high school and middle school will be in a much different place in terms of safety. And then we still work with the elementary school. So I'm working on figuring out what the summer is going to bring, you know, what we're doing with sports and those kinds of things and summer school. And then working with Maria, who's going to be taking over my position to get ready for next year. And so it's been an interesting year. And as I said, hopefully the clinic will run smoothly. There were some concerns about it that have been expressed. But I think that it's completely safe as far as I'm concerned. We've really done everything to, there won't be any communication with other people. In the course of the clinic, it will all be students and anybody who comes into the clinic will be separate from students. So I think that's all no cases, none since the vacation. You know, another district I talked to had seven cases in one week and we haven't had any. So that's really gratifying and helpful and encouraging. So any questions? That's all I have to say. Chris. Hi, Elizabeth. We're going to miss you next year. We'll be happy to have Maria, but we're going to miss you because you've been that calm Fauci presence throughout this pandemic year, which is very nice to hear. In terms of the vaccination for students under 18, is parental consent required? Oh, yes. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah, either parents have to come with a student or they need to have consent. And it's all, it's done virtually, but the kids have to actually bring the signed consent form to the school. Yeah. Great. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Brian. Yeah. And I just want to thank Elizabeth as well. We will miss you next year. And I think a lot of this work that we've done this year, I can't imagine doing it without you Elizabeth. And I also can imagine doing it without the teachers and staff who worked extremely hard in our district this year to be one of five districts in the state to start on, start for full-time in-person learning. So my hat is off to all the teachers and staff and leadership team members. So, thank you, Elizabeth. So I'm going to move on to the, I think the big topic that a lot of folks have spoken to previously tonight and that is about the art music, allied arts. So before proceeding with the recommendation from the leadership team, which is in your packet, I would like to comment about the process and my role in it concerning these reductions in the Allied Arts program. Whenever considering a reduction in force or a transfer of staff, I believe a superintendent, this is me or any superintendent, at a minimum must consider the following questions. And there are four of them that I think about at a minimum. When is it appropriate to notify the school board about impending rifts and or transfers? Number two, when is it appropriate to notify staff about impending rifts and or transfers? Number three, when is it appropriate to notify Washington Central Educator's Union about impending rifts and or transfers? When is it appropriate to notify parents and families about impending rifts and or transfers? In this case, my decisions about when and how to discuss changes focus primarily on the rifts, the process outlined in the collective bargaining agreement, and the timeline for informing staff of these rifts by April 1st. I think it's very important to understand several other factors that influence the decision and my decision making around this process. The greater context of our this of our budget season, my concern about the impact of the pandemic on the economy, my desire to not have any of our staff members lose their jobs, especially during a pandemic, and my concern over educational programming that would be or could be lost if a budget did not pass. There was a very real concern, we all think back to the budget season, given the initial tax rate from the state and our people per people spending that our budget may not pass. Here's additional context I saw during this time. COVID-19 shuttered our schools across Vermont and we've been working currently and we still are in a state of emergency. Washington Central is a newly merged district and we're one of five districts in Vermont providing in-person learning five days a week from K-8 during this pandemic and that's a tribute to our staff and our teachers. This Board of Education, our communities as well. In other districts I have worked, the public and the association are normally invited to attend budget hearings and forums to ask questions. I honestly thought this was the opportune time for parents, families, staff and others to be informed. The budget was presented several times in school board meetings and during community budget forums. I thought this provided multiple opportunities for folks to ask questions and give feedback and be informed. Second, and I said this before, I was really concerned about the budget not passing. That was a big priority this year to make sure we passed the budget in this horrible pandemic. If the budget did not pass, I was concerned that, and this has happened in other districts where the budget has not passed in Vermont, we would have to cut positions rather than transfer in our district and that would impact students in the classroom and the lives of staff and educators whose jobs may be eliminated. The district's physically responsible budget was passed successfully in early March and this was a great outcome after my initial worry. I have done a lot of reflecting over these past several weeks. Through normal attrition and retirements, our district was able to achieve a budget that supports all our students, no one lost their jobs despite facing a pandemic and a declining student enrollment. In order to determine what was the best time to school year to notify folks in the absence of not having any written procedures or policies regarding notification of transfers outside of the collective bargaining agreement, I decided to follow the timeline outlined in the collective bargaining agreement for RIFS, which states that teachers are notified no later than April 1st. This meant that the school board needed to take some action sometime after the budget vote but before April 1st. In hindsight, after having gone through this reflection, this is not nearly enough time for effective and thoughtful communication, but again, I want to make sure that I've outlined the extenuating circumstances this year. I will also disclose that the teachers association, some school board members and leadership team members have informed me that the previous, in previous years, reductions impacting staff and programs had been shared much earlier than April 1st. So I understand things were done differently in the past. As a superintendent in a new district going forward, I will continue to learn and adapt to the expectations related to informing stakeholders about leadership team decisions. It is my hope that all stakeholders will work with me and the leadership team on this. Now, I also just want to find and just say that the leadership team has been working on this recommendation for several years and there is a history and rationale for it in the packet and now I will turn it over to the leadership team to speak about the recommendation tonight. Thanks, Brian. I'm Aaron Boynton, the school principal at Berlin and I'm going to start this evening on behalf of the elementary principals here tonight. I wanted to acknowledge the response that's in the board packet regarding that further comment on the recommendations. But I want to say heart to heart, we hear you on transparency, 1000%. We hear you on fostering well-rounded children that have an opportunity for positive experiences. We clearly hear you on that. We are on the same page with that. Many of you know us. You know your elementary principals well. You work with us side by side every day in the trenches every day. You know as well enough that we don't want to make cuts. We do not want to reduce experiences for kids. We wish we had more time to do more and more time to do what is expected of public schools these days. We are dedicated to our schools that we work in and in navigating this newly consolidated district. I wanted to speak first because I know Berlin has been in the hot seat with all of this around music and cuts. Please hear me clearly when I say there are no cuts to student contact time for art. Physical education, library, guidance, art, there is no change to student contact time for art. Art keeps coming up, art and music. Nothing is going to change for the student time with art. For instrumental music, after looking further at opportunities that Berlin will have for students. Historically, students have received two band in a chorus session per week and an instrumental music lesson per week. Looking at the schedule going into next year, we will be able to retain this this offering for students. Groupings might look different, but student contact time will be the same. Our students will have one lesson, two band sessions and a chorus per week which is not a change from the previous year. So I don't mind publicly saying that I personally apologize for moments of miscommunication, misunderstanding and all of the other factors that have been brought up to administrators personally. I want what's best for all kids, what's best for kids at Berlin, what's best for teachers that support our kids and to be able to look at next year and realize that we will be able to make it work where students have the same opportunity for music, instrumental music. I'm happy about that. But again, no other cuts to the arts or even general music class are being made. Thank you. I want to just echo some of what Erin just shared. I'm Kat Fair. I'm the principal at Calis Elementary and we are not making cuts in art or music at Calis. We are not changing the programming for students at all. We do have declining enrollment. We are down to five classrooms for next year. One thing that I like to always keep in mind about Calis, we are small, but we are mighty and we care about the arts. And at Calis, I can guarantee you I have already looked at and drafted a schedule that ensures that every classroom has the same access as they have always had to art education and the same access they have always had for music and enrichment, including instrument, band and strings. What I don't have an answer for is Calis' music program has been up and down over the last few years. We're ready if there's a teacher who's passionate about strings. We are ready if there is a teacher who is passionate about band. We're ready if teachers are passionate about percussion. We just need a teacher. But we are not talking about making any cuts at Calis. Thank you. I'm happy to share next. I'm Casey Provost and the principal at Romney and Middlesex. We, as you likely know, we're looking at a 0.1 reduction, which is a half day. We also are facing declining enrollment, which led this year for next year to one less homeroom classroom. With a half day reduction, we will not see any decreased opportunities for students in music. So students will continue to have all homeroom classes with general music, chorus and band and instrumental lessons. The schedule will be a little bit tighter, but it is seemingly manageable. We have a schedule that's drafted that allows for our programs to continue. Thank you. So I'm Gillian Fuqua. I'm the principal over at Doty Memorial in Worcester. Doty is experiencing no changes in the art or music, FTE or programming. But one thing that I wanted to bring up is that we're really hopeful of doing is it's extremely challenging to figure out how to fit it all into a day and make it all work. And we would like to pick up from January 2020 when there was the board meeting where we talked about strings and would like to use this as an opportunity to partner with the music department K-12 looking at how can we provide parity in our offerings across schools and how can we provide that all schools have equal access to instruments and other resources that they might need and develop a vibrant and strong K-8 music experience for our students. Hi, I'm Alicia Lyford, the principal Eastmont player school and my colleagues all said everything beautifully and I really don't have much of anything to add except that we also have no reductions next year in art or music. And I can also speak similarly to Erin. We have very similar sized schools with the same number of classrooms and we're able to provide a similar experience for our students with band and chorus instrumental lessons and general music. And I too hope that from this I want to say very painful and unfortunate experience that I don't think any of us want to live through again. And my hope is that we all have some lessons that we can take and learn from this and do better next time. But my hope is that we can work in collaboration with the music teachers. I know they have amazing ideas. We know that they're the experts at the table and if changes to music programming needs to be made then they need to be the ones to do that with us and our hope is that that can happen soon. Thank you. Thank you Alicia. Thank you Brian. Are there any questions first? Chris McBae? You're muted Chris. Sorry. Sorry about that. Thank you each of you each of the principals for your comments. I am still a little mystified however that the same access to art and music can occur when in Berlin the music is being reduced by 0.3 FTE and the artist being reduced by 0.2 FTE. The same comments for the callus where there's a reduction in the music from 0.4 to 0.3 so 0.1 FTE reduction and then the arts reduced also by a 0.1 FTE. And then the same comment for Music at Brumney where there's reduction for 0.1 FTE in the music program. It sounds to me like there is a struggle to create the same type of service. I don't think we were given the specifics about any potential cuts before we voted on the budget and I think cuts were known at that time. It also sounds like there was no collaboration with the music staff or the art staff before these cuts were considered. At least that is my takeaway from fire board meetings in discussions with the staff. I am to be quite blunt I am hopeful that we vote to restore these cuts and that will maybe provide the opportunity for the music staff to collaborate with the administration and develop the type of K through 12 music program that we heard Gillian talk so eloquently about. Thank you. Diane. So I just have a couple of questions and one is I'm just stumped as to where this is in the budget. So you know I did notice that one of the last lines on the letter from the leadership team and please don't view this as disrespectful at all. I really appreciate each of what each one of you were sharing but the statement at the bottom of that letter says that the staffing that you're in support of the staffing remaining as it's budgeted for in the 21-22 budget. I was not cognizant of any kind of cuts to the arts and so I guess I'm asking where is that cut present where you know there's a number of things listed. I completely hear you Brian it was a very scary time in November and December and then those major cuts were recommended and so I wasn't as concerned and then we also knew as the changing context. So I worry that's one of the transparency issues I have is I could did not see that at all in the budget so please help me see where that's at because otherwise to me that statement in that letter says that it does stay at minimal status quo if we didn't have those cuts noted. Then the other part of that was that you know we are in a different world now and you know again I apologize for not even thinking about that March 29th when we explored it but I wonder if the lens of what does learning forward in the reentry, the reintegration, re-energizing of our kids is as we come back from COVID did we apply that lens at all to when we look at what music and art might mean for kids as they come back in and do these ESSER grants give us that availability of figuring it out. Again I don't mean any disrespect to the thought that's been put into it in the ideas that have been shared these are just the questions that are popping up for me. Lindy and then Stephen. I, Diane just said it very well we were not we were not told that there were program cuts in fact we were told there would not be program cuts that they would be administrative cuts which I at the time question what does that mean and the other thing that really bothers me is when we've done this in the past and had public forums specific about program cuts the people in those positions had an opportunity to apply for other jobs when the job market was open waiting until April 1st if I'm the person who's now being told I'm being split between two schools and that is not easy for me with a family or whatever my situation is maybe I share a car with somebody you have not given me the opportunity to look elsewhere and do what's best for me when you do this April 1st that to me has been one of my biggest issues if this is what's necessary our numbers haven't dropped precipitously in six months except maybe COVID and remote but I think there needs to be a more thought out timeframe with public input from the teachers from the staff you're I also am wondering if you're going to burn out people if you say okay we're going to cram you into this much time because we have one less class and we know in our small schools it's not easy when three kids move away and they're all in different classes or and we have to reconfigure so when we have small schools we have to be a little we just have to realize that and one of the private schools in our district area is getting very big and I think people are going there because of their arts programs and the things they're offering so we have to think about that but I'm more concerned about how we're treating employees and people on our staff being told when they get their contract oh by the way you're now in two schools or what you're you're cut whatever so that's my concern thank you Lindy I lost track of who went first Steven or Scott I'm gonna go with Scott and then Steven am I missing somebody Scott Scott's pointing at me oh okay but I always like to listen to okay go um so I I would just like to offer a difference perspective none of this was a surprise to me I heard this and understood this in December um I I don't think we knew specifically what buildings were going to be impacted but we knew what these cuts were we discussed it part of the discussion was the board preferred to know specifics on where they were going to be and that information wasn't available but the number of FTEs and where they were going to be cut was discussed as the board the board voted on that issue and voted to support it thank you Steven is Scott and then Jonas thanks for that um although this may come as a surprise to some of my colleagues on the board I really do try to learn from my mistakes um which means I do a lot of learning and one of these mistakes um came about a year and a half ago um when the board I think with the absolute best of intentions voted to uh earmark essentially $50,000 to um expand the streams program in the schools um that that not only flopped it it blew up um and left a crater um because as well-intentioned as we were we forgot that we're not a board for a single school anymore we're a board for multiple schools and it's a complex organization things like expanding programs can't happen without a lot of consultation a lot of working among the various parties involved and I think you know for us um all of us want as much music and art as much joy in our schools as we can possibly have but it has to be worked through the system and the system is a lot more complicated than it used to be so with that I'm supporting the uh the leadership team um on keeping the budget as it is and um looking as I think Alicia may have referred to before you know what can we learn this time um and how can we actually get to a better place in the future but recognizing that it's not something the board can wave a magic wand and change but that it takes time takes hard work and it takes focus um sustained focus thanks thank you Scott Jonas Dorsey you're on deck uh so I was I was not going to speak because I have some pretty strong feelings about the the process here the way this was communicated to us uh but uh with all I I respect Steven look maybe more than any other single person in this room but I have to push back Steven we did not discuss the riff I see you Scott I respect you a lot too but Steven's Steven's at the top of the pyramid as far as I'm concerned we I we did not talk about this we praised the superintendent and the administration for deep cuts in the budget without riffs we explicitly were happy that the budget had happened without the riffs and as I pointed out in the last meeting the board a number of people on the board specifically requested if there is a downside to this budget we need to know it and we were never told um in in in fact the board didn't the board was not aware that any riffs were occurring until the second draft of the agenda for that special meeting which was sent out on Friday morning and the special meeting was on Monday the decision was known in December the board had less than 72 hours to learn about this very little time to ask questions I feel sandbagged I feel a little bit gaslit um I feel deceived and not trusted to make appropriate decisions I feel like information was kept from me to protect the the the passage of the budget um because it was known that this would be a controversial topic and it was kept under wraps until the very last minute um to be frank the letter that's included in this week's board packet signed by all the principles is extremely convincing and what all the principles have said here today is extremely convincing I am a hundred percent confident that this board and everybody who works in this district is committed to music in the arts absolutely we're not gonna balance the budget on the back you know at the expense of music in the arts we're not going to you know engage in some you know perverse definition of equity and remove services so that everyone meets the lowest common denominator that's simply not what we're going to do but I also feel like the process here has alienated many many many people I am one of them and so even even though I find the the argument entirely convincing this time compared to the the previous letter which was written I am I'm going to vote to restore the cuts simply as as a protest in the way that I feel like this board um was misled thank you Jonas Dorsey oh yeah um I agree with Steven um I see the past uh meetings in December and going forward I understood what was going on and I understood that there were not any major riffs but I also understood there may have been there may be some reshuffling and what I find tonight I found very rewarding and I was not aware of it is how close the elementary school principals have come together and they have agreed to this and they did agree to it way back at the beginning apparently quite early on they did not have to be have their elbows twisted or whatever they saw the handwriting on the wall and I also remember the meeting at Berlin when the board wanted to give $50,000 to a string program and some principals or I'm not sure who they were spoke up and said yeah we want to do this but you got to give us a chance to figure out the scheduling to figure out how it's going to fit even if you give us all the violins in the world we have to fit it into the day that is now demanding more time for literacy and math which we all know really our district is not doing that well in so they certainly are not going to cut back that time the principals aren't at if they have a chance so I really understand the scheduling thing and I really understand now how the leadership team works and I'm kind of like Alicia we there have been mistakes made let's not be the dead horse we those of us who have made mistakes have said yeah we made a mistake let's move on let's do it right from now on I can see where Brian had some information he tried to figure out what was the appropriate time he we didn't have any apparently any policy or anything in our negotiation agreements that gave him an idea of what to do so he followed what he had as best he could as far as timing um I I just feel that we shouldn't we shouldn't make the change to change what the leadership team and our administrator has decided it's the best route for us to travel and that's what I'm that's what I'm thinking thank you thank you Dorsey uh Jonas is that a new hand okay Laurie and Gillian and then we have a really long agenda today so I don't want to keep going so I'm just going to dedicate a few more minutes to this I know that this is really important but I would like every board member to be able to have a chance to ask questions if they have them go ahead okay sure um I just wanted to let you know that there was a budget line that said staffing changes which included unfilled early retirement positions in the total amount shown to the voters was a reduction of 390 518 dollars um it wasn't intentional that it didn't say rift because at the time and I said this at the last meeting we had had 42 temporary contracts issued this year and we believed at the time that people wouldn't be rift that the reduction would be done by not renewing a temporary contract and we did do um that reduction in the budget I just wanted to go to bat the principals have been working on this I did it some homework since December of 2018 they have had a lot of time to think about this this their recommendation has been in several meetings so I wanted to go to bat for that and to also let you know that it was only on March 18th that we learned that there were temporary contracts and they were not in our in music so we would result in a rift after that date we met with um the principals again and we had a plan of discussing this and confirming and it was unanimous that all the principals supported this together so I just want to say this was not an intentional slight of information or intentional um act by any one party and the superintendent wasn't even here when this conversation started so I feel like somebody needs to say that and thank you for listening thank you larry Gillian um I just wanted to take a second and really quickly answer chris's question about the um the time question that he had and where where the time came out of was non-student contact does that make sense chris oh you're muted when you say non-student contact but within the music or art programs so what I what we looked at was within the teacher's schedule over the course of the week what percentage of time had was student contact and what percentage of time they were had either planning time or time with no student contact okay so sorry no fun so the reductions come out of the teacher's planning time or other non-student contact time can you explain what that would be if it's not planning time it's what in terms of a non-student contact time so this is where some of my peers can jump in and help me out but there is unassigned time um within the day and so what we looked at was creating parity across all teaching positions so we you know we had the there's the guaranteed planning time the duty-free lunch and then the percentage of time that is spent in front of students and not in front of students and so for the um for the music positions there was no none of the minutes no minutes were taken away from student time we'll just add to that gillian just for clarity if you look at a teacher's all teachers contracts whether regardless of their fte will say in general the for elementary their start time is at 8 15 in the morning and their end time is at 3 45 at the end of the day by contracts they get 30 minutes for planning most of us provide more than that um they get um 30 minutes duty-free lunch every single day and they have a number of duties per week based on their fte status in addition to that they're always with um students be it morning meeting be it greeting at the door be it literacy or math or music when we did a time study for some of these positions we noted that when you take out planning time duty-free lunch um student classes or instrument or band or art that there remained a significant amount of non-student contact time that showed there was a lack of parity across all of our teaching staff parity in what way i i'm hesitant to um to go into too much detail because i i don't want to call out individual people um chris but i do think it's important that we're transparent and not engaging in a dance with words some teachers have more time that is not working with students than others and that is where we have made the cuts can i just add a tiny bit to that um piece cat um so there are teachers um in our elementary schools when we looked at this and did this time study that had more time than others and i would say that even with these cuts those same teachers um remain still have more time than others so it wasn't it wasn't actually leveling the amount of prep time so that every teacher in every building gets their 30 minutes there's still a lot of discrepancy in that among our buildings and within our buildings thank you everybody thank you lesha and kat and gillian for clarification it lasts an opportunity for board members that haven't spoken otherwise a i i believe we ask our leadership team to come back with us and this is a follow-up and they came back with their recommendation so i'm i'm assuming that we could do a straw ball like we did the last time since we already voted in this uh before but what would the pressure of the board be i'm flora i'm gonna make a motion that we restore the cuts that were made to the arts and music programs across the district i'm gonna second that okay so we have a motion in a second any discussion um just briefly um you know i think in our our district we've prided ourselves on collaborative collaboration uh amongst all the interest groups including staff members community administration and board i think it is painfully clear that that type of collaboration did not occur in a very difficult situation like this where we're cutting art or music for any other position and it does not build trust i mean we heard earlier today that trust is the keystone to an effectively functioning organization so because we did not have that i think we should just restore and and then renew any type of move in this direction next year with all participants having the opportunity to talk before the hammer falls thank you so because this issue is a little controversial i'm gonna do something different that we have done before and i'm gonna do a roll call i do want to say that voting yet is my personal opinion and just to clarify the motion voting yes in this motion this doesn't doesn't undo the communication it doesn't make the communication better automatically this is a strict vote on the recommendation do we approve or not the recommendation of the of the leadership team so if you're moving to restore hold on a minute if we're moving to restore the the the position it means that we do not accept the recommendation of our leadership team if we vote to know it means that we accept the recommendation of our leadership team just for clarification um for can i ask you just to clarify that again because if we're my motion would require a yes to restore and a no not to restore i understand that but i want to make two i want to make it clear that there were two separate issues here one was the transparency and the communication and the way that we share this information the way the information was shared with us that is completely separate to the planning and educational outcomes that the the principles are sharing with us so i don't want to confuse those two so if you're voting yes to restore you're voting no in the recommendation from the leadership team and if you're voting no you're voting yes in the recommendation of the leadership team is that clear that is clear and i would call the question i would call the question and i don't know that i can call the question it's still not clear for me can you see them you are way better if we're going back what might be viewed as backwards so if we're view if we're saying yes to chris's motion that we want to restore the positions in essence what we're saying is that we're not we're not taking the recommendations of the leadership team so we vote yes we're restoring the positions and that has a subtext of not accepting the recommend yeah thank you so i'm gonna do a roll call so that we can make it easier so scott no diane yes chris yes it's even look no i'm having trouble seeing it everybody in lindy and first if there's somebody not muted could they mute everybody mute themselves please thank you lindy yes who am i missing dorsi i can't hear you dorsi is that me or you're muted no okay hopefully somebody else is helping me come to jonathan yes okay who am i missing jill you're not on my screen but jill no thank you kari no and then i don't see anybody else but myself is that right am i just nope you miss me oh sorry jonas jonas jonas yes so i guess uh that's everybody and myself i vote no i count eight nos is that correct uh lissa do you mind confirming with me i think it was six and five yeah i have six nos one two three four five six nos and one two three four five yeses okay sorry i'm just taking two quick notes here so that the the nose have it so the motion fails thank you everybody so 4.23 brian equity scholar uh yes uh so this is a uh what you have here is the mou for the equity scholar in residence program that you approved uh few board meetings ago this is an opportunity to take the good work of our equity scholar in residence uh shelly vermelia over at u32 and expand her opportunity to work with our staff across the entire district around uh building our capacity around equity uh and and so what we've done is we've worked on uh i've worked with the washington central friends of education uh lucinda garthwaith and uh was able to come up with a new mou that is based on a district mou district wide mou rather than a u32 mou moving forward and so all the recommendation i have for this is to uh ask the board to authorize me to sign this mou scott you have a question i was just going to move that we authorized the principal to sign the mou this superintendent superintendent can you make superintendent apologies the motion by scott and second by a second thank you chris any more any discussion or questions yes i have some questions because this is essentially a contract so i have some questions about this contract that we'll be signing um the uh number four on page six it indicates to me that the um es the person employed will not be subject to the authority of the whatever school principal they're in because they're not subject to district employment policies um why is that uh yeah so i i can also have i don't know steven is here he might be able to chime in uh but i basically the the way this model works there's a two different what i've understood is there's two different ways of some districts are around the state of vermont and around the country are looking to have equity and inclusion specialists that work directly for the district and as a result when you have a person who works in that capacity to work with teachers to have conversations around equity and building building our capacity and understanding around equity having those conversations with a district employee is very different than having it with someone who is a third party contractor why so the the idea is is that they can have conversations with people that are do not necessarily um um are related to the district it's a it's really about trying to build the commitment to the process this is what shelly is uh at u32 she's always been a third party contractor she's never been a direct employee of our district i don't know if steven has anything else to add or or jody uh because this is so i believe i believe that we have policies that um definitely apply to contractors uh with the uh with the to school district um and the policies include them within the school district my concern is that this would take uh this particular contractor out of that that compliance um and i i actually don't see the reason for it um and i i just believe that the the principle of the building and u brine is superintendent overall should still have some authority over this independent contractor and and this seems to take that away because i don't see it anywhere else maybe it's somewhere else in the ml u that i missed but it seems to take that away and i think that would be a bad precedent um let me you know let me go through all my comments first and then you can okay and chime in um the next is um on paragraph uh five i'm sorry paragraph six that goes from page six to page seven uh number c d and e uh my concern with that is that it almost requires that um the preliminary results of the study um be the basis for moving forward into the into a future contract um or relationship as opposed to we the district should be able to say we don't want to have a future relationship for no reason or any reason i think it's limiting our options the next um part that i have a question on is um the what what happens if because we have in page paragraph 10 that either party can basically opt out at a certain point in time if there's a violation um if they feel that the agreement is violated there's really no mechanism for testing that as opposed to a party just saying we think the agreement's violated we're going to opt out there's no provision there that says we get um a proportional amount of bar of what we're paying back on that uh the other thing that that concerns me a little bit is um on page eight where it talks about washington's central friends of education uh indicating that it would provide the liability insurance employment employment functions and like workers compensation coverage it seems to me for the independent contractor is that the way that that reads yes um if it is then that kind of undermines that previous independent contractor designation um because they're more of an employee of washington's central friends of education and second is that we should be um we should have proof of insurance by the washington's central friends of education because ultimately if anything happens the contractor will be coming back to our district for some type of coverage it's just a a flow-through so there's my concerns about this um this contract thanks yeah uh i can just uh talk briefly what i hear you i understand your concerns what i can tell you is that this contract was uh modeled after the contract that we've had for a number of years at u32 when u32 was a district this was also shared with our legal council who did uh review this document and the the premise of this entire agreement and uh relationship is based on having the uh having shelly work as a third party vendor a third party contractor outside of not being an employee in our district uh steven do you have anything else to add i so chris a lot of legal stuff that i can't get into i'll let you lawyers figure it out um but the the part of go ahead the part that we want to stress with all of this is that we want someone who can speak about equity issues without the fear of evaluation from us and so that's why we want the evaluation to be the third party um for us and so that's the part i would speak to is we want them to be independent from us so that they can speak to the equity issues without fear of a reprisal through the evaluation process that's where that piece comes from uh as for all of those other things that you talked about i'm i'll let you guys figure that out okay because there's okay i just want to add that i was hoping that it's even it was going to use the same quote that he used the last time but it's the only way you to speak truth to power and and if you're really involved in a lot of the by bug work in in the equity work that is super important you cannot achieve that unless you are an independent person otherwise you always get labeled as political is instead actually doing the work that is needed and karen had her hand before and i don't know where she went but she also with shelly but i don't know where she i just as a board member of washington central friends of ed i just wanted to chime in and relay our excitement and gratitude about the this step that is on the floor right now to share the equity scholar and residents resource across the district so it's been incredible at u32 and we're really excited about the step that's being considered right now that's all i wanted to share thank you thank you karen chris anymore um no no i'm happy with the independence of the work but i concern you know if something happens that's when independence can go away yeah so i think what i can do is work with washington friends but i will look at the insurance issue we'll make sure that this person is insured one way or the other well washington friends right it sounds like washington friends is going to ensure them okay thanks ryan you're still on four point oh yes i was asking for the uh uh the motion to sign the mou could i have a motion there's a motion there's a motion and it's seconded that i'm is my internet being slow that i made the motion sorry i i made the motion for right at the top yeah okay sorry that you're right you're right okay sorry my internet is unstable and i can barely hold on a minute so all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi any opposed hearing none the motion carries uh the next one was just the uh we had a there's a grant that's been going around this uh the state uh kelly bushey has worked with uh shelly and a number of folks in our district to put together a equitable education systems grant application uh i don't it's kelly here i'm not it's kelly here i would like to i've heard this talk about it if uh yeah i'm here okay great yeah so as many of you know shelly is currently teaching a class um with the mostly a cohort from u32 but cat fair jen and i and then ali from ramir in the class otherwise it's u32 folks but um this grant was released or you know sent out by the agency of education and so this class decided that this was something that we were going to jump into and three of us so meg allison ellen cook and i spent time drafting the grant and with first draft and then we brought it to the whole class and they gave us feedback and we made some revisions and so what we're asking the agency of education for is funding to help us establish an intersectional justice council in washington central and so that council would be made up of students parents a board member so get ready if we get the grant we're going to be asking uh leadership team faculty and staff with an intentional focus to include stakeholders from historically excluded groups and the overall purpose and tasks of that group are outlined in the grant there's the three bullets here right so to develop implement and monitor policies practices and strategies that support culturally responsive and inclusive school communities facilitate the development implementation and monitoring of culturally responsive and inclusive inclusive curriculum and develop strategies focused on diversifying our educator workforce to address educational equity gaps within our district and so what we're asking the funding is so that the one we can pay stipends to the people that are on this committee because the expectation would be it'll be outside of the work day and for professional development and so the hope would be that the committee would be up and running this summer and we would hire some outside expertise to come in and lead the work and to get the the council some training and and we put there's we could apply for up to $50,000 and so we put in there some resources for books and materials as well and so this is at this point right it's an application that went into the agency of education and we expect to hear back from them by Friday actually and you'll notice on the grant itself my name is not on there even though I did most of the work but wanted to make sure that when the AOE communicates back that it was to Brian or Jen because they'll be the ones to continue to lead that work forward so and I would just like to publicly not acknowledge Kelly for her work on this this is uh something that she worked on I'll put many hours and put a lot of devotion into it so uh thank you Kelly for your leadership in this area thank you Kelly it's wonderful any questions from board members I see just gratitude to Brian as moving along at the last me last meeting there was a question about access to facilities for all students over at U32 uh since that time we've asked I've asked Stephen Dowager-Pate to give us an update about the facilities and how how they're being used for all students so I can turn that over to Stephen yeah thanks everyone so the you can see the details in the letter I'm not going to go through every detail but I would just say that the foundation of the work that we're doing now is to have several adults and students working together to make sure that the school is accessible for all students and so it's not just transgender issues you're going to look at with that group but it's all issues so is the school both accessible physically but is the school also accessible emotionally and socially for all those things and so we do have a group that are working on that we'll keep reporting back to you when there are significant changes but the first changes are probably things around signage and and just how we address some of those needs but we also want to make sure that we say to everyone is that it all comes with an educational component so as we make changes we have to educate the community as to what those changes are and how they affect everyone and so those two things will go hand in hand as we make those changes I foresee us coming back to you in the future with some some actual capital expenses around adjusting some of the facilities but for now very small adjustments through just the signage and and some of the structures that we have that don't require a ton of money if any any questions from board members this is wonderful Steven thank you so much this is exciting work and we will be ready when you need the money hey Brian I want to yeah I also just want to thank Steven as well for the quick turnaround and working on this with his administrative team on this one so thank you Steven the strategic planning process so over the last few weeks this is really more of an update as you know that we have a curriculum management review that's coming in we're waiting the final report we envision having some sort of presentation to the board at a meeting coming up in June possibly looking at the ed quality committee meeting to do that the but we still wait we still need to get the final report that leads us into the strategic planning process so just to let everyone know where we're at is the we met I was able to meet with the leadership team to gather their thoughts about the process the leadership team envisions having a very collaborative process a very transparent process and an opportunity to involve multiple stakeholders across our communities to make sure folks are heard and give input into the plan so we're still we still need the time and it's very busy at this time of year just finding the time for us to get together and talk about this just on this one topic so we're gonna have to definitely dedicate some time in the future around this and leadership team I also attended the Vermont superintendent leadership academy as a new superintendent and we had our last meeting just last week and there was a session on strategic planning and during this time I learned a lot about what's happening in Vermont around strategic planning certain districts that have newly merged and tried to involve multiple stakeholders across the communities to give folks an opportunity to be heard and to talk about the strategic planning and the one item that many of these newly merged districts did in Vermont that I learned was they first started developing a portrait of a high school graduate and so the idea is what does a high school graduate what does that portrait look like at their at the flagship school of the district the high school and what kind of programming is required across the district to to get to that desired outcome and so many districts around Vermont that have begun strategic planning where I've done this in the past began their strategic planning process with actually a process of creating and developing a portrait of a high school graduate and so these are just some things that we're exploring I will definitely like to continue to explore this and meet with the leadership team and then prepare a report back to the full school board thank you Brian it creates you have a question in the in the process of of the strategic planning if there's going to be transparency and collaborate collaboration amongst the different stakeholders is the process through which the strategic planning process will be transparent and collaborative going to be committed to writing like it's a plan for how it's going to be transparent and how it's going to be collaborative and how outreach is going to be made amongst the various stakeholder groups going to be committed to writing and then distributed so people have something to look to and rely upon to be informed about how the processes can proceed and how they're able to to participate in it thank you so Chris I just want to make sure I understand so your the question you're asking or recommending is that to make sure to ensure transparency and collaboration across multiple stakeholders would make ensure that the plan does include how that process will be for engaging stakeholders and making sure folks are given an opportunity to provide input into the plan and having that process in writing so that folks know what it looks like and it can comment on it okay whether and and also just you know just because one size doesn't fit all so so some ideas on how that can work best I thank you thank you Chris for that definition of transparency and collaboration around the plan I appreciate that well I didn't define either one but I just said they should be defined in writing somehow well that's a start here thank you yes Diane and then Carrie I know that as part of the agenda setting committee too that we had talked about the fact that options for the board to consider either you know if there was going to be a potential exploration of an external facilitator or somebody in house because we have such great educational leadership within our buildings of our teachers or administration and that so that also having that as part of that consideration so that whatever is presented to the board that we also know what it is we're we're looking at as well Carrie I have and the spirit of helpful suggestions one thing I've seen that could work that's sort of along these lines is consider forming a steering committee that would oversee the planning process that includes representatives from different stakeholder groups and that's just a suggestion I don't see any other hints but I agree with all that he has been said I did share with with Brian I've been participating in continuing learning for the past year on community engagement through the grade schools partnership and I share with Brian some resources from Mark Costin who I believe has done some work at U32 about how they have done strategic planning and mostly how they engage make sure that everybody set a table and figure out who's not at the table so the equity lens through this process is going to be really important for our community so that's all I would share and I gave him the the context for Christina Hoener who's the one that has been facilitating this continuing learning through the portrait of a graduate which was similar to what Brian had mentioned to us too and we had engaged on that as a board I don't know if Scott and other board members that participated with us when we had our interim superintendent and we had started to do a portrait of a graduate with Montpelier I know that is you know probably not at that time right now but I just want to put that out there too that we have so many communalities and we should be doing some more sharing between our two districts so that should be part of the strategic plan okay that's a month well so before we get into equity it's been I was hoping to do it right at 7 30 but it's 7 40 I think we all deserve at least five minutes of stretching our legs we've been sitting since five o'clock and two and a half hours is the limit usually for me at least so if everybody be back at the table 1946 okay see you soon wait for see I still don't see a lot of cameras on we're back on air everybody there's Gary so we're right at 4.3 and we're gonna start probably the most exciting part of our meetings as far as I'm concerned educational quality so I'll give it to you okay thank you for that floor I was actually gonna make a suggestion this is a little impromptu but given the late hour and the long agenda and this is something we discussed at the at quality before that this is the kind of material that really deserves our full attention and and brain capacity I'm gonna see if the board it would please the board to table this until we can schedule it for a time that we can give it appropriate time and attention I have no position I wouldn't say what is the pleasure of the board I don't see many faces but the ones that I see it looks like thumbs up yeah okay thank you sorry Jen and Carrie I know it takes a lot of preparation to do this but apologize but I think we'd like to look to see what we can schedule maybe a special session or something like that where it's front and center and I believe we have two questions Diane and then Stephen so I know that one of the recommendations was that uh there at the next ed quality committee we look at the curriculum review audit and and have that be explored and all board members are encouraged to go to that meeting I wonder if the first 15 minutes or so Carrie could focus on how we were looking at long range planning of of kind of future steps so maybe introducing that part of it too which would then help frame a future time that we explore this so just adding that as part of this start like that suggestion thank you thank you then and Stephen yeah I would just echo what Diane said I've been able to attend a fair amount of these I was unable to attend this last one and to be frank I was unable to give the presentation in the packet the time it was due prior to the meeting so I would I would echo Diane encouraging people to participate in the equality meeting but if you can't be less like me and hopefully more like others and and spend some time in the packet looking at the information that's provided because there is a great deal of information thank you Stephen and we're hoping that most people can make the June 2nd meeting that would be the hope so we are going to table education equality which moves us right to finance okay it's not so much break hi Laurie hi Brian and hi finance committee okay let me I just have my notes here at the same time I was not quite ready one second the finance committee met yesterday morning at 8 at 8 30 and I'm just going to go into order of the agenda so the central office a ventilation bid yeah I'm gonna ask for a motion no or this is the one that the finance committee approved already yes sure that's true that was sorry sorry that was right yeah so we just that one was in the packet but we the finance committee has already approved it and it was just a follow-up for you guys and see if you had any questions you gave the authority to the finance committee to to approve it and that is on motion so let's move right to a unless there's questions on that one I don't see any if authorize the superintendent to sign contracts in page 48 thank you Scott thank you floor I'll move to authorize the superintendent to sign all documents and contracts on behalf of the school district second Chris second discussion if somebody unmuted could they mute themselves please thank you seeing no discussion all those in favor of the motion as read by Scott please say aye any oppose hearing none the motion now floor you're muted sorry I'm like talking around yeah Scott could I have a motion and then I'll give some instructions to you want a motion for the blanket authorization I I I believe well all we have to do is send an email and I let Laurie speak to to this is we're gonna everybody needs to know just what we did last year right and so I just was gonna write it up for you to say this serves as my authorization for the blanket authorization for FY 21 22 and this is if there isn't a board meeting then we can issue checks and review it after the fact and we had found in person you would circulate it and sign it but tonight because we're not in person an email will suffice thank you Laurie so are you gonna send that language to us yes thank you any questions about that on page 48 so then we'll move right along into the annual bids a renewed anticipation note on the end the investment bid Laurie says shares some information with us in the packet so if we could have a motion I we can have some discussion I move that we approve the revenue anticipation note and investment bid from community bank and a second this is looking like our finance committee any discussion where floor is hurting cats seeing none all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi hi any oppose hearing non-emotion carries we I'm sorry to be so there's still somebody on mute it it's just my sound here is not that great if everybody could mute themselves so it would be really helpful thank you so the audit service bid we had a recommendation from the finance committee scott um is there a second motion have we voted them we we voted but but there's a second motion yes yeah to authorize the chair you're absolutely right this is a question to um well in that case I move that we authorize the board chair to sign the loan document for the board via electronic means can I have a second second thank you Diane any questions seeing none all those in favor of approving the motion as read please say aye hi hi hi any oppose hearing none the motion okay okay now for real into the audit service bid could I have a motion for the recommendation could go ahead scott I yield to my distinguished colleague on the finance committee to make that motion is that carry you can't say no he's still on he just took him took a vacation okay a move that we authorize the audit service of bid to our our smith for a three-year period FY 22 for the option to extend two additional years FY 25 to 26 I'll second tary thank you tary and thank you chris any questions any discussion seeing none all those in favor of the recommendation please say aye hi hi hi hi any oppose hearing none the motion carries moving right on into the property liability and work is compensation in page 82 I can just hear that lory explained that denise and ricker and brown is our current insurance agent and and the bid results I just want to make sure that other people know this because it's a lot of work it resulted in 3707 savings in in the budget it so could I have a motion move that we authorized the award the bid for our liability workers compensation insurance and property insurance to denise ricker and brown for the total of is it 206,000 206,871 dollars lory you're muted sorry um 194,726 dollars okay thank you thank you I'll second thank you Dorothy any questions Scott would chris accept the friendly amendment to add and authorize the superintendent to sign yes definitely all those in favor please say aye hi hi all right hi any oppose seeing none the motion carries and then not last but not least authorizes superintendent to approve the bids for fuel oil propane with chips and with pellets I'll make the motion thank you I'll second it lindy second by Dorothy any questions all those in favor of approving the motion please say aye any opposed hearing none the motion carries infinite campus online system update I'm looking for a motion and then we can discuss the ways I can also do a report but it's easier if we have a motion I can make a motion to authorize the district payment for transaction fees for parent and staff payments using the infinite campus payment processor thank you lindy I have a second a second thank you Scott any questions seeing none that's my favorite seeing none all of those in favor of approving the motion as read please say aye all right all right all right any oppose hearing none the motion carries and then the Romney par educator position on page 85 could I have a motion and Casey is here if you guys have any questions I move that we authorize the hiring of a power educator at the Romney school for the 2001-2002 school year second thank you Chris second by Scott any questions go ahead Diane do we need to emphasize or put in the word for general education because the other I think there's another one coming up that special education I didn't know if it mattered doesn't matter Casey I think about Casey that might be a better question for Laurie or Kelly but it is not it is not tied to special ed funding so that's I think that's the purpose behind us there would not be reimbursement for that position yeah Laurie have the same job description in the same um what do you call it a job title we entitle these positions pair educators whether whether they're regular ed or general ed for flexibility so I don't believe we need to clarify that thank you Laurie is that okay with you Diane is that clear yeah thank you okay any any other questions Scott I don't know if in the finance committee Laurie was kind enough to give us the budgetary impact of each of these maybe the board is interested too sure I included the high side for a family plan in the cost would be estimated at 55700 dollars hey Laurie could you just do all three at the same time so otherwise we'll have you coming back each time okay and the estimate for callus is the same expense total but because there's anticipated revenue the net impact for callus would be 24508 dollars and the impact at East Montpelier it's a part-time position um but because the person um that might be taking it would still be eligible for benefits um the amount I estimated was 11971 dollars for a total of 92179 dollars um from fund balance thank you very much thank you Laurie Scott um I didn't have a chance to ask this at the finance committee meeting yesterday but I have not seen this this method of requesting um new staff before and I kind of like it it seems to make sense but um is this is this new or is it um I could speak to it the new policy says that if a position is not included in the budget that the board needs to approve it so these three positions were not included in the budget thank you thank you Laurie Lindy is there any chance some of this COVID money can be used Laurie um I'm looking into the regular ed position um but for these special ed positions um obviously you would want to probably maximize your special ed first before you would use COVID so um we don't have all the instructions yet Lindy but I'm still looking forward to giving you an update in June any other questions in the Romney position seeing none all those in favor of the motion please say aye hi hi hi hi any opposed hearing none I didn't hear you Dorsey for some reason it comes a little later yours hi yeah sometimes I forget Laura I'm gonna apologize I'm gonna abstain I missed the discussion okay so Kari we'll abstain so moving on the calisthenicator position I'll I'll move to find the calisthenicator educated position that's noted on page 89 a second Dorsey Scott any questions this is a one-on-one position and it it's I don't know if you have any I don't see any hands but if cat wanted to speak to it yeah um I don't know that I have anything more to add than what I put in the the note um other than I anticipate while I'm asking for this to be funded for next year I anticipate it will be a need for the next few years thank you well those in favor of approving the motion prepare cater for calis please say aye hi hi hi any opposed anyone abstaining seeing none the motion carries now we're moving into the East Montpellier pre-k better cater position could I have a motion I'll move it um move uh an increase of 0.28 fte for the pre-k para educator at East Montpellier for our next school year second second by Diane any questions besides Alicia's memo anything that you would like to add Alicia or we're good yeah thank you all those in favor all those in favor please say aye any opposed any abstain seeing none the motion carries and I believe that's all for the finance committee so I'm going to pass it on to the policy committee chris okay thanks very much floor so we are here to consider for first reading two policies f44 on password management and b8 on electronic communication between employees and students do you have any questions on f44 password management again thank you to Jim garrity for his work in helping prepare and then revise these policies based on the policy committee discussions I just want to say to chris and to the rest of the team christina dorothy and jody and the rest of the group I'm so impressed with this team certainly working with other districts I don't see anywhere near the level of engagement that I see in this district on the policy side I've been very impressed with each of you and I appreciate appreciate the hard work that you've put in it's made my job incredibly easy and rewarding at the same time so thank you so hearing no no discussion on f44 I have a question I have a question uh so the one is there and I apologize I didn't read it fully but I kind of scanned through it so basically users will change their password upon first usage and there is there an ability for the district to reset or what happens if it gets lost or compromised if a student forgets it's an actual question diane so on our side the goal of the password policy is we're going to set the passwords long enough such that a user isn't going to have to change it every month or every two months where we're trying to get the district to go to a yearly password change policy if the passwords are long enough so if they need that national institute for standards and technology 16 characters or more then we can change less often uh now if if they forget their password or have some sort of issue since we don't know anyone's password so we can't we can't get it and break in as anybody right but what we can do is we can reset the password at any time for anyone so if they get compromised it's very easy for us to reset and in some cases when they get compromised we can offer up another factor of authentication meaning that in addition to their password we can turn on individually at 2fa which allows them to send a code to you know another email address to us to their to their cell phone as a text message where they can use an authenticator to get in as a second form absolutely thanks hi lindy yes now it's this is just a concern of mine with the policies recently and it's just a concern but i don't think we're the nsa and i feel like we have had so many and we get these big huge packets and reading every single word and i'm just throwing out a caution that we are not becoming some sort of big brother and a teacher sends a personal email during school and is reprimanded and this is used against i'm just i'm concerned with how many policies i've been seeing that have not been in the realm of what we've done in the past so it's just a concern of mine that i'm putting out there thank you lindy lindy i'm gonna ask you to speak to the lindy can you speak to that a little bit more thoroughly and um just because part of what i think we've been doing is trying to protect the system um and also avoid potential liability for the district but if you think that there are areas that go too far and create a trap for employees um to unwillingly go into it we would like to hear that because that's not that it's completely not the intent the intent is to protect the system uh and the integrity of our system and i understand that i'm just i felt like in the last few meetings there have been a plethora of policies that are beyond my understanding technology wise or of what i've seen in places i've worked and it could be just a little hesitancy on myself my personal feeling of trust and i was on the policy committee and they were always vsba required or recommended was what we were looking at and that's not what i've been seeing so it's just a caution i'm throwing out there and i'm trying to read hundreds of pages of board packets but i feel like i'm just feeling like i'm i trust you chris i really do and i trust the committee but i want to put it out there that it's a concern so one of the things that we um had a discussion about was you know who gets to if there's a a question about a search one of the issues came up with search who gets to authorize that when when the policy originally came there was i didn't think of it it specified who in terms of the administration would be able to authorize that outside of a an emergency basis in terms of either protecting this the system from from being hacked or going down or a danger to staff member or student or community member along those lines and so we did build in the safeguards where it would be the superintendent or the superintendent's designee and not the it folks being able to act unilaterally so we tried to build in those safeguards so that a individual who would be accountable to the board even though i think all employees are accountable to us but more directly accountable would be the one making the the more serious decision about conducting a search and issues like that but you know i would i would be happy to suggest that we put some of these um the second reading over for third reading before we adopt them just to give everyone the time to to go through them because they are lengthy policies i agree with you completely about that and they come at a time in our meeting where everyone is struggling to stay awake um so i mean it's particularly for these because the electronics are so crucial to our organization running and they expose so much of our personal data potentially um that a third reading would be well well advised in my opinion and chris i agree with that i think the third reading is is is welcome and and we'll give the board the opportunity to to read through those i think we'll need back to your point about the lengthening of some of the policies um there's some new policies that the the sba doesn't necessarily suggest and so one example that we we've did we've done in a previous meeting was the the change manager policy and how do we institute change within the district so that policy originally started out relatively small and and in concert with the team we decided to blow that policy out so we could you know create better definition around the things we were we were trying to do the things that that were important i think we talked about this change advisory board that you know i think we developed a whole page of content there so um you know i do i do understand that there's there's a lot there and and we'll take as much time as you and the board need to to to feel like you're comfortable and and by all means you know we welcome you you know you know making or suggesting any changes here and and we're all yours thank you jim scott thank you um i know uh floris dog starts barking whenever i say this but um this is another tendency that we deal with with consolidation um the greater professionalization and specialization of everything that we do and um it's not surprising i think that we um you know it's bigger there's more involved the technology is advancing and um it's it's just going to be this way i have to argue this isn't consolidation because we've had our tech head over all six schools for years they've worked together so i i am a little bit tired of hearing that everything's because of consolidation because i think we've worked very very well as the five towns and six schools for years yeah i think that this is a um just to piggyback on a couple of the comments one of the things i found what i'm in here now my job is to be critical as a consultant like my job is to come in and figure out areas that are at risk or things that we can improve upon and so um one of the things that i found um that you know we can improve upon is documentation in the group and so um that was really uh one of the purposes was to just get down on paper some of the things that we already do and in addition some of the things that we're not doing that you know back to chris's point will help her better protect our students and our teachers and the district as a whole and so that's the approach we took and and again from somebody who's is naturally a critical eye i'm a contrarian by nature it's you know those are some you know some of those things came out you know in the policy jody and i had some good conversation and she was a absolutely awesome member of the team and we were so thankful to have her one of the things that she had asked for and and we agreed with was um after the policies go into production we're not or get approved we're not going to put them into production until after we have a chance to you know train the administration train the teachers make sure everybody has a chance to ask questions understand what the impact of these policies are and especially around data right because there's some things around what happens if you store personal data in the environment what what does that mean if there's a search called upon a device or something like that what does that mean to you um what's protected what's backed up what's not backed up those types of things there's a lot of questions that come up and so we try to be real thoughtful as to what happens there so everybody is is is clear but um you know again uh lady i welcome you know any any changes you'd like to make i'm all yours and i think the initial time christy you're suggesting i think is a good one oh yes scott dorsey the dorsey i think oh i'm sorry i'm sorry gorthy oh i just wanted to point out that um i this has not so much to do is consolidation as the growth of technology and how we can be exposed to all kinds of things that lindy i was on the committee and when jim talked about stuff it was like star wars and a lot of a lot of ways i mean just the technology has really gotten beyond our normal people or our tenure it's gotten beyond 10 years ago and we need to have these policies to make sure we're safe and all our teachers are safe and all our students are and and all the information we need to keep safe and i'm really glad that we went through this exercise but it was a long one thank you thank you dorsey scott thanks for the on policy d 40 on page 98 the third line down um talks about protecting the district's employees partners and the company um is the company should that be district or is is there something i i i use that that word interchangeably so i i talk about the company in the district is one i think there's a couple policies where we go through that there was one specific entry that we did change which was um which was the word uh business to district and that was one that jody found in our last in our last piece what i'll do is just as a clarification point in our reading scott is i'll go back through all the policies where we say you know where we interface the business of the district or the company business of the district versus the the educational piece of the district i'll smooth out any of the terms that that are that are you know that are a mistake or that aren't clear so and in your your piece on page 95 i'll go ahead and make sure we made a notation of that and i'll clean that up for our next reading so thank you for that i really appreciate it okay so i think it was on 98 98 i'm sorry yep okay any other comments because we will put this over for third reading at our next board meeting feel free to send any additional comments that you may have before the next policy committee meeting so we can take them up if we need to on any of these policies and we'll see you next go around thanks very much thank you very much appreciate all your work thank you chris thank you jim dorsi and jody and christina and christina yeah no longer yeah yeah we'll we'll get to that in a minute a negotiations update chonus but can i just we were on the floor can i just yes so the second reading are we doing we didn't do we talked about the policies for the first reading right so now we're we need no we did we did them the second reading we were the ones we were just discussing okay got you okay thanks thanks for reading yes jonas do you have anything that you want to report uh sure i'll say that uh we continued to negotiate with both the teachers and the esp unions regarding what we hope will be a two-year deal to take us to the next two school years i remain optimistic that we are all negotiating in good faith and i certainly hope and anticipate that we will come to a conclusion soon thank you jonas okay let's move on into board operations and discussion so the first part of this is the superintendent evaluation update so the committee the board met today and we're gonna our next evaluation is scheduled for june 23rd with brian from five to six p.m so mark your calendars and we are also we're continuing with our evaluation of our superintendent i think that's all we have to share any comments or anything that i'm forgetting from board members nope uh just that yes that we agreed that we would finish out the process as it was and that we will use opportunities to review and revise and figure out what makes the most sense for all parties involved as we move forward to goal setting and next year's evaluation correct yeah so we're not done yes thank you and i diane the next one is the call us appointment update so as of now i have not received any letters i have had two different phone calls with different people uh i checked in with melissa today she had not received any letters yet i'm hoping that soon we we're gonna have some candidate but i that's all i have to report i was hoping that we would be interviewing our next meeting but i don't know that so hopefully before we have our agenda meeting we i would have more information to share with you talking about this the board appointments crissy for the members of the public the board received an email today she's been higher at our district so she is resigning from the board because she is going to be an employee so welcome to the family crissy so she's not here today and she has resigned from from the board and now in governance we had caroline was gonna was gonna help us and she had she was going to put some documents together but she is also has applied for opposition and she doesn't know yet so we are she's keeping today's that i there's somebody on mute it okay there you are so caroline will be a hopefully will be at our next meeting i received then a text from uh from from her but she hasn't made a she hasn't made a decision yet but as of today she is not able to join us so i don't have anything on anything more in governance but we continue to work in our continuous improvement as a board and how we can best govern and we will have a document for you our next meeting now we can move into the consent agenda could i have a motion scott thank you flor i i wonder if there's um if there's an open since we there there wasn't we kind of um leaped over agenda revisions if this would be a good time for me to mention s13 i was gonna wait until before the signing if that's okay but you can you can go ahead and and do it right now to thank you very much um i just wanted to let the board know because we joined the coalition for student equity um in vermont that the bill that we have been supporting along with uh the coalition of other school district boards throughout the state um to reform the equalized pupil waiting system has um passed both the house and the senate now unanimously so um what that means is that there's a task force on the implementation of the pupil waiting factors report that will recommend to the general assembly an action plan and the implementing legislation so that um there is equitable access to educational opportunities for all vermont public school students so um anyway many many thanks to to our board as well as to all the other boards who have been participating in this and to dorothy who has um been another mainstay of this from on behalf of the board so this is a um this is a good thing and well done to all um can i jump in and say um one of the things that's part of it has to do with i i this has gone back and forth so i may have this wrong uh of getting rid of the um the cap on your the penalty for having too high of taxes so yeah i can clarify that dorothy so one thing that was missing from what to add to what scott was saying is that uh the you know those the access to educational opportunities is takes into account the pupil wait factors that we deal with right now so it's not in isolation from from that and the excess spending i believe is what dorothy is trying it was trying to share with us the excess penalty monitorium for the fiscal year of 20 it's removed for 2022 and 2023 yeah and but i was talking i don't know how that affects us but it's good to know yeah yeah we are not in the excess spending and just to add to that so the the coalition worked on this the vermont school versus association and the vermont principal association and the vermont superintendent association too along with a lot of parents in and other districts in our area so yeah it is a it's a great thing uh moving into the consent agenda could i have a motion for the minutes did everybody had time to review the minutes i'll move that we approve the minutes of april 28 and may 10 thank you scott have a second i'll second it thank you for diane any discussion any changes see or none all of those in favor please say aye hi hi hi hi hi hi any opposed can you abstain seeing none the motion carries and lindy i'm going to put this on you i just don't know i got it open i'm i'm escaping one but yeah go ahead oh okay i make a motion to accept the board warning or the board order in the total amount of five hundred seventy nine thousand five hundred eighty seven dollars three cents thank you lindy could i have a second and i know that i skipped one item but i'll come back to that i'll second second thank you diane any questions all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi any post it's like a little chorus any opposed hearing none the motion carries and the board orders are approved going back to the instructional coach job description on page 129 sorry brian i skipped that one so are we approving these i thought i thought there was something where we had said we were just being informed of them i think diane what i used to include these in the superintendent report and then i was asked to put it into the consent agenda so we can do these more quickly so yes you had asked us to approve them so so yes is the answer to that diane so we still need a motion sorry i move we job description for uh is it literacy coach sorry no these are instructional instructional coach diane moves second got seconds any questions my job description was pretty clear all of those in favor please all of those in favor please say aye hi hi hi post hearing none the motion carries yeah back to you lindy or if somebody else has it in front to the personnel can i can i just say something uh just interject here i just wanted to uh just personally uh just thank carla messier uh for her help with it's been uh you see a lot of these uh melissa taller and michelle sepka with uh just helping to process this uh this a large amount of work that's been coming across our desk with uh making sure we're getting teachers new teachers assigned uh the processing folks that are leaving our district and setting up processes to interview uh folks in our district i just wanted to help thank them for not setting up the process but actually scheduling it and doing it's a lot of work here and i just wanted to acknowledge uh their efforts this year and as i was about to make the motion i was about to say this is a big one there's a lot here um so i'll do them by category i guess and then list each person in the category if that's necessary or just category um i make a motion to accept the new teacher nominations which include annie ladu at u32 shannon mckinnon at east montpelier christina pollard at dodie likely gilmore at callas callus andrea dobson at callas samantha jackson at callas and rebecca hill at u32 thank you lindy second chris seconds any questions seeing none all those in favor please say i hi hi hi hi hi i'm here post i know sorry guys everybody's calling us so the motion carries we don't have anybody in retirement lindy resignations resignations yep okay um to accept the following resignations marcie larabee at callas uh megan phalby at u32 hailey fitz gerald u32 ashley gilstead special educator district nathan or ted nathanson special educator at the district level erica rose dodie lisa lavangi at callas thank you lindy could i have a second second i'm gonna give it to dorsey since you second some other ones chris i hear you second right dorsey yeah yes second yes that's what i'm saying all those in i have a question i have a question for yes just the clarification so why is erica rose considered a resignation and not a transfer since she's moving into an art position for berlin and callas and i think that would go for um k rob too who's changing but she's a new hire in the other one so yeah uh that it's my understanding that uh uh the when someone resigns they have to resign their position for the transfer period has already happened so we're just this is occurred after the transfer period and so what happens is when an opening is is a posted and someone applies for a position from another school after the transfer period has already happened they have to resign their current position in order to uh take be considered for the new hire thank you brian i assume this doesn't affect seniority no absolutely not thank you for clarifying that all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi hi any opposed seeing non emotion carries uh new hyers yeah new hyers yeah new hyers um i make a motion to accept the following new hyers seems like we already did that above but okay um katrina rob berlin this is um mark kline director of technology erica rose callas thank you second second it thank you diane any questions lindy this is the katrina rob one that after what diane just asked it appears lisa had to resign but kat says it's a transfer so i'm not katrina lisa but the other one the art teacher erica so i don't understand that oh there it is but kate is an up here under resignations that's why i was confused i can look into that i don't know carl is still here i can look but i can get back to you any other questions this is just informational hey brian when is the transfer period it sounded like there was a specific period of time when staff could transfer within the within the uh yes the transfer period according to the cba collective bargaining agreement is up to april 15th after that uh if there's an opening in another building uh folks can imply internally from another another school in the district uh and we typically do a five-day posting internally because that's also part of uh our practice here is to uh to give internal candidates an opportunity to apply for school in a job in the same school within the same district um but the transfer period is uh ends uh april 15th but yet there will still be hiring folks uh uh throughout throughout you know now and you know hopefully we'll have a full staff but uh by by summertime but if not uh we have to follow the process of allowing anyone in the district the opportunity to apply okay thank you you're welcome okay all those in favor please say aye hi all right hi any oppose to hearing on the motion carries brian you have your hand up yeah i just want i just wanted to uh thank jim garrity for his uh help and leadership as our director of it mark will be starting mark client i don't know if he's here or not uh i know he's sitting here i'll let mark talk briefly and then i'll continue so mark please introduce yourself and say hello hello everyone my name is mark climb as you mentioned and i'm very excited uh for this director of technology position i was actually in your area today uh signed a contract uh or at least an offer for a house and found a storage unit which are incredibly uh an incredibly short supply so it was a good day from that standpoint um i think that vermont is such an exciting place it's so innovative and i really look forward to uh to being able to work with you if anyone has any questions or something i'm happy to respond otherwise i'd just like to say hello thank you mark welcome i think the cat wants to say something i thought i heard a cat meow maybe they want to talk to mark i saw the cat poke his head in a couple times on the screen my cat is trying to figure out the cat that's coming through the speaker i know it's like it's my cat that is trying to get out sorry so so i just wanted to thank welcome mark and thank jim garrity for his help and leadership uh mark will start july 1st we'll then start developing some crossover uh between jim and mark and then uh we'll uh thank jim uh officially for his service thank you brian thank you mark and we we're not gonna say goodbye yet so here we'll say goodbye when the time comes we're not ready okay all right welcome back yeah any future agenda items i think we have a list big enough so just a reminder that we change our our board meeting to june 23rd i just hope everybody received my email and please answer to the to the calendar invite so we can make sure that we would have quorum uh Jonas yeah i just want to remind you and everyone else that we will need to get a special you know knock wood we will need to get a special meeting together to approve the cbas uh when we when we have them uh an agreement with the union thank you Jonas thank you Jonas so now we can come to board reflection and i know it's late enough so i was hoping to get us out of here before nine so we're almost there Jonas um so um it's it's been a long a few weeks since our last meeting a lot has happened uh there's been a lot of public uh conversation uh out there in the media and social media and online um the board has been board has received you know dozens and dozens of emails from people uh concerned about what's going on in the district um and you know there hundreds of people have raised concerns um and i i feel it incumbent to say it publicly that i am saddened and disappointed that there does not seem to be the will on the board to dig into those questions and concerns personally i think that we owe it to the hundreds of grownups who work in the district and take care of the kids and help to raise them we're all here for the kids but there are hundreds of adults who work in this district and i am very concerned that we are not going to hear their voices and we are not going to honor their concerns thank you Jonas any other board reflections before Dorsey and Lindy um even though you don't have anybody replace me i said i'd only stay till the end of may and i spent today um finalizing where we're going to be staying in bennington we're moving to in bennington in july and um i'll miss having these long meetings sort of like a toothache but um i like being part of it all and um um i'll miss stuff but i remember when i left teaching when we sold off our business it seems to me as i look at my past when i leave something i seem to leave it and i don't keep going back and wishing i was there now being part of this i i will miss being part of this board um and i really enjoyed what i did and um i think i had had some good good impacts i hope that callus will get itself together and find someone to carry on because i find it rather shameful that we have so many people who have spoken out and especially about this latest issue as Jonas said but they're not willing to put in and and say yeah i'll try to help on on the other board and and i'm really kind of and and that's true in some of the other towns somehow we need to find a way um to get people to be part of the board and then i don't know cat still cat i've got my shirt on that the callus teachers gave me when i went to there your callus cougar baby so i i got my old cougar shirt on the callus cougar and um i've had a good time and if you have a special meeting before june i'll be there but after that no way enjoy what you do and and do your best and keep on doing your best thanks thank you dorsi uh lindy and then scott i i think it is worth um one of my reflections is how pleased i was that public comment was at the beginning because i think that is very very important i've been fighting for it and it is part of open meeting law in my opinion and i'd also like to recognize the many people who took time to write um their opinions their heartfelt reasoning behind whether they were in favor or not in favor of the arts and music cuts and changes and at first i thought it was going to be more like the postcard that's already printed but there were many many um very personal notes and i did read them all i think it's i didn't respond to them but i'm publicly saying right now that being on a board it is our job to hear from the public and i appreciate it whether it's uh positive or negative or you need to know about this and i've been on first east montpelier and now this one for many many years and before this year i had had one person reach out to me about a security issue they were concerned about at an elementary school and i think that was it as a board member so this year has been a little different but i do appreciate being contacted thank you lindy scott thanks for that um i just like myself to salute dorothy um for her just amazing work for the town of callus uh and now for the people of all five towns um i i hope to become like you dorothy when i grow up um so um our our callus uh select word chair has a motto that i think um dorothy may have sort of made an allusion to um the motto is you complain you serve so um it's fine to you know to um to write in and to make your opinions known but i hope that um at least some of those people who are um who are exercised about this issue will take the step of actually joining the board um this is how we got jill on the board actually um i you stepped up jill and i hope more will follow your example um and the final thing is just in connection with everything that's been happening this has just been um a really really hard year and again as i was saying at some point i no longer remember when um everybody is everybody is really tapped out so i think it's you know as much as we can manage we just have to try to make things work there are there's so much talent here all around and so much potential to really do tremendous things um i'm hoping that we don't get sort of um in our uh you know cantankerous moods that we don't get um all hot and bothered too much about things and and can get past it quickly so that we can just help each other do better um because i think there's there's so much that we that we'll be able to accomplish if we do that thanks any anyone else so i i just want to say too that i appreciate it the comments from everybody i try to respond to every single email that came that came through and hopefully i didn't miss anybody the input is they put it's always appreciated we always learn and i think two things that i can reflect on is that we have heard you that music and art as we said it's important in our district and as we continue into our strategic plan we we have heard you and the other and the other part that i want to say is that i i believe that we you know that that culture and climate matters and just because we are in gardening season right now we need to tend to the garden in order to have a good yield right so i just want to close with that and if and we will continue to to to monitor and evaluate so we will continue to do our job as a as a board thank you everybody for coming today could i have a motion to adjourn unless there's any other comments i move we adjourn thank you diane thank you dorsey well those in favor please say aye good night everybody have a good night