 I'm going to have a meeting at 6.32. So order of business, let me just make a couple of notes regarding agenda and then just a procedural note. I think we will have a short executive session at the end just to discuss midterm evaluation. And then also just kind of procedurally, Mia, who I see is remote, is going to be joining me in the weekly meetings with Libby to help plan and set out agendas. So we are starting that I think as of tomorrow. So the idea behind that is just to get an extra voice also to make sure that Mia is kind of as informed as I am when she needs to step into the chair role. And so we will start that tomorrow. And so on to the next order of business, which is public comment, do we have any public comment? We have one person in the room. Anyone on Zoom who wants to comment, please raise your hand. I don't see anyone. So in the room, please step up to the table and also announce your name just so we have a walker. Sure, absolutely. Hello, everyone. My name is Ben Maniscalco. I am a parent of a student at Union Elementary School and I am the husband of a second grade teacher at Union Elementary School and also a former special educator in the LaMoyle North Supervisor Union. On Friday the 27th of January, a student at Union Elementary School was having a student in crisis at Union Elementary School was having an intense behavioral episode that occurred in the hallway of one of the primary grade wings of the building. The student was screaming, kicking and punching the door to their own classroom and then proceeded to move to another classroom and continued screaming, kicking and punching the entry door to the second classroom while standing outside of it. This episode went on for about 45 minutes, screaming, kicking and punching the entire time. In some cases students were unable to leave their classrooms or needed an adult, I'm sorry, to go to the bathroom unless they had an adult escort. Some students were visibly crying and reported being scared that the student in question could have perhaps broken the glass panel on the classroom door. Teachers reported feeling as though they were, quote, under siege in their own classrooms. The student was monitored by adult staff. My presumption is that these adults wanted to monitor the student to avoid further escalating behavior. No one's blaming the student. No one's singling out the student. My question is why was the student not guided or if absolutely last resort necessary physically restrained and taken to a safe space so that the other kids did not experience trauma and interruption to their learning environment in, I'm sorry, in what is supposed to be a safe learning environment. This was not the first incident. These are occurring in other grades as well, perhaps not to that degree of severity. It is understandable that some students will have such behavioral episodes because that is the reality of public school. Teachers have worked extremely hard comprehensively with proactive strategies to minimize all behavioral outbursts. However, at times, even the best framework is not enough. Therefore, my question is what is the school's plan to address escalated violent behavior with some level of accountability? Many teachers feel as though students are having big behaviors with little processing afterwards or accountability, suggesting that the school needs consistent protocols in place from administration. All are qualified, I'm sorry, this is a question. Are qualified and licensed district personnel afraid to restrain a child because of the perceived impact on their reputations? Are classroom teachers supposed to bear the brunt of the most severe behavioral issues within the school environment? Is there a consistent protocol in place from an administration to keep teachers and students safe in extremely tense and emotionally heightened situations? May the school be more affected with an intervention room model similar to which has been placed at up at Johnson Elementary School for over 10 years? In such a model, highly qualified behavioral support personnel are in place to support students when they experience unpredictable and sometimes violent behaviors, and if they must, absolutely last resort. Physically remove the students from a certain setting in order to keep all students and staff safe. I have Vermont State Board Rule 4500 concerning restraint and seclusion to be used in order to create a maintain, I'm sorry, create and maintain a positive and safe learning environment. Maybe these schools haven't needed the protocols in the past. This is our reality now, we hear it in Bristol, we hear it in Wellington, it's here now, it's been here for a while, this is our new reality, no one's singling out any student, but students, one student in crisis should not hold the entire wing of the elementary school hostage for 45 minutes to an hour. With qualified licensed personnel watching them, it just really doesn't make sense to me that this is the point where we are. Great, thank you very much, I really appreciate the input. Thank you. All right, not seeing anyone online. Let's go to Consent Agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the Consent Agenda? Thank you, Joel, do I have a second? Thank you, Seiji. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Consent Agenda passes. All right, and now we welcome back Nathan to pick up on the visioning process that we have started, and I think for one, thank you for all the great work and thanks for coming again, and I think one thing that we probably want to focus on this spring now that the budget has passed is really wrapping up the visioning process and getting an idea of what we want to do with it. And I think Nathan is going to talk to us about priority setting, which is integral in the new policies that we are likely going to adopt in the latter part of the meeting. All right, good to see you all again. Wait till the camera's on me. I'm Mia C. Audible on the... Mia, can you hear me at home? My name is Nathan Souter, and I am here consulting with the board to support them on priority setting. Looks like Mia can hear me. OK, so I think I've got about 50 minutes to work with you tonight, and the process I've designed is not a sit in our seats, talk to each other across the room process, but could be adapted to do that if you wish. I think we can move. I figured. It's one of these. Is it a made for TV event or not? First, let me just talk about my thoughts about how you slash we might approach this. I sent, in case, so for Mia and Zach and Kristen, I don't know if Kristen's not. She had real life. Real life came up. OK, Mia, did you get the materials I sent via email? If you didn't see those, please check those, because that's what I'm working from. OK. I said I saw it. Seeing it and reading it are different things. OK, so I think if I were a board member, this process might take place over a few sessions, because I think it would be iterative. And I think the first thing might be identifying areas that you're particularly focused on, and maybe making some distinctions between what is important, sort of long term, and what is urgent for a shorter term this year and a half, and then trying to figure out how to establish a high level pool of these are the most important issues to this district right now. And I think that's a, so part of that would include at some point naming what your focus areas are and then what fits underneath those focus areas. So here's an example. If you had brought agreement that academics are a major reason that the district exists, you might simply say academics. But you might also say one of our goal areas or one of our priorities is excellence in teaching and learning. So semantics can matter. And so there will probably be some discussion on that, and we'll do some of that tonight. And another piece about the contrast between urgent and important is where I think things get interesting for a school board, which is for someone in Libby's position and the rest of the school administration and educators, they're on a long, long trajectory of many systems and many career path of a teacher, the educational path of a student, the life and durability of the facilities, et cetera. And so that's why I think the question of urgency versus important is useful because I suspect that, of course, on a long-term vision, academics or academic excellence or learning would be the highest priority almost all the time. But if the district or if the school board feels as though teaching and learning is well under control in the near term, you might prioritize in the next year or so, something more highly than that. The example I used in this document that I just handed out puts operations, or in this case sort of facilities and maintenance as a low priority for urgency. It may be that this school board feels as though with the capital spending plan and the five-year facilities plan that the facilities area is always important, but is not urgent as a sort of priority for the board or a priority for the district in the next year or two. Because it is well structured and well taken care of. So mostly I'm introducing that idea, and I want you to think about maybe being willing to decide, OK, this area feels like it's on fire, and we really need to attend to that. This area feels as though we always care about it, but it's under control, and the district is doing this well. Is that making sense? Is that resonating? It sets the little urgent important, important not urgent, not important not urgent. Right, so people would do that in a quadrant. Not important urgent. And so in the examples I gave sort of two lists that are sorted differently by rank of importance. And then I say it's also probably useful to think about priorities for the district or strategic goals not necessarily as a ranked list, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, but rather as a pool of all these things are important. One priority or one goal might realistically take two or three years to attend to, and another might be resolved in six months. And so I think it's also useful to be mindful of the complexities of some of these things if you're trying to make change or gain traction. So what I'm proposing for, and then though we don't have a ton of time together this evening, this is a very capable board with a number of people on it who are able to facilitate a process like this without me being present. And so what I'm hoping to do is that this can act as a scaffold or as a process that you all can replicate without me in the room or without somebody else, although I'm always happy to work with you. Acknowledging that we probably aren't going to resolve all the school board or the district priorities tonight to the point of them being ready for print and then to be handed off to the administration. Sound good? All right, so for me it's always useful to respond to something that's drafted even if it's not the right fit for what you're hoping for. So the example that I gave earlier of trying to attend to a focus area that we might call academics by calling it excellence in teaching and learning. You may not like that word choice and that's fine. So what I'd like to do is have us get up. I've printed some of these out in large type. I've also got the backside of a bunch of blank pieces of paper and I've got some big black markers. And if you want to come up with your own focus area, and I can think of others that I didn't print out, let's do a little bit of that. Let's see where people are thinking about how we name these sort of high level focus areas. And then let's do a little bit of sort of scenario work where we think about, OK, we heard a lot of community input in the last six months or eight months about bullying in our schools. If I care a lot about bullying, where does that fit underneath these focus areas and how do I as a board member, how do we as a board create a priority area if that's a big priority that ensures that the administrative team is resourced and focused on creating an environment where bullying is less likely to happen, for example. I think the board has also heard about reading and learning around reading. So it's not the board's job to decide which curriculum tools the district uses to teach reading. But if you care about the district really focusing on reading and, say, students achieving proficiency at grade level, what language do you choose to use that empowers Libby and the district to really focus on that, acknowledging that there's an opportunity cost to everything, right? If you really focus on one thing, probably some of the things are maybe not being as well attended to. So I'm trying to think in terms of Orca media. So I don't know your name. Sean. Well, yeah, so I might have you move over. When we close those doors over there, we can use that as a sort of working wall. So I'm going to move everybody over there and we're going to work over there. OK? Come on up. I love the confidence, Sean. I can film anything. Don't you worry. I got this. I think you can go with the handheld, the Blair Witch project. It's going to be great. Hand out, but you have this in email. So I made, as I said, I made up a number of these focus area titles. And I'm going to start just taping them up to the wall. You can untape them, rearrange them. You could put check marks. I don't think we're at the point of voting yet. But if you, others that have occurred to me since I sent this to the printer, include, you could choose to say, you could choose to address. I just thought of that. We have Mia remotely. Is there a way for her to be able to? Mia, if I give you my. She's got my. I'll get mine. OK. So you don't have to worry about it. OK. Tax me, Mia, with ideas. Yeah, or even call. We can just put you on speaker phones with Libby. Fantastic. All right, so for example, what if we really want to attend to student needs and readiness for learning, right? Are we able to support students with mental health needs well enough in our schools? Do we want to do that in our schools? What if the thing you think is most important for the next two years is recruit, retain, and develop high-quality staff at every position? Any of those things are possible. So have at it. Don't accept my draft. So we're picking what we want. I'm just going to start sticking these up. But there are blank sheets of paper. Are we adding to it? I would add to it. Or you can modify. So partly, the reason I do this is you might look at this and say, oh, that's totally off base. Great. How is it off base and what would you prefer to see? And if I'm Libby and if I'm the chair of the board, I don't want 11 strategic goals. No. Way too much, right? Five, maybe. Five is my target. So think about that. If you've got to reduce it, how many do you want, Libby? I'm three. OK. But keep that in mind, right? And it might, again, I think that's part of why it's interesting to talk about important versus urgent, because there's something that's important, but it's actually doing OK right now. So if you don't make that a strategic goal, it doesn't mean it's not important. It just means not renowned. Thank you, Joe. And if you don't start drafting new ones soon, I'm just going to have you vote on these, and we're going to roll with it. And then you'll be really many. And I'm going to see if they're going to be truly efficient. Well, I'm thinking about the recruitment and retention and the diversity combination, which is a part of the goal of that. Yes. Or a lot of some of the things that I'm going to talk about. How big are these problems? Could that fit into the GNI? Right, so can I talk to that for a second? So Justice Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, you can certainly make an argument that we're going to be attentive to Justice Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in everything that we do. And that might work. And maybe you might be able to say to the district leadership and to the teachers, we need to attend to this. Here's a way that we're going to attend to it. Go do it. But it's also possible that in the heat of battle, or the year that happens and go over there, and he knows what, that something like that gets lost if it's not top level, if it's not named, and if it's not prioritized. If I'm a university that says, you know, we care about diversity, equity, and inclusion, but I don't create an office for that, or I don't create, you know, a dean, a dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Good silly. Yeah, I'm just making the matter. Click it to my lapel, and then we're going to stop talking. Right, if you don't create a position, a dean position at a university dealing with this, do you then lose focus on it? Because there's so many other things to focus on. So that's the kind of thing you want you to do is, okay, wait a minute, what are the things that are most important, most urgent right now for the next year and a half, two years? Let's make sure we name them. Well, first year looking, is this, are they, is everything you want to consider there? And if not, add more. And then once we've done that, then let's narrow it and try to prioritize. The one on the right, this version of excellence in teaching and learning includes some sub-bullets, right? Student achievement, reduce or eliminate the achievement gap. Recruit, retain, develop high quality staff at all positions, which might be a strategy and service of excellence in teaching and learning. Fully staff and trained for multi-tier systems of support, excellence, right? If you feel like we've got this system, MTSS, and we're just not quite getting there on implementation, we're willing to focus on that. That starts to, you know, the other question is, what's too granular for the board? And then identify, implement and train staff on a social-emotional learning approach and curriculum, right? Do we have an SEL curriculum? Maybe not. Even if we do, is everybody trained on it, right? So this is an example of what might fall below or fall underneath one of these focus areas. I feel like recruitment and retention could almost be its own item, because it's a non-trivial task. That's really important. Cool. To me, a lot of people are cow-specific, we want to be, because, you know, I think we're always gonna want excellence in teaching and learning, right? I'm just gonna text Mia, some of these. She's got, all those are in your email. Okay, but just so she knows what we're all looking at. Okay. And I didn't want to help her make notes too. Yeah, thank you. You focus on the sessions. I want to get this to the three. Sort of. I suppose we have to add it to that. Well, if you think there's no solution. I think one way to think about it, if I can weigh in, is whatever year the board's priorities are, the board is saying, I want regular information on this and what you're doing in the district. Of course we're working on all of those things, but, you know, multiple pathways, for instance, may not reach the level of priority where the board needs to hear multiple times a year information on multiple pathways. Maybe it is. The social-emotional piece that's under here, I kind of don't want it in there, because I kind of want it to be in this group, because it's own really important thing. These two seem much, sort of similar, and I would like to see that social-emotional piece under there, and personally, that's as important to me as excellence in teaching and learning. And adding on to what Louise said, what specifically do we want kind of information on and really want to put it on as to how we're doing? Because, for instance, I think we always want excellence in teaching and learning. Do we just want general excellence in teaching and learning? Or, like, what I can point in on that is closing the academic achievement gap, and we know that gap is there and we know that it really needs to be addressed. So we want to hone in on that and we want to focus on that as kind of like an information point and an action point for the next year or two, rather than just getting, like, general... Yeah, general updates on how to teach it, is that that piece could get lost in an overall presentation on excellence because we could, in some ways, be doing excellent and it could just be like, and by the way, it gets a little... You know, this part of it, we're not excellent, but we're excellent. Top bullet point. You're calling out that, hey, this is where we need information, but also, you know, including the other excellence in teaching, but not losing sight of that. I agree with the fact that, for me, also, academic achievement is one of the top points. So we're going to take, like, three to five of these, and then are we going to create a smart goal for each one of those categories for the year? So this is a question I'm going to pass right back to you. This group, and even this district, hasn't, as far as I know, really done a strategic plan or set strategic goals in the past, so there's not a pattern. At the board level. So there's a continuous improvement plan. The district team has already done this through that lens and does it in more local ways often. That's why I'm trying to telegraph that I do think it's complicated. So choose carefully. Belonging safety and wellness is the place under which social emotional behavioral learning resides. Is that okay? Or does this need to be higher up, right? Or does this need to be the top level goal and then this belonging safety and wellness is like, okay, I think that's enough under control but because we're really focused on this. Well, I also get a little bit like sort of mixed up with, like, Libby obviously runs these types of meetings for Adam's team and has, is working on smart goals within the district already and now as a board, we're going to be setting some sort of like priority categories and then we might be creating goals but those goals will be for our work as a board or for the district? Probably both, right? So to my read of that, for example, one of the reasons I like this and I like some of the new policy language you all are considering is that it starts to bridge a challenge between the board and superintendent relationship, right? In the worst case, superintendent's underperforming and the board has like only a really big stick, like you're fired, or not so many carrots. It really depends upon a good working relationship and so the policy language says quarterly reporting. Quarterly is pretty frequent if you're a big district administration but what it does is it creates that sort of ongoing communication bridge feedback loop. So I like that piece of the policy language and then the question is that it seems fair to the administrative team to know what you're asking for. What are you paying most attention to? Imagine a dashboard. Yep, we care about all this stuff but these five things or these three things are the most important right now and what does right now mean? I don't know, 12 months, 18 months. And like I said, some of it might be three years if you were to set a reasonable timeline and some of it might be six months. So I think that's another, there's sort of multiple layers, right? So I think, but I'm watching this board and all are charged with being sort of conduits for the community. So on the one hand you have folks saying we've had these horrible experiences with some bullying incidents. What's going on? And you want to be able to respond to that and the administration wants to be able to respond to that. Similarly, hey, I want my kid to be more successful at reading what's going on with that. And if you feel, if you, the board, feel as though, oh, we really need to focus our district's energies to address some of these things, right? Reading, to me, is going to fit underneath something else, probably, because it's pretty specific and you're not in charge of choosing the curriculum. But you might find language that says we're going to close the achievement gap, right? We're sick of, we're sick of academic performance outcomes being closely correlated to income or closely correlated, right? Damn it, we're better than that. Let's make it so. Okay, and then it's up to, you know, in case Libby weren't focused on that, then she and her team have to figure out how to do that. So, I mean, I can be more prescriptive, but I don't think that it's my place to sort of decide. So are we right now individually ranking these in our heads? So here's what I, well, I'm going to go back. Let me pause. Is anybody noticing absence, right? So it's always the hardest question. Is there something you really care about that you've been hearing a lot about that is not represented up here or couldn't fit within one of these things? And if so, please write it on a piece of paper and get it up here. Second of all, closing the achievement gap could be a product of an outcome of excellence in teaching and learning. Or it could be that closing the achievement gap is the goal. Gosh darn it. And this is a strategy, right? Excellence in teaching and learning is a strategy to serve that recruit, retain, and develop high quality staff at all positions, right? Your theory of change might be we can't close the achievement gap without excellent teachers. We are losing, I don't know if this is true, we're losing excellent teachers to South Burlington because they pay more. Don't know. That's not accurate. We have an empty position. We have two empty positions at these highly skilled areas. Special education, we're having trouble filling them. What would do with the needle in that? Right? To me, that's the work of this. Do you see anything missing? Looking at them earlier to think about it. I think those are broad enough where you can put pretty much anything inside of it. Right. I feel like recruitment should be on its own still because in my mind one of the areas of recruitment or retention that comes up in my head is that at different schools. So it's not necessarily just the instructors that we want to retain. Would there be a different category that you would put it into or would it be at their own category? Okay, so in the interest of time, I'm going to push. I'm going to give you each three stickies. We're going to do just a quick round of if I choose three of these, that are my the field most urgent or most important to me and you don't have to cue to my model of thinking about that. But please let's do a little struggle here. I'm going to let you be heard. Mia, feel free to assert yourself if that's what you're going to do. We're going to give Mia a chance to participate. It's a little bit difficult remotely. It comes up. Okay. Hey Mia, just unmute your mic. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. I can't tell if these are combined, but I would put excellent teaching and learning with closing the gap and vote for that. Belonging safety wellness and put that with the HAP and vote for that. And then I haven't decided yet on the third long run. Oh, connection with community accountability. There it is. Found it. Inclusion and belonging. Belonging safety and then partially the justice equity diversity. Those three have a lot in common. Yeah. Right. And the connection with community and accountability. I created that partly to demonstrate the complexity. You could think that most of the accountability is about sort of accountable to the community or connection to the community, but accountability couldn't be it's totally, it's completely an own thing. So I think, so this is we've got a lot of agreement. Mia, just to read out loud academic achievement close the gap is I think the highest vote getter with some support maybe underneath that for recruit routine and develop high quality staff in all positions. Next up is belonging safety and wellness and then connection with community and accountability meet student needs and that was ready to learn meals, mental health, etc. That wasn't sent to you via email because that was generated on site. And then just justice equity diversity inclusion receiving one vote. So question to the just as a side note, I've never seen that represented as Jedi and I will not be using that as a Star Wars fan. I sometimes use that because I think sometimes for groups adding justice to that helps people think through that lens which makes it less, makes it feel a little bit less like wait I'm about to be accused of being a racist I'm not engaged in this topic whereas oh and we all care about justice and then through that lens we can enter a lot of this sort of stuff. Another favorite to add on there is belonging be. Good. Okay, so quick sort if let's talk about academic achievement gap am I, is this an essential is recruit routine and develop high quality staff in all positions sort of an essential component of that or is that outside you know I think what I would have you do is now start building what's below this so far Libby is getting her wish which is there are three top level goals and then then the question is sort of how how specific do you want to get or I like this one because it's specific people know what that means it's something the district and we're not alone it's what the district struggles with then you might then the interrogation not the interrogation but the the discussion with Libby and her team would be okay what are going to be good indicators you know is there going to be anything meaningful mid-year what would be the adjustments that would happen if we weren't hitting our goal right to me that gets to be pretty interesting belonging safety and wellness is that where social emotional and behavioral learning fits is that not you know talk to me more I like the word these indicators underneath it like it doesn't necessarily need to be written as a smart goal I don't think that's our administration goal I'm always talking about or that would be our administration's work but to have board indicators that would give guideposts as to what you want to report it out on right and I also think it would be nice as a board to have just board centered smart goals for ourselves like what is the work that we are going to do as a board for the next year for these three priorities that supports what Libby's doing or just supports these three priorities you know the work I think it's a practice what you preach it's not like here we're setting this agenda now we need to make it happen we're also committed to making this happen whatever our capacity is to do that would it be okay to put the three at the top and see how many we can fit underneath them yes but I think that the there's a I think this would be most powerful if they are not too diluted if they're focused the achievement gap is pretty focused how we get there I'm not sure that road is clear but so we'll put these up here and move everything else to the side and you can also you don't have to acquiesce to Libby's desire to have only three right one of these other ones you could you could decide we're going to go with more of them I'm feeling good about those three yeah um I keep thinking about the large umbrella for the Jedi piece and I'm wondering if there's a way that it can you know it deserves effort and attention to include it in the three each of the three it doesn't seem to be extractable from anything it's certainly not all of them unless you're focused on diversity you're not going to close the achievement gap unless you're focused on pretty major background I think the connection accountability is making sure that we're reaching all of them I'd like to know if it feeds more quantifiable which then drives into one of the ways to do it is using Jedi so you can fit other things but the goal is quantifiable which is what I like and so I'm trying to come up with how can you quantify other what are the other things that we can quantify that can become the goals so I keep drifting over here to my yellow sticky note and if you're sitting here thinking about what's quantifiable what would the indicator be when it comes up with here's what would be on the dashboard to indicate that so if you're having thoughts about that as we are talking or you're having thoughts about what contributes to success at this priority write them down and put them up there this is a really good workshop and it's been a lot of time the suggestion is that Jedi could be a theme for one of the indicators for each goal yeah I think that's a good suggestion will I get me out? it was a very difficult workshop but it was the ones that should be with belonging, safety and wellness I keep thinking back to the presentation that Jess Marie did with the dashboard the behavior dashboard and that is going to become a different piece of software that's going to be more effective and it's going to drive a lot of efforts to support teachers and support kids to behave in a way that's effective for them and fair for them and helpful for the kids next to them I don't know just the behavior dashboard is what's going to quantify the belonging, safety and wellness but cover safety but maybe Jess and you and everyone else can figure out some kind of indicators that are that category that are accessible because it's something to measure how safety is deal but you could measure the behaviors that you are tracking that's what I was just asking around student input and how that can be if they have input into this process at all and I think there are surveys that sort of thing that you could use with students to ask them about how they feel about the goals that we've had that we set up and how well we've achieved them and if they have suggestions for things that might make it better and Lynn are you seeing that primarily in the belonging, safety and wellness or across these? I think you could have something that would look at all three I think community community service as well so then just a question in response to that it might start to be useful to figure out which of these responsibilities sit with Libyan administrative team in terms of reporting and are there instruments are you all in charge of the community survey instrument or is that also administrative I don't want to put too much on the board because we just think we don't have a ton of capacity and I think certainly being a bridge to the community is a big role and part of our role is helping to set the priorities I think that piece right there is the one that is the most fleshing out but the other two are obvious to educator minds like me you know that I think we can do a pretty good job that's also where the board accountability for me is a big theme you know like Nathan raised a couple of sort of like our red flag issues that have boiled to the surface over the past year one being HHB and the other being literacy special ed and so and it's not just those things there's other stuff that when community members come to us with concerns I'm not always seeing good follow through or just not knowing what it kind of goes into this like this for me as an individual board member so I don't know what the accountability piece is on the other end to sort of circle back to those folks and make sure that concerns are being followed up on and the progress is being made and I saw it more clearly with social emotional well-being was a big topic and also like ESER Fund was in the sessions and then there was like clear action from the admin team on that and the budget was moving forward and there was quite a few sort of reports out on here's what we did with that red flag issue that arose I think the one big difference is I was a part of those conversations and people are writing to the school board directly or speaking only to the school board I'm not a part of those conversations so unless there's a directive to act on it from my end that's one of the big differences with those two examples because I had a clear directive to act on something with all the ESER communities and that was the purpose of those for me to act on those but I may see school board emails with the school board and the PSPT of the movement was made but if it's directed just to you all that's an area of conflict for me do I answer is the board answer do I help the chairs answer like who answers those emails to me that's a systems question in result not always going to be a uniform answer but I think that's a huge challenge and you already face this all the time you'll have people posting something on Facebook and does the board respond does everybody on the board respond does one person on the board respond is there no response we just had a public comment involving a very specific incident at a school I would expect that there's no way that Libby can then respond directly to that comment because it's so specific but you might say can you get back to us in a couple weeks about what does happen in cases like you know etc how do we say can you get back to us about outlier behavioral issues and the support system that goes into that is I don't even know I don't know exactly how I would ask but I also wouldn't know exactly what I knew I would ask because meetings have agendas and if I catch you somewhere I might ask a question to try to get some knowledge but I don't necessarily feel like I'm going to ask a random question that's not related to the agenda in a meeting if anyone wants to respond go ahead now I think that's a good question Rhett and I think that's the reason we're doing this process is to say oh that falls into the category of inclusion safety belonging and wellness we have on the upcoming in two board meetings we have already on the schedule presentation from Libby and Jess Murray on how what is being made around that and we can ask more specific questions about this during that so I think that to me that's why we're doing this so that we can have a place to have these conversations without them feeling like random or reactive yeah I think I was going to say something similar we've had multiple meetings on HHB and the frustration of the board is we oftentimes can't react in real time and also these are kind of continuing themes that go through so we've had Jess come in we've had the training from Heather Land we're definitely going to revisit all of this and HHB and Mia mentioned I'm sure we will have meetings after that so we come in like that's the time to really raise these questions and be like well we're in this community and the questions are being made or sometimes just understanding what the issue is and what the limitations are the context we put into the info we give back so we can go back and explain things to the community is important our job is not necessarily someone comes in and says I'm unhappy about this our job is not always to fix it sometimes there's reasons there's also reasons what comes the way it was there may be changes necessary there may not be and I don't think we need to get too granular I just wanted to raise accountability as one of the things that come up for me and there's such a spectrum of the issues that are brought before us that are sort of potentially is under our purview and we could help move the needle or completely out of the scope of what we do which is kind of the issue that was brought tonight it's like there's not really much but I still would like to see accountability with things like that just one individual coming with a story who captured an email who's going to circle back to that person and let them know we heard you who's going to connect them to the proper channels of maybe the school board isn't the place to raise that issue but you should contact the principal and we do have systems in place for the concerns that were brought up tonight so it's just like here's connecting you with our handbook on these protocols and things like that so even that level of accountability I'm interested in improving as a board it's obviously not going to be me as an individual that reaches out to that person I don't think but I still think that people should feel heard and understood and then reacted to and there should be some responsiveness well I think we look at that community connection and accountability we could kind of trap the issues that people are raising and maybe we have a quarterly board newsletter that goes out or something from you that goes out to the community online that just talks about these are some issues that were raised in general not specific cases these are how we're managing behavior at the school or this is how we're managing communication with the community or if we had some kind of regular schedule for just any kind of general topics that we think it would be helpful not just a budget time and most of the time there's a really positive really positive information that we can provide people we actually need a lot of progress on this it's an opportunity for us to reach out to the community and make them feel rest assured like this is a priority at the school it's already being worked on like here's the different things that have been done over the last few years but some of that is going sort of unnoticed by the community sometimes they don't have any knowing because a lot of the stuff is private right but I think we could speak in general to this is how we manage behaviors or this is our protocol or you know I think some of it actually is being noticed I mean I a lot of the conversations that have with community members when you engage them a lot of people are very pleasable to do and noticing what we're doing but when they're feeling that way they don't come and often not even tell us that yeah an example that's rising to my at which I told all of you already at a meeting was like I went to a middle school sort of welcome meeting with Julie and there were some things that she was talking about where everyone was like you know we had that and it was like it was all news to them and it's not bad it was like a bad reaction oh my gosh that's so exciting I didn't realize that we had that and it was like oh darn that should be an opportunity I don't know how but that's why it's a goal that's what I was thinking that's why it's risen to the top as a goal because we all feel that there is a need for all of us including the administration to reach out to the community and so if you make that a goal that gives it an opportunity to work on it and to see how we can improve in that right we certainly see a need to improve it so then we put the processes come up with the administration's help we can come up with these things so I want to maybe I'm getting a soft track I'll just really quickly then I hadn't thought about the whole like follow through before so thank you for explaining that like it would be helpful to be able to have a plan for connecting people because a lot of times there is an answer and it might actually be a satisfactory one but I do want to caution I think this happens in my job as well is Libby does blogs she does podcasts she does regular updates we have twice a monthly board meetings where we have but I'm not sure I don't I'm very cautious about whenever we make an ask or come up with an idea that we then hand off then we have to take something off of the administration's plate to make room for that we can't just keep piling so I actually don't know what else we can ask of them for the connection with the community maybe that's something we need to own a little bit more as a board you just named a few there's also all four of the principles put out weekly newsletters I don't read them all I think there are a lot of people who are busy and when they see something sideways they notice but oftentimes it's not until they do something they're kind of a captive audience in front of Julie because they're there for an event she's telling me my guess is probably a lot of information she told them had been in the email she sent out weekly that went on red so I definitely agree we need to do a better job of connecting but I also think we have to be realistic nothing so this is into the weeds and I'll get out of it really quickly there are certain blogs or let's say there's a publication there are articles about many things oftentimes at the base of an article it'll list visibly what the keywords are this article addresses this person's name these themes I don't know how much work that would be I don't know how much work that would be because you do a blog thing or the principal writes so long salutes there's information about basketball French exchange students there's a few almost hashtags if you develop that ecosystem then Emma gets an incoming call this happened I'm so upset let me show you here are some links to what's already out there if you still have questions or something like that I just want to say one more thing quickly all of you have kids in school or you work in the school I don't and so when you talk about all these resources I'm not familiar with them and I'm new to the board so I'm figuring this all out but I think for other people in the community who don't have kids in the school there must, maybe we need to let them know that all of this information is available somewhere I mean another thing that might be easy to do is make sure that information gets kind of easily archived so all the Gator news and so on salutes are just on a page kind of listed and with a couple keywords so that way if someone's like I feel a little out of touch with the high school I've been busy what's been going on they can go and instead of like cutting through their emails you can just be down like oh and just for everybody's information they are posted on our website and archived on our website Mia's got a question that goes off in a different track she can go and then I'll watch okay I have a question that will switch gears when we're ready Mia please move on to a new topic new topic well as a segue I'll just say my two cents on the community engagement accountability I'm thinking of that as a more I'm just agreeing with those who said this is a little bit more of the board function that falls into sort of like a board function goal for me than more of a student outcomes kind of goal so I'm also thinking about it as far as like what is the what one more could the board be doing on that and the question that I wanted to ask brings us back to the academic achievement theme and I'm thinking about what Nathan said at the beginning of this conversation where he was naming things that you know asking us to think of things in categories of important and urgent and I'm wondering if we as a board want to narrow this goal down to address something that we have been hearing is urgent which would be literacy and say that actually for the next couple of years the board is going to have a real focus on literacy and not just not obviously not just academic achievement but not have it be too so broad as to address academic achievement so I just wanted to pose that to my fellow board members to think to see if you think that that would be appropriate. I mean my thought is I want to hear more because we've heard a few voices on literacy we've also heard about closing the achievement gap for several years I mean I would like to hear about where the administration really feels because I know literacy is a loaded topic and we're not experts I would like to hear from the administration about kind of what they feel the focus for closing the achievement gap should be I know literacy is a big piece of that but do we want to be that narrow in focus because I know there's a lot. It's completely up to the board I can see both ways I mean would you miss the information on math if you weren't getting that information like that would just be my questions would you miss the other stuff and we haven't had a I mean we have not had like a real deep dive on you know teaching literacy your approach to literacy you know your interpretation of the information we were presented I mean you know very smart and educated parents but you know not educators so I'm sure you have opinions on the information that was presented so I mean I'd like to hear a little more my thought is I'd like to hear a little more from the administration about the approach to literacy and where you feel the deficits are before I would want to limit it specifically to that because right now we have I think a sliver of information and not the whole lot. I also think highlighting literacy as like narrowing the focus wouldn't be to the exclusion of us hearing about math data right it would just be it would just give you a direction to say for the next few years maybe literacy can be elevated as a priority so literacy is our priority for the next couple of years so that is a we're actually moving away from some of the PDE with math specific targeted PDE with math because we've been there for a while so we are moving my only concern with that is not really a concern because it matches what we're doing anyway would be if the summer the board is in a retreat we have plans in development around literacy and the board says no we want to hear all that science like science should be your priority for the coming years that's where I have to say hold on hold on you can't just change that in July that would be my only concern for years down the road I also think saying close the gap academic achievement closing the gap mentions nothing about curriculum or teaching methodology so I think the concerns that you're raising are sort of not under our umbrella and not really related to this goal it's like if she can show us that they're closing the gap and increasing academic achievement I'm not sure that we're going to even dig into what methods are you using it's like the proof is in the data so I had a question when we when I think about literacy and I know how important that is I wonder about what's happening in this building and what's happening for kids that are going in many different directions and that need support in many different directions the local pathways doesn't come up as one of our priorities here but I wouldn't want to lose I wouldn't want to have the kids in this building that are doing so many different things not remain a place where we have some focus at sometimes even if it's not one of these priorities I feel like when we're talking about there's a big difference to me between I feel like elementary school is like foundational learning social-emotional learning high school what do you want to do and how do we find that for you and that doesn't fit into any of these that's sort of I don't know how to fit academic achievement in closing the gap it would be harder if we were focusing on one content area at the high school to show different types of data but we can do that you know what I mean we were just talking today about the data we collected at the high school and knowing for instance goes into the belonging piece actually of students who participate in co-curriculars and who are those students and who are repeat students because belonging matters so much so like we were talking about that kind of data today it just might not fit under academic achievement however we haven't named what high level learning in literacy is in high school yet what do we mean when we say that what level of proficiency are we looking for and if we name that then I can provide data on where we are with that cool I mean I know there's a let me just a follow up question on that it would be you and your team who would name what high level oh yeah absolutely right yeah I mean with academic achievement and then the close the gap is it academic achievement and then like side point close the gap or is it really academic achievement with just that singular goal close the gap because if it's academic achievement period and then also close the gap I think things like multiple pathways could and should be included I think multiple pathways and I see academic achievement for all because you can close the gap by having everyone drop to the bottom that's not just to be clear again in the living room so I read that as academic achievement for all that's really the excellence of teaching in multiple pathways is a strategy and but even there you can show data on there which one which students are taking advantage of multiple pathways what's their socio-academic status but you know what are they doing why are they taking multiple pathways there's lots of good information there that we haven't put our that is a centered around closing that gap that was what I was going to ask you came up earlier around you know some information isn't can't be shared or isn't visible but I think for example if if you all choose or let me choose to track to to focus pay a lot of attention to folks for whom there is an achievement gap or has historically been an achievement gap and you look at that longitudinally and then you can tell a story and you can you can set benchmarks we think will be on the path to success if we're starting to see this curve in this way right and is that how well we know what our gaps are socio-academic status and then students especially needs right so we'll be looking at pretty targeted demographic across multiple years because that's not going to go away tomorrow I'm just a quick time check I think my window of time is closing this is to me looking like quite productive so far I don't I suspect you all can carry this forward if I'm Jim and me and Libby looking forward to at agendas I would sort of put a pin in this episodically on a quick rotation until you've got it resolved okay yeah and I think that and I think we're kind of thinking about this let's do it really inform the agendas in terms of what I'm hearing about Nathan will you put the post-its on look at your sheet and hear those okay sure will anything anything else super helpful thanks for doing this you welcome my pleasure the equity committee want to give an update or media media Chris is not here so if you want to do an update great if we want to punt that to another meeting that's fine too if you're not feeling prepared well we will have more I believe the deadline we gave for that equity audit was the 10th of February so we will have more for the board in the not too distant future because I suspect we'll be bringing forward a local board to hire but other than that we don't have much to report great thank you so policy monitoring we have approval of the D-12 prevention of employee harassment monitoring report do I have a motion to approve D-12 I move that we approve obviously monitoring report do I have a second any discussion those in favor aye opposed and on to policy reasons we're doing a fifth and final reading of A-20 through A-24 any questions, comments, edits so the thing is Jim is that we haven't met as a policy committee since the last read so there only are comments and changes to be made on A-23 but we have not made those changes yet so I would just offer if anyone has anything else to add at this point our next meeting is on the third my hope is to have these changes made at that time and then we can move them forward for what being passed or do we need another reading after that so I'm not sure that we had to have them on tonight's agenda unless anyone has any pressing feedback yeah no downsides if there's anything people noticed or anything we should include before the policy committee meets and you can email him to us before we meet I'm sure the six is the final reading isn't that what they say six times a charm I think so, I think that's what it is considering there's you know five policies there six readings on five policies could be 15 could be 15 3 each but we can talk about library materials yes we can talk about library materials do you want to tear it up and how it came to us yeah so I'm forgetting her name right now Sue Monami how do you pronounce it? Monami who's the librarian here at the high school met with the other librarians in the district and together they looked at Vermont school boards association sort of draft policy or it didn't come from Vermont it came from Vermont library and association didn't come from VSBA they looked at that model policy and they sort of drafted made their own version, made little tweaks to it changes to it and personalized it for what they thought was best for this district and so this is that draft Sue came and presented it to the policy committee and we sort of went through with some of our questions and made a couple more revisions at that meeting and so this is the first draft of that policy and so if anyone this is the first of hopefully three reads so if you have any suggested edits we can go into the document now and I can make those as comments and then move them into the policy committee for revision yeah and huge thanks to the all the librarians that thought to this great policy and really appreciate them stepping up and presented to us and they feel really strongly about it and want us to adopt it so any initial thoughts, edits, or comments otherwise we can move it along for second reading I thought it was interesting that it seems like family members students can come use the libraries we talked about that this would be my public library it's a great selection for me to test it's closer for me we discussed possibly adding language there to make sure that people couldn't point to this policy and say I can come into the school any time I want and I forget exactly what says if it's not disruptive so obviously there has to be some layer where they're checking with the front office and finding out if it's okay for them to come onto campus but we decided ultimately not to add any stronger language than that because we felt like it was self-explanatory no coffee in the New York Times right is there anyone else for that because I have a few questions yeah, no go for it I think floor is yours or the screen okay I also really appreciate the quality and I'm really excited that we have drafted it and I hopefully adopted it largely edited as I was reading through it I was thinking to myself how will we we're meeting yet and monitor and hold ourselves accountable and so I wondered if the intent what's written up as the intent which I think is if that is also the outcome and then that way we would say whether or not we're meeting that outcome I just offer that as a question for the policy committee to I don't know to think about and then go ahead I can call it by a computer I just need to remind myself of what the intent was I don't have it on my screen yeah I've got it it's the first four paragraphs of it it's entitled policy and intent and I personally I think the last paragraph of that feels to me like that's the outcome of this policy that's what we're striving for so I think the only change would be to call this intent and outcome change the subheading of it or whatever anyway that's a thought that I had another thought that I had was the implementation section if whether or not it would make them to have metrics or if those are the metrics again I am just thinking about how we in future years hold ourselves accountable and check and make sure that we are in line with what we want you know we're doing what we say we're going to do I'd want to check with the librarians to see what metrics are possible because I don't know not being a librarian I'm not sure how they categorize them be it beyond genre and author so I would just want to make sure that the metrics were feasible for them to provide I don't think it necessarily has to be numbers but I second that would be that makes sense to check with them and make sure that we're not holding them or ourselves as a district to something that doesn't make sense another idea that I had and I was using that equity tool that the equity committee came up with and using it as sort of a gun check on this first draft and so the stakeholders came up for me and I wonder if it would be possible to include stakeholder involvement in some way like maybe what we're saying is every once a year or every couple of years we survey students to know whether or not we're meeting the intent and the outcome of the policy so that we are not just us who are saying yeah we think that we're you know all students can find themselves in our books but in fact we're asking students do you give that to the reality for that so that was another thought that I had for the yeah you're bringing up some some themes that have applied to just more general discussions around policy and procedure and so one of the things has been like that we would like to see maybe more speak to metrics and sort of benchmarks of success in meeting policies embedded within the policy I think a lot of times it feels like it sort of lives more in procedure currently that some of this stuff could live in procedure so if we're talking about like stakeholder engagement or how many you know that once a year we survey students like something like that could live in a procedure but we've been having that conversation about like do we do we embed certain things into the actual language of the policy so that when they're being monitored those things are being highlighted as priority to report back on it. That's the question for me is does it rise to the level of if we're you know we should we run through this as we're monitoring it like for example would we survey stakeholders as part of the monitoring process and I wonder if that's across the board too because I think there's a lot of policies where you know particularly where a student could be useful to see you know how they're feeling and you know part of it could be one question of several that we do you know annually or semi-annually with students and the other thing you brought up about the headings the policy intent outcomes so that was another thing we had talked about and I think we probably likely will change because the formatting that we're moving towards is to have a statement of intent as the opening paragraph and then to have the body of the policy so I think we probably will end up changing that. I don't know about the outcome section we'll talk about that. Emma did the librarians provide the procedural document for you? I don't believe I saw that. Jim did you see a procedure? It's linked on the policies I just clicked it up so I'm assuming the librarians wrote that. Okay I just need some tweaks. Oh yeah. But that's not something the board that's something that I would write so there's just something exactly that I would change. And that's not the procedure for following policy that's the procedure if somebody has an issue with something that's in the library right? Yeah I'm not sure about that. I think the librarians may have gotten this. Do you remember where their source was Emma? I don't think. They may have gotten the procedures from somewhere. I think both the procedure and the policy came from the library and association. Yeah. I guess that is where the procedure came from. Which is fine. You know the complaint shall read the policy like I can't force. We can't force anybody to read anything. There's just some language in there that does need to be there. Okay excellent. Well we will you know with those great input Mia and we'll particularly on that first section maybe a little clearer. The idea of survey and stakeholders goes to the community connection piece too that we just talked about. We should just skip through that as a board which stakeholders we want to reach out to and how throughout the year and you know getting input from not just students but community members as well. And I think like the lens of how they feel about how our policies are being implemented is a huge one and bless you. So great we can move on to second reading with some amendments there. One is coming in at 23. And now I think we can have the executive session which trying to figure out the best way to make sure Mia comes with us. So Mia just logs into the meeting. Am I coming with you or no? I think you can go home. Okay so one of you would just log in the meeting and then Anna can make that person or can make that person host. Yep let me just Is there a reason why the executive session isn't on the agenda? We added it at the beginning. Oh it is. The executive session is next. It's not on the draft agenda for next time. It's on the website at the 15th. It's because the superintendent email committee is working to we got all of the responses on Friday and did the summary Monday and yesterday. So we're just moving quickly here. It's on the agenda right? It's on the 15th version of the agenda. We don't need the whole special one for that one. I was a favor. Hi. Any opposed? Great. And you are co-host Jim. Perfect.