 The first thing on our agenda is to welcome guests that are attending tonight. So if there are particular issues that people want to, are of interest to you, or that you want to address at some point, it's useful to either let me know or we can circulate a list for people to sign up on as well if they want to speak to a particular issue. Thank you. Are there any agenda recommendations or board comments? Yeah, let me see. Here. Sorry. The agenda shows the policy committee get very poor in offering our charge, but we haven't actually met. And I would like to take a look at the next meeting of the poll so that we can have a meeting and discuss it. I think that that can be tabled. Okay. And Brian again. Can I just, what's that? I think you still got a mic. I don't know if this is more of just a meeting norms type of thing. Is it appropriate time to bring it up at this moment? Yes. Okay. I just want to remind everyone that as we sit up here, there are things that run across these tables and conversations that are at, perhaps, that tend to be in private or not, they're public and picked up on recording. And so it just encourages all of you to be mindful of that and respectful of others who are talking at the time and what we're saying. Because that's reported live. Thanks Brian. Any other revisions to the agenda or comments? We have time on our agenda for public comments and correspondence. Again, I think I will assume that most people out of here because of interest in Act 46, unless someone has another separate learning issue. I think it's, let me know by raising their hand now. Seeing no one raising their hand, I'll assume that. So generally we provide a time for public comment after the board has discussed a particular issue. So we can open up the floor after that chance to have some Act 46 updates if anyone of our guests would like to comment on that. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of September 26? So moved. Over. Is there a second? Okay. All right. Is there any discussion? The minutes are on page five. No discussion. All those in favor of approving the minutes of September 26, 2018, and signify by sending high. All right. Opposed? For 3.1, that he has asked that we table the policy committee charge discussion later until our next meeting. So without objection, we will do that. And that leads us to 3.2.4, which is an update on the conversation. So I'm assuming Matthew, that's myself. There, we've had two meetings that have had President Boat, a board member. We haven't been on your full committee. Scott was at one, and Stephen was at another. And we were able to have a meeting. Patrick Halladay is the chair of the Coombeville Board, and Mark Puckett is the superintendent. At the end of the fast-forwarding, I'd be glad to give you any details. But one of the first questions in the first meeting was, what are the opportunities between the two schools? So we took up just kind of a list of programs. I feel that it was the high school programs. And looked at that along with co-curricular and statin and class sizes and things like that, along with current debt. We had the first meeting provide a whole bunch of information. It was a similar role that had in 716. Many to each other. So it wasn't, there wasn't much. There was a lot of data changing from where it happened, even the book. The Coombeville School District and Washington District. At the end of the second meeting, it gave me the conclusion that I was asked for an outline to be drafted of what it would take, no matter what the governance structure was. We were looking at the SU level to merge the two, the Washington Central and Coombeville School District together. So that had been passed to Mark and myself as superintendents. And we are bringing together our staff from Central Office to look at those together and outline. And that's about a week of, we're meeting in about a week. So it's probably going to be about two weeks out before we have that. Are there staff? I don't think so. Do you have any back-general communications as to whether I can read the front of this position? Nope. Are there any additional comments about maybe making a statement or something in the meetings? Okay, I don't know. I just want to go up to you. That, from my perspective, that pretty much covers it. Patrick was very consistent in that meeting plan, timeline. Right, we are. Are there any questions for Bill or Scott or Stephen? At 3.2.2 is the Articles of Agreement, specifically the subcommittee was established to look at them. So floor. We had a meeting on Wednesday. And does everybody know who is in which committee? I can just update on that. That might be helpful. The Articles of Agreement Committee is Chris Winters, Dorothy, Matthew, Chris McBae, Carrie, and myself. The first thing we did, we elected a chair. I would be chairing that committee. And we came up with a list of questions for Bill to go back to both the AOE and to Chris to try to figure out all the state deadlines for us to be able to respond properly. So I don't know if I should go through. There might be too much information, but basically is when we want to have the meetings assuming if they consolidate us, we have to have a public meeting with our communities. And we also have to, we will have 90 days to do Articles of Agreement if we don't want to just do the Articles of Agreement that they gave us, even though we would be using those as a base for any conversation. So there's, we had a lot of questions from, this would be a recommendation for the transitional board. So it was pretty much an organizational meeting. We're meeting again next Tuesday at, what was it? 5.30. 5.30. And we came up with some dates. I don't know, Bill, you were going to try to have maybe some dates for today or for next meeting? For the next meeting. Before each up calendar, what the boards have seen before, that's something to be said. For a calendar of timelines based on the draft medical agreement. So if you read through the Articles of Agreement in page 21, 22 and 23, there's really like an outline and an article 8. We're not going to have time to do that right now. It's pretty prescribed what we have to do and what we're trying to do is just figure out the end date so that we can work our way backwards and make sure we have something to review and to, you know, we have to take into consideration town meeting day and also that we think January 18th is the last day to give anything to our town clerks too. So we're figuring out all of that. Is that? We follow up questions from the floor. We'll go to 3.223, which is the debt issue. And of course we're forming another second meeting to explore this issue in this article. The debt committee met on Monday, I think they have played us today, a lot of conversations that we've had over the last ten years or so. We discussed with Bill, gathered some detailed information on the debt and value of facilities in each town. So Bill and folks will be gathering that information. We quickly realized that we either don't have a charge from this board or the charge is very wide open. So we discussed a little bit that we fear that we're not something more specific. We're unsure if we're going to go there to do something for this board that is helpful. We did discuss different proposals that we've come up with, however we did. Each one we did identify that even if we came up with a proposal that the five towns could agree to. It's unclear whether there's a mechanism of law right now to allow their operation. So we kind of step back to that. We can do some simple things like getting a second opinion, a second people opinion. That's something that we pursue so that we don't have a next week schedule. That was a great summary. I'd just like to add to it from my perspective, and this is perhaps also a connection with the previous discussion of articles that in the 12th article, article five is, from my perspective, flatly unacceptable. And as it stands, it cannot stand. And there has to be some, if we are going to force a diversion, there has to be some opera solution. I'll just say one way that I think the draft e-book articles committee came to a rough conclusion that our probable work was going to be to draft articles agreement for our own school system that we could consider and have a committee that our thought at least, and it may not jive with the members of the tech committee, I'm not sure, but our hope anyway is that the tech committee would take special charge of that. Steve? By way of a more specific charge, I don't always agree on everything. I agree with him on this, that the article on debt is the way it's worded, it's not satisfactory. So my thinking for the subcommittee was around coming up with what that committee felt was the most viable alternative to what this mandate would create more equity. Other than that, I would want to be too specific. I think there are some resolutions around debt that have been utilized by some other mergers that might serve as a starting point. Even though we don't have flexibility with that, my feeling is that if we're going to dig our heels in and fight somewhere, that's where we dig our heels in and fight. So coming up with the viable and relatively cheap Washington view that would be acceptable with an existing law outside of that mandated can do it. There are some things I think that can be done with an existing law that might not get completely there, but can get us closer to what we have. Yeah, I guess I would also add briefly that the executive committee has decided to meet more often over the next six weeks or so. So our next meeting is, I believe, November 6th, the central office building. And then we're meeting again either right before or right after the Thanksgiving holiday before our next NSE meeting, which will be December 5th. So if the debt committee, it would be at all helpful to consult with a wider group of people, or if there's like a spending decision to be made, for example, if there's going to be one consult with a second attorney or something like that. There's opportunities, I guess, to check into the executive committee and if you feel that's useful. I guess I'm trying to warm it up because I understand that there's not like a hard wire of charge with very specific working. But I'm not sure we have the time, you know, to take that up tonight and try to hash it out towards the second one. So I guess I'm hoping that what you've heard is going to go forward. This is one point where you and I are going to disagree. Okay. I think without a charge, the committee will be up to vote. And I think we'll be up to vote. And I think that you need to, the board needs, they don't need to get extremely specific. But I think they need a charge, just as the subcommittee on the articles had a charge to consider wording and other possible articles. It took us a while to work through just to get, I think that we kind of roll over the place without at least some focus. It could be as simple as what was Stephen presented or, you know, but I think that that is needed for my observation of that meeting. I guess I'm a little confused as I thought Article 5, as soon as the deadline, was not amendable. So are we, if we are looking for alternatives, is it just something to go back to the state board with as proposed, so different, to propose change in that to them before they hit us with it? Like, I don't know. That's where I'm kind of confused about that. So there is a provision in the default draft default articles of agreement that allows for districts that are forced to merge to opt to form a committee, essentially a 706B committee, to draft its own articles of agreement separate from what's in the draft default articles of agreement. And there's some fairly tight timeframe for doing that and trying to get it approved, basically it would require the state board approving those articles. It's only meeting, which is a play, I think, given the timeline, probably January 17th, and we'd have to have schedule, warn and schedule and have a vote of the electorate on whether or not to approve those articles of agreement or not. So essentially there's a kind of very narrowly defined opportunity for us to, as district boards, to draft our own articles of agreement, which the content could be quite different from what's in the default draft articles of agreement, but it provides that the state board has to approve it. So yeah, right. So if a 706B has to be formed, what's the timeframe? I guess, sorry, maybe you answered that, but being on the next page, I just want to understand that there's two groups working on potential articles, right? We're going to focus on one. But if that committee has to be formed, what would that have to be formed? I think any time, really, I'm climbing farther and farther out of the limit here, so in terms of whether I may be right about this or not. And my sense is that it could be formed, probably should be formed if it's going to be as soon as possible after the state board issued its statewide plan. And then there is a kind of nine-day ticking time clock limit on being able to kind of vote to have the voters vote on draft articles. So would be after the final visit? We had some discussion about whether we could form one earlier. We would approve. Yeah, we're asking that question. Yeah, well. So generally, I agree with what Bill said. At first, I thought this discussion was helpful with what Stephen said, but I think now I'm walking in the other direction. It's still not clear whether this board wants the committee to identify a solution that this board considers equitable or that is going to, doesn't appear to be two different things. We can brainstorm solutions that this board might be acceptable and bring them back to the board and then go from there. The Executive Committee or the Articles Committee or the SC board to go from there as far as exploring what is within the law. But I don't, I'm not sure that we're going to be able to do those two. I guess I allocated flow suggestion. It really is just that. Would it make sense for the debt subcommittee to bring three alternative Article Vs, draft Article Vs to our December 5th SU meeting? Understanding that as you say, there may not be any alternative that's going to sort of take every box that has to be taken. But maybe by just saying like, well, let's look at these three and list out what the pros and cons or the challenges are, you know, at least that may have something to discuss as we're going to, again, that's just a suggestion. Part of what we were instructed at that committee because they were just going to focus on that was, I had read that email that Ed sent us about maybe trying to ask them to, because we know that on Article V it says that neither the board or the voters can amend the circle unless it's within the law. So we've been around a couple of times with the lawyers. So what you were saying, I think it's right that we could ask them to come to an alternative way even if it means that we will be involving the legislation to be amenable. So come up with something, even if it's not within the law, that we can flow through. So be creative. Just be creative. Think outside the box. Yeah, I'd just like to remind us all of what everybody already knows is that equity is actually the number one goal of the Act for the Six, at least in whatever the presentation. I think, arguably, we're in the work that's in the case of conflict. And clearly, in this particular instance, we have a conflict between the boards of Act for the Six and trying to, in person, have a merger. Yeah, I think that both the sort of impetus for forming a subcommittee on this issue is exactly. We have not eight questions involved. And nobody really knows how to square this circle. And we, as the larger group that we are, could probably talk to them as they had better than we had over the same place. So our dear hope is that this smaller group of folks, either laser in the legs to come up with some alternative, I understand. It's not a font or an easy chart. So I guess the question is whether we need to formally adopt a charge. Do we need to? I'd be happy to make a motion. I think we're comfortable with what I said. I'll try to work that out. So I guess I would move that we can charge the subcommittee on debt to present three alternative options for Article 5, language, in our December 5th WCSUP. Is there any further discussion? Maybe if I delved through the numbers of meetings at Act 6 when we did, I'd find this, but I'm hoping it would be easier. Can I have some numbers? Like it's all this theoretical of, you know, this town owes this much and this one has a surplus. But how, if he did do what our full plan said, can someone show me the map model of how that translates to this individual person in their home? Is this individual person in their home? Because I don't have any comprehension of that. I just have this theoretical, it's a monster and all this negativity. And I'd like to see some data and the data, these alternate models have to have some number crunching in here. We need to count it on this, not just lawyers, to tell me, I mean, the whole formula for how we get our property taxes is just insane. So if you translate it, I mean occasionally, you know, when we look at something like voting for a bond for our school, it's this huge, longest number and then it translates down to $10 more per year per person, that's a big difference. It's not as big a difference in learning. So I would just like to see some numbers and data because it's just swirling around with me. Yeah, maybe the only one, I apologize if so. So Karen, I was tasked by the subcommittee. Our assets in the Ply Village just says that Allison had talked about. Actually, the one thing I would add to the little summaries is not just debt. We've got to look for merging of corporations or organizations you need to look at assets and liabilities. So I'm pulling together a lot with a lot of issues. You know, I'm going to ask Lori to look it over and get it back to you. Right, Lori? And it is a matter of fact that I think that is one thing. Because, you know, potentially one town is five years ahead of doing the necessary upgrades and there's a liability in another town because they need to do a million dollars worth of renovations that haven't been done yet. Those are conversations that we had. The other piece I would say that in the last week's State Board meeting, Brad James gave some modeling that he's updating. He realized that those figures weren't absolutely correct. So he's actually called back to us and asked for more data. But it's just for all the towns that are in Berger. There are other towns that have tax rates affected. We're one of the highest, but not the highest. What I saw from his data he had in the State Board last week. So, Karen, I think your comments are well taken. I know the committee has been discussing the use of data. I guess to kind of make, there's an implicit assumption that any effective presentation of the alternative is probably a sort of all, you know, some figures and implications. Along the same line, I think the assets and liabilities and sort of business analysis is important. But really getting to the heart of what Karen was saying is a way to, you know, grid out. Like what does this mean for my household? I pay X number of dollars in taxes every year on my property between my school tax and my, however it works. You know, and then I either income adjusted or I'm not to some degree. And what does that mean? So that instead of this huge, scary swirl of numbers that we don't know. And this is something that we did. Eastmont Pillar has some pretty direct experience with this because we took on a huge amount of debt. And one of the things that made it less unknown for the taxpayers in Eastmont Pillar was to give some really direct, clear numbers. This is what this will mean for you if you make, you know, X number of dollars in your household and you have a $150,000 homestead, it'll translate to a lift of this many dollars in taxes per year. And having that actual hard data is really important when we're talking about decisions like that. I would also hope that one of those models or fourth model would be if we had to merge what that would look like with the same amount of detail, so that we would have something to compare it to. Yes, Al. I do want to close out discussion of this pretty soon because we have some other variable things to get to. Well, is it reasonable that we have numbers by the time that debt subcommittee is formed? And is there any other participant of that committee from your office that would be useful that would have numbers that the committee could use when trying to make meaningful calculations that have been formed? So the first thing I said, we're waiting for the audits to come back. So we have FY18 data. Right now I'm running out of FY17 data. And that's one of the problems with the models that we produced is we're usually two years back. So I'm waiting for the audits to come from the auditor. We've been told by the auditor that we'll be here by the end of this week. Because I want audited figures. Audited figures, Laura's really good. Her team is really good at what they do and they can put everything together pretty fast. From there, it's not going to be calculated at the table. Laura and I usually do not like to do that because we make mistakes. We rather be asked for the information, go do it. We use a third person in the office to double check all our work and then bring it back. So I guess I just want to ask quickly, Bill, since you brought this before, does the charge as described sound like it's adequate to your concern? For me, it was just knowing having some direction for the group. And that's all I was looking for because I think without it, we had a tough time finding a direction at that table. I guess my last comment would be that I share everyone's hunger for precision and objectively verifiable data on what's going to happen. But I think this is a more complex situation even than what he was wrestling with when he was doing it. So I do that process. So I guess I just want to compare folks for a likely some degree of frustration with it and some forgiveness in advance for our county members. Okay, is there any other critical discussion of the motion that's on the table? Again, so the motion is for the debt committee to present three alternatives to Article 5 to the SU Board. It's next meeting in December 5th. We're ready to go, but I'll ask it about all those in favor of the motion. Please see if I'm missing any items. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? At this point, I'd like to ask if there's any guests who came specifically with something they wanted to say about Act 6. Because at this point, I don't want to disobey the trending to that topic. It's a normal area of discussion. We have other things to get to on the agenda. I'm sitting here in the board and discussing the vegetation goals and things like that. But there are people who want to see more of an opportunity to do that. Do you just, if it's possible to take, let's say, 90 seconds or less? Please, I'm going to talk to you. Please, I'm going to talk to you. I missed something. There you go. I mean, Charlie and Ernie and I went to Scott's meeting down in the SBED. And Carol, one guy who voted against the notion of merger here, was very explicit in pointing out that the dead issue is not simply a matter of winnowing down to what the tax impact would be on individual policies. The country and the law is a question about the size of it. So I'm hopeful that you bear that in mind, because quite frankly, I think, the winnowing down to the impact, depending on the dollar for $100 or value, is a good way of masking the inactivity that is involved in transferring tens of millions of dollars to death. I'm going to bear that in mind. Court to John Carroll, which would be important to you. Kyle Lins from Middlesex. Five minutes. That's how long the state boards spend evaluating the alternative government instruction proposal. And all of you folks and others worked for hundreds and hundreds of hours. Looking at this group and thinking of all the meetings you wanted the original committee, and how much time was put in to traffic the long document that was submitted. And five minutes. Okay. Hi, Carl Hartman from Berlin. And I guess I would just like to ask the boards. I know we had, in Berlin, we had a road to join the lawsuit to fight forced murder. And at the last SCY board meeting, a few of the districts decided to abstain or wait until a decision was made. I just wanted to bring that up and remind those who did not vote or decided to abstain and wait until a decision was made that the decision was made to force mandate now. So there's still time for you to join that lawsuit to fight against forced murder. So if there are any other comments there, then we'll move to page 3.3, which is the student policy. Thank you, Matthew. I want to thank all of you for the opportunity and especially the School of Quality Committee for really helping us kind of shape this a little more in the chair. Let's do minor reports. Jen Miller, our son, my colleague, our film director, will be joining you. She and I are going to split this report. She'll be doing the first part, and I'll be doing the second. Just to give you kind of a general outline of the first part, we thought that it was important. Last year, as we did the presentation, we gave you a written report again this year and we're doing a presentation. Last year, I'm working with the School of Quality Committee. The first part was more about what does the school monitor report look like. So you saw PowerPoint-sized affirmations of what we had tested to for where we are with School of Quality and how we monitored that via the policy. We decided for this year that we had done enough of our work. We had monitored two policies last year that we didn't necessarily need to have a presentation in that form. But that was important to have the written report in that form. And as you know, we're using a policy governance model for this type of report. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to my colleague Jen. So hi, everybody. I wanted to share some context with you before we get ready to share the student achievement data. And the first thing that I want to remind you of as we get ready to put the slide is that the first thing that I wanted to bring into the room is the mission statement that the full board adopted two and a half years ago. It is right there. I think that you're familiar with it. I wanted to let you know that we are very familiar with it as educators in the system and it really is driving all of the work that we're doing from pre-take through graduation. So first and foremost, that mission statement is informing our work. The student learning outcomes are really the way that we're operationalizing that mission statement. And I wanted to let you know that again, all of the work that we're doing when we get together across the supervisor reading and engage in teaching and learning collaboration together is grounded in these student learning outcomes, both the core knowledge standards and the transferable skills. And also, it is this year's current junior class that is required to graduate with proficiency-based graduation requirements. So we've been working hard to do this work through pre-take through graduation so that we can lay a strong foundation for our youngest learners and then build all the way through. And we're definitely feeling a sense of urgency right now because our current juniors are graduating three semesters, about no more than three semesters under this new system. So there's other context that informs our work as well. One is the theory of action that the leadership team established a few years ago. And you are familiar with that theory of action you've seen in the implementation report and the strategic objectives that we've created. That work has also allowed us to organize the work and the learning that needs to happen in the system in order to realize that theory of action. So we spent a lot of time working on the establishment of figure of learning targets. Being able to really explicitly articulate what it is that students need to know and be able to do. We want to make sure our students know those as well. We want them to know why what they're learning is so important and how it relates to the learning that will come down the line. We're focusing a lot on high quality instruction in interventions and you will see some of the thinking that we're doing right now is to analyze our student data and then along those same lines the comprehensive and balanced assessment system. You'll see the pieces that exist and you'll see that there are pieces that don't yet exist. You all spent a day learning from the DMG about recommendations for effective and efficient practices and special education that I would argue are effective and efficient strategies for all children. It's incumbent on us to meet all of our students needs and we have a collective responsibility to do so. So some of those recommendations include a report with which you are familiar, our informant, our work as well. And then finally I'll talk about this a little in just a minute or two. The agency of education works to monitor school quality as well. And the annual snapshot which is the quantitative part of their monitoring process. I hope you remember that recently we participated in a pilot with an integrated field review and there were recommendations from that as a more qualitative visit. An aspect of the work that I want to share with you just a little bit of how to expect that annual snapshot. So tonight you're going to see some sources of data that we've used to report to you on our student progress. You will see our most recent SBAC scores, Smarter Balanced Assessment, SBAC measures literacy and mathematics. You'll also see a combination of our local assessment data in our youngest grades, kindergarten through third grade. We use a benchmark assessment in literacy which is called the Fountas of Penel or FNP as we affectionately refer to it. You'll also see in grades four, five and six we use the developmental reading assessment, second version or the DRA2. And then we have a universal screener called Star 360 in reading as well. We administer to our students grades three and ten. We have an assessment that transcends each of those major transitions. And in mathematics we administer Star 360 as well and we administer that assessment grades one through ten. And then you'll see report card data as well. So we spend some time aligning report cards to our student learning outcomes in a very intentional way and ultimately teachers use their professional judgment and student work to create scores, to give students scores that are a reflection of their summative performances. So all of that data is used to triangulate. And the importance of triangulating data can't be underscored. Any one source of data is one snapshot, one view of student performance at a particular point in time. When we look at multiple sources of data that are intended to measure the same knowledge and skill set, then we can understand more deeply how our students are doing. Teachers can respond to that data at the individual school, individual student level. They can respond at the classroom level. We can make some school goals and priorities and then we can look at our assessment results as a system as well. So when you see the results as they exist right now that Bill's going to present to you in just a little bit, you'll see the SBAC, the Star 360, down to something now, the DRA2 and an analysis of our current report card. So you're going to see a lot of data and you're going to be asked to draw some conclusions yourselves. But it is super clear that we have had for a long time and continue to have an achievement gap between our students who are historically underserved and those who are historically privileged. And we are finding that achievement gap in two ways. One, by students who qualify for free and reduced lunch and those who don't and also students who have individualized education plans or require special ed services and those who don't. So you will be asked to consider that data and what it means for our future action. We also, we did a lot of work to align our report cards to our student learning outcomes. But we have a lot of work to do, I think, across the system in terms of calibrating our practice, looking at student work together and determining what that means a student knows and is able to do and how we would summarize or score that data across the board. So we've engaged in some conversations about that in the Supervisory Union either at our curriculum campus experiences in June and sometimes when we have the opportunity to get great or subject or like teachers together, mostly during in-service days, occasionally on Wednesday afternoon, but that is work that is deep and critical and we still have a ways to go, I think, in that work. We have some local assessments in literacy and mathematics and then there are areas in our student learning outcomes where we have no common assessments whether we created them here or we looked outward and that is not good enough yet. So we work to do in other areas as well. And let's see, again I mentioned the district management group's plan. We're doing a lot of work specifically with our east managers right now around enacting or preparing to enact some of the practices that were highlighted in that report and also at a school and systems level when we're looking at how we structure time and expertise and allocate those resources. And then finally, the most important thing is to have a high quality teacher in the classroom who is engaging in effective practice and with his or her students as much as possible. So we're looking for ways to do this really important work in a way that's not going to pull our teachers away from their students. The other thing I just wanted to share with you and this goes back to the annual snapshot is just a little more context about the state of Vermont. With the federal legislation ESSA or ESSA or the Every Student Succeeds Act Vermont created a statewide plan to meet the requirements of the federal legislation as recipients of federal funds in Washington Central we are also required to follow that plan. So there have been a few changes. In December the state is going to reveal or release the results of the annual snapshot and you're going to get a nice set of data to look at. The one domain that we're sharing with you tonight is academic proficiency. There will be changes down the line. The state is exploring ways to enact these assessments. So as fact has been around for a little bit it used to be grades 3 through 8 and grade 11 and the state changed grade 11 to grade 9 in part because we were getting particularly reliable results from 11th graders and there was a strong suggestion to test 9th graders instead. So as fact does transcend elementary middle and high school there's a new assessment in science. It is aligned to the next generation science standards. We piloted it as a state last year. We are not going to receive individual student results this year but we will test in May with this test, the Vermont Science Assessment. It's a test of grades 5, 8 and 11. It is rigorous and I think it's going to cause us to look at what we do and don't do yet in science instruction in our supervisory union. And then finally, fitness program is an assessment of physical education. Our PE teachers have actually been administering fitness program for years as a measure of strength and flexibility and aerobic capacity for our kids. So that was a huge heavy lift for us. We piloted it last year across the state and we will implement fitness program as part of the school accountability measures this spring and the state after the pilot results has determined that it's grades 4, 7 and 9 that will be participating in fitness program. And finally, something that you're going to see that is relatively new in the annual snapshot is the state is enacting its commitment to equity by calling out sort of scoring schools on how they're doing with groups that have historically been under-served or marginalized in students who haven't. And so we'll get some official results about the equity index. So we'll see that difference between performance and student groups and we will also over time be assessed on how well or not we are closing that gap. So that is in my mind really important and critical work. I'm thrilled that it's going to be public and that it will help us to continue to engage in that discourse. So before I present about the data, I wanted to celebrate some great things. We've made some huge changes in our assessment and data system from last year and it's not so much the assessments themselves but we have a lot more data than we did before. For the first time, we now have the ability to ask better questions to our system and the cornerstone of that is the proficiency based scoring system that we have. We are now able to look at, as I said in my report what is being assessed and recorded to parents and what is the written curriculum and we'll show you some evidence of that tonight. We're also able to really start to triangulate on what our quantitative data is saying and we're able to do that and then go look at what our qualitative data what the stories that we're hearing from students and from teachers about what's happening in the classroom. With those qualitative data, we're really starting to look at with them how and why we're getting the results we're getting. I'm going to show you some of that tonight as well a little bit but we know we have a lot more work to do in that area. So it's really exciting to have this from last year if you remember we were only able to look at three grade levels so that makes a big difference in having that proficiency based report mechanism. So this is our first slide. I'm trying to figure out where to stand so I don't get everyone's way. I'm triangulation. So we're able to look at the literacy data both from our report cards, our local assessments which Jen had reminded her on the sponsor now our DRA2 Star 360 reading and then the SBAC assessment. You'll know up here that the report card data is lower than our local assessment in our SBAC but when we look at our literacy data compared to the state means and state averages, our literacy data by grade level is achieving above the state average in all grades. So this makes me wonder do our teachers have higher expectations for our students in literacy than the other two assessments? That's one of those qualitative questions we wanted to really find out. We also know that about seven, eight years ago the supervised union put a big push into literacy professional development for most of the teachers of literacy. So this is just breaking it up by grade level and you'll see the SBAC percent proficient and you'll see both a fall and winter literacy. This next year will actually have a spring that all students would take. The past couple years in literacy we did not have a score that was happening at the end of the year. So our winter assessment is happening in January and December at the right time. When is it again? December and January and the fall happened right at school start. So you can see some growth on this as well as how it compares to the SBAC performance. This is our gap analysis. So you'll see on the left hand side it took sixth grade. We can look at different grade levels. We can look across grade levels when I do a gap analysis. I do a gap analysis within a grade because of the performance targets and the scales in which the kids are scoring at. So as you see on the left hand you'll see free and reduced lunch and non-free and reduced lunch. They gap there at 53 scale points which is almost a year and three quarters of learning for our students at that area and remember we screen reduced lunch as indicator for poverty. If we look at students that are on to have an IEP and for those who do not you will see that we have a gap of 95 scale points at sixth grade that's almost three years of learning. Back to the triangulation now we're at math. So this is our local common assessments, our report card and SBAC. And last year when we showed you this you saw two bars, the local report card and the local assessments much higher than the SBAC. The grade is as we've been able to get those in to where our local assessments now are in alignment with our SBAC scores. So the scores the teachers receive right away from our benchmark assessments are in alignment. The place that is in alignment right now is our report cards. And Jen talked about calibration earlier. Our report cards are about 50% higher than the local assessments. So the information the teachers assessing the student on. So it's a place right now that one of the things we want to ask is how do we help to calibrate our report card expectations with that of our local assessments and the common core. So the report card and for all the parents who use the portal isn't more frequent reporting back to them about how their child is doing. Very similar to literacy. So we just started 360 here again and looked at it with SBAC performance. You'll notice that we actually have a range in here of positive 6 to negative 2 with differential from the winter assessment to the SBAC performance. And so it's really it's much tighter aligned which is giving us much better information. If we look at sixth grade math performance decided by poverty and students who are on an individual education plan on the left-hand side again the same format. You'll notice that there's a 43 scale point difference for students that are on career use lunch and those who are not. So that's about a year and a half worth of math. And for those who are on IEP there's 98 scale points lower. So approximately three years again below in the performance or the gap. The black line is the proficiency line for that grade level. And wonder a little bit about the career use what it looks the way it does because those have been lower. Looks like she hired someone. I'll look at that one more time. So one of the things we can do and if you look at my blog as I sit you in my memo and to in my report there's a lot more information to go to the blog and look at. Look at literacy and this is literacy scores at sixth grade. So if I came over here to the poster you'll see in literacy there are six standards here that are written to the curriculum. So while the order isn't quite the same you can see that now we can see the performance of students via these those standards at that grade level. All of our content committees have written performance indicators at each of those grade levels so that we know so the teachers can judge are they beginning to meet expectations progressing are they meeting or exceeding expectations. So as you look at this the teachers can now take back this data as a group and look at their curriculum for adjustments. One of the things Jen and I have been talking about is where do we have the time for teachers to get together and use this data to inform their curriculum path with their students and one of the next one. This next one is math at sixth grade and as you see if you look up here there are five standards and I show four up here on this graph and the reason for that the functions standard what grade levels at eighth grade does not even start with a performance indicator in eighth grade but you notice we have no assessed data and there are no assessments for geometry or statistics and that's called for. If you look at the next slide Jen you'll notice that the teachers have written performance indicators for the sixth grade for geometry and statistics so we do not have assessed information on our students at that level. So the question the next question that happens is for me is it not whether we have to have them all but what does that do for the students ability to learn math and there's probably prioritization I know for me and I were in the classroom back to my teaching days and I look at that I'd say the number and quantity in the algebra has some priority over the geometry and statistics or it may be something else that's causing that as well we'll get to in a minute. I went down to fifth grade I'm sorry I didn't say sixth grade on this but it was just an easier way to get the data we're also if you look at these X marks and you look at the elementary schools and you look at the standard I've only brought three content areas you can see we're nicely aligned in literacy this is data of where teachers have scored students so they scored students all the elementary schools in literacy and the five standards all across the board and that's what it was called for in the performance indicators when I went to math they scored in three of the four that were called for but they were all in the same place when I went to science and I stopped at science and I wanted to see if it was true it was enough to say hey not all the elementary schools are scoring in the same places so when I get really excited about science and love I really like looking at data and doing this analysis I run into Jen's office and I say hey look at this and she goes I got one thing for you there are different grade configurations so they're not teaching the same thing necessarily so there's a lot more looking to do we need to get the teachers together to ask the question is this okay or is it not I don't know the answer to that I went to some high school performance data kind of the end of the pre-k graduation career for Washington Central and it's here's our graduation rate right now currently we're not getting and I should say this with all the data the agency of education has not come out with their SFAC data or their other accountability data they're not doing until December Ms. Jen talked about their annual snapshot I sat through a presentation last week at the superintendent's and school board's conference they're trying not to have it be comparative between school or districts so we will not when you say so how do we compare to the average I can't tell you they're not giving us that data so you will see this is our graduation rate up to last year next slide one of the other things we did if you remember I had the nice smiley faces in previous years about college admissions and college acceptance rates we are now in state of mind as Jen referenced earlier we're using the annual snapshot and it will take data from other places the national clearinghouse for data is giving us indicators of what's actually happening with students as long as they go to college in the United States so it doesn't give international we all have students that are open Canada and over in Europe for college it also won't give us it will give us some career college career ready data so it will give us data from Montlabor and Montrade schools but we are changing to this data because the data that I had done in previous years for all of you was things we collected only in U32 so this is much more reliable and validated from the national clearinghouse and this is a graduate so it's not a four year cohort it's just the graduates from the senior class so you only need to be in U32 for one year I believe to be in this data set you didn't have to be here for all four years that's what the previous data set was so you will see what students are reporting in the blue for going to college and accepted to college for a student report and then coming from the national clearinghouse data is who's actually enrolled you can see we're averaging around 58% we have one year that's a little bit of an outlier at 74 our students do really well what I think we hear around the state is that Vermont students do not stay in college and I've heard numbers lower than 50% but to see that that's averaging around 74-75% so that's called the persistence rate and then the completion rate is completing the college experience within six years just a really quick question does completing get checked if somebody goes through a two year versus a four year versus a I think so it seems right so the data we got from the state is a little more limited so I think that's just the four year completion rate but the two year if we actually pull all the clearinghouse data which we have not done the career point to do now it will show us two year again four year college completion rates as well as something independent trade at schools as well there's some other days to be able to do but we just don't have any that's probably what Vermont had to say right see the way of the national clearinghouse I believe to get some access to this so on to actions that was part of the report this year were actions that we were going to take and so Jen if you can go to the next one so Jen mentioned a lot of these I'm going to reiterate them again so one of the things that we're doing and I'm going to hold the top one full setting to the last part but supporting all our learners there's I know that Jen and Kelly have been working with special educators a lot of that you heard from our work with the district management group that's specializing our special educators into content areas of which they instruct so they've been working on more depth of instruction literacy and math we've expanded a little bit of math interventions at one school but we're seeing already integrated we probably need more of that I know that that's always a constant conversation about the capacity we have for interventions we keep that on at our math instructional time one of the things that we know is that we're not all our students are seeing 60 minutes of math every day for math instruction as we do in literacy this is one of the things that happened in literacy about 8 years ago so we changed to ensure that we had 90 minutes of literacy instruction for all students I mentioned earlier the audit of the written curriculum with the assessed curriculum and our teacher need to look at that and sit down and say what does that tell us for what kids need and how might we alter our scope and sequence of what kids are learning and the last part which I want to thank the board for is the math goals you had given us the working with the school quality committee you had asked for a math goal to be set and your leadership had asked you for that it's required us to ask all the math teachers all the instructors of math to say since they know their kids the best not that any of us is a member of the leadership team where do you think your kids based on where they are now where will they be in June as measured by the star of 360 math assessment so in the past three weeks or four weeks the principals were closely with their teachers to look at that data to build targets based on what they believe their students will be able to do and what they have come up with is that for Washington you see this by school and it's in the report as well but for Washington essential currently it's the September assessment we had 45% of our students proficient and our goal for the June administration is to have 71% of our students proficient along with that we decided to have we had much discussion about this do we need a growth goal because star 360 will show us how much growth a student makes within a year as well as their attainment or achievement also that they combined across the supervisory union that 90% of our students will grow at least one year's worth of growth I think you all occurred or you should have grabbed one when you came in or you need one if you don't have one that looks like this and this is similar to an activity I did with the teachers at the beginning of the year but a little different so take a look at this image I'm going to give you three or four minutes you're going to ask for a flight in the room for an audience not to have side conversation I'm really going to ask the leadership team to be quiet back there tell me what this image means to you take a minute, write it out write some quotes what does this image mean to you so in a few minutes we're going to be in groups and you may want to share what you wrote on that card but let me tell you what this image means this image means to me in order to provide equity we need to make sure everyone pick the apple doesn't matter to me what the ram looks like or how it's constructed or who builds it what matters to me is that each person is able to get the apple in the context of what we've just observed in the student learning data we need to ensure that all children can reach that apple that is to be successful in literacy, math and social emotional learning for many years we've been talking about the inputs of the system and what would help to provide equity if we only talk about the inputs of the system then to me we're only focusing on some sort of equality and equality to me is not the same as equity not only do we need to focus on what the ram looks like but we need to focus on does it provide the support for each and every student for me it's become clear we need to switch our conversation from the inputs to the outputs equity means we do everything possible to ensure equity of outcomes outcomes for all our excellent instructional system must focus on high quality rigorous learning targets for all last week and I've heard Dan French use it the past two or three weeks and I totally agree with him you can't separate the conversation between quality and equity for some education institutions and for some states they've achieved equity by lowering standards that's not what I'm talking about and that's not what I believe by providing the same high quality outcomes to all students we'll be giving the best strategy we can to lower our poverty and racial gaps we have in our towns in this great state of Vermont and in the nation so I believe it's our moral imperative to do it that's been asked to ask ourselves some challenging questions what are we willing to change we've been nibbling around the edges for years in Washington Central and if we aren't willing to really change the system I don't think we'll be able to change yet again are we able to change the length of the school day the school year change our school schedule increase the number or decrease the number of students in classrooms change our teaching structures so we have content specialists change our variety of courses we offer fewer variety of courses more are we willing to ensure success for all students I've heard the board struggle from East Montpeliers Challenge about asking for a guarantee what word do you want use guarantee but you and the board have to decide whether you're willing to promise something to the kids are you willing to do it Ellen I really need to work here with the board so I really like Albert Einstein for those of you who have been in my office you know I'm a former physics teacher this actually isn't sure that this game from Albert Einstein if you look at it on the web I'm not sure if it came from him but he's attributed to it anyway all over the place but I really believe in this the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results so I'm going to ask you to get to own your color table groups the leadership team will come with you and join you we're going to have no pads and I know we don't have a lot of time Matthew but I'm going to ask you to extend it by 15 minutes but I think this is so important that we do there needs to be a report out and that you know we answered your city questions Kari and I worked on them together as part of the school quality if we changed them from last year what's your reaction to any information that's reported what is something that reported you're proud or excites you and what change would you be willing to do if I could ask surprise you what are you proud of or excites you and what are you willing to change what's your reaction to that yeah we're all in the community that's what I was saying it's going to be nice if we have an action I'm proud of having to find a table thank you thank you thank you so much thank you thank you thank you I think the improvement in data is definitely something for us to be proud of. It's going to make our studies more accessible. One reaction I had is when we look at, say it's 6th grade trends across, I wonder how that will change. 6th grade teachers from all schools can talk together and calibrate their stories. I don't think that's happened a lot yet. It's just starting. So I wonder how much this data will change as we talk more and align more. There's something Bill said that I wanted to ask about, like rate alignment or something like that. Was he talking about the 5, 6, 5 classes and that type of stuff? Right. Yeah, right, yeah. Is that what he was talking about? At this moment, yes, we are all... Right. There are some places where living is at one straight grade. There are some straight grades, but we're not even aligned in the grades that we can find. How can we ever do that? We're at 3 through 4, 3 through 4, 5, year to year, and I think there would be years. We had that conversation in our board a couple months back, and I don't think it necessarily holds true at the elementary level, but when you're potentially taking something that keeps that kid in school to get any advantage, how do you weigh that? How do you weigh taking away something that... I'm just going to use sports, but that's about taking away sports. Right. So that's keeping them both at least engaged in the school. I struggled with it at the elementary level, and my point was I know that as a parent, I'm able to give my kid a lot of experience outside of school today, but I also know there are parents that can't, and Bill's point was, well, they're going to lose experiences in the future because of the gap. So that's one thing I struggle with is letting kids be kids a little bit and not having that gap. You can bring your kids to school, but not in this district. Yeah, no, it's that we keep it off of the people. That's actually the opposite of what you need to do. You need to get that energy out so we could focus. I don't know if you've done it before. I don't, you know. I'm very young. He wasn't in this district, so it's okay. But those are the things that we have to try to balance it in. We need that direction to try to get the students up and provide them the most that we can. But we also need to recognize that we've got to be self-balanced so that they can get the exercise that we need to get that energy out and help me focus. No, you don't want to do it. Yeah, and he has to balance it. You know, he says it. That's not it. Yeah, I'm just something that's all for each question. Just like no one has to. Yeah, I'm not consistent, but it's supposed to be the exercise. I have like three more graders. I know you're in great conversations this season. I have a lot of meetings, but I'm just wondering if you've had students for two years. The table will be set on your time, but I need to bring you back together. I'd like to get to hear from each other. If a group said something, and you were planning to do so, one minute of work around it, please try to take something out of your conversations. I'm going to start right here at this table. And I'm going to cut in on the ingredients and the urban sort of topic. And I'm going to move over. I'm going to start working on that. I'm going to try and hold this. Oh, good man. So we can scan them. OK. I'm a good one. All right. All right. You're really leaving the crowd. You're seeing the Britishness and the depth of the information especially compared to last year. We were interested in the differential and both kind of with the other. And then in terms of changes, you talked about the fact that maybe we need more time. That it's too late. I don't want you to buy more time. I don't want you to buy more time. I don't want you to buy more time. I don't want you to buy more time. I don't want you to buy more time. I don't want you to buy more time. I don't want you to buy more time. And then in terms of changes, you talked about changing the focus of elementary education. You're talking about the second. You're talking about the children's school. You're talking about the tiered schools. You also talked about the... Why I talked about it. The question is a little bit the wrong one to me. It seems like everything is going to be able to change. The teachers want 71% proficient by the end of the year and 90% achieving a full year of progress. Maybe three years from now, we want to say we want 80% proficient but 100% achieving a full year of progress. We set that out. Then we should include the team. The leadership team lose. Our reaction was we were pleased that all of the state is being collected and used versus collected so it's being made public and appears to be being analyzed using the data as a vehicle for change so that if more professional development or focus is necessary that's happening but also to be prudent and careful with its use but we're pleased that it's being used for making changes. We also talked about the board's role would be more of approving a charge that came to us versus us micromanaging what it should be done. The experts are all being paid quite well and they can make some decisions bring it to us whether it's a financial decision or a change in school day as was mentioned something like that would be what we saw coming to the board. Our reactions were surprised and shocked by the gap analysis and the difference really for us that means it's a call to action. Changes, I'm just going to give the proud and excited changes looking at what has worked elsewhere to close the gap extending it for maybe there are certain students who have an extended period of time who want to make sure that we have the content expertise of people and if you have to share that specialist interventionist among schools perhaps you can come together to support the number of students who need it but further outside the school we really feel like we really need to you know it is part of how many hours a day are these kids at school versus home. Families can help them because they're struggling too. Our group talked about how we are excited as well that we have this system of reporting it seems to take a big step this year and it's really gratifying that it's actually being used to strive to improve. One of the things that came out was that we're interested in hearing more about the qualitative part, the experience that students are having the report is definitely good on the quantitative side but there could be more and then like some of the other groups it's difficult to answer the question of what should change but we also said that everything needs to be on the table and that there's a sense of urgency on it. So in our group we didn't dive deep in some of the questions as others but our reaction was we weren't surprised the same data that we can see for more than a decade. Some stuff that we were pleased about was the work around triangulation, alignment between the local assessments, the other assessments and the work art. We didn't work it this way but I think we were pleased seeing the beginning to see the closing of the gap at the U32 level but that was good news, bad news because then we were very disappointed that we weren't seeing that gap closing at the elementary school and then understanding that to close that gap at the high school was causing students to have to have less access to learning opportunities outside of the basic core courses and feeling that we need to start doing a better job at the elementary school. Some discussion on guess reaction to the difficulty in trying to move the needle on factors that are outside of the school's control. So for instance poverty, we wouldn't try to do that but it increased the difficulty. Some of those disadvantages that students bring to school and I think the other point might be the snapshots that we see and maybe there would be the possibility to take more snapshots. So for reactions our group really focused around the testing and how it seemed like the local assessments were starting to align with the S-backs which was nice to see. We talked about how the testing can vary day to day based on the student and so that would need to be taken into consideration and also how great configurations make all the elementary schools look really different so the learning that they're getting is completely different. We were really proud or we also talked, which hadn't mentioned yet I think about that we were pleased with the study finding the graduation rate. That was nice to see. We were happy that we're getting to proficiency based learning assessments that we have improved data and that our S-backs are aligning with the local assessments. The changes echoing what everybody else said were willing to discuss and think about anything specifically we talked about having the ability or having the desire to provide earlier interventions for students in elementary school that could help ease the gaps as they get older extending school days, making school years longer or offering more summer type programs even going as far as increasing staff to help with that and really just anything that could improve outcomes we were willing to consider. First of all, thank you for all of you for that work. I'm going to ask that you minister in detail and make sure this gets to Chris so we can type it up. We'll give it all to you by December at the latest. We'd like to be able to capture that and put it together and document. It's great to hear that a lot of things are, everything's on the table. I know Alicia team and I, we've talked a lot about different things and we're very concerned that the time for instruction is not there. It's hard to learn when you don't. You're not there for the instruction because of the time of the school day. That's one of the things that we're going to, that I'm going to ask the leadership team to do and mod it in the next month to exactly where is our time or number of minutes for instruction and bring that back to you. Thank you for the opportunity. No, I just thank you and thanks to the leadership team for what I know we're just hours and hours of work. We're not only going to this presentation but also the ones that are the most special appreciation for that. We do have one more discussion item on our agenda which flows rather naturally to the presentation of Gisela which is to discuss a goal that we committed to developing as part of our WCSEY goal number two around student learning. I guess I'm just going to take, because very short on time I'm going to take the liberty to say a couple things about that. So I suggest a way that we might be able to expeditiously kind of try to move forward on this topic. So we're, to me it feels like a unique moment in time for our boards to be considering a goal that we want to set to really set a bar around educational outcomes. We've had a ton of discussion because of what's been going on the last three years about what's happening in the school and what school performance means. We established a school quality committee which has been doing a lot of good work in analyzing the data that we have and interpreting that and looking at it. We had the retreat where we got some ideas, we had discussions around guarantees where we may feel that the discussion itself is going to be rich and productive. And we also, as we know, are crossroads in terms of the future of the school system. It seems to me that we have an opportunity whether we remain in a certain group of structures or whether that changes and we have a single board going forward. We have the unique opportunity right now to draw a line in the sand about what we think the school should be achieving in regard to educational outcomes. And no matter what happens going forward, we're basically daring future boards to come back and say, wow, we're just going to wipe that line out of the sand because we don't care. We have an opportunity to kind of influence and set the agenda for our school system going forward. So what I'd like to suggest, and I do want to hear from Kara in this, but what I am hoping is that the school quality committee might be willing to take this up at its meeting in November and come back to the SU meeting in December with a couple of recommendations for goals for the SU board to consider. Possibly adopting that meeting to discuss them. I know we're out of time to do that tonight, so that's why I'm suggesting sort of approaching it that way. I think I somehow ended up with all the microphones. Yeah. You're like a troll. So the committee will be meeting in November and we're happy to talk about that. This was, our thinking was shared in the packet of the last SU board meeting, and I wasn't here, but I guess we didn't get explicitly discussed. But at our last committee meeting, we basically felt, having not seen this report yet, that we weren't in the best position to set the target that actually we would be looking to the leadership team to make a proposal that would bring us significant improvement. That's what we left at that, is significant with them to interpret and us to respond to their interpretation for significant improvement in both math and literacy learning. And a plan including resources needed over the short term and long term, one, three or more years. And so I think now that we have this report, we'll meet in November, we can discuss that. We see this as, that it has to be iterative and in collaboration with the leadership team, because they are the experts. You know, we talk about the changes. We have, we need their best thinking when we consider what the changes are needed. Thanks. And I guess I would just give a heads up to this board that it will be on the agenda in December. So I hope we all come prepared to discuss and possibly act as we are. Is there anything else that is burning to say on this issue? As far as reports to the board, I talked a little bit about the Executive Committee meeting extra times to try to get a jump a little bit on the budget process. I think Bill has probably mentioned to most folks here that he is aiming for maximum transparency in the budgeting process this year and as much consultation as possible because of a certain state of flux. So we're going to proceed, kind of as we have in the past, but we're just trying to again schedule these extra meetings so the Executive Committee has time to kind of figure out early questions how to present to the SCU before the next meeting and how to discuss it. There is no financial report this evening? What is that? Well, we have. Great to hear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Policy Committee we discussed. I think negotiations are just getting underway so we can talk about that next time. The SCA, I think we can talk about next time as long as it's okay. So the only other thing remaining on the agenda here is the action item 5.2 which is to approve the policies as listed. We approve the first reading at our last meeting of these policies. Is there anyone who wants to make a motion to approve these policies? Is there any discussion of these policies? There is no discussion and all of those in favor of approving these policies is sitting by me saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Motion carries. Are there any future agenda items other than the ones discussed already? Okay. Are there any forward comments or communications? In that case we are adjourned I think at seven minutes.