 everyone to the Sponsor Roxbury Board of School Directors meeting for Wednesday, March 2, starting at 6.35 p.m. Have some exciting new additions. Congratulations to Rhett, Emma, and our newest board member, Sagey, and also congratulations to Zach and Merritt, who were selected last meeting, but are starting for the first meeting. So after we have public comment and the consent agenda, we can go around and introduce ourselves and talk a little bit about why we're on the board. And Sagey, we have admittedly in progress on-boarding process as I think I told you when I texted you last night. And first, I want to confirm everyone got sworn in. Excellent. So all official. But we will, I'm going to encourage, I know Libby and I have already reached out to you about a meeting. We will assign you a mentor, and I'll be asking for a brave member to step up for that. But that's just basically someone who you can lean on to walk you through to ask the questions that you think. Like, I should know this, but I don't, which you're going to have a lot of those. And yeah, and then the VSBA has some good materials, which I also pointed to you last night, our policies are there. So, and I encourage, I really encourage every board member to reach out to Sagey and try to meet him for lunch or coffee or a phone call or something just to get to know him a little and share the experience. And then similarly, American Zach, super excited to have you here. Thanks so much for doing this. I definitely also want to discuss ways that we can include you with the, I know we have a little hiatus from having students, but one thing that the last crop of students we had did, which was pre-pandemic, was they gave pretty much every board meeting like a 10 to 15 minute presentation on whatever they wanted. It could be a matter that was really pressing for the school and the students. It could be just an overview of things that were going on, school events, et cetera. So if you're interested in that or something else would love to hear your ideas, we definitely want to make sure that we involve you as much as possible on the board. And we really, one of the main reasons you're here in addition to giving our voices to students is so that we can hear about what the students are concerned about and what's going on in the school. And also, there's only a couple of us that have high school students here. So hearing about the great stuff in high school, it's going to be news to a lot of the board members because they don't hear about it at dinner time. All right, excellent. So do we have any public comment? It looks like you do not. Anyone on screen? Great. We have a motion to approve the consent agenda. And for the new members, the consent agenda consists of basic items like the approval of minutes, the warrant that allows us to pay staff, the superintendent's reports, and other basic items that really don't require discussion but require board action. So what we do with the consent agenda, the items on the consent agenda are included in the board packet. If you have any questions about them, you can make a motion to take a certain item off the consent agenda for discussion. Otherwise, we just do a motion approving the consent agenda. It gets a second if it passes. All the items on the consent agenda are approved. Again, if someone takes an item off the consent agenda, we approve everything but that item. Then we have a separate discussion about whatever the concern or question is about the item that got removed. And then we separately move to approve that. Emma, did you have your head up? No, but I think you read my mind because I did want to just sort of clarify for the student members what their role will be. I mean, I know you're both going to meet with Jim to talk more in depth about what your role will be, but in the description of the student representatives, we talked about how they're non-voting members. So could you explain to them just quickly, just for the sake of this meeting, what they can expect for that? Yeah, so when we take action, like we're about to on the consent agenda, the board members will vote in the way the board is organized. You know, we're a merger of two towns. We're governed by the merger agreement. There are nine members, seven from a pillar and two from Roxbury. Because we did not want to have an enormous board or just one Roxbury member, what the merger agreement did was it gave each mob pillar member two votes and each Roxbury member one vote. So every elected member has, well, the mob pillar members have two votes. No one has yet used the two votes to vote differently on things, but I think theoretically they could. And each Roxbury member has one vote. Generally we do not have close votes. So that hasn't become an issue in terms of something passing or not passing. And then the student representatives are non-voting members. So you don't have a vote, but you clearly have the ability to participate in discussion, to make comments. And the way we participate in discussion is Ray's hand and the chair, which is me, will recognize the member. And we try to cue as much as possible and kind of take the airtime we need. But we really want to hear from you on discussion. And even though you can vote, you can certainly weigh in with how you think those who can vote should vote. Or give reasons why we should consider X instead of Y. So when we actually take a vote, we do yay or nay. If the voice doesn't make it obvious, we'll go around and actually do a kind of a count vote. The chair does not vote unless the chair's vote is needed to break the tie. Why that is, I don't know, but that's the way it is. It's like you're the vice president. And usually when a motion is made, the emotion may second it, and then before it's voted on, there'll be discussion time. So that would be an appropriate time if you have any questions or want to talk about something you could talk about then, but probably not make motions or can they make motions and second motions? No. No. Okay, so. I mean, you could suggest a motion for someone else to make. But someone else would have to make that motion. So I mean, I don't think it'll come into play tonight. Tonight's agenda, it's not a lot going on for that, but just so that you know how things work. And we also have a lot of discussion without action. For instance, someone might come in, Libby might come in and present on special education throughout the district. And she might do that with the special education director. And there's a lot of discussion based on that, but we don't have necessarily any item that we're approving or anything. So during those times, you're very willing to make comments, ask questions, et cetera, like any other board member. Really only thing that you won't be able to do is when we have a formal action, like we're about to take with the consent agenda to vote on that. But again, like we definitely, if you have opinions about how we should vote or input on, do you think that would be important in helping us decide our vote, we want to hear it. Great. If you're reading, they don't have to open this up by themselves. Yeah, we don't. We actually mix up the seating arrangement every time, I think, pretty well. I don't know if Libby's been over there, Libby just does random, all of these. That's where I call the name tag. I don't want to talk to any other in class. So I'm going to separate the trouble maker. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moves. Do I have a second? Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great. So now we have to organize ourselves, which means appointing board rules and committee assignments. So I'm just going to call up the committee page here. So I've got it. And Anna also very helpfully sent it to us just a few hours ago or whatever that was. So we need a chair, a vice chair, a clerk, parliamentarian. And do we still need a treasurer? I think so, yeah. And a treasurer. There's no one here. I think that was actually voted on. I think that's a, that's a, that's a position. Isn't it? Yeah. Shall we, shall we go in? Yes. Yes. Sorry. So we need a chair, vice chair, a clerk, parliamentarian. Who is our current clerk? Our current clerk was Jerry. And do we, did we replace Jerry? I just found out. I don't know. I think we just put Rhett in the role because he took over first. I think that's what we did too. You worked very hard at the first roll of Rhett. And it was Jill, parliamentarian. I believe so. Yeah. And Mia, do you are interested in vice chair? I'd be happy to serve as vice chair. And I would be honored to serve as chair again, but. Also happy to have someone else who's interested. If you want to throw me out. I make a motion that we reappoint Jim Murphy as the chair of the Lafayette Rocksbury School for Disruptors. Second. Any discussion? I'm sorry, I didn't care for motion. She's in the chair. Oh, yeah, Jim. Yeah, if you want to be chair. I think so. Okay. I would love, I love being your chair. Yes, no, thank you very much. It's an honor to serve as chair. I really appreciate it. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Do you have a motion for vice chair? I move to nominate Mia Moore as vice chair. I'll second that. Any discussion? Thank you, Mia. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great. Motion for clerk. The rest, do you want to do it again? Again. You did actually do it. There was one meeting where the Wi-Fi was down and you were like, we asked you to take some notes because Anna was not in contact with us. That was some peer pressure, right? Are you sure? I mean, I don't know. I'm just trying to contact. I'm just trying to contact. Do you want to go for parliamentarian? No, I just think I need to do a better job in my section. Your clerkship. I think forcing Anna makes the kerp job. Very easy. Pretty life left. Yeah. Motion to appoint Rhett as clerk. Second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Congratulations, Rhett. And, Jill, you want to... I'd be happy to. I see you've even got your mother's rules of order. You got your mother's rules of order. I was actually looking through it. She was making sure Jim was saying the right things. And so for those who I didn't know, parliamentarian is someone who just tries to keep our emotions stuff correctly and make sure that we're following the right steps in our orders of the process of the term. I move Jill Remick to be parliamentarian. I second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great. Thank you. Congratulations, Jill. All right. Thank you. So next is committee assignments. And so we do a lot of our work in committees. We obviously do work here, but then we have committees of, I think they're all three member. We may have a couple of four member committees. That actually do a lot of the work and kind of bring some of the work back to the board. The committees are all somewhat different. I think in terms of kind of their work involvement and intensity. You know, we have some committees like. Well, I have both standing committees that we just have all the time. And then we have a couple of special committees that are only working for a period of time. I think right now the only active. Committee we have that is not standing as the district-wide visioning committee. The rest meet either kind of regularly or semi-regularly. The, some of the, you know, the names kind of imply what, what they do. Our policy committee works bi-weekly and. We're, we're not technically a policy governance board, but we govern through our policies. And the policy committee both adopts new policies and revises and updates old policies. It meets bi-weekly right now. We're actually looking at a lot of our policies to try to streamline them, make them a little more consistent with some of the Vermont school board association models, because we're actually not quite sure. I think where some of our policies came from. They've been around for a while. And I'd say that's, that's a pretty busy committee. The members on the old board were Emma's, Emma's chair, I'm not a garsus and myself. And then we also had a fourth member Andrew was, was a fourth member. That is a committee that actually might be able to absorb four. The finance committee meets, how does the finance, is it quarterly? Quarterly. When we get the budget presented to us, a lot of the presentations at a pretty high level, just because it's a, it's a big budget and there's only really so much detail that we can absorb and know. But we do want to have at least some members kind of taking a peek behind the numbers that, and a little more detail. So the job of the finance committee is to meet quarterly with the superintendent and with the business manager and do a deeper dive into the budget numbers. And essentially if the finance committee feels that there's something that the board needs to pay a deeper level of attention to, or that needs to be brought to the board's attention, it's the finance committee's job to do that. So the finance committee really kind of does a deeper oversight over the budget and finance process. And is kind of the gatekeeper of deciding, you know, whether or not the level of detail the board is getting is adequate or whether the board should, should know about, you know, more. The equity committee is relatively new. It's Amanda, Mia and Kristen. It's really looking at kind of all of the district's works through an equity lens. That committee has also been very active. Obviously, you know, equity is a huge concern and a huge value of the district. And one that's really risen to the four relatively recently. So, you know, I think like a lot of school districts, a lot of organizations were really trying to look at everything we do through an equity lens and, you know, proposed changes that are going to be transformative on that level. The negotiations committee is one of those committees that can be super quiet like it is now and we have a multi-year deal. Or it can be extremely intense when we're in negotiations. It's also, it's really one of the most important committees. It's not necessarily the sexiest. In fact, it might be one of the least sexy, but it's extremely important because when we do negotiate, we've got three unions and we have to negotiate contracts with all of them. So it really kind of requires, you know, knowing what the contract looks like, knowing the details of the contract, spending a lot of time, you know, in negotiations with the various unions, working through the details and then coming back to the board and reporting how that's progressing. And, you know, the board ultimately, ultimately approves, but, you know, the negotiations committee does the brunt of the work and that requires us for the teachers, but also, you know, working closely with Libby and her staff, you know, who really helped with that, you know, having, I think, a command of, you know, the budget numbers, looking at other districts, seeing what's happening throughout the state, you know, working with the district's lawyer because a lot of this is pretty technical and pretty legal. Some people love that work. And I think that's really important to understand, you know, as you're talking about your predecessor, Andrew Stein, who really got into it, and a kid is fantastic at it. I can't speak to his passion for it, but he's been very effective as has everyone who's, I think has participated on it. But that's, yeah, right now we have a multi-year deal with the union. We'll start negotiating next year with two of the unions. Yeah. We'll start negotiating with two of the unions next year. So we have a series of one year deals. So that committee was the cabinet, yeah. Yeah. It was, it was doing some, some, some winds prints pretty, pretty frequently. The superintendent evaluation committee is, you know, some of the primary jobs of the board, the primary jobs really of the board are, you know, just making sure that the, you know, implementing the policies of the district, making sure that that's being done, but budget and superintendent evaluation are, you know, huge, huge parts of the board's role. The superintendent evaluation committee. Helps develop the process for, for that. We've got a template that we've used that. They've used it for the first time in the last three years. And then, you know, the. Me has done a fantastic job of updating. A team at. Yes. Well, you're leaving us and going to do a great job. And, you know, working with the superintendent to, to set goals. And then to measure those goals and then to, you know, go to the board and just making sure that the superintendent is doing the type of job we expect her to do. Which she absolutely is. Yeah, and then also doing recommendations in terms of compensation. You know, the contract with the superintendent, et cetera. So, and that's a committee that's, that's relatively active, but certainly I think it's more active during those, those kind of goal setting periods and then, you know, at the time when, you know, we near the evaluation. And recommendations time. And then facility and energy committee is, you know, really responsible with, with working closely with, with Andrew LaRosa, who's here, who is a director of facilities for the district. And making sure that, you know, the, the buildings are being well maintained and that, you know, the, the infrastructure needs that we have are being met. And I think increasingly, you know, we're really getting calls from, I'm sure the students can tell us about this calls to be part of the solution on energy and climate change. You know, and part of that committee's role is, you know, is working with, with the district where students, et cetera, to, you know, find ways where we can be as, as energy efficient and as, as climate responsible as possible. And then the district wide visioning committee is a, a part of a process that we put together. One thing that, you know, both Roxbury and Montpelier had prior to merger that, that night that we don't have now are, is kind of a real clear set of goals and visions and, and for the district that we can, you know, measure our work on. And I think we all have ideas of, of what our district's values and visions are, but we haven't really gone through the process of putting that together, articulating that, and then using that to guide our work. Yeah, so one of the main goals of the district wide visioning committee is to, you know, get input from, you know, all of our community, you know, from, you know, Roxbury to Montpelier, you know, all of the various groups and interests and, you know, diverse voices we have and come up with, you know, some recommendations for the board on, you know, really putting forth some, some goals and visions that we can then use to, you know, to guide our work and to guide some of, you know, the decisions we have to make in the coming years. And that is going to be pretty intense work, but it's also worked with light at the end of the tunnel. I think right now our current goal is to wrap up most of the committee work by, is it May? And then have some solid recommendations to the board that we can, can use, you know, in the later spring and through summer, and then hopefully have kind of, you know, starting in full swing by the time we do our next budget. So anything I missed? And a question I have is, since do you, it's probably more work than cut out for, but do you want any involvement in the committees? Yeah, so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing to keep in mind is all of the committee meetings with the exception of some of the negotiations. Are open meetings. So it's like, you would also just be welcome to sort of drop in on any of those. Yeah. You know, I'm just telling you when they are and the gen does and zoom links and all of that stuff. So anytime you want to, you know, if you were interested in sort of dropping in, and then if there was something that like caught your eye or became a particular just for you, you could always more officially sort of join the committee. So whatever way you want to proceed. Yeah. We can talk about on Friday. Yep. Yep. You don't have to make a commitment tonight. You could sort of wait and then take your time to decide and, and your top, your level of time and your availability. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Cause we can, we can add. Add or drop numbers. We can have a final decision. So that's a very simple action. So with that in mind. I know. Amanda is. Let me get my cold now. Unable to come. She was interested in saying on policy and equity. Correct. Right. see on the district one vision, which is that short term committee that's gone through bank was hoping that maybe say you might take her spot. I don't know if you're interested in that one. One thing I can say, I'm sorry, I've met the upgrade as long as I can be effective but I haven't had much experience with that. So obviously, I think it would be great and I think you absolutely would be very effective. I think most of the meetings are other nighttime meetings. I don't know how that works through the schedule, but they're Mondays. And they've only had two meetings so far, so I don't think you would be, I think you'd be able to jump in and hit the ground right. Yeah, and I'm also sure the consultant that we're using is Nathan Souter and he lives a month earlier and I'm sure he'd be more than happy to spend some time with you getting up to speed. And red is the other member on the board and not to volunteer you, right? But I'm guessing you'd also be quite willing to the other part of it is it involves a lot of outreach. So it's a chance to sort of hear what you are thinking, hopefully, always well. And you know, introduce yourself with people as well, which I think is an important part of being in this role. I'll connect to Seiji with Nathan. So do we have to officially make a motion or how does this work? We have to officially make a motion. So I move that we appoint Seiji Ohashi and Rhett Williams to the district wide vision committee. Second. Discussion? All those in favor? Any opposed? Great. Thank you, Seiji. Thank you, Rhett. And I think did Amanda ask to be on the negotiations committee? So maybe we could do that one next. Rhett, I don't know how you're feeling, but it seems like you have more committees than anyone else right now. You sure do. I don't know if that's okay with you. That's how you want it. Well, it's hard because there's a lot to be learned that I haven't yet learned from all of these committees. I feel like if I had been through a cycle of any of them, I'd be more inclined to give them up. But without having an opportunity to learn what they're about and understand them, I don't, I mean, the finance committee would be my least life. Except for that, we'd have to replace grant and figure out how that process goes. So I don't know what that will look like, but it may be involved. And so I don't want to, it may involve a lot of learning because as we're bringing someone new in, that's kind of, so I don't know. If anyone wants to be on any, if anyone wants to take my place and they want to arm wrestle, I don't know. I don't have any really strong feelings, except I want opportunities to learn from all of them. So for negotiations, since Andrew Stein is done, could we just nominate, is anyone else really wanting to get on there? Could we just nominate Amanda along with the rest of the people who are already on it? Anakit, don't even, it is very important on the negotiations committee that somebody who truly understands the finances of the district is on that committee. That is, that is a very important role. So while I don't want to speak for people, I look to Amanda and Jill, or I'm sorry, Anakit and Jill, who do truly know finances pretty well. And I'm only saying that because of Anakit's wizardry with, with spreadsheets, which if you haven't seen yet is a thing of beauty. But I also know Anakit's very busy right now. Don't want to nominate you guys, but no, I'm happy to. Thank you. Yeah. No, I'm willing to stay on too. And also, I mean, it's a larger committee, but when we're negotiated with three unions at the same time, there's, there's, yeah, we did manage to space it out. So we'll be two in one going forward. But next year will be our instructional assistants and our teaching staff. Yeah. So four of them that today would be three then three people. Typically what they do is they split when there's two unions, you don't do both unions because that equals a lot of work when we're negotiating at the same time. So typically it's I'll take the, you know, this group takes the IA's and this group takes the teachers. And there's maybe some overlap, but yeah, last time we had three, so there was overlap. Yeah. Okay. I think, like Jim was the overlap. I think I was. Yeah, other one, not teachers, but this year we'll be able to minimize the overlap. Yeah. Negotiations don't act like, I mean, we'll have them, they're not, you know, they're sitting down and negotiating, they're not open meetings. Got it. So we, the quorum doesn't necessarily apply. Yeah. I'm going to a second session. I was just asking because the larger the, if quorum applies the larger the size of the committee, the larger the quorum gets, which then it can't all be there, then you're like, oh, now we're going to have to meet it. So anyway, it's good to know that quorum doesn't necessarily apply because of the activity of the committee. Yeah. And it also something the bigger committee would be helpful. Yeah, I was just going to say that if you have six people on that committee, you can split it, but also it would be helpful to have same people continue negotiating with the same units. Seiji, is there anything, I mean, I feel like since you're the person that's stepping in as the newest and you're not already assigned, is there a particular committee that speaks to you? The ones that jump out to me, let's say it would be equity and facilities and energy, but also I don't want to try and take on too much before I get to speak. And so how about that finance? Would we need to fill Andrew's position on finance or do we feel like four or sorry, three people is enough? I think three is probably enough. I'm comfortable with three on finance. And that's, is that Annika, Jill and Rhett? I think that's plenty solid. Does anyone else have an interest in jumping around or doing something different? Or are we ready to kind of like go through these motions? Yeah, I mean Andrew's on facilities, so that would be perfect for Seiji to swap. And then I'll defer to the equity committee, but right now it's a three person committee. It could be a four person committee. Seiji, for your inventory in terms of time, facilities and energy, aspirationally it's poorly, so trying to get on a more normal regular set, basically every other week. Well, that's a good balance too. Well, yeah, and with the visioning committee, I think that's enough. For now, right? You always jump into another one. You always jump into another one, but yeah, you don't let your family member say what you do. At least not too quickly. So I moved to a point, Amanda Garza's etiquette called Carney, Jill Remick, Rhett Williams, and Jim Murphy to the negotiations committee. Great. Do I have a second? Any discussion? All those in favor? All right. Any opposed? Um, so finance committee. I moved to a point Rhett Williams' etiquette called Carney. How do I pronounce it? Cool Carney. Cool Carney. Cool Carney. Cool Carney. And Jill Remick to the finance committee. Do I have a second? Second. Discussion? All those in favor? All right. Any opposed? Policy committee. All right, this is going to just keep going, Emma. Yeah, I have a question. Someone else wants to get on the break. And Amanda Garza's to policy committee. So second. Discussion? All those in favor? All right. Any opposed? Great. Equity committee. I moved to a point Seji Ohashi, Amanda Garza's Kristen Guttler, and Neymar to the equity committee. Second. Second. Discussion? All those in favor? All right. Any opposed? Great. Um, facilities and energy committee. I moved to a point Seji Ohashi, Kristen Guttler, Jill Remick, and Emma Vahan to the facilities and energy committee. Second. Second. Discussion? All those in favor? All right. Any opposed? And superintendent evaluation committee. I moved to a point Jim Murphy, Rhett Williams, Anna Pickle, Carney, and Neymar to the superintendent evaluation committee. Any, do I have a second? Second. Discussion? All those in favor? All right. Any opposed? Great. I think that's it. That's it. We are organized. Thanks for putting this together. Whoever put the document together to listen to the meetings. That was helpful. Thank you. Yeah. It would be Anna. Or Anna, I'm sure. So I want to have a review for the other presentation and thank you. Thank you, Mike, Bill, and Andrew for being patient and for us to organize ourselves. If the trio would take the chair in front of the microphone. That's what I tried to tell Barry. He needed to have. We stole the table so the students could have a table. They look very, very good right there like that. So Grant is also with us. He's just virtual right now. So if we have any questions for Grant, he is, I'm sure more than happy. Anna Kidd and Sagey, I'm sorry for the turn, if you want to move your chair. You're more than welcome to join the gentleman here too. It's changed slightly a little bit, but not a big deal. So we put together this presentation for the board around our plans for spending the ARPS or money. As I've talked to the board in the past, it's really hard to talk about one funding source coming into the district without talking about all the funding sources. So the way that I organized this was I put it into themes of what we heard from the community and what we know of from our needs in the district and put basically all the new things or things we had in there from our local budget, from Medicaid, from Essar's one and two ARP, like basically all the different funding sources we have. Because one of the things I learned in this process very early on was, for instance, when people said we need more support for social-emotional learning, and I said, well, talk to me about what you mean when you say that. It was, well, we don't have any social workers. And it's like, well, no, we do have social workers, but it's paid for out of a different funding source. It's just not necessarily in this particular funding source. So I want to make sure that the board and our community understands that part of our job before or five of our jobs with grants included, too, is to know what all of those funding sources are, what we can use it for, and what are the best ways to, like, how do we extend to those dollars the best we can based on the way we're allowed to use those sources. Does that make sense? So Mike's in charge, for instance, of Title 1A. You can't use Title 1A on a whole lot of stuff, right? So we have to really focus on intervention services through Title 1A, and it's really, it's much easier if we use those dollars to spend on human resources rather than on other things, just the way the agency of education has set that up. So we, it's our job to know all of these little pieces and nuances, but it was really hard for me to talk about these themes for ARPSR because I knew somewhere we hear out, but what about, right? And it may, we may have it in our budget or in our other funding streams, but it's just not ARPSR. So that's why I organized it the way I did. Some of this will be very familiar to the board who's just gone through this budget process. Congratulations, by the way, for getting your budget passed to all of us overwhelmingly. That was great to see last night. So, you know, let's get into this a little bit. She's got our controls. So I do want to remind the board and for our new members and students that we do have a theory of growth. And so anything we're thinking about within our funding, thinking about how funding streams and revenues are going to go is fit into this theory of growth. And of course, our theory of growth is matched around four pillars. So what we believe at MRPS is if we meet these four pillars and we're not there yet, then we'll ensure that all of our students who graduate from us will have limitless choices in their lives when they grow. So they graduate from MRPS and they can do and have the confidence and skills to make choices. And our four pillars are collective responsibility and collaborative practices. Teaching and learning is too complex to do by ourselves. And so we need to be able to do that together. We need to have the efficacy that we can move forward at any of our students, regardless of challenges in our way. We can only do that together. So it's being very systematic about our collaboration and purposeful and focused with that formalized essential learning. There's so much learning to be had in this world, we can't possibly do it in our 18 years of schooling that we have with our students. So we have to really decide what are the essential learning pieces, and that's really what we're collaborating on, what we're assessing on, what we're truly looking at, and guaranteeing to our families and our students that all students will be proficient in these essential learning standards. We're still working on that. Actually, the pandemic has helped speed that work up considerably. So it was under Mike's direction, which has been fantastic. Our next pillar is timely system to enrich, intervene, and remediate. We actually, through the budgeting process, the board will recognize that we've put a lot of emphasis on this area in terms of human resources over this past budget, as well as a couple of years before this. We've been building this system. It was not existent in a way that was functioning when, four years ago, when Mike and I took the helm of this work, and we've really put a lot of human resources there, a lot of money towards increasing this capacity. Now I feel like with this budget cycle that we just passed, we will have the human resources in place. Now our job is to get them all growing in the right direction, and really doing work that's going to move students in a way that we haven't seen before. High quality instruction in every classroom that every single one of our teachers has a common understanding of what high quality instruction is, that it's not left up to choice. There's Anna's email. It's not left up to choice and chance as to who a child's teacher is. Every child will receive high quality instruction. So whenever we're talking about movement forward and how we're spending considerable amount of dollars, we always want to put these four pillars in front of the school board because they're pieces that we focus our work on. All right, Anna, you can keep going. I think there's a drag from her, from her house. I'm trying to figure out how to deal with that. I can do it. Okay, so for the themes that we heard as the board did considerable amount of communication work with the community, which I thank you so much because you knew how overwhelming and stressful this year was. So the board did a considerable amount of community outreach regarding this and we heard a bunch too. We did some internal work as well. The major themes that came out as I looked at the documents the board put together and I looked at the thought exchanges that we did were the big themes where we have some infrastructure needs and it would not be incredibly smart of us to ignore this amount of revenue that has limited constraints on it without thinking about our infrastructure needs and being able to create spaces for our learners that really matter. We have some social emotional learning and mental health needs and from internal as Bill can speak to internally our student many of our students came back with the pandemic did one thing for our students it took community away from them. And so for many of our students that has been a considerable difference maker in their life and not necessarily a positive one. And so we have learned you know I can remember sitting with Emma and Mia saying just hold off a little bit and see what happens and see what you learn when the kids come back. We've learned that we need to put a considerable emphasis on our supports for students around social emotional learning behavior mental health that kind of thing. We've all we also have known for years that outside agencies are swamped as well. And so the the Calvary is not coming necessarily so we need to build one ourselves. Special education we've that was a that was a theme that ran through a lot of the community feedback was really saying hey you need to put some more emphasis and some more attention on to our special education systems literacy math also comes comes out just as just a data point we knew that internally we've been focusing on that internally and it was emphasized as well from community members and then summer programming in general. So when we're when I'm going through this presentation these are the major themes that I'm going to be focusing on for these dollars because they were the overarching general ideas that we heard from the community that we heard from staff that we heard from our own administrative team as we as we work through this process. Anna go ahead. So if we spoke speak just on infrastructure keep going Anna like wait for it. Just trying to build the intensity up a little bit. So these particular are faster you'll see that there is considerable dollars from the ARC SR fund going towards infrastructure. The reason being is we could do a lot of these projects we wouldn't have been able to do a lot of these projects or we would have had to wait a considerable amount of time. So when we looked at UES and the board has had a few different presentations on these on these projects in more detail so I encourage people to go back to those presentations and Andrew is here so he can speak more broadly about them if we have any questions. At UES we're thinking about the special education suite so if you're in UES it's a very large area one end of the building that has a lot of office space and I don't know what kind of space in the middle that has been reused over the years and is not usable space for students right now. So the idea is to take that suite renovate it and turn it into a 21st century learning space for students with special needs so that it's actually usable for students particularly those with intensive needs. UES little gym you've been in the little gym lately with Max and Daniel you'll know that that space needs a considerable amount of work we know there's asbestos in the in the walls for the ceiling one of the two we need to renovate that space so it's safe and it's more usable for our kiddos as they're running around like crazy crazy people in there. At Main Street Middle School the playground is in desperate need of an upgrade and an update so it matches what adolescent kids need to run and play and do what they need to do outside. Also at Main Street Middle School something that's been we've talked about when we did the Main Street Middle School building committee a few years back before the pandemic hit is the need to seriously look at our cafeteria and kitchen not only for space issues for the amount of students we have in there and having them eat comfortably but also being able to prepare foods in a way food in a way that kids want to eat. Right now we have a galley kitchen that's kind of out of the the space is not used to the best of its ability so Andrew's been working with a kitchen architect to really see how we can upgrade that space to make it more usable and allow our chefs in the kitchen to do something different in there. Again at MSMS this connects to social emotional learning that you'll talk about in a minute we're we're talking about building and this was part of our local budget as well a Thrive program there it's for students who are truly having a significant struggle in the classroom with behavior. We need an alternative placement that we kind of make their world less for a little bit so regulation becomes a piece and teaching the skills they need to be able to function in a larger world. We know that our kids need this right now and so but we need a we need a good space for that to happen at Main Street Middle School so it would be renovating a classroom space to allow for this type of intensive programming for social emotional learning needs and then at Montpelier High School here the transition room which is upstairs there's a small kitchenette kind of room right at the top of the stairs. One of the things that has been floated around for years here in every budget process I've gone through is the need to provide transition services for our students with intensive needs who are who are leaving us at age 22 21 22 are ready to go out to to the world right now our job when we have students of that age is to teach them life skills so that they can work independent work and live independently and so this space would provide us with the necessary tools to be able to do that life skills training so it's basically creating a mock apartment using the space that we already have up there I'm gonna if you write down your questions and then we can come back to everything does that work yeah okay so if we move on to social emotional learning and mental health go ahead Anna for our district just the community liaison was put into the local budget that was just passed so that position thankfully is now in our budget our local budget in that position we the board has heard multiple times Nick Connor is one of the best hires we've ever made and works with students who are really struggling coming to school just coming to school and getting here he works closely with families he's in the community he's in their homes he's basically really getting kids here um very small caseload but he's phenomenal at what he's doing we're also thinking about using ARF ESSER funding so when we're thinking about ARF ESSER the board does need to know that that's not a you know that's a funding source that will dry up right so we're thinking that as of right now the need is really great for another BCBA or a board certified behavior analyst we have one already in our local budget yes yeah um so this would be a second one we believe that this position is one that we may just need for two years to to truly get a handle on what skills that we need to teach our kids so this is a position when you're thinking about how many positions we're adding into our bus or there are some we're thinking about how do we how do we fold into the local budget or another funding source and there are some that right now with the knowledge that we have right now which could change we're thinking that this may be a position that we need for this two-year blip um and it may or may not be something that we're looking to put into the local budget that of course is a district-wide position at UES the RISE program the board actually saw this in the budget presentation um and we told you this was part of our our professor thinking um and again this is this is we're thinking about as a get us through this two-year blip of behavior so RISE program very similar to Thrive so what we're thinking about is making that type of programming for significant needs uh in all three of our Montpelier schools um we have we have a significant need for right now at UES the board put in a guidance counselor I just thought it was really important for for that to be recognized to that that just passed in the local budget for the second guidance counselor at UES we also put in from this local budget the SEL teacher for Thrive so when you see RISE and Thrive think same same thing it's just different UES chose to name it a different thing and so MHS the transition I just added that mock apartment because that was that's part of mental health and social emotional needs um MHS MS MS and the district we're adding racial justice advisor affinity alliance advisor we're continuing with restorative practices that is all being funded through local funds as well as ARC IDEA which the board hasn't heard a whole lot about it's a smaller amount of money but that lump of sums bill has been the main uh point person on and that's where we're funding a lot of our work with up for learning and uh with John Kitta around restorative practices I'm always in uh Montpelier high school interviews today and you heard a lot of the work that's happening there um which is great so that's being paid for about through ARC IDEA which is also a two-year grant that started this year uh the district one of pieces that um I've spoken to Jim about and as our administrative team started thinking about the amount of human resources and programming that we're developing around social emotional learning and mental health one thing that started to become really apparent is that it was it was a lot we are we're spending a lot of financial dollars there there's an enormous need in our district and we feel as an administrative team that we need an administrator overseeing that and if we don't have an administrator overseeing that it's haphazard it's not together it's not focused there's nobody directly overseeing it because all you know Mike Bill and I all have other pieces and it's so important to us to make sure our kids have the skills they need around social emotional learning that we feel we need to put in an administrative position there where their sole focus is on the district's social emotional learning goals and programming uh our special education director it's too much for the special education director to do um Mike has other Mike it's too much for our director of curriculum and technology to do so we need we need an administrative role here this may be something for the board that's been new I haven't spoken to the entire board about this yet um but I think that we have such a large influx of human resources and programming going into social emotional learning right now that it I think it's a necessary expense we decided as a team to put it into our essay so of course it's two years and we will be thinking about is this a position we need to continue or is this a is that in terms of figuring out how to put in a local funding or is it something that we may not need in two years we don't know that the answer to that yet but I do know that based on the programming we're trying to design and the amount of resources we're spending there in the need of the district that administrator is needed and uh for that and then the the last piece here uh Mike and I have been talking to the social workers quite a bit around increasing our capacity to offer our mental health services through teletherapy um and we've been we've been going out to get some bids on what that might look like so providing a safe space in our school buildings for our students and they do the the uh mental health counseling through teletherapy uh teletherapy service um it's something that's an idea out there we wanted to make sure it's part of our professor plans we're still in the let's get some ideas some big bids around it um our social workers and our guidance counselors are all behind this idea um because of the needs currently so that's social emotional learning and mental health go ahead and when we're thinking about special education keep going my organizing slides here i should have done the clicking there we go so it's just to add the intensity we've been working with john chron apple around belonging inclusion professional development this year that may or may not continue next year we haven't made the decisions around it yet we've been paying for that out of our IDAA so that's the work he's doing with our equity committee at ues uh we've put in some money for some orton gillingham professional learning this is a definite need in our district to have some expertise around multisensory approaches to learning um reading and orton gillingham is the name of the program what it is is it's a very specific targeted um work with uh very structured reading that some children need not all children in any way shape or form but some children need uh that we don't have the expertise right now in the district for that um so it's not currently a service we can really offer with any length or expertise um and it's so it's a piece that we put in here for our IDAA uh we're working with some of our special educators and interventionists at ues in particular because it's for lower grades in particular um around this type of programming and developing the expertise at the district our IDAA has allowed us to increase our capacity for evaluations so we do have a school psychiatrist psychologist who does many of our evaluations she works out of ues but she does them for the whole district correct yes she does yeah and right now where we are just in the world we needed some more capacity there so bill has been contracting out some evaluation services i'm using the rpi id a money at msms in ues the thrive and rise teachers which we've already spoken about that's again being paid for out of our ester and local funding and uh the infrastructure models that we also talked about many of those infrastructure renovations are are targeted towards our students with special needs um so the room here the transition room here the thrive rooms the um rise rooms and and that kind of piece so that's very much targeted at our students with special needs and then district we're trying to find we have somebody but we needed to we need to go back to the drawing board to do an outside audit of our special education programming so we really want somebody to come in with a very with some expertise and a fine to come to say what do we need tell us exactly where we need to improve and where we need to go better with our special education programming so that's in our art id a funds and then uh district around the district the behavior supports and the capacity building around behaviors that's also put into our id a so some professional development there all right Anna in literacy and math a lot of this work um is building our interventionist FTE um so as Anna's moving the screen there one of the things that uh Mike and I noticed right away when we took over four years ago is that um we had a very limited amount of interventionists in our system the the district it's put a lot of money and a lot of support and human resources in some very good programming flexible pathways is an example we are leaders in the state around our community-based learning and flexible pathways um and we had one interventionist at UES for 400 students right we didn't have the human resources um not only do we not have did not have a system but we didn't have the human resources so slowly over these past four years we've built in um an intervention team Mike is leading Mike and Bill are leading the interventionist we're actually working on our district wide intervention team combined with special education our special educators so with act 173 which is the new special education funding model that changes the game of who provides intervention and services so we've been pulling these groups together to get a common understanding of what it looks like for kids like how do we do this these tiered system um so in this particular budget with the revenue sources coming in we have intervention positions we've added four FTE with nine total across the district to a tune of 1.6 dollars uh so that's paid for out of title one it's paid for out of local dollars we've paid for it out of Essar two and ARP Essar so with these interventionists as the the board will see the ones who are paid for out of Essar two have we have a plan to move them into ARP Essar funding and then a plan to move them into local funding these are positions that we will need um down the line so as a grant and the leadership team built their budget or with these interventionists in mind we have a plan for how to move these positions into local funding because they are necessary and needed positions um going back up a little bit uh we've been working this year with teachers college reading and writing project uh for professional development that's really focusing on the high quality instruction in every classroom for K through sixth grade right no K through eighth grade sorry K through eighth grade we've paid for that been able to pay for that out of Essar two funding and math we've worked with teachers development group uh which is a group out of Oregon that's working with seven through 12th grade math instructors um and it was really working not necessarily on content but on mathematical behaviors we want to see in kids and how do teachers provide the mathematical environment to get talk going to get movement to you know all those really good pedagogical practices to get mathematicians minds working we've been working with them for the past two years the pandemic has made it difficult it's a coaching model um and it's hard to do that during a pandemic but Mike has moved mountains to make it virtual and hopefully next year it will be more in person work uh and then just a lot of systems development on our multi-tiered system support we're putting a lot of time a lot of focus and a lot of energy to making sure everybody understands where we're going and everybody understands their role and responsibilities within that system now that we have the human resources ready to go um so we're putting a lot of emphasis there there's professional development we're looking at through solution tree for our our guiding coalitions which are teacher leadership teams in each building as well as for interventions and special educators so we're putting a lot of time and energy and money in that area go ahead Anna then summer programming last year we had even though we got it together in May um we got a we're a relatively successful program of athletic opportunities for kids we paid for it um and we were able to hire our student athletes to be coaches um which was pretty cool we had a lot of student athletes show up to be coaches um they're they're relatively successful programs we're going to do that again this year we'll be free to all students I have a meeting with Matt link who runs it or who's our athletic director tomorrow concerning this trying to expand it a little bit in addition any student or any family who qualifies for um subsidy for after school or summer care we pay the difference of the subsidy so anybody who quality any family qualifies for that essentially gets free all all summer long part two with our part two program programming they never have to worry about it we just work directly with part two so that will be in place again this summer we're paying for those two things through us are two funding um which we did last summer as well go ahead Anna I think we're reaching the end here I added a couple slides it gets my own here um so some other themes that were discussed with the infrastructure we've talked about the track we've talked about that as a board and we're actually going to bring that back Andrew has done some pre-work on the tracks for the board to consider we have it on uh an agenda in the next couple meetings I can't remember exactly which one but that was discussed as something to use climate change has comes up quite a bit in our community feedback um specifically around energy energy consumption and some of our buildings um and Andrew I have here so if you can talk about the things we are doing towards climate change that aren't necessarily in this presentation because it's a completely other funding kind of piece um and and the board quite honestly has to have some conversation of if the board truly wants to move into uh you know net zero kind of work then then there's some really hard conversations and decisions the board needs to make because it's a considerable cost so the track and net zero are kind of one of the same for me because they're kind of the similar cost structure that we're we're guessing um around social emotional learning and mental health we heard some feedback around uh offering mentoring specifically for our lead gtq plus uh youth that's actually a nick connor's job description of the community liaison already it's just it's his first year getting his feet on the ground and we haven't been able to get that moving just yet and there's a lot of needs with with just reengaging certain segments of our student population that nick has been focused on we heard some trauma and resiliency programming as well um that we're we can consider for for uh some focused professional development and then summer programming uh we heard some uh a bit of feedback around wanting academic remediation for summer programming um and i can talk to why that's not necessarily in our in our plan right now uh academic remediation over the summer in order for it to make any difference with a student needs to be incredibly intensive um meaning five days a week at least a half day very structured very planned very targeted um we don't necessarily have a system in order to do that um we don't have anybody to run it we don't have teachers wanting to do it necessarily um we also have a need for extended year services and once you once we get teachers doing extended year services which are mandatory for us to offer there isn't a lot left for remediation for students who do not qualify for extended year services on their IEP um so there's a little bit of a a need there um and essentially running it organizing it is not something we've ever done here we don't have the infrastructure in place for it um and so that's a piece that is not part of this plan as of right now um we can put it in there it would be a considerable lift but we could put it in there and then the last piece we heard was diversifying the staff we're just going to figure out what a strategy would be for that that is a place where myself and our administrative team need help on that way we just need help on and i'm not we weren't sure what a strategy might look like for money that we would qualify under any of these grants but it is a theme that we've heard we understand we know we need to to put some thought in we just we need some help with that so we need to look to get some help for that so uh we're happy to answer any questions you might have two questions for the um the team my trio i guess you're saying the conversations about the net zero next to the track expenses coming yeah you want to talk about climate change first and the things that we've done with climate change efforts and then kind of what you're thinking at it's around net zero sure so uh the um actually met with some some of the high school students who were working with the bt digger out doing an inventory we saw was we went through this very recently uh you know as a district we have done a tremendous amount of work with regards making what we have as efficient as possible and some of the projects that have gone through very recently that have been approved it's we're going to be doing two hundred thousand dollars worth of pdc control upgrades here at the high school which means we're going to use our our oil as efficiently as possible as possible we've uh got some bids or we receive a bid for doing heat pumps down at Roxbury to clean our sauce off the fossil fuels we also have a grant i don't know if we've put it in here yet but uh and part of that conversation Roxbury does not have a bdc control system so at night unless someone goes in turns those thermostats down it's trying to keep that building itself increased i've noticed all night long yeah so you know one of the things that i look at is my viewpoint on this on on energy efficiency is get what you've got working as efficiently as possible before you start to solve the bigger issues and that's a kind of a simple sum so we're taking care of those simple ones led fixtures in all of our buildings in the last i think that net zero report that my affiliate put out i think in the last three to four years depending on when that report came out we've reduced our electrical use by like 15 percent if you look back more like 15 years we've reduced it by over 40 percent in the district through the simple replacement of led fixtures we've got a service contract with for our mechanical system which doesn't seem very obvious but we have spent the last two years making sure what we've got is working as efficiently as possible and and we've been having standing meetings with our with our h dot consultant and our engineers to make sure those things so those things we're working on and we're seeing the difference not only in the amount of energy we're using but the comfort and usability of buildings so that's really good with regards some of those especially those uh projects that were brought forth in the that Montpelier net zero report there are some um aspects that are absolutely worth looking at but there's no easy decisions on that because we are city schools and real estate is difficult some of the project specific projects we have using ground-source heat pumps at main street middle school um the challenge is that that used to be a neighborhood back there there's a lot of stuff underground there so a lot of these things that we talk about really need to be looked into more closely and um we've been when we look at my project like the track um we kind of took that I took that uh that approach and looking at the track where we've been talking about what does it cost well a track over here was that's found out we actually hired a engineering firm out of Burlington to do a proof of concept study on the track so we actually had them come and visit the site look at stormwater permitting issues look at all the sort of jobs we have and give us a best estimate of what the cost of that would be so we kind of got to do that proof I would say is we move forward if those sort of net zero type projects want to be considered we have to do that first we have to go and say okay what are our challenges and what are the engineers say and what are we thinking just so we can get our heads around what it is before we you know fine team it from there so the other thing that that wanted to be clear on is that all of our buildings all the electricity we do use in the district 85 percent of it is from solar so there's a lot of this that I'm very pleased that the building uh committee's going to be get going because there's a lot of this a couple years ago I presented a 70 page facilities report I got one this year ready to go as well but but I look forward to presenting to that group so they can kind of get an understanding and then once we I answer their questions we can get it out to you both as well so there's there's been a tremendous amount of work that's been going on and if we want to hit those other goals we need to do we need to do more work and and really bring in some professionals to really guide us through that process do you have followed well yeah I mean we have a lot of short-term funding we need to do a lot of planning with people that are going to increase approval concept stuff are are we using it up are we or is there is there some pockets of that funding that's yet to be allocated or is it kind of have to be allocated well we're talking about the track we're not talking about any revenue source other than our other than our our our mine blanking right now our savings account thank you fun balance sorry total mine blank right so so one of the things that when we have the conversation and which is on a future future agenda coming soon is if we want to use that fund balance which we want to use soon um considerable fund balance on something like the track or do we want to start or do we really want to hit these net zero energy goals with that money because that's the amount of money we're talking about with some of the differences in and unless a bond is suggested which I don't I'm not suggesting in any way shape or form I don't believe we can do both here irregardless of the revenue sources that are coming in now I could be wrong I think what I hear you asking is are those items getting whether well yep said we want to get to net zero but if we were to say that in the track are they included in this our best or plan is that what you're asking no if if there's a lot of complications that come with ground sourced heat pumps at msms is there any work being done to get whatever contractor finds out what exactly would be involved in that like if I imagine that if this if the city of the district is looking at the choice between a track and net zero we need to have a lot more complicated than that and more information about what how long that process of getting to net zero it seems like a long process could throw a million dollars at it and it would be done but it would still take probably five to 10 maybe not 10 years but quite a bit of time I imagine maybe not maybe it's easy but it seems like a lot needs to be determined about how do you get there well I would yes and no that are 40 thousand foot sort of just analysis of okay it's speaking of the high school if you wanted to learn biomass at the at the high school what would you do well if you want to use chips that you're going to need a silo you're going to need a building you're going to need to place the turn the truck around you're going to have to decide what real estate that you are if it's you want to use pellets that that's sort of 40 thousand foot study is not a crazy amount of money and it's all money is important but it's not something that I think we'd have to budget too too far I think we can probably in a normal year it becomes really important we can kind of pull this and shake that and we'll we'll wait a year on that together and to be able to do that that sounds interesting I think Merrick had a question yeah so how much of our asset funding still needs to be like developed good question so what we saw here in the board part did you guys get the board packet yeah so there was also a spreadsheet and what the agency of education asks us to do in our initial application is to basically spend it all it doesn't mean that that's how it's going to go right so S or two is a really good example we were able because of once you start spending and some things don't cost as much as you think it's going to cost and you know all of these figures are kind of guesstimates our best guesstimates you often have $50,000 left over that has to be spent because it's a grant right you're going to lose it if you don't spend it so that's why teachers college professional development and the math professional development that's why all of that is being spent out of S or two because we had money available that was already plugged for our professor but we're like we have the answer to let's spend it out of that one instead and we can use the R bus or for something else so the application we haven't put the application in yet this is like our first like or one of many iterations actually about public feedback and things like that but what you what you're seeing is here's the dollar amount they're saying here's our best guesstimate to get to that dollar amount we may make amendments we will make amendments because every grant we make amendments with over time because it's a two-year grant and we and they're just estimates they're our best guess some art some art you know contract costs we know how much a teacher is going to cost but that's that's so this plan essentially spends all our best I wrote down a note where I was like I wonder if anyone might want a little refresher on what our answer is versus S or one answer to you know like yeah I thought about that when I started talking because you just a quick refresher on what that is so the federal government provided four different funding sources maybe Grant should speak to this better than I can but spend provided four different funding sources once the pandemic hit the first one was around COVID I think it was actually called COVID relief or something like that and that was basically spent on PPE and food and all that kind of good stuff that was right off the bat as our one came through next as a relief measure and what we really spent that primarily on and this is all in the public plan document that's on our website was one-to-one computing for for students because we had to go virtual and so we needed a lot of virtual devices for students and so as our one primarily was around that and then we also because we had done it just finished with a literary literacy audit which one of the glaring findings was our classroom libraries at the middle school we had that as a glaring finding so we had S or one money available at that moment and we had to spend it relatively quickly and so we bought the one-to-one devices and then we bought a massive amount of classroom libraries that might can speak to for Main Street middle school that we knew we our teachers weren't actually ready to dig into yet but we had the money available so we have it and then S or two came along after S or one S or one and two and and the COVID relief had no requirements for community engagement or feedback or anything like that attached to it. S or two came along we put in some interventionists around that in S or two community liaison was originally paid for out of S or two we've now smoothed that out we have professional development our summer programming that kind of thing all came out of S or two and that was basically the way we we used that money was was judging what our immediate needs were in that moment in time I think we actually bought some devices out of that too S or two and our professor has some different it was a longer process like the agency of education told us we could put an application in like three weeks ago like it was a much longer process for ARP us are in development of it it's a lot more money and there are a lot more strings attached to how we can use that money and where we can use it some of the money needs to be spent towards what the federal government has called learning loss and some of it can be spent on other things but a certain a certain percentage has to be spent on learning loss which we are way above that percentage now is how this particular plan but we've gone through many iterations of how we thought we could spend it originally we thought windows let's do windows as the board will remember the windows are now in the capital plan because we just decided it was a better use of our time we got some really good feedback around hold on just don't go so fast with this and the agency of education didn't allow us to go fast anyway so kind of forced our hand on that one but that was that was good we got that feedback we went back to the drawing board we thought which which funding source do windows make sense we know we have to do the windows so now that's in the capital plan and it's the original plan with the windows of moving them across multiple years and so this ARP us are again some of it has to be done guaranteed towards learning loss and others can be used for other pieces and you have to get public you have to get public engagement as to how to spend the dollars too there's also we've been talking about those trends as well there's also been the Vermont indoor air quality oh yeah there was round one and there's going to be a round two as well coming up that we'll we've got a couple projects that we'll put it before we'll see yeah and we bought 10 bazillion air purifiers and the the controls and all that kind of stuff 150,000 on that one in the first round we'll see what the second one looks like I would just like to appreciate that this is massive this is such a significant thoughtful plan I mean when I think about this I'm like we're talking about things schools have been schools like thrive and rise and an additional administrator and I just see like so much value and so many of these concepts and these ideas and I think it's really exciting and it feels like in kind of the you know the values work that we've done it feels really in sync with with a lot of what we can talk about so it feels really exciting I have to imagine it feels really exciting to you all in terms of like the scope of your work we'll be particularly happy to be able to talk about education in the nuts and bolts in the degree and also getting to be like really innovative and really trying to address what the needs are so I'm just really excited about this so thank you for all the work it just feels huge as I have so many questions that are just based on curiosity because I'm sort of like a school nerd but I also just want to yeah but I'm going to try to stick to just some other things as far as the SEL administrator which does seem green because it's a lot of different programs that seem to be coordinating and I'm hearing there's maybe you know seeing how that goes could get you know continued through the global budget but say if it doesn't you know in that role is there anything that if it's going to be temporary is there anything that could come out of that position that would be lasting in terms of like systems development yeah sort of looking at what already is is not optimal and kind of fixing that and getting the systems in place so I'm just curious how what that could look like if we can't yeah that's actually one of the major pieces as to why we want to want to have somebody with the expertise and the focus so that systems development can't happen right right now I'll be honest it's just haphazard you know it's it's based on what the need is in that moment and it's reactionary so what we want to create is a system that's not reactionary that's proactive that that it works within a program so that kids we know which skills kids need to build and we know how to build them with the kids and the families I can't say we know that right now with our with our truly with our kids who are truly really having a challenging time with typical school we don't know how to do it right now so we need that level of expertise at this moment and the ideal would be that they work themselves out of a job you know that would be the ideal it may not happen it may not happen in two years and we may be having to have some hard conversations of how to do our local budget or using other revenue sources but in the ideal world if everything worked well they'd work themselves out of a job and so the timing of the funding will allow for that new administrator to come on like putting these programs are also coming online right yep right and then just this is a thought about so the next step will be to put this in front of the public and get comments right so just wondering it could be helpful for folks you know just there's there's some jargon and acronyms that might be helpful to demystify for folks even just like SEL MTSS and I don't want to that could be a massive glossary endeavor however I think it could be helpful so people might know what they're looking at I'm kind of raising my hand like maybe oh I was just thinking Mike would love to do that and let's see as far as the uh like the summer enrichment programming like how will that be made available and I did hear and I was actually interested in it but if our students were interested to weigh in on what summer enrichment programs they feel students would appreciate and would want to see offered I would love to hear from you on that either now or later but it sounds like you're going to be having a conversation with the coordinator of that yeah I'm just interested like it's going to be kind of an RFP that's put out to the district educators if they want to offer something and and also thinking about our middle and high school students in Roxbury and just how they might plug into the opportunities last year they were made our students didn't have transportation necessarily to get to the program so some of the transportation is um it's always been expensive and that makes that can handle a budget very very quickly but I'm just curious you know I think about those you know but no we're not we're not in for you know where you can't just kind of go in town and that's our activity for the day so um I mean it could it would just be a stop for the Roxbury community story so yeah I'm just curious how I might think about graduating my students into what those plans could be is I'm really interested in them but just social um opportunities yeah transportation is the big yeah and how do you figure that out again I have a meeting with Matt tomorrow um who coordinates this for us again he's our athletic director um so he did it last year I also have sent a survey out to our um faculty and staff asking hey anybody interested in and what might you be interested in doing so I was an anonymous survey just to get an idea from people um so I'm gonna go back to that with Matt we're gonna talk that through with him tomorrow um about how can we expand what was offered last year because it was pretty primarily sports last year we literally got the money like May 15th and planned it like in a week um so it was what Matt knew and that's what we went with which was understandable um so where that piece will be we'll talk about it tomorrow because we have a little bit more time now although I know that summer as a parent I know that summer planning is happening now and so that we'll move relatively fast because we have you know last year we had to figure out how do we pay people how do we you know like we had to figure so many just basic steps out because we've never done anything like that before in the summer um but now we figured that part out right so uh now we can focus more on the actual programming I'm not sure if we have anything on like top of our minds right now regarding that but we can get back to what students would like to see survey of sports, student body, so you mentioned uh something up to I think nine interventions across the district that where we are now Mike can you count them on the top of your head so I just curious what the spread of the interventions are across the district and if that ever becomes fluid if they're like school assignments or if like oh we're having more data on my assignments right now we're going to be up you know so just kind of curious how that how that works and hopefully this so the fluidity comes from we did have some fluidity at UES this year because of a small kindergarten class we had too many teachers for the amount of students so um one of our kindergarten teachers became a K1 interventionist this year based on our projections she's going to stay there uh the kindergarten first grade team loved that um she's phenomenal at it it's a need to target the littles like that particularly right now think about it our kindergartners did not have a typical daycare experience so you know that some freaky experience that many kids do so our kindergartners are interesting this year and they'll be interesting next year too and so uh that definitely has been a need that's been where our fluidity comes the most um in terms of we're not good enough in our data yet to say there's more need in our fifth grade in this area in literacy we're not good enough yet with our data Mike do you want to talk to that yeah about the data or the just interventionists in general so where we are I think there's a couple things that are coming up now one is that slenderman intervention and special education that's happening so that's that's huge still and I obsess over that often so for you know spending a lot of time as what he mentioned working with the special educators and interventionists to just talk about how we helped it regardless of your title and what are the how do we identify the need how do we identify the skill how do we use research to really tap that skill quickly and we're trying to move away from that model of okay this kid needs help they're going to be in a small reading group five times a week 30 minutes for the rest of their life we're trying to really move away from that and be more diagnostic about what we're doing so we're building that that skill set in everybody with common language across all our schools which is pretty pretty amazing the other thing with interventionists is they tend to be content specialists as well so there's not as much validity in one person moving from different areas of support so your math interventionists that's pretty much your jam that's what you do and we're we're are starting to have some conversations between transitional grades so fourth to fifth grade and then eighth and ninth grade about supports and interventions so there's a little bit of overlap and validity in conversation and resources there that's been really interesting so like at the high school we have a literacy interventionist for the first time this year and that person is working with the middle school interventionists really talk about what are the strategies they're using because it's similar ranges of needs it's a bit a lot of good crossover but think about that statement we have a 400 student middle or high school we did not have a literacy intervention until this year this year ever like it's not just because somebody left like we've never had a interventionist at the high school the same with math right so like we just didn't have the human resources we needed for that piece and then data that's pretty much all we're working on right now is building our base level systems to be able to track data and be able to be really specific about what kids learning is telling us about our instruction so we're building these base level systems and I could geek out for like an hour and maybe one or two people would like this bill would leave no it's so we're building computer systems database systems all sorts of things to be able to make it easy for its school teams to look at data and make decisions about instructions and what it's need and easy for us to share with the community as to what our data is telling us as to where we are that is not an that should be very easy for us to do and it is not so we're putting a lot of effort in there it's not easy because it's not a system or just right kind of translating the it's not there's not a system there's not a system in for a long time excuse me the building for license so they didn't cross talk one school was using one program another and another and just make it difficult yeah can you can you share with me your your reading assessment data and we get we get uh like google sheets like we just get some had all the data in it some didn't you know it was just I couldn't I couldn't look it up myself I have to have somebody share with me it just wasn't it's not the way it needs to be we'll fix it yeah thank you thanks yeah I also just want to start off by acknowledging appreciating the evolution of this plan from the beginning you know Libby you mentioned that a lot of it at the beginning was about the windows and I just I see a lot of what we have heard from the community and the through the thought exchanges and to the listening sessions and I imagine also through the conversations you all have had and the input you've been getting from teachers reflected in this plan and I just wanted to you know acknowledge that and say I just really appreciate the the effort that went into that to gather all of that and I also wanted to for the members of the community who are watching our our recordings say thank you to that for first sharing what their needs are and what their dreams are and their ideas because this to me feels like an extra reflection of of all of that so that was the first thing I wanted to say and I do have just a couple of questions one is it's feeling like some of those infrastructure needs the space ones in the schools are pretty huge right now but I also am imagining that infrastructure is a little bit of a slow process do you have a sense of help quickly something like the drive space or that special in space could be ready to go yeah so Bill and I were talking about that today um there are some places that we need to get on on board this summer to drive and arise this we need to make those spaces appropriate next year there's some other projects just district-wide other project capital projects none of that we've got to think about what's the economy going to look like this summer are we going to be able to get stuff you know we've also got news we've got new staff in some of our buildings and we've had two years of just rationing around we kind of need a year to relax not relax but to gather our breath let that new staff get a handle on their buildings and just get things back in line and the idea of even when we look at a project like the auditorium we go well it's just one room it's one spot but even just talking with Tara who's over with me now um just you know that 15 minutes of the electrician saying hey do you know what the box is for that it's just gonna it throws off the rhythm and they really need to get into their buildings and they've done tremendous amount of work and they're gonna they're gonna continue to do that so it's sort of this what can we do what do we have to do there's something we have to do for the students there's some stuff and also just bundling the projects we've got a lot of money spent and spending it all at once is more efficient and you get more bang for your buck we're gonna have a year's worth of inflation but we also don't want to tear our buildings apart to not be able to get the materials that we need right that's going to be a real issue so we're we're i'm internally having that conversation and that'll be another great thing to bring towards the the facilities committee to bounce those ideas up you know this is what we're seeing what are you guys think so there are some definite spaces that we need to get ready thrive and rise spaces especially in here at the high school boat the transition space we can get those they're small projects let's get them done they may not be the full vision but at least they'll be appropriate for next year um the bigger ones again it's we always like to say you know you want to do it as early as possible but there's some stuff and you can't you can't get painted i mean literally you can't get paint so do we hire a painter to paint the auditorium for material they can't get so the other reality that andrew's pointed out quite a quite a few times is uh to me is that our building season or renovation season is relatively short you know we're talking about mid june to mid august yeah and that's the time we have um and us is is busy and part two is at us during the summer so you know there's there's limited things we do at one time so we have to pick a juice and Andrew's very good at prioritizing those things and i i i think that bundling as much as this for next year is probably the way to go because we can get we can get our contractor our construction manager whoever on board really early and they that's what they do is they organize it's all about logistics and i have capacity to appoint but they have the capacity and the muscle for first force people to come to this job versus that job that thing so and when you say next year do you mean next school year or next summer of 23 summer of 23 in 22 months okay so realistically what we're saying is that there will be a rise or a thrive space it may evolve into something more next summer but the very we'll have the those types of spaces that we know we need to have ready those we can get ready for the summer and the special ed space that one that one again there's also the capacity of the administration and the people that use it that takes you talk about the the special ed suite not being i i've designed a lot of those and i can i can envision the conversations around why that space looks the way it does and those aren't the same conversations that we would have now so it's going to take a couple months to get people to talk about what that space wants to look like i think that's a burden that i'm not sure that we're in a position to quite do that yet so going a little bit slower to make sure that we've got what we want that's going to last us for 20 or 30 years is worth is worth waiting the year to try to try to get it done for this summer you want to do us you got two hours a week for the next four weeks i think it would be difficult i think it would be difficult and i think what you need to hear is that you know our focus on changing any of these spaces is getting back to a kid-centric model for the space it feels like that's been drifted away in some of the spaces especially the you know the sped suite of the ues so certainly we're looking to create the environment in the space that's adapted to students and to particular student needs to that drive or high needs um in the best of times it'll take the six eight months just to talk about it and what about this change and have different iterations of things before everybody can have their heads again in the best of times it'll take you a good six months to do that yeah thank you i think so can i stand up yes um for the positions like the like the racial justice advisor and the alliance advisor and the restorative practice professional development i know the funding this is as local and the airp idea um do we know if those positions will be able to continue in the same capacity sort of when that airp funding runs out where it's not going to be a problem the restorative practices professional development is in the airp idea grants the positions are in the are in the local budget and we actually move those late in the game in the budgetary process to during the school day because you all are the most important part of that work and so we want to make it equitable for all students so the the goal is to have those those clubs and those opportunities for students during your school day so it's not hey i can come from three to four or i have to choose between two things right so teachers are paid for their school day so there's actually not a huge budgetary expense if we move it into the school day right it's more of a time how do we get the time to work the restorative justice restorative practices work is is something that we know we will have to figure out how to do but and honestly it's not a considerable sum of money so that that is one that right now is in our IDEA because it's a grant fund that we have available to us it will easily be able to be absorbed into our our local budget and i think ultimately the plan is is to release that responsibility to the staff to lead restorative practices so it doesn't need to continue on and on in the same vein yeah sorry um other questions um i have one so i'm going to echo what christin and me have both said about just like being so pleased that this at the process that has brought us to this proposal that's in front of us today because it's it does feel very responsive to the committee and all the input that was received so i really appreciate that i'm super excited about the idea of a district administrator for the scl work that's okay i was nervous about that so good i'm excited about that yeah i think that's really great um and one thing that sort of most of my questions have been answered but one thing that did come up with the student listening session in the library i think Zach who were there for that i don't know merrily there for that was here but um we came and we just sort of did like an open listening session around kind of around the ester funding budget stuff um and one of the things that was requested that i thought was like a really great idea and i know we're limited with actual physical space in this building but it was a like a student lounge collaboration space and i just didn't see it on the other themes and i know yeah that's good yeah you're right it might be nice to add that in there just so that it stays on our radar as something that it seemed like the students wanted um and it might be nice to start you know because of the way you're talking about the way that it's it's slow work you know we would need to like think about where to put it we need to do the studies we need to get the drawings we need to get the contractors we need to let them hear us so it's probably already a couple years out to to implement something like that unless it was a space that was already currently in the building um so it just it just feels like something that we should put on back on the radar yeah i added that thank you i added that to the other themes discussed because that definitely came up and it came it's come up in a couple places yeah um so the space is the big the big challenge with that but there's also the piece of our high vaccination rate in this grant that the agency of education has offered to paces with a higher vaccination rate so we haven't decided how we we did put out a thought exchange from students way back when around how to use that um funding so and we got some great ideas around air conditioning and building the track and and then creamy machine and uh those were the top three vote getters um by one of those that's n grand but that might be something that we would we can consider we just have to figure out space um but but something like six seven seven thousand dollars could definitely get us a good start and something like that i'm sorry i'm because we have high vaccination rates we're eligible for grant money yeah okay i didn't realize that we are we have it's we've been eligible for a while we we're eligible in our three month failures for it and that would be something that could a funding source that could come immediately yes because yeah it's just it's just a matter of putting our heads together with um tom and chris here and same and the principle and see where where we might be able to do that i'm not sure yeah the other thing with regards to schedule was the money has to be spent by september of 24 correct yeah so yeah so in most likely would like to be most of the heavy lifting next year so things if they need a variety you have time to finish up yeah so how much money is coming from that like high vaccine it was i think it's 6700 uh so not enough for air conditioning upstairs definitely but but yeah we have about 6700 so if you all want to want to reach out to people again to think about how we want to use that we can we can literally put that grant in next week and get those dollars like two weeks from now and is that money also spread out throughout the district no so each of our three month clear schools who have reached the 80 vaccination rate um all it's a dollar amount tied to the number of students so it's all because our schools are relatively the same size it's all around 65 to 70000 and Zach you're there too i just going back to the student that also has to notice that i there was a group that presented about this next session um that had ideas specifically around space or whatever um all those things that could definitely be helpful if that's something to consider i think they did like a proposal we can talk about it more on friday guys you guys already asked a lot of good questions so um i was just wondering um does the money what the like big picture time period when it has to be spent by or come or why is there a chance is there a possibility that because of the supply and the lack of like i'm not sure we'll find all these magical people to build these positions if there's a really quick timeline like do they sweep it and take it back if it doesn't get spent by a certain time yeah okay we'll spend it so if the positions don't be filled aren't filled then we'll spend them on something we'll look to something else right so that's when the amendment process comes in um the the positions that we have in here actually i've already posted an anticipated sel administrator because i was going to twist your arms um to approve so actually i actually have some qualified candidates for that i put i had heather post it right before break um not doing any interview or anything like that yet just anticipated so um we'll probably take that anticipated off um that piece and uh and get going on that hiring process because we do have some good candidates right now the bcba we do not we haven't posted that yet um so we can get going on posting an anticipated one for that piece that would be proud of looking at looking at these positions i would i'm venturing to bet that that would be the hardest one to fill and that'll be difficult that's a tough license to to come and they can make pretty good money in the private field and do you have to have a teaching certificate to work in public education so there's lots of hurdles and roadblocks that yeah um around that but of all the other positions i think we'll be able to find people but jill just jogged my memory might can you remind me tomorrow to remind us to post the guidance counselor position thank you um other questions well thank you again i just want to echo what um several board members said this is fantastic work and a really great process uh very responsive and uh the outreach the outreach of the absence everyone i mean i want to thank all this all the administrators for doing it but also yes several board members for really helping with getting feedback and processes back so a real group effort um yeah no and thank you uh like bill and andrew for uh staying till the bitter end um i'm talking about the bitter end we have one uh one more item uh first reading yeah thank you first reading of uh c14 um which is a new record policy regarding uh level four and are just any comments or edits on that we have three readings and then we uh prove as part of the consent agenda but if there's anything that strikes you as needing attention on this policy or question to have that was the time to raise that has the policy couldn't you look at it yet or is it okay we looked at it and we decided to move it forward as is because of other conversations we've had about other required special and related policies that um we've had conversations with our district lawyer about and with bill and liby and it just doesn't make sense you're you're not really supposed to kind of mess with them you leave them alone okay i think that's the smartest thing to do so we're we're putting in forward as is from um the bsba for at least for the first round so if there was anything that you see it was a relatively quick look through from the policy committee but that was sort of our gut that was what we our gut reaction to it well i ended on this first one i also did a pretty quick look through myself especially as it got further ended it was more about the process that didn't that didn't feel i definitely agree i don't think we should touch that the one thing that stood out to me is that it it could benefit and again this is a little bit more from now like making our policies accessible to the community it could benefit maybe from a couple of sentences at the top that say this is our intent this is the impactful of this policy to have or this is our yeah our intended our intention around it is and maybe it is even just of all about like ensuring that every child in our district has the access to the education that they need and that it's as simple as that but it felt like it could have used something like that so that it again mostly so that when people in our community access our policies and say what's all about it's at least there's something that's in plain English right at the top yeah we were we were trying to do that sort of as a matter of best practice so i think we will take a step at that thank you yeah there are a couple of superscript numbers first paragraph itself some other paragraph that were the financial assistance another one yeah and then next like that's three yeah there's no two right right i couldn't find what one two we'll have to ask amanda was the one that did the sort of initial like yeah to suit the need so i wonder if that was just like a accidental translation um so we'll take a look at that too thank you any other questions comments on first reading we'll look at those two issues um policy red uh motion to adjourn second all those in favor great thanks everyone