 Let's open the new meeting of the Montpellier-Roxbury school board of directors for our first meeting of the new session. And tonight we are going to reorganize and we also I'm congratulations to Mia, Emma and Amanda who got elected to Mia and Amanda got elected to the two three-year terms that were up and Emma got elected to the remainder of a three-year term that expires in 2022. So we all have a full board and then oh the congratulations that I thank you to Kristen Gettler who just would believe you got elected via write-in. Yesterday we got elected via write-in from Roxbury who is taking the three-year term that Ryan Zajak just served out. So congrats to everyone and thank you. It's just a couple of notes on the agenda. One thing I definitely want to do is we need to set a date for a retreat. So we're going to discuss that quickly as well. I think the best time is likely in May. Also in preparation for that and also just to give people thinking we had a difficult year with COVID where that was a huge focus and we also managed to do some great work on the SRO. But what I'd love to do, assuming I'm re-elected chair, is just reach out to everyone talk to people about their top three priorities. I think they really want the board to focus on this year and then kind of use that to put together an agenda for a retreat where we can map out some priorities and how to get things done. I know we've got a lot of big issues from continuing the safety work to picking up some of the building's work that Andrew is working on before COVID as well as Jill in the MSM's committee. We're going to hear about carbon emissions tonight, which is another big priority. We've talked about Roxbury and obviously our diversity, equity and inclusion work is a huge thing we need to focus on continuing to carry forward. A lot of things to kind of refocus on as we enter the new year and a retreat is a good place to do that. I also want to propose we have both a superintendent evaluation and a negotiations update for the executive session. I want to propose, and let me know if anyone has a reservation about doing this, doing just a one-hour executive session on the superintendent evaluation with kind of both Kristen not having any real context on that at all or any ability to look over the documents and this being a new process to a lot of board members rather than trying to have a great discussion late at night. It might just be good to do a special meeting for an hour and just kind of sit through and talk to and make sure we kind of get both questions answered about the process and get a document that we all like. And just all the feedback has been very positive so far, but it's a complicated process and a big part of the board's work. So unless folks feel otherwise, I think it might just be both easier and less worrisome to just set aside an hour when we're fresh and we can just delve into it. Hey, Jim, do we need to take roll? We do. I'm going to do that in just a second. Oh, okay. I was just going to lay out the agenda stuff. And I think that's all yet on the agenda. So I'll just run through Jerry. Here. Jill. Here. Kristen. Here. Andrew. Here. Anakit. Here. Emma. Here. Amanda. Aki. Here. And Mia. Here. Great. So first order of business is public comment. If you want to comment, either use your raise hand function, which is in the participant bar, or you can just either wave with your hand or, if that's not getting my attention, just unmute yourself and shout a hey. Looks like we have Ann Watson. Anyone else? Ann, go ahead. And although everyone knows you, please introduce yourself for work on the camera. Great. Hello. Thank you so much. My name is Ann Watson. I am a resident of Montpelier. I'm a teacher at the school Montpelier High School. I teach physics engineering and math. And I also happen to be the mayor of Montpelier. And I am here sort of wearing both a little bit of each of those hats to a small degree here. I sent most of you an email just within the last couple days about carbon, about carbon pollution and our, the strict's responsibility to address that. Except I don't think I sent it to Jerry or Kristen. So I will forward that on to the both of you. So I don't have a lot to add to that. It was somewhat of a dissertation. So my apologies for the the length of it. But I'm going to assume that those to those of you who might sent it that you got a chance to read it. So I just have a couple things I want to highlight from that. The first and elaborate a little bit, which is that, you know, in terms of the district's history of carbon emissions in terms of greenhouse gases. I do actually think that there has been some progress that has been made by the district. But I think it would be useful to see what what the track record is. What is the history over time of the district's you know, pollution record, you know, greenhouse gas emission record over time to see if it's trending in the right directions to see what can be addressed what needs to be addressed. Moving forward, and I just want to emphasize that those that kind of data should be a part of the regular review of this board. It seems natural that we take data about things that we care about, but I think the inverse is also sort of true in that once you start collecting data that actually encourages people to care more about it. And so even just the act of collecting that data and having it in front of people actually incites people to to be invested in that and to care more about it. So that's that's an important part. I also want to make sure that you are well aware that you do not have to tackle reducing carbon pollution on your own. The city has made a net zero commitment. We're aiming to be net zero by 2030 for just municipal operations. And we're actually we're about to be announcing who the city will be partnering with in terms of making a plan to reach 2030. And our hope and my understanding as well is that the school will be participating in that net zero 2030 plan making. But in addition, I mean, reaching net zero is that's a big that's a big goal. And what I mean by net zero in case people are not familiar with is renewably producing all the energy that you use. You don't have to do this alone. We the city would love to help hope that you end up also potentially increase the capacity that you need to make that happen. I also just want to say that reaching net zero is not going to happen by accident. You're not going to stumble into reaching that goal. It needs to be a formal commitment, particularly because it is going to take a while. And so I'd urge you to make a commitment to going down the path of reaching that zero energy by 2030. And I know that the earth group is going to be presenting more. So I'm going to leave more for them to say I just wanted to add my voice in support of their cause. So thank you very much. Thanks for your time. Okay, thanks, Ann. And thanks for the very helpful email and information. Any other public comment? I'm not seeing any. Stu, consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? I move that we approve the consent agenda. Do I have a second? I'll second. Thanks. Any discussion? Jerry. Hi. Jill. Hi. Kristen. Hi. Andrew. Yeah. Hi. Mia. Hi. I think I got everyone. Um, so next is, uh, the zero energy student presentation. And I know that I coordinated with Molly Hutton on that, but I'm not sure I don't see her and I'm not sure if she's one presenting. So, um, Ruby, is that you? Yeah, I'm presenting. Great. Thank you. I will share my screen. Great. And please introduce yourself as well. Okay. Is there any way you can allow me to present my screen? Libby, can you do that? Make her co-host. You should be good, Ruby. Try again. Can everyone see this? Okay. So, I'm Ruby Bryant. I'm a senior at Montpelier High School, and I'm also part of the Earth Group. Yeah, sorry. I'm Erin Kelly. I am also a senior at Montpelier High School and a member of the MHS Earth Group. Thanks so much for listening to our point of view. And we're here to propose the adoption of a net zero policy for the school district. Just to begin and sort of introduce, um, who we are as a club as we are student representatives from our club. Um, the Earth Group is a club in Montpelier High School with students who are dedicated to increasing sustainable practices at our school by decreasing our ecological footprint, as well as in the community. And these pictures sort of showcase some of the things and the projects that we've done in the past, including refillable water bottles, reusable bags, managing the composting at the high school, doing activism at the state house, all sorts of things that are meant to reduce our ecological impact as a school. Okay. So, our ask tonight for the school board is to adopt a net zero energy 2030 policy for the school district. And this will also direct staff to report annually on progress towards this goal, including electricity, heat and transportation energy. And this will be able to happen by establishing a renewable energy committee within the school board to support the staff in this goal. The net zero policy for the district would include producing or offsetting all of our energy needs from renewable sources by 2030. And this would align with the accompanying goal for the city of Montpelier. And as Anne mentioned earlier, the city of Montpelier is excited about this, and they're definitely willing to help and really wanting to get the schools to sort of sign on, I guess. This net zero policy would include looking at thermal energy, which is like making the buildings more efficient, transportation energy, like like transportation energy, like cars, buses, etc. Like, how do we get students to school? And electric energy, which our electric energy is already pretty good because we're connected to Green Mountain Power, which has a net zero plan of 2025. And then another very large part of this would be moving away from heating with oil. Okay, so this graph shows the energy used by type for the whole city. And as you can see, that the oil is at 32%, which is pretty high compared to the others. And if we did adopt this plan for the school, we would be able to reduce our oil as a district, which would then create the oil slice and for the city to be smaller too. And you can see all of the green slices are renewable, but our goal is to create everything to be renewable. So by adopting a policy for our school district, we would then contribute to the city and become a better part of the community that way too. And just as a note, this graph is municipal buildings and the school district. It's not the whole city like homes, residential buildings or businesses. And then this graph is the fossil fuel used by building within the city, which is also the municipal buildings. And you can see and hear that the schools overall have a large part in this graph. Nearly 25% of the thermal fossil fuel use comes from heating MHS alone. And 40% is the result of heating MHS, MSMS and UES, which is a large part of the city. And so we think that it's really important to include the schools in the net zero plan that is already happening for the city because you can see how big of a part it is. And also on the graph, you can see that the water resource recovery facility also has a large part, but there is something happening right now where they will be heating their building using the methane that they're producing. So that will be renewable and suddenly net zero. So that slice will go away. And hopefully if we adopt this plan, all of the schools will go away too. And also another thing to point out is that UES is connected to district heat. But this year they decided to burn oil and I'm not sure why. So normally that slice would go away too. And another part of this is that Roxbury was not included either. So that would become part of it too. But overall this just shows how big of a role as a school district play in the whole city of Montelier. So we also wanted to address why we as students really care about this and care about reducing our ecological footprint and particularly our carbon emissions. Climate change directly impacts our futures and as young people climate change directly impact futures. And quite frankly it is directly impacting our now as we can see globally with you know everything that's happening in Texas right now. But also locally we've been having a several year drought in the summertime. So it really is already affecting our labs currently. And we really feel that we need to play a part in our broader community. We feel that we have an obligation to repair and prevent more damage to our earth. And this is a way that we can make change locally and globally. It will by adopting a net zero policy we can create a secure secure reliable and sustainable energy. And like people say like the sun will always shine but there won't always be oil around. And we can also lead by example and encourage others to follow locally and nationally as well. And we really also care about the 2030 goal because science says we have to keep science says. There have been reports 2019 reports. I don't know the 2020 numbers but every year honestly gets pushed closer of we need to keep our global emission our global temperature under 1.5 degrees Celsius and the deadline for that really is 2030 if we can decrease our emissions a certain percentage by then globally. And this is also the picture on the right here is a picture of the global student walk out for climate change in 22 years ago at the Vermont State House. It was and it sort of shows that there really are so many students that care about this within our school because a lot of these people were from MHS but also across the whole community and across the whole world. So with adopting this policy there will be many benefits that follow one is the it'll reduce wasted energy so if we are able to tighten up our buildings and make them more efficient we won't have to use as much energy to heat them which will then bring the cost down for heating all the buildings. Another thing is minimizing greenhouse gases that are emitted into the atmosphere. If we're if we're not producing any carbon then we won't be contributing to the global warming in the atmosphere and another thing is it increases our energy security. So energy security is the availability of energy sources at an affordable price and by combining renewable energy energy efficiency and conserve conserving our energy we'll be able to have more control over the overall cost of the energy as a school district and also it will be cheaper in the long run. It may seem like a lot of money now and a lot of work but the cost of not doing it is much worse than actually doing the plan and falling through with it and I also think it's really important to know that this is very urgent and if we don't do it then we will have much larger costs than in the future and you've been coming up sooner. We when putting out feelers for this policy were told that it was going to be impossible but we think that this we know that this is not true and we think that this mindset sort of hurts the process. We understand this will be expensive it will be a lot of energy and a lot of work that needs to be put into this project but as young people this is our future and this is our now and we really feel that we can't ignore climate change and we also feel that because this is something that so many of our students care about the school board should represent the student body and have our interests in mind in undertaking this policy excuse me. We know that this mindset of impossibility means that we will never get there which is sort of like this mindset of impossibility is saying we're never going to get there which is sort of setting us up for failure but we know that we already have the technology we already have the like we already have the technology it's really like we need to get the willpower to really start this like people put us on the moon in less than a decade and we have COVID vaccines in less than a year so we really just need the will around this and we do think that our 2030 year is we think that maybe that's one of the things that feels risky but we really do want to say again like it is important to have the goal at 2030 and to start this as soon as possible so that we're able to get there because 2030 like it's the deadline essentially and we also ask like the worst case scenarios we miss a deadline but we also this is why we think that creating a subcommittee is important to support this work and to really get it moving. Okay thank you so much for listening to us and I will either send the link in a chat or email everybody the actual policy that we have created and we also are welcoming any questions if you have any too. Yeah no thank you so much for for that that was a great report and I completely agree that climate change is the challenge of our generation and certainly yours I know that we will see some of the impacts but you will be left with the major impacts especially if we don't act and act quickly and I completely agree that the school district needs to do all it can do to not just enable you to be great change makers and advocates but also to play our part in terms of reducing emissions. I'm sure we have a lot of questions I see three already. Andrew here on you. Thanks Jim and thanks Ruby and is Erin still with us? I don't I don't see her on the screen anymore. So first of all I just want to say we hear you on this we appreciate you and this is an issue for all of us we certainly need to do a better job of not only monitoring our energy use and where we are in addressing this issue but we should be striving to really drastically reduce our greenhouse gas impact so I don't think you're dealing with a board or a district that's going to approach this with an impossibility mindset but I think this board does need quite a bit more information and later this meeting we are going to be talking about a committee that in part will be focused on the issues that you brought up and one of the things that we're going to be proposing and this is a question for you is for this committee to meet with the student earth group on a quarterly basis is that something that you think would be helpful? Definitely I think meeting with students as often as possible will definitely be beneficial because I think sometimes as students it's not as hard or it's a little bit hard for us to get things going but with you guys there it can be definitely helpful for us and I think it'd be beneficial on both sides to have our point of view from where we're at in school and just in our point of life and also you who can help us as well so I definitely think that would be helpful. Great one other thing because I realize we have other board members who have questions and comments is we are participating in the city's energy audit and I think that's going to be really really helpful for all of us students, teachers, the board, certainly administrators to understand where we are and my general thinking on this and others can weigh in is once we have that information and we really understand where we are we should adopt a policy based on that information and maybe 2030 is the time but I do agree this is an urgent matter and I think this board I don't want to speak for everybody but my my understanding of this board is that the board will want to act swiftly on this so thank you for coming to us with these issues. Great, Aniket. Thanks Jim and I also want to echo Andrew's sentiment that the I feel and I feel the boards feel the same way that we do need to address this issue and we are very receptive to this. I also want to mention that it was a great presentation it's good to see the students leading this and coming up to us and to administrators and to board to request that we act on it so it's really nice to see that. A couple of questions I had one was the data source for the for your charts and for your graphs can we get the sources of where you got the data from? Yeah I will email the board afterwards all of the documents that we use and I'm pretty sure that was from the energy committee for the city. Okay cool and there were a couple of slices for district heat one was the renewable one was not can you talk about that what's the you know where does that come from or what's considered a renewable district heat and what's not? I and would have more information on this but I do believe that the renewable district heat is wood pellets and I think that there is still a portion of district heat that may be heating on oil but I don't know exactly what the non-renewable part of district heat is. Okay well again as I said great presentation thank you for coming to us with this it's really good to see the initiative coming from from the students themselves because they're the ones who are going to get affected the most in the long run. Yeah that's it thank you. Thanks again Mia. I mostly just wanted to say thank you and I'm just really impressed with that presentation and feel a deep sense of gratitude for your leadership on this issue so so mostly I wanted to say thank you. I my question is more for the board and Andrew I think you answered it mostly but I wanted to just make sure that I understand how we would go about responding to this request and you know we may not do the full exactly what they're asking for but it it sounds like we would first have a buildings and facilities committee investigating the information of the the report that's going to come out of the energy audit and then use that and they would share that with the policy committee and the policy committee is where the policy would get drafted is it possible that that the policy committee could get started before on this at least you know some of the research or whatever or I don't know it just I don't want this to get all like mired in process but I also want to make sure we have our ducks in a row and and do this smartly. Yeah I mean my later on in this meeting I don't I don't want to necessarily take away from this presentation but I think the idea of a facilities and energy committee I have a list of various responsibilities that we can discuss associated with that but generally when we have a policy that impacts for example a budget policy generally the finance committee is involved with the policy committee in coming up with that so I mean I don't see why Jim any thoughts on process for pulling together a policy on this are my my general thought right now is that we don't we need information and we're going to be getting a lot of information on this we're meeting with Andrew La Rosa next meeting and getting a really deep dive in a way that the board has never really received before because we didn't have this information on all of our facilities and then the meeting after that we're meeting with Kate Stevenson from the Energy Committee to discuss these issues further so this is something that we're going to be focused on over the next several meetings and we're going to be talking about creating a committee that I think pretty much meets the request that part of the request that the students and and brought to us this evening the the issue of the policy and how we come up with that and what you know how we go about that is you know I think that's up for discussion yeah I know I think I think we can get both processes started I think it's good to yeah I think realistically kind of the three things the district would have to do to have you know a net zero by you know 2030 or you know and I think we want to see if 2030 or 2035 is a date the biggest thing is most likely a bond to change the heating system for our three buildings because I mean the chart you know you know Aaron and Ruby the chart you provided really says how much of a of our carbon chunk is from heat and and all three of our buildings well two of our buildings are heated with I believe a pretty old oil system you know and the high school in particular is a big emitter so so there would have to be a bond to to you know to change the heating systems there and my guess is that is probably not an inexpensive venture but it's certainly something we could do but we'd have to go to the public with it but these are electric buses and you know some sort of carbon buy down and I think we'd also have to get a sense of of you know accounting you know what what do we count as as district commissions and then turn here and out of way to tackle them but I think the policy committee could definitely get started on you know sketching out what we feel our goals are um and you know the best way to achieve them I think you're also going to hear from Andrew La Rosa next week and he'll be the he'll be able to answer these types of questions better than anybody else is you know a comment he made to me a while back was essentially that you know we could have all we could have great renewable energy resources but would still be heating the outside um of a number of our buildings and so obviously weatherization is going to be a huge component there and with some really old buildings you know we'll have to ask him as to what that would entail um and and frankly we we also need to keep in mind some of those types of renovations the amount of time that they would take you know we don't have any space to shift students around right now so I'm not certain what that would mean in terms of where students would be educated um like how long certain retrofits would take so that's going to have to be factored into this too like if we were going to have a got it we need to have a strategy in place so so just one follow question on the process do we need to make a motion to say instruct or ask the policy committee to begin to look at setting a um a zero a net zero policy do we need a motion for that I guess is all I'm asking or can it just happen I think it just happened I think we can just do it but yeah we could also make um you know a motion would be appropriate too but it's um I don't think we made a formal motion with other major policies like you know the diversity policy we just kind of had a consensus that it was it was going to be a priority of the policy committee okay thanks yeah and another thing to kind of think over the picture too um is you know we do have the yearly um capital fund um you know and I'm thinking about how to spend that too um amana thank you so much for a great presentation um I I uh thank you and I just want to ask because that is perfect segue to what I was thinking is like because this might be expensive and we're going to need the public support what kind of work are you doing with the public right now so that you know things like these that are need to be also grassroots space where like you have the backup of all the community in Montpelier as well to push this in both ways where um so what kind of work is happening around the education in our community as well well right now I know because the city has adopted a net zero plan for 2030 I know that overall the people who like run the city and are higher up are definitely involved and are willing to back us up on this and I know people in the earth group and people within mhs are definitely involved and want this to happen and I think it's just a matter of kind of making sure that the public knows what's going on and knows that there is are these plans in place and um will support the school being involved with it too yeah and um in general has has been having a little bit of a little bit of a outreach this year um you're breaking up a little yeah and you're breaking up some maybe you turned your video off it would give you a little more bandwidth um that's better what the has been having some trouble creating public outskirts here with difficulties around COVID but yes I always forget to do that the earth group has been having a little bit of trouble doing public outreach this year just with COVID it's hard to go out into the public um but we have been working on in our meetings like trying to figure out ways that we can get different like engagement things that are accessible um different educational engagement things that can't be accessible by um anyone on top of our projects thank you Erin thanks Erin thank you for for doing all totally I support you and I support this work and look forward to learning more I am not really intro to just to be honest not very into intro to the climate justice work so I'm going to have a lot to learn and I look forward to learning with you great um Emma so yeah thank you Ruby and Erin um I'm very impressed with all the work that you've done and um and just thankful that you're putting this level of action uh to your beliefs so thank you um I agree that I think the board is supportive I there's I had two questions the first is for you guys um why why do you did you look into why MHS is using so much more heat or oil than the other two schools I just wasn't sure that's that was a surprising data point for me I am not sure I didn't really look into that part I just noticed that it was a huge part um it may have to do with the size I mean I know UES is a pretty big school too but MHS is also big I'm not really sure but I can definitely look into that okay yeah I would be interested in knowing um but it's not it's it's no rush on that um and we can obviously have Andrew LaRosa look at it yeah so then my second question is more along the lines of what Mia was talking about I feel like sometimes you know democracy can be slow and the students prepared this presentation and they're coming with an ask and I think it would be nice if there's something that the board can do tonight to sort of formalize our support for the students because it's pretty clear to me that the majority of us you know agree and support that we should move in that direction and so I guess just process wise is there something that we could do maybe pass a resolution or something like that um I was really inspired by Ann's email that really laid out this like plan of here's how it actually could look if you um if you adopted a goal by 2030 these are the steps that you would need to take each year to move steadily towards that goal and so sometimes stuff like this can feel really big but I think also the point of sort of setting the goal will move us closer to that even if we don't end up meeting it by 2030 um so is there something that we could do tonight to sort of formalize our support I mean I think absolutely I mean I think one thing we do is they're kind of what Mia suggested which is you know just formally charge the policy committee and yeah if we have a new buildings um and facilities committee with with with shaping a path forward on this I have a question that kind of built on that built on Emma's question and I'm sorry to put you on the spot and Watson I I'll let you finish eating what you're eating I apologize for this but since you're here and you're such a great resource kind of bridging the the city and the schools um and I know you've been and I served on the energy committee together like seven eight years ago um and and would you mind just explaining to us how the city got to that goal of 2030 and when that was put into policy how did this work at the city level sure thank you that's a great question the city council adopted a net zero policy just generally speaking in 2014 it really did not have any specificity beyond beyond that and we we came to realize that we we needed those specifics we needed those targets for ourselves and so we ended up adopting a formal policy written out with clear goals uh in 2018 and so that I had three parts to it which are some of some of them anywhere are similar to what the the students talked about um particularly in terms of of data collection um there were there are other like different things like that the staff should look at uh aligning their practices with net zero um with the net zero goal you know for example aligning a purchasing policy uh with net zero that kind of thing um and so we uh we adopted the 2030 goal um in 2018 mostly because that was that was the the time frame that we were aware of that you know things really needed to be significantly changed by then and actually as a part of that we do have a goal to reach net zero energy for the entire community by 2050 um knowing that we had much more control over our own um facilities and our own operations we felt we could do that by 2030 and can would you mind just explaining number one how long did it take to develop that policy and and what kind of process did you did you use yeah so we uh mostly it came from the energy committee once it became clear that we needed to have this policy it didn't take very long to develop it I think it was less than a year um a matter of months uh it was really a matter of determining what pieces needed to to be there and then sort of formalizing the language yeah thanks a bunch and and did you have several city council members work on that as well as city staff working with you on that we did have uh city staff representation um on the committee and um I think I I was also on the committee uh but and I think there might have been one other city councilor who is a part of it but it was mostly the energy committee thanks so much yeah uh along with your hand swap or is that from before all right that's an all to him great any other questions for um Aaron or Ruby or am as well yeah thank you so much this is this is great and important work it was a fantastic presentation um and it is a topic the board you know as I think Emma and me have suggested um you know as we put our committees together um we'll likely put some some meat on the bones of trying to flush a path forward because um yeah I think the the the graphic they really stood out to me is is how big a portion of the total um citywide emissions is is related to the the district and it's it's quite substantial um so thanks again and uh we appreciate all the amazing work uh so much so was a great work uh originated from students and we really um I'm so thankful for it uh and I just sorry yeah I just have to say because it's gonna be in here just keep us keep us you know keep coming back you know it's like some of the work is like keep coming back and and pushing and knocking and don't give up and thank you for all you're doing so thanks thank you um so next item of business is uh reorganization um uh Olivia it might be easiest after we do the officers if you can just put the the committee page up so we can see Jim I think Emma has her hand up oh sorry Emma sorry I'm just I just wanted to revisit you know is there something that we can do for the students tonight as like an official nod of support for them like if we want to I see Mia has her hand up maybe she has a motion ready to just officially set it in stone that we're going to be moving forward on this work yeah I was thinking before we assign work committees you should probably form them um like right now we don't have a buildings and facilities committee so um I was thinking of forming the committees first and then and then giving them a task along these lines does that make sense procedurally I'm not sure about procedure I just want to make sure we do something before the students have to hop off um yeah I mean we can it's just it's just I'm not sure we can assign we can definitely assign the policy committee and then we can assign the buildings and facilities committee um I I mean it sounds like Emma what you're thinking is we just you're thinking just a motion to make a resolution that the school board is is going to organize and focus our energies on achieving net zero for the district in in in swiftly does that does that seem reasonable I I'm just I'm just speaking out the cop Mia do you have something that you were thinking I was just going to say we we um I move we ask the policy committee to begin investigating and researching a policy a net zero policy for the district I don't think we have to put a timeline on it so that's my motion is just the policy committee can figure that part out but just to get something going um so that it's it's reflected in our minutes and and that way that had the policy committee has that to come back to and say oh that's right we're now charged with this that's my motion yeah perfect a second a second uh any discussion um charity Kristen hi Andrew hi yeah hi I think that's it great um thank you for that Emma and we're proud to want to do something with the the buildings facilities committee assuming we form one um uh so let's move on to reorganization the first action item is after point four officers chair vice chair parliamentarian and secretary clerk um I'm certainly willing to be chair again I think Andrew is willing to be vice chair um she'll email me and said she was willing to be parliamentarian um and chair I don't want to put you on the spot but are you interested in being clerk again um can you explain what parliamentarian is please the parliamentarian is um basically makes things we do things procedurally correct uh which requires um some sort of working knowledge of Robert's rules uh that's that's pretty much it so if you have any questions about you know for instance you know how we make a motion or you know when we have to have discussion over a motion etc um the parliamentarian is it's supposed to have those answers so um that's that's the primary function but my understanding of it is it's it's the person who makes sure that when we want to take action that we actually do take action because if we don't follow the rules we have to come back and take action again or our actions aren't actually achieved because of the way that the laws are structured um so that's how I view it and I also view it kind of as like bump like bumpers for us like if you imagine like bullying like kind of bumpers so that we don't um unintentionally have like an executive session uh hiccup type thing you know when we we make sure that we're going into things like executive session we're going in for for an authorized purpose and that we do it in a manner that is consistent with um with the state laws so that's how I view it yep no it's it's someone who makes sure we follow a proper procedure and and um uh uh uh because you mentioned um that Jerry the position of clerk I have a question from the the ballot that I just voted in um or you know there was a position of district moderator district clerk and district treasurer is that the school district are those roles within the school district yeah they're by statute that we have to have and they they work with grant in the business office oh okay so what would be the difference between the district clerk that everybody just elected and Jerry if Jerry is um voted by us to be the clerk Jerry would be the board elected clerk and if I'm not mistaken Jerry that means very little but you can that means basically I go like this to Anna because Anna takes takes care of all the documents for the most part and really it's you know have added if anyone else wants to do it there's not much to do it's vegetarian versus like the board meeting operations I think so the the district treasurer and the clerk half someone has to sort of formally be that role for the district so Grant sort of checks in with that person and says can you verify what I've yeah there are certain times during the year that Grant talks to talks to the people who are elected it doesn't happen often but there's certain times during the year that he does for certain pieces great yeah and for reasons that I've never fully understood those were positions that that needed to occur when we merged with Roxbury because it became a slightly different entity than we were when we were just mob failure and those positions were required and um yeah they're they're they're they're kind of very they don't they serve a function but it's more for the administrators got it the and we didn't elect anybody to moderator it do we need to go out and find a moderator or is that are we gonna survive without one I'm not positive what a moderator does for us so even if you had one they didn't do anything so I'm not I'm not overly worried about not having okay yeah I think I asked for people that have found me in like uh the moderator in the oh okay if we had a head oh I see okay got it yeah um okay yeah and when we we first formed we did have a moderator in the moderate moderator formed us when we were like because yeah when we created the new district we had to start from like absolute scratch so the moderator was the one who basically officiated the creation until um because when we first formed we didn't have anything we didn't have any policies we didn't have any yeah so so we had a moderator who was an attorney in town um and then yeah since then I I don't think we've had a position and I'm not sure we need one and Pedro hasn't yelled and screamed about it either has he yeah questions yeah I'd like to make a motion I move we elect Jim Murphy to chair Andrew Stein to vice chair Jill Remek to parliamentarian and Jerry Huck to clerk thank you uh second second uh second from Amanda uh any discussion Jerry hi Kristen uh Andrew Anakin hi um Emma hi Amanda yes I uh Mia hi and thank you hi thank you uh Jill hi thanks I think that's all the votes um for committee assignments um I think we can do them all at once once we kind of figure out uh Jill sorry I didn't mean to interrupt I pulled I was waiting till you're done your sentence at least I didn't know but at some point we can introduce ourselves to Kristen and just hear from Kristen I I welcome and thank you for for being on here yes yeah no thanks for thanks for raising that um so how about this why don't we hear from Kristen while Libby if you can if you could pull the committee assignments up on screen so they might be easier just to see the current makeup and who's on them um so everyone just has that visible great yeah good evening everybody um Kristen Gettler I am a fairly new Roxbury resident I've only been in town here for especially relative to some of my neighbors who are very generational and I've been here for a long time um so I've only been in town for about three years um and myself and my partner and my own daughter are here we bought a leaning old leaky farmhouse and uh our busy at work we have um a traditional Japanese organic shiitake mushroom operation that we have here at our house that is just like a fun little side hustle that's sort of like our you know one of our night shift jobs um and yeah let's see I've been in education in one form or another for about 15 years um I for most of that time I was doing food system education work um whether that be um running an ag and natural resources program at harwood union high school for um a couple years I've worked with many different elementary schools in central vermont offering educational garden programming so partnering with teachers and administrators and developing curriculum um and working directly with students in the classroom and yeah and then most recently um for the last five years I've been with TDSU after school we serve the communities in northfield lamestown orange in washington um we also offer a program at rock spray village school and I'm the assistant director there and um yeah right now I'm working on a lot of youth voice projects it was really nice for a meeting one for me to see you know students taking center stage um that was really affirming for me and so I coordinate a youth reuse council project within the TDSU district and we're doing council work and um distribute funds to student enacted projects in the community that the that youth and students have teams um important to having um communities that understand youth and families and their realities and doing a bunch of uh work readiness programming and apprenticeship programming within after school and yeah I'm really excited to teach you how um this is sort of I literally this is about a 48 hour write-in campaign that happened when I was nudged by some folks that informed me that there was a vacancy that needed to be filled and that there was a desire to have a parent voice um at the table um understanding is that there's going to be some visioning work and that will take place around Roxbury and how it um integrates into the district um you know in the in the pending incoming future so I'm really interested in that like I said I have a young child who will be at rvs for the next four years and then this district for you know the next 12 years so I felt like it was a good time to get involved when it seems like a kind of cardinal direction is going to be such um you know for for rvs so I'm really interested to be a part of that um and yeah this is my first board experience so I have much to learn and so I look forward to you all taking me under your wings and I'm excited too I feel like this is going to be a real um just way for me to connect to more Roxbury community members you know like I said we are new here we've been busy and um I feel like this is just going to be a great way for me to um get to know my neighbors more and hear from them and make sure that their voices are represented here um by me on the board so um I'll that's I'll leave it at thought for now but thank you so much for the warm welcome I appreciate it you had my husband at mushroom my husband is actually um he is the true mycologist in the house um so you don't want me to take you on a foraging walk through the woods he's the guy but um yeah I know a thing or two about Frank Shintaki for sure he's a beer brewer and I'm sure he could get a nice over yeah I won't fight it yeah yeah that's awesome and thank you so much for stepping up um we're looking forward to serving with you and um meeting you in person hopefully sooner rather than later uh yeah and as you may know once we return to um in person we have every fourth meeting uh in Rocksbury um obviously we haven't been doing that virtually but we uh we get out there um every other month so uh yeah so Olivia ready to share the committee screen Jim Jerry has her hand up oh sorry Jerry that's all right I just wanted to really thank Kristen for being a a sport and um taking it on it like she said the 11th hour and uh it all happened pretty quick and she's been great so I really want to thank you for being open to that I've been saying if I had more time I might have talked myself out of it so it was probably a sweet spot it's good that we got you at the 11th hour then yeah I like condoning those great um so let's take a quick look at committees um and so here's the here's the just a google doc with the committees but I also want to make sure the board is aware that all of your information is on the school board page of our website and so all of this information is also on this website and you can click any one of these and and uh hopefully it clicks oh it's it's waiting up here we got the circle of that you can see the members and you can also see the meeting agendas in the minutes all on all on the website so Anna keeps that up today pretty well but here's in a google doc right here right over here yeah so so should we start with the fun one negotiations it is fun Jim I think because we have Kristen and some of us are also now so can you just plain committees can you give a description of each of the committees as we go yeah I will just I'll just give a quick overview of kind of the committee structure in general we have I believe six committees that do a slightly just either they are tasked with a certain a certain task or they kind of do work that they then bring back to the board just because a lot of the the work um you know just can't take place within the confines of a meeting so the committees we have we have the negotiations committee a big part of the board's work is negotiating contracts with our three unions the teachers and then basically the IA's etc they have a union that covers everyone else including you know custodians food service workers etc um it seems that lately we've been negotiating a lot of short contracts so you know the work of those committees seem relatively constant but essentially what the negotiations committee does is the negotiations committee does the direct negotiations with representatives from union works out tentative deals and then brings that back to the board for approval um negotiations committee can be a fair amount of work particularly if there's you know several negotiations going on at once and negotiations are complicated the removal of healthcare from the district's purview to the state has I think significantly uncomplicated some of the negotiations the negotiations could be pretty intense when they were about healthcare but it's still you know it's it's very important work but but that committee can can be a time commitment the finance committee meets quarterly it basically gets a deep dive from our business manager about the finances of the school or of the district um the budgets that generally are brought to the the board um have a decent level of detail but uh not super super granular detail and the finance committee looks more granularly at the detail um and if there's any sort of of questions or things that the committee feels that the board should be aware about that aren't necessarily in the presentations that the board gets which are slightly higher level the finance committee is basically there to um kind of do an overview of that and make sure that that the board is getting uh the financial information it needs and that there are board members who have a deeper awareness of the finances um the policy committee formulates our policy we have kind of a hybrid structure a lot of boards are policy governance we were policy governance until we reformed as the Montpelier Roxbury board the Montpelier the Montpelier board itself previously was was policy governance I'm not sure if the Roxbury board was I believe it was it um we now have a governance by policy board which is kind of a creation of our own um it's follows the the the policy governance model generally in that uh the board uh the board does policy it does not do operations it does not make it does not implement decisions but it sets broader policy for the administration to follow it and and use its guidance in in its work the policy committee works on policies and that I think largely entails two things one making sure that we have the policies that were required to have because some policies were required to have by law and that you know any updates to those policies occur every three years we have to revisit our policies and renew them you know as laws change etc and then to also work on policies that the board wants to have that are not necessarily required by law you know for instance if we have a a policy as we discussed tonight on net zero emissions which we've been charged to the policy committee you know the charge is basically for the policy committee to do kind of the work drafting that and crafting it so we'll do that and bring it back to the board for approval the school safety and police relations committee that is that is not a permanent committee that's a temporary committee that has been charged with looking at the SRO position which is work it's already done and then also its second charge is to come back I think soon with recommendations about you know policies and goals that the the district can set on how we ensure we have a a safe environment for all of our students and how we want to define safety in general and so a special committee would kind of work in that way like its work might end up going to the policy committee for for action on some of the recommendations that it would take the superintendent evaluation committee does exactly what the title suggests it it heads and coordinates the superintendent evaluation process and uh just kind of uh one of one of another you know the the board does a that really like I think three major important functions uh it sets policy it approves the budget and it evaluates the superintendent the superintendent reports to the board the the superintendent is the board's only report all the other reports report to the superintendent but the board supervises and evaluates the performance of the superintendent and that committee basically puts make sure that process occurs puts parameters on it the board ultimately improves the evaluation of the superintendent but a lot of the work of that occurs at the board level the mainstream middle school building committee which I think we are going to probably have a motion to turn into a permanent buildings and facilities committee to look at our buildings facilities issues including I think emissions that committee was set up last year it's a broader it was set up as a broader community committee as well it has as does the SRO safety committee members of the public on it as well but it was it was first set up to look at our mainstream middle school building which is a hundred and seven-year-old building now that you know has been chopped up over the years and can be expensive um and then the CCC governance study committee representative on that who is Jill and Jill probably knows more about that than I do but that's a that's kind of an outside committee that we have a representative on um any questions and I can no longer see the participant list function so just go ahead and Jim this is Jerry will we be setting up a temporary committee to do the visioning for Roxbury I think definitely we don't have to do that now I was I had an in mind of of just having that probably be a retreat discussion about how we want okay sure how we want to go about that Jim this is Andrew do you mind it since we're going to be people are going to be considering committees we're going to be considering who's on what committees if I uh touch on this proposal related to a facilities committee yeah definitely um so let me just go ahead and make it because we can wrap that so yeah yeah so well let me just explain my thinking here because I'm not really thinking of turning the main street middle school it's the main street middle school building committee as Jim mentioned was really a community committee we had well at the time it was one city council member but two of our members were elected to the city council so it became three three city council members but two two community members there were I think two board members on it Libby Andrew La Rosa um we had student representation but long story short I mean that that effort needed to be put on pause once COVID hit because we were looking and that building has a lot of assets too a lot of times I feel like people approach that building from kind of a deficit mindset and and it has a lot of strengths there's a lot of things to love about and once we got into the process we realized that there were a lot of things that students and teachers really valued with that building that's kind of a side though because we really don't know what what our buildings orientations are going to be looking like over the next couple of years so I'm not proposing a community committee I'm really proposing uh another board committee and this came out of a discussion I met with the energy committee with Libby and Andrew La Rosa a couple of members from the city's energy committee and through that conversation I was talking with Andrew and Libby about how the board could approach this issue and other similar issues and I have to give credit where credits do Libby mentioned that many other districts do have facilities committees so that's when I thought about okay a facilities committee would probably make sense for us um and what I'm really proposing is a facilities and energy committee and I just rattled these off like literally five minutes before the meeting um and these are the the preliminary uh responsibilities that I'd envisioned for this committee and they might be too broad which is why I think uh whoever gets appointed to this committee if we decide we want to generally create this committee we should put our heads together and come up with a formal proposal probably in a month um but anyways the responsibilities I'm thinking of would or purposes would be to bring a general understanding of our facilities and energy situation to the board it's something that we're really lacking on the board right now we saw that when we just had that discussion before none of us including myself really understand where we are with the state of our our buildings and and the energy that it can that they consume um meet with Andrew La Rosa at least quarterly on facilities issues and to to get an energy consumption update um be apprised of and participate in the capital plan the capital plan and our capital fund are pretty new to our district well our district's a new district but they're they've only been in existence I think three years and it would be good for I think this committee to be apprised and have input into that plan with with the administration of course um and and I envision the administration would really drive that plan um and then you know um sometimes we do will want to look at some facilities planning issues like the MSMS building committee and some one or however many members from this committee could participate there transportation issues we've had a lot of um we've had a lot of discussion surrounding busing in recent years and we expanded our busing we have this upcoming energy audit that we're participating in and we're talking about net zero goals I'd imagine that this committee would focus on those issues that would probably those would probably be some of the first issues sometimes we have ad hoc issues we had a lead the the lead issue that the administration was way out in front of the state on several years ago bonding issues I'd envision that this this committee would meet with the student earth group on a quarterly basis or at least twice a year and also at least one person from this committee I would imagine would liaise with the city energy committee so that our board and the city are you know communicating regularly on issues um surrounding our net zero goals and energy consumption thanks Andrew um so I uh want to be mindful that we are quite late on Mara's training I don't want to keep her too long do we want to um why don't we do we want to come back to committee formation maybe let Mara have the training and give some thought to um I think your idea is great I think just the question is um making appointments so why don't people get thought to that while we hear from Mara and then we can come back and finalize this because I don't want to I don't want to keep her waiting too much longer uh Mia um I definitely appreciate that and I appreciate Mara you sticking with us so far um well we're I'm excited that you're back um I just wanted to put out another idea that maybe we could also be thinking about during Mara's training which is the creation of a board equity committee um I don't have it quite as uh well thought out as Andrew just laid out but I would imagine that it's um would serve this a similar function for the board as the district staff committee which has been doing really amazing work uh what is is doing and that there would be some liaison liaising between the two but that um in order to make sure we're all moving forward in the same direction um I was really inspired by the um the Burlington equity report that Amanda shared with us a couple of weeks ago and it it that it occurs to me that that um takes a lot of uh of thought and intention to come up with a vision like that and um that is another place where I think our board could um could could play a big role in in establishing that and then figuring out how we continue on measuring our progress toward an end goal um and uh and then another idea could be that that equity committee could be where we hold a progression of trainings like like the one Mara is about to do um for us and with us to uh further develop the the knowledge base of those of us serving on the board and figure out how to help bring in new board members because elections happen every year to the equity vision of uh of the board so those are initial thoughts that I have that again just wanted to throw it out there so for all of us to think on um the value of having an equity committee for the board great no great suggestion um Amanda we can continue the conversation after Mara just I want to respect your time so okay um great Mara go ahead and um yeah we will come back to committees I am I want to express my gratitude that you are that you are letting me me go I have my neck hurts and I really want to go to bed so thank you so much for thank you so much for coming that's okay I'm I don't miss this but it's so good no I I um I'm really excited to actually get to to see folks and to get to talk to you this evening um I assigned uh the first two modules of the Kerwin Institute's implicit bias training and those are really intended just to be kind of a background for like what even is implicit bias and how does it function but we are going to talk more about precisely the sort of stuff that kind of Neil was getting at there with the equity committee stuff which is like okay you have had a lot of trainings what are you doing with the stuff that you learn in the trainings and um what is the district doing and there's an equity policy what is it accountable to those sorts of things so that's kind of the the shape training is going to take this evening also I'm not going to lie I'm kind of glad there was a big gap between me and the youth because they killed it and I was like I do not want to go right after Aaron and Ruby just knocked everyone's socks off so um but I actually will steal some of uh uh specifically Aaron's uh words where Aaron addressed the concept of um whether we approach a problem with an attitude of impossibility versus an attitude of this is going to be really hard and we will find a way to do it and I also really appreciated her point about will that it requires individual will collective will and the strength of that will is actually what determines what gets done and what changes much more than that we were interested or aware right awareness doesn't change anything if we aren't going to choose to push to act so rather than making you aware of a whole bunch of stuff that lots of you are already aware of um the awareness part was the homework and now we will have the conversation part and I am wondering if I could have do I already have co-host capacity for sharing screens you don't need the co-host you can just share your screen or you should be able to excellent okay what would the evening be without a thrilling PowerPoint I don't even know I would hate to leave you all in that kind of lurch so here we go PowerPoint this is a statement that I that I think is a good one to frame how we have to go about getting oriented to what it what we mean by will um so this quote actually comes from uh some education experts that um that I'm actually doing some training with at VTHC so I am borrowing um their words that I literally just learned today and the phrase that I came across here is what are the skills and knowledge that I need to be a threat to the existence of equity in my sphere of influence and there are lots of pieces to this and that's why I kind of separated them um oh I wanted to really I will I will make sure that I mentioned the names of the two women who did the work because I don't want them to go without recognition but um the first piece is what are the what are the things you need to know what are the things you need to be capable of um what are the skills you need to be able to put into process what are the awarenesses that you need what is the context that you have to have so that's the what are the skills and knowledge that I need meaning us personally individual people who are on the board and this is a question that we can encourage other people in the district who are interested in change to think about like what are the things that I need as a parent what are the things that I need as a student what are the things that I need as a staff member to be a threat to the existence of inequity and I think that's really powerful the threat piece it's what do we need to do to endanger the existence of inequity to make it ultimately extinct what do we need to do and then the last piece is the in my sphere of influence because obviously we all with different hats um I was actually really impressed by and kind of giving the list of like these are the various hats that I wear and therefore various spheres of influence influence that I operate in and so you have a sphere of influence that is here within the board that is with the administration the way that like liberally liby literally is administration and then the rest of you have deep relationship with folks in administration and the sphere of influence of who's your friend group people that your friends within town what other committees are you on what other ways do you engage with the school do you have kiddos in the school district you have um nibblings in the district so this is just a centering question and the next piece that I want to move to is do I have the will to be that threat to inequity because it is one thing to recognize that some there something has to change it is another thing to drive that change yourself as an individual or as a body or um as an advisory capacity where whatever your area is that you have to influence do you have the will to be the threat to inequity and so the conversation that I really want to have right this second and I promise we aren't actually going to go even the whole 40 minutes because this is going to be a kind of a heavy more emotionally vulnerable sort of training is what gets in the way of your equity will what gets in the way of your determination to make things different if you know that there are really serious inequities and that they've lasted for sometimes hundreds of years and that they're really big one of the ways that things that gets in the way of our equity will can just be in like an intimidation of size like it just feels like it's insurmountable so that's one of the things that I want to that's what I'd like to get kicked off here with the conversation what are some things and I will offer you I'm going to give you about 60 seconds to either think or jot whatever you need to do in quiet processing time what are things that get in the way of your will to make equity change and you can think you personally and you can also think what are the things that get in the way of the district's will because the district has indicated a will with its policy commitment what are the things that sometimes get in the way of that will to do something all right I will give you 60 seconds now kind of wrap up whatever sentence you're on whatever concept you're jotting or thinking I would like to give a huge shout out to Emma Bay Hansen who provided me with the names of the two educators and they are Marceline Dubose and Tess Ormseth so uh really kind of have cracked my own brain open and I was like I feel like I I'm going to share this with the school board because they deserve that kind of brain cracking open awesomeness so word folks if you are willing to kind of challenge yourself to speak up can you tell us together some things that get in your way or that you think get in MRPS's way yeah Jill oh did I not say Jill clearly sorry I'm the kid who raises my hand first so that I can rip off the band aid that's legit for me as an individual I think you hit the nail in the head it's the sort of insurmountable nature of it feels so much bigger than me that I feel I wouldn't know where to start and then I think for the district well I think our district has come a long way and I think this year they've certainly you know dragged me kicking and screaming into that lens there's always these sort of competing priorities and emergencies it's like the best intentions but then there's grenades being thrown and left and right that really do require immediate attention so it often you know pulls the attention away okay so I hear that there are some concrete things that get in the way like nobody really planned on COVID that wasn't really in the five-year plan right so obviously that there's a kind of hijacking that happens sometimes but often the hijackings actually only highlight the inequities that exist and we haven't had a chance to deal with yet right and then it doesn't mean that inequities stop existing it just means things are worse and we're dealing with a house that's on fire which it doesn't sound super hopeful but at least is a way to acknowledge like yeah it is really hard when urgent things come up and you have to deal with those and nothing else has been completed or finished and it's a big thing that isn't going to be completed or finished anytime soon um me I think you had your hand up next the things that get in my way um are a really deep-seated fear of conflict um it it's um I don't even know I don't know if there's more than I can say than that it's like I I know it's like ingrained in me through um from childhood on in ways that um are very difficult to overcome um and and going hand in hand in that is um a fear of making other people uncomfortable and from being totally honest um other white people uncomfortable um if we're talking about racism because there's lots of other ways to other people as we know um and and making myself uncomfortable um and and a fear of messing up I think those are three things that that get in in my way in a really big way thank you that I mean I was not kidding when I was like this one's going to take a lot of out of you if that's why we're not going to do a really hard long one it requires courage and vulnerability and I'm very impressed and excited so yeah that is another thing is that we are we come from a culture where conflict even subtle conflict even disagreement at the dinner table is like well if we can't talk politely about it then we just won't talk about it at all right and so if that ingraining that happens culturally becomes a big deal when all of a sudden you're like oh I'm supposed to have a conversation about stuff that makes literally everyone in this space uncomfortable and not just uncomfortable but cringe oh god bake it stop uncomfortable that's big and I think Emma had her hand up next I wrote down that it's it's emotionally exhausting um so it's it's draining so it's hard to you know knowingly go into a conversation or a process where you know you're trying to make change when you know the path ahead is going to be so emotionally draining um time is always a limiting factor I feel like you know everyone's busy and we all have jobs and this is you know more often than not that type of work is volunteer work and it's um it's hard to make time for it's hard to justify the time needed um and kind of relating to the like bigness of it all that there's the work is never done so there's always more time needed um and then I wrote something similar to what Mia said just making waves and hurting feelings and I think that that's something that um you know holds me back but I think it also holds our society back culture the board you know our town just you know we're we're neighbors and we like each other and you want to be likable and you want to um you know like other people and you want to have good relationships and sometimes when you go to make change like this and speak speak out against inequities it can make people feel uncomfortable and make you feel like you're not likable or mean in some way yeah that's also really awesome the the feeling of costs what is going to be the cost of my investing my time my energy my will my social capital right what is going to be the cost of making waves of continually pushing a point and even of like looking like you're not rightful for all of the amazing things that have already been accomplished right because quite frankly I am deeply impressed in lots of ways by um the district's commitment and the steps that it's made and of course we know that like it's barely scratching the surface so it's hard to be in a place where you're like I see and appreciate the amazing things that we have accomplished and it's not enough right so I hear that too uh Jim I think you were next yeah I think I've encountered a lot of of what's been said already but I also think there's there's kind of a deep resistance and I think this book personally and um and at district level it's just some change I think you can intellectualize that it's needed but there's also things that people have grown up with tradition and you know there's been existing practices and um like sometimes actually making the changes and and letting go of some things that you know from the time you were little we're just kind of accepted as you know this is how things are done uh it can be more difficult for both people and systems than than people are willing to admit that makes sense thank you for sharing that Jim I even as we even as we talked about a parliamentarian I was like who decided that we do things with parliamentary procedure and when and why why do we do it with parliamentary procedure what is that better than other ways that we could run meetings or make decisions collectively and but there are laws and the laws say we have to do things via parliamentary procedure but who wrote the laws and who right so you like there's this kind of sense of like that's just the way we have to do things when in fact it's not it's not the way that you have to do things we can change but the immensity if if if you come from a place where your culture is reflected and the things that make sense to you are the things that the vast majority of people do it it definitely feels like why would we do it any other way doesn't make sense and of course if you're on the outside looking in you're going we don't we don't need to keep doing it that way because everyone else who isn't you right now gets left out and that that's why we're seeking the change those are being powerful things Kristen I'm going to call on you next but first of all welcome to the board good job I'm so proud of you for not thinking it through that's the way to do it the $48 turn around I actually took a training with you a couple years ago I was going to say you look very familiar yeah it's one of the most powerful lasting trainings I've taken to date for sure so nice to see you again and yeah I what I wrote down is um and this I initially thought was kind of like personal and situational but I think certainly could be um policy connected I wrote um afraid of endangering who I intended to protect um you know via unmasked up and um you know I think just I guess the potential for unintended consequences um like you know what how does the saying go the road to hell is paved with good intentions um you know having having the skills and capacity to deal to I guess to to facilitate and um backlash um and you know as a as a white you know cisgendered woman um you know I have a lot of social capital to expend and sacrifice um and yeah and and yet still you know I I fear making this step whether that's saying the wrong thing saying it the wrong way you know there's just there's just some fear in there um and then you know some other folks are mentioning just sort of time and I think for me it's like being able to do things really thoroughly and with great integrity is really important to me and so if you were to you know take on something just so important and massive that it just be able to be done really really well um so yeah those are the two things I came to mind that's really big I remember I remember seeing a um a triangle on like uh hiring people to do new construction and like you can have it done well you can have it done fast you can have it done cheap right but you cannot have it done all of those ways you get to pick like maybe two right so if you're going to do it really well sometimes it takes time well what about the fact that it's urgent it is the people who are most impacted do not have time for it to take time but we also don't want to do it too fast and do it wrong so those are real fears um and I just like to share an anecdote with you like I I ask these hard questions of myself I spend a lot of time focusing on these questions and I spent today um I had a situation where a school called me and said we have a situation where a kiddo is binding their chest within a spandage which chest binding is a thing that sometimes people who have body dysmorphia people who are gender non binary or transgender do to try to make their body adhere to how they feel like they need to be inside and so sometimes they'll try to bind their chest and there are safe ways to do that but an ace bandage is not typically among them because you can really do some really scary damage to your ribs you can do really tough things to your lungs you can really create some big problems for yourself but the school was in this position where they're like the parents do not approve of this whole transgender thing and the nurse does not know anything about binding chests we've never heard of this before the guidance counselor knows about it but we don't give it to the guidance counselor to talk about people's bodies especially intimate body parts where how do we solve this problem and we spend a lot of time talking about how do we solve the bureaucratic problems and we didn't spend time at first talking about this kid is wrapping their ribs in a knot and that's unsafe and unhealthy and while we're busy thinking about all of the consequences to us this kid is going to keep harming until a better solution is offered so sometimes it means that the adults have to forge new paths have to go places we don't already have policies have to make decisions that actually may be fly in the face of the tradition or the expectation of what we're currently doing because the harm is existing right now and we have to fix it right now and it sometimes means that we got to chuck some other stuff out the window and come back for it in a minute in order to get somewhere and making those decisions is hard having that stuff in front of you like what what what if I'm held legally accountable what if the people come with their pitchforks sort of meeting I've been in a pitchfork meeting or two definitely big things to consider and big intimidation factors that can make it really hard to exercise that will to get something done awesome Kristen and Andrew was next and then I think Jerry yeah I think on a very I I initially started this by thinking about the board and also state levels but it seems like we're talking about this on a very personal level so for me personally I I feel I feel like it's complicated for me because in some ways in a state like Vermont I feel like I really am I really am you know being being a white cisgender male I feel like I really am coming from a place of privilege and I acknowledge that the same time I definitely grew up in a place where I I came from a religious upbringing that that was persecuted where I regularly was on the receiving end of that and I mean I saw it recently in in Pittsburgh the synagogue where that shooting occurred is where my parents were married and having lived in a city of like 500,000 people where I was the own me and my partner were the only people that were a different ethnicity by being able to speak the language they are hearing all of that it made me think so much more about like what is my role and and there were lots of supportive people there but there were lots of people who in in those places also really were not happy that I was in those places I was treated very very differently for several years of my life and living in those places in Asia and so that all like kind of colors my view on this and it's a little it's a little bit complicated for me but I you know for me it's like figuring out my role you know how do I support equity how much to push for change versus how much to step aside how to push I am pushing for change how much to speak versus how much to listen how to speak how to listen I'm not an apathetic person so it's it's it's figuring out how how do I how do I support this thank you very much for that vulnerability that's really powerful and one of the reasons that we're kind of ending up digging into the personal is that our systems are made up of us we are who is in the board we are who is in the legislature right there isn't a way for the edge of the the board to take an action that the individuals in the board were part of forming in their minds and their hearts and their moral compasses right so that it's helpful to know that some of the things that we're identifying here in the personal are also the things that make systems resist change or drag their feet a little or be nervous um or not go as fast as they could or just to be uncertain and I'm very grateful thank you Andrew for raising all of those pieces that are the constant balance question the uncertainty of am I doing too much am I doing the right way should I move aside I know that I can't let those questions stop me from doing things so I have to keep doing them anyway but someone might get hurt and what do I do when they get hurt because I I can't just insist on never doing anything because I might do it wrong and toes might get stepped on and pain might happen and those are all things that even the district even big entities have to worry about in terms of pushing at envelopes so wow wow wow good good identification chair so um I had written some of the things other people wrote but one big thing I think that gets in the way is language terminology and part of that is depending on the group you're talking to so I come from a very poor background uh and to to talk to very poor people about pain gets tricky really quickly and vulnerability and because they immediately go to um no one sees my pain and so language is really tricky and I think you have to adjust your language depending on the stakeholders where the the people you're you're speaking to and um otherwise you you tend to make people defensive and you know you have to you have to meet people where they are and I think that's really important and but it's hard to do it's a really fine line to walk thank you for sharing that too I I also come from a poverty background and I'm like I'm literally talking to you right now from rural western Pennsylvania who my mother's dining room so um that there is that reality of the way that we sometimes feel our pain and our differences and even our joys and celebrations and use them to feel like we aren't like other people or use them to say like I'm not getting attention on my thing on my need and don't always capitalize on the opportunity to say I understand some of that difficulty because I'm having this kind of difficulty what solution can we come up with that becomes feeding two birds from one hand right like how can we come up with solutions to lots of the inequities that are happening at once and I will point out that the board is very new since you know the past year or so um but Tamer Okun's piece that uh the board worked on within the past year it's um on specifically white supremacy culture and what it looks like the neat thing about that piece is that it's got some actual responses it has some actual answers some practices some ways to move forward and a lot of those pieces aren't just about white supremacy a lot of those pieces are about middle class a lot of those pieces are about patriarchy right and so there's lots of different ways that inequity comes into stuff and if we look even at one lens like we look through the race lens getting practice with a tool that tells you what some of the answers are can help you to create copies of those sorts of answers that deal with bigger situations than only the question of white supremacy and that kind of oppression uh maybe your hand was up but now it's not up do you want to be up my hand wasn't up oh it was up for a second but maybe you did not mean for it be up so I will go on I will go on to Mia and then Kristen and then I will kind of close this question and go to the next piece I wanted to kind of piggyback off of something Jim said and then you followed up on and maybe put a little bit of a finer point on it which is the um the traditions and the procedures and the policies and the like the way we do things have because white supremacy is so entrenched in in everything especially institutions and the district is not immune to that as an institution I think it's fair to assume that that it was through a lens of white supremacy that those were all written and so those that feels like a really big not for us to be unraveling and that it's necessary for us to unravel as a district and that's that is like one of the things that just to quickly you know directly answer your question feels like it's what gets in the district's way of dismantling white supremacy is white supremacy itself um and I can recall a few years ago when I was working with my former colleagues on developing our own understanding of these things we had read some very dense articles about the origins of white supremacy getting woven into our laws so before we were even a country and I can remember feeling very um despondent about that and vocalizing that in this discussion we were having about just like really feeling like I just like throwing up my hands and being like I don't even know what we can do about this and one of my colleagues at the time who's uh who's a black man said to me this has been constructed by humans to your point Mara it can be destructed or deconstructed by humans so let's get to work and that's it that like I really hold on to that every time I have that feeling of like where do we even go from here that I that's my reminder that was awesome I really appreciate that and it also provides a tie back to this is still a discussion of implicit bias because what implicit bias is is unexamined operating procedures that's really what implicit bias is it's the ways that we go about making decisions or taking actions that we don't always examine and that when we pause to examine we recognize have bias or have pieces that we didn't intend to cause harm so I really that's that's the I I am sure if I if I were in this training uh because I'm a Virgo I would be looking for keywords and I'd be like lady this is not about implicit bias but I want to create that connection for you that precisely what implicit bias is is the ways that different identities that we have in different ways that we've been raised and brought into the culture cause us to not look too closely or to just assume that's the way things are or to just assume that we are making intentional choices when in fact lots of things are being decided for us because we just we we're we have to adhere to the system and so there are some costs to that just wanted to make sure I was making that implicit bias connection because it is there's implicit bias that happens in personal level individual decisions there's implicit bias that is always about what's unconscious and what's unexamined but it's also about collective ways and big picture ways that we don't examine or don't see or even allow our emotions to pull us away from so that when you start to examine it it feels yucky and you pull back those are all things that I want us to just as we're wrapping up here dig fingers into because Montpion and Roxbury public schools have actually taken a lot of steps that plenty of schools around Vermont plenty of districts around Vermont have not even tried to take yet and that is powerful and important and we're still getting reports from people that that things aren't equal that harm's being done and so we got to keep doing more things what are you going to do and another question that I have is if we know that all of this is stuff stuff is coming up we also need to have a conversation about accountability because one of the challenges of implicit bias is if you are the only one holding yourself accountable for things that you can't even see or sense it gets really really hard right so it's an opportunity and an invitation also to think about what does accountability for the board or for the district or for the moves that you make look like when you know you yourself or those entities themselves are prone to not being able to see some of the things that need to be addressed in the first place where does that accountability come in who's who's watching who's double checking the work and who are you producing for so I just wanted those pieces to also be part of the implicit bias discussion because implicit bias isn't just about being aware that you have bias it's about trying to course correct and course correcting often requires outside support and external assistance and I think Amanda you have your I think you had a hand up do you still want to have a hand up how did I turn it off I had a hand up how did I turn it off yeah I mean thank you Mara for all these pondering questions I think like for me is this idea of you know when I looked at 2,132 people voted for me I'm like yes I have accountability to I accountable to 2,132 people right now I'm like that's what put me here before I wasn't so sure because it was like this so like for me it's like things that get in the way is also just my lived experience as someone who is doing this work for my life and my kid's life and my nephew's life and my friend's kid's life is like this is my life right so like things that get in the way is that it's like that's part of my nature is that I'm fighting for my life and that when that that gets in the way sometimes of this inequity because then you have to go not only it's like here's this white supremacy culture that doesn't see me right because I am a threat I am a threat to inequity just by being me and there's all these things that are in place I also care I am part of the white supremacy culture I also carry biases that I need to work on it's not like one day I woke up and I knew everything about disability no I had to learn about that right like I had to be so for me is inequities is like being the threat and then being threatened by a system that doesn't see me it's really hard for me and then when we think about accountability moving this work is also that I'm in this work because I believe that we have to be agents of change for our kids so how do we how are we in that in that same wavelength like I come with my biases I come with my reactions but here we are because we want the best for our kids in the long term and like it's very interesting how for me conversations around net zero and environmental policy which is a very white led movement you know it's just like there's zero there's no brain but systemic racism that for centuries have just like and like you know it's the same with disability and ableism and the same with our folks from the LGBT community all the systems have been in place it's so hard to like push that but when it comes to environmentalism and I'm not just I'm not about the board I'm talking like movement-wise it's like there is it's very white and those are the people that are being listened to so like there is for me it's just like it's just a lot to to process and being in this space that that's what gets in the way so when we think about accountability I think like it's having this conversation about how do we put this theoretical things that for some people it's theoretical right to be like we are humans on doing a system that fucks us all sorry sorry TV this is why these things shouldn't be recorded but anyways I I think that it's important that it's like we are here in humanity trying to change a system that is going to leave legacies for many of our children and their children right whether it does environmental racism or whether it's systemic racism that lives in our system so thank you Amanda and I mean it is a big deal the people who do make change work their lives are all of those fears that we um you know that we kind of talked about for the past 30 40 minutes that is that becomes a lifestyle like living into those fears day in day out and just have like part part of it comes with accepting them but part of them also part of that also comes with accepting that there is actual fallout and that you have to kind of find ways to sustain moving forward even when the fallout even when the thing you're afraid of happens and so what I'd like to wrap with is an idea that came right before I started talking was an equity committee now I don't want you to think obviously that committees are like I mean committees are the last thing that solves anything and the concept is it's a group of people who get together to focus on an intentional topic and that any of itself provides even a small amount of the board can then reflect on things that the committee is doing the committee can reflect on things the board is doing and you can start to get just the slightest inkling of that like kind of external people reviewing your things people checking your work for you and looking for more ways that you can do the work checking is this committee is this uh what in what ways does this group potentially talk to the district because we have lots of important things to think about in terms of like power authority and you having um the kind of voice and the kind of influence and the kind of power that you have what does it look like for you to do work with the equity committee that exists in the district or what does it look like for you to do work with the administrators what does it look like for you to do work with community I know I'm mostly raising more questions than I'm answering but I before we go into the next training which is a couple months from now I wanted us to really dig deep into the definitely we have done change more change needs to happen what are the things that sometimes slow us down what are the things that might keep us from making some changes but make other changes easier because as we're doing this work it's just the check-in that you have to do once you get started you have to course correct every once in a while to make sure that you're on target with your mission with your policy with your goal and that's is the end of this implicit bias trading and I know that it was me entering I hope that it was very deeply impacting because the work that you have to do as a board is made up of work that you do as individuals and as individuals I really wanted you to get a chance to push hard on the question of like okay change is it all just motions and resolutions and if it's not where are limitations what are the costs and what do we have to potentially push against that feels scary to push against all right I gonna leave you there just dangling how go find committees to be part of they'll be it'll be great hope your neck feels better mara um so yeah I am going to bed immediately yeah absolutely uh I'm also just really proud and impressed with the work y'all keep doing I just want to say that out loud just being in the meeting again around and me y'all are awesome people I'm really excited that you work for the district okay bye bye mara yes bye mara great that was excellent um back to committees are you bringing it up yeah literally and bringing that back up it'd be great um so one note on the school safety and police relations committee is it looks like that work will probably go into april uh we've already we've already booked some meetings in april assuming um we're hoping to be finished mid april but um as we just talked about with mara you know it's a time consuming process so I'm feeling pretty um strapped for time with that committee commitment and I don't feel like I'm doing the policy committee justice right now I don't know what that means in terms of like if I should maybe move to a different committee or um just wait it out but that's definitely your choice um can I motion that you stay in the policy committee I motion that you stay with me second can I ask a question about the SRO committee and this is opened I maybe I shouldn't maybe I shouldn't do this never mind actually I'm gonna hold my tongue and we can we can chat later um it's late I feel like this is going to open up a big discussion so I'll hold it so should we just kind of work from top to bottom that's what I'm thinking um I was also thinking you know Kristen if you have any preferences you might want to put them out now so we can kind of think about it as we go down the list because we don't have a lot of lineup change and so um and so Andrew's proposal about a um I forget building disabilities energy committee that's sort of I'm still being considered but um you know it's not listed here um and then I guess and then the equity committee is also something that might come to the fore I guess I'm just trying it sounds like there are also some things on the horizon um and then this is probably further down the road but there might be a committee that is um dedicated to the RBS visioning excuse me visioning process yeah so I would I guess the first thing is does anyone let's assume those two committees will be formed um unless does they want to have objections to either the building facilities and energy committee or equity committee I think they're both great ideas but um you know we can approve them later but it might make sense to just unless people have objections assume they'll be improved and appoint folks to them now so we can do it all as one big package and again I can't see raised hands with the sheriff's grade so yeah I'd I'd make a motion that we we appoint members I don't even know if we need a motion but I think we should appoint members to those two committees and charge those members with oh my god this sounds ridiculous but coming up with like a purpose a vision for those committees so that you know those committees have a focus can stay on track my view with the equity work is that that's a lens we should be using with everything we do so I think having an equity committee that meets I don't know how frequently the committee would meet but that meets at least quarterly would be helpful for ensuring that we are uh you know looking through that lens when we're doing that work I think I think that's that's a it's that'd be really helpful and I'm sure whoever's working on sounds like Mia you you might be working on on that charge you you might have some other ideas in mind but whereas like the facilities and energy committee that's not something that I feel like we're going to be looking through that lens with absolutely everything we're doing that's kind of like a more yeah yeah so I think that you need to be formed within the first order of business for I think the members is to bring a charge to the board to approve okay excellent um and I think the other one was that Kristen asked about was the Roxbury visioning exercise that we've talked about heading into next year and I don't know if that would be a committee or or what that would look like we talked about it at last year's retreat and then between the pandemic SRO and everything else that comes with being on a school board and and dealing with those issues we haven't gotten back there but it is a it is something we should we should get to this year yeah I mean I think that should be a topic for the retreat and we should give some thought to how that is going to happen but I definitely feel that we need one of the Roxbury board members to be integrally involved in that process whatever shape it takes so I think you know Jerry and Kristen you might want to keep that in mind could could we um is honest still on the line could we get that proposal sent to Kristen and actually I could use a copy too or actually everybody because a lot of people haven't seen it the original proposal from uh yeah yeah yeah I don't know if we still have it but we can look for it okay okay great thanks do you want to make that oh sorry go ahead yeah so I don't know what sort of customer like this is my first um and board experience but if I should you know pick one or pick two um you know I feel like I have a fair amount of learning to do just about kind of basic you know board operations but you know um you know I think I would be interested in you know lending some energy to the facilities and energy committee as well as the equity committee you know and they're also unformed and maybe it'd be wise for me to join something that has kind of you know a more um solid identity and clear mission um but those are the two that stand out to me that I'd be interested to lend my energy to Andrew you're gonna be on the are you gonna be on the facilities and energy committee Andrew I'd like to at least at the beginning um yeah at least for this year because that would that would resolve the problem of you being new Kristen because Andrew knows everything that is not true at all there's a lot that I do not know can I make a plug for the policy committee Amanda and I are both new and there's a lot of work to be done um so I I don't know if it's possible but I feel like it would be you know Bridget used to be on the committee and when she resigned that meant that we do not have someone with a legal background um on that committee so I don't know if it's possible I said the same thing before this meeting yeah no I'm I'm willing to be on the policy committee but um yeah let's look at what else is on my plate maybe take a couple things off or at least bring it off I think negotiations is going to be a lesser lift heading into next year which is going to free up a lot of us who have been very consumed by that yeah and as much as I would love to work with Amanda and do love working with her if if you come into the policy committee if it makes sense for me to shift out and take your spot somewhere else I'm open to that that that reminds me Jim are there any committee requirements in terms of number of people I have a fuzzy recollection of that but I also could have just made it up I don't think so I think we get too many on then we start to become the board um okay I think that's that's our only issue I don't think we have five yeah I think you need to have less than half but I would like to be in the equity committee and in the policy committee that sounds great um and Jim I think Kristen also said equity committee yeah i think equity committee is is great for you know it'd be great to have a representative of rocks very on that too because I think um you know we want to make sure both communities are included in the equity work right so who's an experienced person who could join the equity committee Amanda yeah the three of us I would I would love to do it too I was just answering Jerry's question directly I mean we have you know we six of our members are one year less experience so yeah true oh that experience I'm sorry I thought you meant experience with equity no got confused well I mean it'll help too yeah yeah I think I can I just put a plug for me and the equity committee as well because of uh some of the work that you have done in the district as well um yes thank you I would love to join the equity committee oh I was gonna say did Jim just fall off that um he's still here I'm here I'm just eating and you don't need to see me so okay so do we need a third person on the facilities and energy committee if we do I'd I'd be happy to be on that but only if it's helpful Joe I think it would definitely be helpful if you're willing to do it okay I think you kind of as a senior member of the board now too yeah scary that one year ago this town meeting day I got elected to this board then then the world changed yeah that was I would also love to serve on the superintendent evaluation committee um it's just a something that I really passionate about is is using evals as a force for good um and um I just I think I could do that once the school safety and police relations committee wraps up so I don't know if it makes sense you know if if folks will have me if we make that move right now or if we just wait until that the school safety committee work is done so let's ask Anakin um do you have a preference do you want to switch around anything or no I think I think that's why I'm kind of quiet here but I think I like to be on the finance committee um I'm okay to be on the superintendent evaluation committee but if there are more takers and I'm happy to drop off and then negotiations committee because the negotiations are going on I'll you know I'll probably stick around there you're not going to be in negotiations Anakin thank you unfold the last one plus it's ending up so you're gonna so you're gonna break yeah I I think the hope is you know in in several months all you know me Jill, Jerry, Anakin, Jim will will come free from from those exercises and that committee is particularly large because we've been in three collective bargaining negotiations at the same time and they're they're all very uh time and energy intensive so and I'm happy to stay on the finance committee but I didn't realize I was on that committee so so I'm happy to start being on it what what what about um I feel like having one extra person on policy might be helpful if anybody wants to step up I'd I'd be I don't know that I could do it full time I could I could probably do it from time to time on certain policies but I I think three people and Emma feeling strapped being one of those people is um the policy committee it it's a heavy lift and next year and the following year there's probably gonna be a lot of heavy lifting there so I think it would be good if we could have somebody else on there and like I said I'd be willing to join but I don't think I'd I'd be able to take on absolutely everything I feel like we could divide the work a little bit better in the policy committee and if we had four people we could break up into groups of two do work and then maybe meet less frequently something like that well and if you're if you're willing I think you'd be great um Amanda you're you were saying something oh sorry I was just gonna say that I think there is um there's also a lot of overlap with the equity committee um that it's like so I think you're right Emma that it could be a little bit of restructuring around the way the policy committee is set up and how you know and how like how interacts with the rest of the committees actually yeah I agree the school safety police relations committee right now is interested in some of our policies and so that work is going to overlap too we could we could even potentially like I could I'd be happy to join we could we could I guess we can't have more than four people on a committee so I guess I'd put it to like Jerry and a kid um others Jill Jill Jill you already have three committee assignments so it's a lot it's up to you anyways I'm I'd be willing to or to yeah go on I just I worry we're we have so many committees and I worry maybe we're asking too much of the policy committee so I kind of think this is good that we'll start out this way but we might find that we can divide and conquer and delegate somehow a little bit yeah for for and that's kind of what I was thinking with the energy policy the net zero policy that would be kind of kicked to the facilities committee the facilities committee would then send it back to the policy committee which would then bring it to the board kind of thing yeah process but I'm not I'm not stuck on that by any means I thought the policy committee could be in some ways like the OMB you know the final stopping place for things that are made in other committees there's there's there's two pieces of the policy committee one is the existing policies and one is the creation of new policies and those two things can live in separate walks you know like the the the current policies reviewing and like making sure you know like following the you know asking the questions around protocols and whatnot but also like then if you have a net zero policy which is the best committee that can actually understand all the ins and outs so it's like those two pieces we can create that structure yeah so a lot of like new policies are you know originated in other committees and then go to the policy committee is kind of like a final review to make sure they're consistent etc and then they can go out so the policy committee is not actually having to write all of this whatever we have had new policies in the past it's been a good process but it's it's taken depending on the policy it's taken several board meetings of the policy committee and in this case it might be another subcommittee so this might be helpful for not having it take up so much in the way of board time because you'd already have different board members who have reviewed it in those different capacities in the past that too it has to come to the new policies have to come to the board right in a public setting at three different times right oh okay so you have those three readings yeah okay our lamentarian i don't know much yet i gotta study up i've got a a half dog eat and copy of robert's rules i can give you so are we gonna officially put andrew's name i i heard of i heard him come forward for the policy committee yes i i i say we do does he say he does i'm willing to do it i don't know when i when i get off negotiations that will really free up more of my time so yeah and i i think i think if we divide and and approach it that way it'll be it'll be helpful hey jim since mia said she wanted to be on the superintendent evaluation committee um i don't think that needs more than three people so somebody could swap out of that i'm trying to think so where else is there a need i also don't if all three of you are happy being on that committee and i think jim you might be required to be on that committee as chair i don't know i think jim is pretty essential as chair although jim i mean we can take on um yeah i mean having mia on and having me kind of yeah we would we were like yeah i don't i have i think i have to be on it but i don't necessarily have to know it's an involved member so right yeah um i think we can add mia to that if she goes to his capacity yeah it's more than it's more than four that we can't have right so four four is okay four is okay that'll be good in case somebody's not available yeah and it's only for a specific amount of time that there's a lot of work and then it's okay so where do we have holes i'm sorry i said where do we have holes if you will in negotiations the next time we negotiate but that won't be for that won't be for two years yeah it looks like everything else is full one question around the retreat um who who decides how the retreat is like how their retreat is organized and the things that are going to be talked about and who's who leads that do you um i do but i will like put something together and bring it to the board beforehand to make sure that we're kind of all on the same page about how you want to use the time and that's why i want to reach out and just get a sense of priorities but we will we will do it we will do it at a board meeting before the retreat is at the agenda okay um the the main street middle school building committee we we suspended that but i think based on on the current situation and frankly that that committee did you know it it did do quite a bit of work that can be leveraged by the facilities and energy committee but i don't think in terms of making recommendations about how to proceed with that building i don't think i don't think we're we're in a great place to do that just because we don't know how like exactly how this pandemic is going to play out hopefully it's done sooner rather than later but there's also going to be lessons that have been learned when we go back to class you know normal classes from this and i feel like i i feel like we we should end that effort officially and that's that's how i feel i'm open i you know i'm just speaking my mind on this if anybody else has a strong opinion in the other direction i won't be offended yeah because if the if more work comes up couldn't it be moved into the facilities and energy committee yeah or we could create another ad hoc committee of this nature and have somebody from that committee or two people from that committee serve or could just go to that committee but i just don't really you know this committee was doing was was doing quite a bit of work for like six seven months and we saw an end to it like three four months later like right when the pandemic hit but that's really kind of turned this you know how we use indoor space you know is a bit of a big question mark liby do you uh liby do you have any thoughts on this i realize you're not on the board but you were part of that committee and so we're we're a bunch of i think it's i mean it's it's prioritization at this point if you're talking about zero energy that's a bond if you're talking about changing mainstream middle school that's a bond um so you're going to have the board's going to have to make some decisions about what they're asking taxpayers to pay and so continue with mainstream middle school i agree with gerry i think that could be folded into facilities pretty easily yeah i tend to agree jill you're the other member on that committee gerry thoughts yeah i agree it's hard to have the conversation or make anything concrete without the context of the other buildings right so it's not really decisions you can make in isolation so that makes sense to me i don't i don't think at this point most of the members anticipated expected it to continue moving forward um but i'll send an email out letting them know do we need to make a motion to officially end that committee i think we can wrap it into a big motion that we're approving these committees forming these two committees and um suspending you know or ending this committee so will we be doing that in the next five minutes because my dogs are giving me the side eye here i think we could do in the next five minutes my belly has a hole that's what the hole um that looks good to be just do we have any discussed further discussion or do someone want to make um amendment to reappoint these committees with the name listed um charge the equity committee and the new buildings and energy committee with coming up with the charge to bring back to the board as well so we know that committee is supposed to do and um formally ending the main street building that main street middle school building committee um with the idea that pieces of that work could be picked up by the the new buildings committee i move that oh oh good even even better so moved i'll second it any further discussion um jill hi jerry hi christin um mia andrew i call on you jerry did i call on you hi i've got a weird screen listed here um advocate hi um so we do have to approve policy monitoring reports um emma did you vote oh good okay sorry uh so policy monitoring reports we have the alcohol and drug free workplace and drug and alcohol testing a transposition of employees um any discussion around those reports or questions otherwise we can just entertain a motion to approve the media i move we accept the policy monitoring reports for policies d8 and d11 i do have a second my second um all those in favor all right oh yeah i'm supposed to do all sorry uh jerry hi christin hi andrew amanda hi jill hi emma mia hi i think that's it um so we talked about moving the superintendent uh yes to just doing a special session sometime the next week or so um and i can send out a doodle poll do we feel we can do a quick negotiation update as part of that or do we want to go into executive session and do a negotiation update now do we need to have that in the next week or so um i don't i don't think at least with jill jerry i i think with our team it won't make a difference based on our schedule if we provide an update tonight or right a week or two from now um the etiquette liby thoughts are you're that or yeah i think i think um i agree it's the same thing with us as well all right excellent um so uh great so um i know we'll send out some proposed dates for the next week just to have a an hour meeting to to um deal those two topics and um also a doodle poll and some retreat rate dates in man just quickly um i think it would be good for us to have a full day in time do people want to try to spend a full day on zoom or do you want to do two half days so we don't um bug out on our computer screens two half days for me that's kind of my preference too anyone anyone not want two half days okay great is this gonna be during the week yes okay because i i'll need to take time off work okay um are there times that are easier for you than other Fridays friday if you're good and like times of the day like afternoon morning yeah thursday afternoon friday uh yeah that would work okay we can try to aim for that does anyone else have a have issues with thursday friday those are actually good days for me too okay excellent thursday morning might not work with me but thursday afternoon is good yeah thursday afternoon is good all right um so and if you could just find some thursdays and fridays that are open on liby's calendar and in may and and send a doodle that would be great and then just um for the executive section do you want to do five to six or six to seven five thirty six thirty any preferences five thirty is works better for me five thirty six thirty blocks well maybe i don't want to just maybe give a few like you have five to six six thirty the you have five thirty six thirty and six to seven and to see which which which works best you know over the next kind of week and a half um all right thanks everyone great meeting motion to adjourn and congrats again to do all the newly elected folks and um congrats and welcome to christin jill do you have a question your hand yeah i just i just really quick i meant to say this during the consent agenda that so i apologize is the power of military and i'm not following the rules but i just wanted to thank liby for that update about your testimony um that that i know that those reports probably take a fair amount of time to write and they're kind of the highlight of the packet to me so thank you for explaining that and for spending all the time in those committees on behalf and then also explaining the why behind why that particular recommendation was not good and the things that we are doing that was really helpful and it also just reminded me of listening to mvpr and also just feeling really grateful for the outreach and the the time that you put in to do that kind of public communication stuff not just for montpellier but for and roxbury but for the whole state so that's all thank you for doing that yes so um you're here uh uh motion to adjourn i move that we join exactly a second a second uh jerry hi christin hi andrew etiquette hi amanda yay gel i am i i'll say i and i also want christin to know that we don't usually go this far over the schedule not usually not usually sometimes lately we have a few times yeah uh via bye i think that's it thanks everyone thanks yeah jerry get those dogs out of the house wow jerry's dog has an opinion about how long this meeting was last night good night everyone thank you bye christin