 Do we have any adjustments to the agenda? Shayne, I'd sound like you wanted to add a... Yes, I'd like to add an executive session to discuss a student matter and invite Jamie. Okay. So we'll do that after that second public comment. So it was number 12 or something. Are there any other adjustments to the agenda? Okay. So we'll move on to the first public comment. Just keep things quick and long time and time, keeper. Are there any public comments? Hello. Yes. Hi, Bridget. Hello. I'm turning my camera on. I can't even tell if it works because again, oh, there I am. I can see myself very professional. Hi. Bridget Taylor, resident South Royalton. I just wanted to express my appreciation and joy for one of the better words that we had a musical and we had a music performance on the green of the band and to see people safely enjoying performing arts at South Royalton again or just even in the gosh, I think we're about the only people who put on a musical. Congratulations. And so I know that didn't happen without a lot of heavy lifting from the staff, heavy lifting from the students, heavy lifting and encouragement from the administration. And I absolutely just want to say thank you. And it was a wonderful and just have that in the public comment because I think I'm not the only person that it meant a lot to. All right. Thanks, Bridget. Yep. Is there any other public comment? Hi, this is Tammy Benoit. I'm not sure how to go about navigating. I live in Royalton and there's a Royalton Facebook page and one of the public comments was relating to it's hard to find out anything about the White River Valley School. And so folks are commenting about the baseball game and somebody had asked about graduation. And when I see something like that, I want to get it in the right hands. But in my mental exercise was, well, this is for Royalton folks. It's not applicable to Bethel, but I don't want out of respect for the administration and board members. I don't know how to go. Hey, guys, you might want to pay attention to this. I don't know how to refute it or navigate that path. But when I see something like that, I prefer to not let it go untended. Do I just identify that to one of the board members to address or what's the recommendation? I think that that would probably be good for that particular forum. I did see that comment and I was going to bring it up as well. OK, OK, great. I was I'm trying to present it in a positive light. I don't want it to be anything negative. But I also, you know, seeing those things, it's important for the feedback loop, all folks to be informed. And then we can continue to do continuous process improvement. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Tammy. Go ahead, Andrew. Did you want to respond to that? What's the name of the group? Just because maybe I could join it. It's Let's Talk Royalton. Let's Talk Royalton. All right, thanks. And yeah, the the comment in particular was that they didn't see when graduation was or what the policy was for public attending and stuff like that. So and it wasn't on our website or posted to Facebook or anything like that. So it was not where the public that wanted to potentially go to graduation or wanted to know when it was happening or whatever. And so I do think we need to be better about. Communicating that sort of thing, not just the parents, but to the public at large. And also, you know, like with the baseball games, we generally did post on the Facebook page, like when they were going to happen. But then we never, like in order to get the results, you kind of had to, like, it wasn't really posted somewhere specifically. Um, that I saw on our Facebook page or something like that. Soon after the game. But. So I think that probably would be good for just like all high school sports, not just the. The, you know, play out games. Yeah, and performing arts as well. Exactly. Marie had an interesting, very helpful comment. I might ask, just as a community member, share that White River Valley as Facebook page link. Thanks, Reid. If you want to watch, there are actually two community groups in South Royalton because we never make things easy over there. Having lived in both. So it's let's talk Royalton and also South Royalton billboard. If you want to just keep an eye on both and be able to answer questions coming in. But yeah, I mean, the school Facebook page is certainly good, but that's where we need to share this sort of stuff for people to be able to go see it though. All right. Is there any other public comments of this time or any other discussion on this topic? Before we move on. OK, hearing none, we'll move on to our consent agenda. And this would be for approving the minutes of Tuesday, May 18th, 2021. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes? I'll move it. I'll second. OK, any discussion? All in favor say aye. Hi. Hi. OK, you have approved the minutes of. Whenever it was May 18th. And we'll move on to board comment. Is there any board comment? OK, then I think we're on to Jamie. Superintendent. Hi there. I'll add to my report. I had a really delightful weekend at the championship baseball game and at graduation. We had beautiful weather. It was really great to be with the community students and teachers. You'll also be happy to know that part of recovery and part of what we're budgeting in ESSER is for the SU to get some assistance with communication over the next upcoming two years. I think that part of the recovery effort is reengaging our community. So we are looking to bring someone on part time at the SU level to standardize a system around proactive communication. So around our websites, around how we utilize Facebook. How do we look at using community groups like front porch forum? And so once grants approved, we'll be able to hopefully pursue and find someone to assist us. We have a lot of great things happening. And one of the things I noticed when I first interviewed here is there were a lot of things I saw that day as a community member in Royalton. I had no idea what's going on. So I would agree with that. So I'm hopeful that the SU group is an important part of our recovery effort is to re-engage the community or schools. Any questions? If you have any questions for Jamie. And then we'll move on to the principal's report. I don't, we didn't talk about who's going to talk. And Owen's not here. And he always jumps in when there's an opportunity to talk. So I'll start. We are ramping up for our summer work. And so just trying to collect information on from families and from our staff about some of the social, emotional learning things that we did this summer so we can just really plant, be more planful for next year. I think we've been reflecting that we spent a lot of our summer last year just figuring out how we're going to do temperature checks and parking and things like that. So we're excited to have some summer planning for getting back into some of these topics like SEL. I don't know, Mr. McCracken, what you want to say or don't want to say. Yeah. And at the high school, two big initiatives are ramping up the alternative program for the high school. We're still in a trite, the mode of staffing that up. And the other one is we've got some dates set for the summer to work on a social, emotional curriculum within our advisory program. So those are some of our MTSS efforts. For academic achievement, we're going to present to you the data report from our May star 360 assessments in reading and math. There's a lot of data there because it doesn't just look at how they're doing in May, but it compares the winter results and the fall results. So there are definitely some trends that we can dig into when we get to that report. And then a lot of information about specific events, the musical, the band concert, athletic performances are all there on the bottom of the principal's report. And I'd also add the link to our latest newsletter, which talks about people who are moving on, just so you can see that. Any questions about that report? Yeah. In there, it said that you were chairing the testing results with parents. I just haven't seen those. So I was wondering if that's still happening or. Well, I think they're going to come in the report cards. That's the plan. And there's a memo that's going to be coming. I'm assuming maybe talking before I should, because we're meeting on this as an admin team Thursday. Right. But that just kind of talks about testing in Vermont in the general and how much weight we should give to these test results given what's gone on. So just that will be accompanying that. So if you don't, you're looking for in the report card, let me know and I'm happy to hook you up. Okay. So that is that going home with the students on the last day or is it the plan? Okay, that's the plan carried home. And when you say given what's happening, you mean just stand back and all that. Yeah. Thank you for that question. And just so you know, you'll get the district results once the embargo is lifted. The agency hasn't lifted the embargo. So you can get individual results, but I can't report out on school results yet. And based on their memo, I'm not certain they're going to lift that embargo this year. So stay tuned. And that's not something that we get like an executive session or something. Okay. Nope. Agency owns those results. We don't believe it or not. So unless they lift the embargo, I can't, I can't discuss them. So we do have like the start 360 and other assessments. Yeah, we're going to go over all that. Yeah. And I think that they will, they're just, they're, they're being really cautious based on, I think some of the results that they're seeing. And, you know, just looking at historical data about how districts have performed. And in light of COVID, I think some of the data is really poor. Actually, I think we got some things that we could celebrate as an SU. Partially because we've been in school five days a week. So I'm hopeful that they do lift it so that we can highlight those results in August. So yeah. Are there any other questions for the principles? And then Tara's up. You have my report. I don't have any updates as far as any new information. Since I wrote my report, so we'll go down to the discussion items where I outlined the changes that I made on the expenditure and on the revenue. And those changes result in expenditure surplus of $586,792. Revenue deficit is $106,858, which is resulting in an overall projected surplus in the general fund as of May 31st of $479,934. So I want to say that your staff and your administration has done an amazing job throughout this year with the expenditures and have worked really hard to get where we are today. And they deserve a lot of kudos for that. And I'll have any questions. Yeah, thanks for the update. That is definitely great news on the deficit. All right, I guess we'll move on to the anti-racism policy discussion. So this is the third draft and second reading of this policy. And we can take comment on it tonight. If the board's prepared or what other boards have done and members of the board is they felt more comfortable to mark it up and make edits and then send that to me and the policy committee member for the board. And then I've created folders and then dropping the feedback in those folders. And so that the policy committee can use that to inform whether or not we need to do a fourth draft or how we want to move forward. And so Lisa is your policy committee member. She has spoken positively about this policy, but if folks have additional revisions or thoughts, please send them my way in Lisa's way. I think that this third draft has a really nice job of capturing all the feedback that we received last time throughout the member districts. And so I'm open to thoughts, suggestions. And you can see that this was vetted by Dita. That's DA. That's our attorney. So this has her support at this point in regards to being a legal policy. Shannon, I think you're muted, my friend. Sorry, I even have a t-shirt. This is you're on mute. I should have worn it tonight. You'll have to forgive me because I looked at this again and now I'm trying to find where it is. But I would say that there was an edit that I had asked for and I don't see it in here. I'm trying to find exactly the right section. It talks about racism and the issue of race intersecting with intersecting with with culture and gender and gender identity, but it doesn't talk about sexual identity. And I thought that that was important to add here. Policy statement three, number four on pay on what I have as page. I'm not seeing. Anyway, so it's it's. Section three, number four. It talks about race, socioeconomic class, ethnicity, religion, gender or gender identity. But I felt like we also should have. Something in there. Yes, sexual orientation in there as well. That's a good addition. Thank you for that. And just so the board knows this originally was set out to be an equity policy. And the policy committee based on feedback that we received from some community groups back in the fall, decided to pursue this as an anti-racism policy. But the idea would be is that under our policy, like we have student matters in policy, we have a board relations in policy. We have finance and policy, those subsections that we would have an equity subsection. And the idea would be is that we will take on additional policies that do address things like LGBTQ as well, Shannon. Because I raise a concern in general, when this policy first started underway, that I do think we have other minority groups in the SU, including our students of color, the BIPOC community that also I think we should look to address in policy. And I agree with that. I just also feel like it was missing from number four, that that is also another place where we find disparate outcomes. I think Ray's got it on the screen there now. Yeah. It struck me as odd that it was missing from that comment. No, I agree. Probably also put it in the definition for intersectionality as well. That's down below. Okay. Are there any other comments that people want to make at this time, or we can address specific. Other edits to Lisa and. Jamie. We move on to the energy committee then. 75. So it was me. I guess. So, yeah. So the energy committee met again last week. We had a brief meeting just because of into the year stuff. Jamie had a conflicting meeting, but we were just wrapping up stuff for the end of the year. Yeah, we've looked at. You know, utility bills for the different schools throughout the SU. I did get updated square footage information from Jamie. And so, you know, I did get updated on the, on the, on the buildings. He had the data from, from the RFQ for the. For the performance contracting. RFQ and. So I put that data into the spreadsheet and I don't have it up right now, but. When I went through and just calculated and compared the different pieces. To each other. And. And I guess, you know, the one that sticks out. Is the Bethel campus. You know, it's. Definitely. Right for some energy improvements. In the. In the facility. I don't know if you all, well, if you want me to share my screen or if I, or if you want me to say. What the. What the values are and stuff, but. I don't know what's easiest. I did share this with all of them too, Chris. Yeah. So, but. Yeah, I mean, like Bethel. Bethel's 45,000 square feet and Royalton is 80,000 square feet. And Bethel is on average using more electricity each month than Royalton is. It's like. It's like a square foot basis. It's about double the electricity. That Royalton's using. And so. And we're paying about. Just under $3,900 a month for electricity for Bethel. And for Royalton, our average bill is around 3,200. A month is what we're averaging. That doesn't count like. Customer charges and stuff. This was just based on. On just what's our sort of effective kilowatt hour price that we're paying. And then on heating oil also. On a square foot basis. It's not quite double on a square foot basis. Bethel is using slightly less than Royalton in terms of gallons of oil. But on a square foot basis. Per year, Bethel's using. Probably about 75% more oil than what Royalton is using. So. You know, within our. School district. You know, the Bethel campus. You know, there's definitely some. Improvements that can happen in terms of like electrical usage. You know, the Royalton campus is one of the better ones throughout the SU. We're not the lowest, but one of the lowest. And then. In terms of oil usage, we're sort of middle of the pack. So, you know, the Royalton campus and then. Bethel is sort of leading the way. So, you know, again, some of the things that we've discussed. You know, between like. Boiler. Improvements for Bethel, but then also some of the performance contracting. For both locations. You know, I think it. Could yield some good results. So I'll be interested to see what the. You know, whoever. You know, gets the contract to do the performance contracting it will be interesting to see what proposals they come up with. And how much energy they think they. That we could save. Chris, I just want to thank you. And I'm going to talk about this again at the SU meeting to Chris. I know you can't be there is my understanding, but. Yeah, I'll be, I'll be, I'll be traveling when you. But I think it has. Doing this legwork. Ahead of time before. We go to the performance contractor. I think is going to serve us well to be an informed. Buyer. So just thank you. Consumer. I feel like where I'm going to inform consumer now where I didn't feel that way before. So I'm feeling so much better. Going into this. So thanks. Yeah. And we still. We still need to get the propane and the water. I do. So. So yeah, whenever we get that, you can. Just like the utility bills. If you just send it to me, I can. Crunch through it pretty quickly. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing to add is that Jeff Martin, who's part of our energy committee. They had put a proposal together. That was kind of like a, a white paper to see whether or not, if there would be grant funding. For us to have. What are they called Ray? To host electric vehicle charging stations as part of a car pooling effort around the region. So that would be a really exciting proposal. And so I have a meeting with Jeff. On Thursday to further discuss this. So that could be really exciting too. To see what that, what that. And get some more details around that. So. Would those be chargers open to the public or would it be mainly for. You know, Students and faculty or like, what's the idea? I think it's the idea is to the public, but it's about car pooling, but I got to find out more information, Andrew, and find out how the funding works. Sure. To ensure that's cost neutral for us. Okay. Yeah, I just know there's. Not a whole lot of extra parking at some of our campuses. That is true. I think it's for people like Ray to park overnight. I see his car at the law school sometimes. All right. Is there anything else for the. Energy committee. Yeah, I'd say thank you. For all the work you guys have been doing. That's been, that's great. Yeah. I think other than that, we're. Sort of on hiatus for the summer. Our next meeting will be. I think it's August 12th. That is when the next committee meeting will be. So. And then one of the goals for next year is to try to get. Teachers and students involved. As well. So. Sounds good. All right. Yeah. So. We'll go on to the finance committee, which I guess I'll talk about. Yeah, we met on. A Thursday. And went over the. Projections and. Did a brief discussion on the warrants. And. Yeah, talk just about. Various things, but nothing, nothing too. Too important, I guess. So. Yeah, I don't think there's that much that we need to share out with everybody else. Unless Tara or Peggy have anything. Yeah, we're meeting. We're making sure everything's. Looking good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had to add was just Andrew had reminded me that the board wasn't receiving the warrants. So I have asked Johanna to please make sure that she sends the warrants to the entire board. When she processes accounts payable. So this is an AP week. So hopefully you all will see that. If you don't, please let me know. Great. Thanks. Okay. Any questions for the. Finance committee. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's up to the. Data reports. Looking forward to seeing this. You can present it. Mr. blue. It was shared in the, in the comments. I'm sorry. There was a snafu. It should have been in your board report. Great. If you're talking, no one can hear you. I was not yet talking. It's not shared. Read was talking. It's not shared with this account. So I can't. Oh, no. I just, I'm clicking on it and it didn't let me in either. So. Adjust the permissions. Working on it. All right. We're not able to share Ray with the. WRVSU conference and present. So we're. No, you can read. I turned it on. Oh, you just turned it on. No. Okay. It's all by default. By default. All right. Here we go then. Andrew, are you sharing with everybody? I don't know. Well, let me do it. I'll do it real quick. With the board and. For the purpose of the minutes, what's your sharing read? Is that intended to be a link used in the minutes? Knowing public. Possibly can't access it. Or not just fix that right now. Oh, okay. Great. I'm sorry. I was asking a proactive question not to be tended to right now, but I just wanted to make sure. Thank you. Yeah. Definitely should be part of the packet. Okay. I can see the. Andra fingers moving fiercely look. So good. Thanks. If you, if you reload, it should be, you should be able to click on it now. Rita, were you sharing it though? Is it not showing up in the meat right now? No, it's not because it always. I'm sorry. Sorry. I got it. Here comes. Sorry. Thank you, everybody. So what you're going to see is, is three sets of data for each. Test. Fall 2020. Winter 2021. And spring 2020. And for elementary, there are two sets of test data. Which you won't see in the middle of high school. Andra, do you want to. Well, and I think we, in our previous academic report, we talked a little bit about what the star 360 is versus the BAS. I think for me, there's some. It's for me, I think we were hoping for more growth, but I want to say that this is again a hard year to look back on and, and weigh all of your wins based on these academic test scores. I think some of our wins are that we were in school with kids and we were really focusing on being together. I know that a lot of our PD time, I'd love to say we spent on talking about how to improve math instruction, but a lot of our PD time was spent on preparing to go remote again or making sure we're ready to go remote or making sure our Google classroom was up to date. So I'm really looking forward to next year as we review this data and to talk about more PD around, because I think life is looking up on, on exactly our math instruction and how to improve the test scores and things like that. So I think I'm not super jazzed about all these test scores, but I also think it could have been worse. And I think given what we came through this year, I have to put it in perspective. So that's my two cents. And while the elementary scores actually show a little bit of improvement, you may or may not be statistically significant. When we get to the middle school and the high school, we're not going to see that. And it's important to remember that we started the year with students only coming to school two days a week for the first six weeks. And then when we, we made our next shift in hybrid mode, they still were not in school on Wednesdays. So just taking one day of the week out of the mix means that they had 20% less instructional time over the course of the year. And even within that frame, we started the school day later and we ended a little bit earlier to provide additional time for all the COVID health screening that took place at the beginning and end of the day. So we probably lost 30 to 35% of our usual amount of instructional time that we normally have, which is certainly one factor in why our scores look the way they do. So middle school going into high school. And it's more pronounced in math than it is in reading. So I would just add that next year, we already know that we have some working relationships with the Vermont Math and VMI. Vermont Math Institute. Is that what it stands for? I always say VMI. So we're going to be answering. The Vermont Math Initiative. Initiative. What is the I? What is the I? Thank you. So they'll be offering some professional development for our teachers. So we're very excited about that opportunity. And we'll also be working in close collaboration with the Stern Center. So that should show us some professional growth for our teachers in our literacy and writing instruction as well. So. And a lot of summer work is in the books for working on some of these things as well. Any questions? I would just add this is a new part of the data report that I want the board to start looking at more. And as educators, we're going to start looking at more is scale score growth. And part of what you'll notice is, is why we saw some of those. The level of proficient go back. Is that from the winter. To spring. We were able to, we saw some decline. And part of that is it also, when you look at just rate of growth throughout the year, we didn't see enough rate of growth. From our winter testing window to our spring testing window. And there could be different reasons for that. I think one is as an admin team, we need to look at testing fatigue. I think a lot of our schools gave this test right after they issued the SBAC. And I think that we can do a better job of trying to coordinate those efforts. So I think students just got done with the SBAC. And then we asked them to do this. And so I don't know if we got reliable information necessarily there. I would also say to you, in regards to mathematics, there's a trend across the SU that we have not put any investment. And or focus in math. In a real strategic way. And I will tell you, as you look at our data across the SU, and also in your district. It shows. And it shows historically. When I look at our star 360 data across the SU and math. This is not new this year. This has been historical. And I would say that math nationally has been hit harder. Due to COVID-19. Then literacy. As well. And I think part of that is, is that a lot of our families, students still read and engage in literature. And math is a language that's spoken mostly in school and a lot of households. And so it's an area we got to focus in. And so there's a great deal of recovery funds being put in. PD in math. Alignment of materials in math across the SU. And. My expectation is that we'll, we'll see that these scores will improve in math. Next year, if we start to focus on it more, I will tell you, I met with your middle school math teachers yesterday. With principal Bradley to look at this data. And they are a really fine group of math teachers. And the data that we're seeing is what I said to them that I would convey to you tonight is not the quality of teaching I see in their classroom. So there is a disconnect there. And so I've said to them, we got to figure out what the disconnect is. Because the three of them are very strong. But yet we're seeing a cliff in middle school. And again, it's not just a cliff and run when you look at the SU data. At the end of this month, you're going to see we've got a middle school math problem in general. I think one of the things we need to wrestle with and that I think we need to talk about at our board retreat. Is what is our goal in mathematics? And I've talked to the principals about right now, we don't state specifically. In regards to our proficiencies, what our expectations and math are at the end. And we've got students graduating high school here without having completed algebra two. And that may be okay, but I don't think we've set the expectation that we want our students completing algebra two. In a really articulate way. And so I think there's some goals that we need to set around math as a district. Because if we want our students at a minimum completing algebra two, that will buy backwards design and form our work or where we want our students at each grade level. And that's where we need our expectations necessary at the place where we need them to be at each grade level. Can I ask a question? Jamie, you say they're falling off a cliff in middle school, which makes me. Concerned. Knowing the math teachers there are pretty cool. They're great people. I don't know about. But I'm concerned that maybe we need to look back a little bit more at what. I think we need to look back at what we're doing. What we're being set up for with elementary education. And what, how consistent the math is. And how excited the students are going into middle school math. If that's where they're falling off a cliff, maybe they're not necessarily just falling off a cliff. Maybe they're. Not being set up for success as well as we could be. I think all that's true, Shannon. And it's part of why we're doing vertical curriculum teams now is to make sure that at each grade level cluster. That we have prerequisite skills that we've identified and our insurance students have so that when they leave third grade, we know. That we want them to have automaticity of multiplicative reasoning, right? Like there's certain milestones each year in math. You know, one of the things I talked to the middle school teachers about two, and I don't mind saying this publicly is I don't believe most elementary teachers. I'm not saying this because they're excited to teach math. I think a lot of elementary teachers love teaching literacy and I'm not saying this to be critical or anything else. And I'm sure we have elementary teachers that love teaching math, but a lot of my friends who are elementary teachers didn't necessarily get into it because they were really excited about teaching math. And it's part of why we've put a minimum expectation next year. If you saw those non negotiables we put out last month around instructional blocks, we said we have to do a minimum of 60 minutes a math a day. Because it's also easy within a self contained classroom to all of a sudden have that slip back to 40, or, you know, 45 minutes, 40 minutes. And that's just not a long enough time to get through an entire math instructional block. Part of the work to that we're going to do as an SU is identify what are our components of an instructional block and math, and we're going to be able to identify what are our components of an instructional block. And that's like we have literacy so that it's explicit and that we're making certain at the start of each math block that students are having an opportunity to really practice routines, which works on automaticity effects. As I was talking to the middle school teachers, I said, you know, my concern is as part of why some of our students are hung up on is they don't have automaticity effects and even the ladder. And not all of our students are proficient with place value. So we can do better. We all want to do better. And this is an area that we got to give focus to. And Gail and you'll be happy to know if you see we put science in there too. As a minimum expectation, I saw you on and I really want us to gear that up in inquiry based science and how we better leverage us seeing that as we're doing eco that that is teaching inquiry and part of that the scientific method. And it's just not an add on. So that's an area too that I'm looking for us to really try to beef up to is science because I personally think science is the synthesis of everything. But I get pretty excited about that. And so we need to spend time on it. So that's that's the work ahead. And that's the work ahead on this coming in at a right time for this as well. And we set aside a huge chunk of our extra money. You'll see that in your report that you're going to get at the full board meeting in two weeks about what are the percentages breaking, how and they've been broken down in S or two. And you're going to see that math is a huge chunk of it. That's good to hear because yeah. Is a little disappointing not to see more growth there, but I'm glad you guys are working on it. So these are average. It's nice to see the average scale score growth and how it's compared to expected it. I think that's an improvement. Have you looked at how it breaks down kind of by. You know, like where kids are. I'm kind of wondering if everybody kind of has in general saw the same amount of growth or if like. Like with the pandemic, we had some kids that were being left behind more. So like if you look at the bottom quartile or whatever and how their scale score grow compared to the middle or the top, like I'd be curious what those things look like. That makes sense. Yeah, no, it does, Andrew. And part of the work at the school level is that at data teams, they are going to be talking about individual students in this growth on a regular basis. Some schools are already doing that. Other schools across the SU that's a, that's kind of a foreign topic. But the idea is that we're going to progress monitor and the principals can speak to how they've been using this data about progress monitor each individual student to ensure that they're making appropriate rate of growth. I will tell you that I am concerned about our lack of math intervention. And so students who have struggled in math, we haven't been able to intervene. We did not have a articulated approach to math intervention. Nor did we necessarily have people designated to do it in literacy. We do. And we actually have a few different approaches to how we intervene in literacy. And we see those students making gains as we start to look into the students who are not making gains in math. Well, I will tell you that their rate of growth is not good because they don't even intervene. And so that's part of the work to ahead is to ensure that we have math interventionists in every building to intervene. And that we have a common approach to math intervention. It shouldn't be extra practice. Math intervention needs to go back to those milestones and gap fill. And so that's part of the PD that Bonnie born is going to be assisting with. She's a retired principal for start Rochester who had worked. She's retiring this year. She's going to help me. Do some coordinated efforts around this across the SU. She has a strong connection with VMI. I encourage you to look up the Vermont math initiative. It's some of the best math PD in the state. And so all of our math interventionists for next year will engage in PD so that they have common PD of how to perform math intervention. So that it's not just extra practice. Good. Well, I think that's a good point. For future reports, maybe having it broken out by if somebody's receiving intervention or not. So we can see. Like how effective the interventions being or whatever. That'd be helpful. Yeah. And I will let the board know you saw my report that we are piloting two new. Sorry. One new universal assessment system called track my progress. There's a hundred schools using it across the country. It is a much easier platform to access that data. Andrew, I will tell you, I'm, I have major concerns. I'll say this with the full board around star 360. It's cumbersome. And if we want our educators to use the data. It needs to be easily accessed. And those reports should be able to be at a few clicks away. And right now with this, it's not. And so I don't think we're leveraging the data the way we could to inform instructional practice. So Sharon and Newton are going to pilot track my progress to see if it better meets our needs around accessing data. And if it doesn't, then we're going to need to pull some, another school together to pilot something in the spring. Because I will tell you that. So what we're trying to do right now, what we're trying to do right now, what we are is it's not being leveraged to what it could. We've had it for a long time. I think it's not about training. I've been trained in this multiple times. I had it in my prior SU. It's just a real clunky. Data. House. The way it houses data and the, and the way it does reports, the data. It's just a real clunky. It's just a real clunky. It's just a real clunky. It's just a real clunky. It's just a real clunky. It's just a real clunky. It's just a real clunky. It's just a real clunky. That's more user friendly. Okay. Had the SU. Prior to your arrival invested in like, I think it was called Otis, a data warehouse. Thing. Is that still in existence? And like what, what happened with that? That is discontinued because they never came through. They couldn't. They couldn't, and I told Ray, I don't have a lot of tolerance for folks that can't follow through. On their products. So we have discontinued with Otis. I agree. We need something so that you can click on a student and you should be able to get. Star 360. Let's say if we move to track, Mike. You, The problem is Otis said they could do it and there didn't seem to be any proof in the pudding. So this would be an outside product that would wrap around the various tests that get administered. Yeah, so Ray, we did budget for these things in ESR. You'll see this as part of that. We break down the components of the ESR money. This is a component of an Andrew is the data. Track my progress. Yeah, track my progress. Yeah. And can you share, like you've been able to look at the SBAC results. Did it show similar results as the Star 360 without getting into specifics again? Principles that you look at. I've looked at individuals. I haven't looked at it as a altogether. So I don't know. I guess I could ask teachers, but I didn't really prepare in that way. Yeah. And I don't know that I've seen that it's been released the average scores. I think they've released the individual score so we can get those home to parents of the last week of school. But yeah, and I could be wrong, but I haven't seen them. Okay. I was just curious. Yeah. One of the things I've seen in looking at the Star 360 tests is I've seen a significant handful of students who've regressed by multiple grade levels. And when I see data like that, the red flag goes off. Oh, this kid decided he wasn't gonna answer the questions. You know, they were just frustrated that they were being asked to take this test. And so they just checked through so they could be done with it. And I, you know, it would require individual follow-up to see if that really is what was happening or not. I didn't see that same impact with the SBAC tests. But I also didn't see as many high scores from individuals on the SBACs as I expected to see. So I, again, without doing a lot of digging into where they didn't get questions right and talking to teachers about whether that makes sense, can't really draw any hypotheses yet. Does anybody have any further questions? Can I just add one last thing? Sure. I will let the board know, and I'll say this to the SU board. I think there's lots of opinions about standardized test. The principle is it hard for me to say it's one data point, but I also think it's a data, it's a skill that we need to teach our students how to engage in. I think it's a transferable skill and it's a life skill. You know, I think that standardized test in sitting down and demonstrating that stamina is an important thing that we should start in an early age to try to get our students to build stamina up to do. I think it demonstrates grit, habits of work, and the things that we hope students to do when they're faced with something that they need to show resiliency or perseverance towards. So it is something that we're gonna continue to engage in at the admin level. And then I hope that principles continue to engage with their teachers because it's something that we all do engage in throughout life. And I think it's important for students to be able to say, this is not something I wanna do right now, but I wanna demonstrate what I'm capable of. I'm a learner, I'm proud that I'm a learner. I'm as proud as being a learner. I am to go on the stage or the baseball field or the basketball court. And I think we need to do more celebrating around academic achievement in general in the SU. I think that we gotta raise that bar. And that when we do these tests, that's our playoff game. We get to show what we're capable of. That takes time. That's really shift in a culture, but I think we gotta start with the climate around the test. And if we model that this is important and that we use this and we take it seriously, that will help us start to shift that culture. Doesn't mean the end will be all, but if we're doing it, it is important, right? And it's part of how we're progress monitoring ourselves as an organization. So we want it to be reliable. Yeah, that's a good idea. One other thing on this report that I'd be curious to see is do we have any statistics on now that we're doing proficiency based report cards, like how the proficiencies that were, like what percentage of kids do we feel like are at a proficiency on a certain scale? And how does that compare to what we're seeing on the tests? So it might be interesting to see some statistics on like what are given report card proficiencies are compared to, you know, for the grade levels and things like that. You know, I agree, Andrew. I think that's an important thing for us to do. It's what I was getting at with the math teachers. I said, I can't believe that only 20% of our middle schoolers in math are proficient, right? And that's not the case. So then why is this so off? Why is this so skewed? And I think there's certain grade levels where it's more skewed than others. And that's where I think we gotta dig back into our proficiencies too, to ensure our proficiencies as rigorous as we want them to be. I don't know. I'm just, I pose that as a question to the group. I think that those are the things we gotta dig into. Yeah, good. When we were at the board retreat, I don't remember if it was this past year, the year before or something, at some point we went through and came up with a list of questions we wanted to answer with the data. That we're collecting. And so I don't remember exactly what they were, but it may be a good exercise to go through again at the current upcoming board retreat to, yeah, try and do that. And then we can see if we can improve or do anything different with these reports to try and answer the questions we wanna get at. But I do appreciate the report that we got. Good to see that these things are being paid attention to. Why not? Does anybody have anything else for the data report? Okay, well, thank you. I guess we'll move on to the tax anticipation note discussion. So we are continuing our tax anticipation note for the FY22 fiscal year with Community National Bank who has provided our TAN over the last several years. The interest rate on the TAN is 1.25% and the interest on funds invested on the amount you don't draw down is 1.35%. So if you please, I would need a motion to accept your tax anticipation note with Community National Bank in the amount of 2,261,767 dollars. To be effective, July 1, 2021 through June 30th, 2022. Would you like to make that motion? So moved. Do we need another please? You repeat that or type it in the comments. I'm sorry, your words were wonderful, but it wasn't typeable. I will type it in the comments for you, Tammy. Thank you. Do we have a second? All second. Any discussion? So I guess, so it sounds like we earn interest when we don't draw down the TAN. Is that what it was saying? Yeah, so what happened is once the TAN itself is put in place, it goes from the loan into an account that allows your treasurer to draw the funds whenever they need it. In some instances, the treasurer's draw it all down on day one, and other treasurers only draw it down as they need it. So it's depending on each individual district's needs and what you need for your immediate cash flow. So if you don't pull it down and it sits in that account with Community National Bank, it will grow at that 1.35% interest. And then whatever you do actually draw down, you pay 1.25% interest on it. I'm just gonna jump in. The good news is we're appearing to have taken care of some of our debt, maybe all of it, right? The last few years, you haven't been able to gain as much interest because when we're running deficits, we're short on cash. So they have to pull it down quicker. So we should be in a better place to earn some interest. And because of that, your tax net, as you may recall back earlier in the year, we already paid off some of your tax anticipation notes. So we were able to put some money back into that account to grow some interest throughout the last several months. So the way, just so that I'm clear, the way that it works isn't... So essentially, when we draw something down, we're paying like 2%, 2.6% interest, paying 1.2 and not getting 1.3 double. Sorry, hold on. I can't hear you, Andrew. My dogs are going nuts. Give me one second. All right, anyway, I think this is something we can... Okay, sorry, you want to re-ask your question, I can attempt to answer it now. I was making the observation that basically like the effective tax rate or interest rate for when you draw something out is kind of adding the two interest rates together because you're not earning the interest and you're paying interest on what you're taking down. So it might be like 2.6% or something like that. All right, well, that's one way to look at it. They would argue no, but I get it. I get what you're saying. I'm following your logic. Okay, well, I guess just to keep all facts and tastes. May station notes drawing down as low as we can anyway. All right, let's vote unless there is other discussion or questions on this. All right, I'll in favor say, hi. Hi. Any opposed? Okay, motion passes. We have your tan. Now, I need all of you to sign it or there are a majority of the board to sign it. So I know some of you do have the ability to sign the documents electronically. So if one of you would like to take the lead and I can email you the documents and then we can start the chain from there. Chris, okay. I can do that too, yeah. Okay, so I'll send him to Chris and once he signs them, he can send them back and then I'll send them on to Shannon and who would like them after that? I'll go. Okay. Peggy, do you have any? No, I don't. So what I'll do is I'll have you be last and then you and I can set up a time for me to either come meet you or you to come to the office and just sign before I get it to the treasurer. I mean, I can probably print it out and when I do my signing, I could probably just stop by how Chris would like that if you want. Okay. Okay, we'll figure it out. Perfect. And then I'll reach out to Lisa. I believe she can sign electronically as well. Okay. Moving on to 8-3, the summer board retreat date. Andra, did you have the results of the do the poll? Drum roll please. No. Did you want to say it, Jamie? Isn't it the 17th? Yeah, so it appeared to be overwhelmingly August 17th, which is our board night, which we had talked about trying to stay off of. I know, Andrew, you had talked about that, but I'm thinking maybe people felt like that was convenient just so you know, we will be in person unless folks don't want to be. I think for the retreat that would be important. And so in, you know, moving forward, even tonight I warned this meeting, the emergency order's over. So I warned this meeting for the SU office, but in August I would like us to get back to our normal business and warrant. That doesn't mean we can't provide a hybrid model. We've done that back in the fall. We did that at Bethel. We had a meeting there and some folks were in person and some folks were virtual. And so it was clear to me also that the Secretary of State's office is encouraging that. And so Ray, we'll talk about how to do that so you don't need to be there because I don't want you to have to be there, Ray, but I think that some folks have become accustomed to being able to do business this way. And so I do think that we should look to try to make that available to folks. So anyways, I guess what I need to know from the board is is if that 17th still seems all right and that was the overwhelming winner. And then where you guys normally host or how do you go about this? And do we want to host it? Do we want to have the retreat come after the original meeting or before? You could change your meeting time. You know, in August, we could try to keep the regular meeting shorter and then have more time for the retreat work. What your guys' thoughts are all about that or we could do the retreat work and then just want a short meeting after. I think that would be the approach I would advocate for. And in the past, we've just done it in the SU offices. So- And we have some food. We need to see if we can get Rodney to bring his ribs even though he's not. Mr. Riley has to bring corn dip. So what time should we start then? So if we have a regular board meeting at six, which we'll try and keep shorter. Does anybody have a preference for when we start then? How much time do we need for the retreat? I guess this would be the initial question. That's a good question. And in the past, we have spent a fair amount of time on them. All of them, specifically. Three hours, right? Is that what we've done? That's what was last year. Okay. You guys, we could start it at like two and E, you know, at some point in the midst of that. And we may have a better sense of how long it's going to take Andrew once we sit down and do the agenda. You and I could connect it and we could email out and say, this is what we're thinking. What additions do you have as a board? And then that will help us gauge some time. We can do all that via email without violation of open meeting loss because we're planning our agenda. All right. Why don't we, for now, we'll say we'll start it at three and then, you know, if it goes longer than three hours we can always take a break. You are meeting, resume app. And we'll take a look at what the agenda looks like. I guess, I guess it has eight objections. So plan on the retreat for August 17th at 3 p.m. followed by a board meeting on August 17th, okay? All right. Anything else on the retreat before we move on to 8-4? Okay. We'll go on to the proposal for Memorial. This is Ann Dodge. Andrew, is it all right if I invite Galen to speak on behalf of the PTO? Please. Galen's done a lot of work on this and I really feel like you can articulate this the best. And this was in the board's packet too, just everyone. Okay. Yeah, if board members have had an opportunity to read or review it, I'm attending to, for certain answer questions. I tried to make the proposal pretty succinct so that there was that historical information. Are there questions? The one thing I didn't see was the attached drawing. Okay. All right. So that was a PDF. Jim Hewitt. Yeah, there's a great bit left down for us. I don't know. Jim Hewitt contacted Green Valley Memorial out of Randolph and let's see. Yeah, I could probably present it if it's not something there. It is a design of the white stone bench. Stone bench, the legs are shaped. So instead of just a rectangular leg, it has a contour to it. But because they cut the stone, I believe he provides the drawings so we can see what it's at. And I guess I have not compared it to the two other benches that are mentioned that are out behind the school. So to me, the drawing was a bit fancy. It might be possible for me to find mine and put it or would it be easier to share it? You can probably email it to Ray or put a link to it in the chat. Okay. All right. I just sent it to Ray. It's a PDF. Yes, it is. Hang tight. Where would this go? And so I believe I mentioned in the proposal, I've suggested the back lawn. So it's the flat area behind the elementary wing. It's at the top of the bank. So if you've been to any of the doors, classroom doors that are being used for entrance and egress on the east side of the building, once you pass the preschool playground, there's an area of lawn. There is a very large established maple tree and a very large apple tree. Two raised beds gardens. One fit station. It's actually a bench shape and one other stone bench that's under the established maple, very close to the pre-K pentagon. Those are the established features in that space. Actually, I think there's also a light pole that is probably photo sensitive comes on at night. And then portable things that have been out on the lawn on a regular basis has been a picnic table or two or three. And in this past school year, three of the 20 by 2010s. So somewhere in that space, I spoke with Lori Egham and I would also wanna check with Josh Mayer who's been doing, I believe the snow clearing just to make sure that it's not in the way of fire drill roots of plowing or snow blowing in the winter time. And although my original idea was on the playground so kids could use it regularly, we are aware that kids can play rough on the playground. And so placing it where it can be used as intended as a bench to sit and gather, feel that that back lawn of the elementary wing is an appropriate location. Yeah, I think that would be good. And somewhere like maybe where you could sit to look over the fields would be nice. That's the top of the bank is prime viewing area for that. The stone bench that's under the maple tree needs to be scrubbed every few years. It's in steady shade during the spring, summer and fall and the amount of moisture that accumulates in the river valley causes it to grow moss and such on it. So Laurie and I were speaking today about probably over more towards the raised bed gardens where it would have more sun exposure because the white Bethel granite has just a really awesome vibrancy to it. So to keep the moss off it for longevity was a goal. The other thing that I realized after I submitted the proposal was I hadn't put in the fund balance. It said $5,843.34. Contributions to the fund were very active back in time and there really hasn't been a great deal of growth in the account for a long time. So it seems as though a project whose time has come. Gail, I'm just gonna add to, I love the idea of the scholarships for the swimming lessons based on the fact that the pool, we weren't able to make that happen as a community, but I thought that that also though really met that goal. Yeah, and although I had intended to contact the local pools, I haven't navigated quite that process but I am hopeful that there's, if Bethel pool is under the town of Bethel's office that they have a system for it and if not, that will need to be created because I think that is an important component. If you reached out to, I think Rebecca Force could help you because I know they give Bethel pool passes, teacher union does, and also DTRI Phoenix in charge of Bethel pool. I'm happy to share her contact information. Yeah, that would be a big help because an additional avenue that I'd considered though I haven't done the outreach yet was one planet but I wanna make it streamlined as much as possible. So I think going directly through the town and the pool feels most direct. Does Amber have any further questions for Galen? So what do you need from us? This is gonna be an upcoming policy that you're gonna see. We're sort of operating under the procedures now. I think that we need policy in regards to donations, memorials, things of that nature. So part of the procedure would be just this that I'm gonna propose to the board is that the group would come forward with a proposal and then the board actually takes action on approving it. So Galen, thank you for doing this and Galen contacted me and I felt like this is a great opportunity to see whether or not this would work for us. So Galen, this was great. The proposal was awesome. So I was just looking for the board to take action on approving the proposal as presented. If they choose. Absolutely. I guess I can also say that one consideration, so Alison Gravel was the trustee for this fund for quite a while and she had also suggested potentially the town green as a location. I chose to begin at the school. I was a teacher at the time when Suzanne was there. So it just brings it closer to her peers as to how I consider it. And so if the board had concerns, there are other avenues, but because there are similar type installations on the grounds and it overlooks the river valley and it's public property. This was my, this is where I started. Sounds great to me. I think it'd be a really nice thing to have. Would anybody like to make a motion to approve the proposal? I think it's a great idea and I would move it. One second. Okay. So we have a motion to approve the proposal for a Memorial versus Ann Dodge. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Shannon, I don't think I got anything from you. Hi, sorry. Any opposed? Approved the proposal for the Memorial. Thank you. And I'll keep Andrew posted about progress. Thank you. Great. All right, thanks, Galen. Okay, we'll move on. So we've done both of the action items at this point. So we're on two resignations, new hires. We saw the list of the overall things on the newsletter. Is there any other specific things to bring up here? Do we have any, we have a few new hires that the principals can mention that I've interviewed. We've hired two new administrative assistants for the South Royalton campus, Kathy Gagnon and Catherine. Her last name always stopped, Rondo. So they will be starting officially July 1st or maybe the week before that if we can pull that off. We've got some office staff training, organizational training, productivity training happening the 24th, 25th of June and we'd like them to be there for that. We just hired a, well, actually not elementary, I'm sorry. Guides counselor for the Bethel campus. So it actually will be pre-K to eight. Her name's Cara Hemingway. So she will be joining us for this next school year. We've also hired a second grade teacher for the Bethel campus, Hannah Thody. She's served in long-term sub capacities and filled in for preschool previously. So she's a familiar face to the Bethel campus. We have English teacher interviews to replace a English teacher who's moving. That'll be take place tomorrow and hopefully by Thursday candidate will be headed up to Jamie for approval. I anticipate that we've had to go back out with the choral director position. I don't know if that's in any of our notes, but we've offered that position to a number of candidates who've all taken other jobs. So we're kind of back at square one although we have a pool of candidates who applied originally to go back through. One area, we seem to have had luck through word of mouth getting candidates into interviews. So I'll throw this out there. We are still looking for a full-time evening custodian for the South Royalton campus. We have had, we've probably spent close to $500 in newspaper advertising at this point and not had any serious candidates. So if you know of anyone who may be looking for work, even could be a second job or something, send them our way and they'll be posted until we fill that position. Can we post something like that to the Facebook website? To our school Facebook? If the boss says it, then we can, we never have four. We haven't before, but I've also used- For custodial position. No, yes, I used Sharon's front porch forum for theirs the other day. I haven't had any luck yet, but I think we've got to use any and all means for those types of positions. Ray's tried out a new thing through the state that we may be able to post our custodial positions on to Andrew that he sent out to the admin team last week. Ray, was there any luck on that? I know we're looking for a tech person. No, no candidates came through on that Vermont job link. You know, in general, I guess the full board will hear me update them on this too. I'm growing increasingly concerned with the market right now for custodians and paraprofessionals. We have a lot of surrounding private industries who are offering bonuses. I feel like every time I have a local radio on, I hear someone hiring and offering $1,000 bonus and starting people over 20 bucks an hour. And that's just not what we're at right now as an organization. So that right now is actually those positions, the custodial positions and the paraprofessional positions are the ones I'm concerned about right now in regards to competing and filling. Looking at all the list of the priorities and the people moving, it did seem like there was a lot more turnover this year than there has been in the past. I don't think that should have been pandemic related or the other. I've seen two factors. One is when the governor proposed changes to teacher pension system. A lot of teachers who are on the cusp of retirement said, hey, I'm gonna get out now, why don't I get the full pension if I wait a year? Who knows how much money I stand to lose? So there have been a few of those, but then the pandemics also put a lot of people under a lot of stress. So a lot of people are thinking about, what do I really want to be doing? And is this where I want to be? There's been a lot of that type of thought process among staff, so that's pandemic related. And I'll say, I know of at least one teacher in Chelsea who was, she only takes contracts typically for a year. And so she was planning on only being here last year and she stayed right where she was because of the pandemic. And I think a lot of people may have just not moved anywhere last year because it was stable. So maybe delayed. Some of this has worked in our favor. We have an exceptional candidate coming to South Royalton who's had a second home in Bethel for five years and just wanted to get out of Connecticut. It's like enough. This isn't what we're living for anymore, but we need to have a job, want to have a job and we're the beneficiaries of it. Just so the board knows, I've asked around with my colleagues we're not the only SU seeing significant turnover. I would say up and down the 89 corridor. That's the case. I know hardwood alone. The high school, my understanding is has, I heard hardwood has 22 resignations. So our folks moving on retirement. So I think in general reads right. There's a lot of folks just deciding are they in the right place? Is it the right place? Is teaching what they want to do? Is retirement if they can retire? Our special services director, I think it's a perfect example. Once there was a retirement system, Don just decided why we wait around. He might sort of retire. He is gonna come back and be a principal sub though. Principals don't know that yet. I'm gonna announce that tomorrow, Thursday at admin team. So we'll have at least a sub for principals. But you know, a lot of folks I've had really great conversations with them as they exited and some of these retirees are still gonna come back and serve us in part-time roles and in different functions. So I don't want folks thinking that people are leaving in bad standing or anything, but there's anything like that. There's several folks that are still gonna be supporting the SU in different ways. So because of these 21 positions, I mean, how many of them are we refilling all of them? Or where do we stand on that? I have heard, yeah, just express of concern from different parents that, you know, when they saw the newsletter, they counted up how many people it was. And there's lots of parents that are like, well, that's pretty worrying. That's a lot of people. Why is everybody moving? And so, I mean, what's the, are we planning on refilling all of those positions or what's the status of, you know, we've talked about, you know, status of job searches, but are we searching for all of those positions or what's that status too? I would say we're still hiring a kindergarten teacher for the Royalton campus. We do have a great candidate that we're looking at right now. The pool is small. I do agree with Mr. McCracken. I feel like word of mouth is where it's at and kind of talking up, do you know somebody who? Do you know somebody who? It's how we've found some of our best candidates so far. We are still looking to fill music positions. So if you know somebody who, we are looking for those. We do have a couple of candidates and just trying to wrap up the year entire at the same time is not always easy. So we're working on that. But I know I was in a staff meeting and some people were saying like they were a little worried about it all. I'm not in a place yet that I feel worried. A lot of times people pop up over the summer and so I'll talk to you in August if I'm worried. Yeah, for perspective, I think the year of the merger, the high school went into the summer with four vacancies and some of those were some pretty key positions that are usually always hard to fill. And, you know, we turned out okay. So I'd also note that three of those 21 positions are positions that were rift. So there are three support staff that we decided were, we were able to save some money by trying to be more efficient with our staffing and that we won't be replacing those. Thanks everybody. Guess we have our second public comment now. Anybody has anything else? Is there any public comment? Representing the public, I have no comments. All right. I guess we'd be on to our executive session. Why don't we set the future agenda items and then we can, does anybody have any future agenda items? I don't think there was anything. I guess the next thing would be the retreat. Anyway, so yeah, I guess we'd be on to the executive session. So do we want Damian principles or just Damian? I'd like it to just be me tonight. Okay. And then I'll follow up with the principles after. Sounds good. Good night everyone. Thanks everybody. Thanks. We still need a motion. Did it go? All motion that we go into executive session at 731. One second. All right. Second. All right. Thanks everybody. Thanks guys. Thank you all. Good night. Night. Night.