 Because we're going to stay on agenda and we're going to. If anybody blows it out of the water, it'll be me with the budget discussion. So, or how many questions you have? We don't have any. Absolutely. We're welcome, Brandon. It's been a long week. Yes, it has. 90 seconds. That's about a three. All right. 6.02, are we ready to? I'm going to call the meeting to order. And we have an adjustment to the agenda. So I'm going to ask Lane to just tell us a little bit about it. So I had this is a have two kind of late request access funds from the reserve accounts for two primary purposes. The first one is for $67,500. And that is to replace two trucks, one of which is non-functional right now. The other, and this is for facilities used for snow plowing, the other that the transmission has just dropped and the cost of replacing it isn't worth the cost. And so that one would actually come from the Transportation Reserve Fund. And then, so I apologize for that. The other one that we have is kind of neat. And it goes along with some of the work that we're planning in trying to get done over the next year or so. And they're trying to build an outdoor classroom space at Randolph Elementary. They have actually secured a small grant, about $3,000 or $4,000 to assist in this. But the grant has a time window on it, and the window's going to run out pretty soon. And so they're asking for the additional funding required to be able to make that happen, which is about $13,700. We do have a, as part of the big recovery plan that we built, this is one of the goals of that recovery plan is to set up those outdoor classrooms at the elementary levels. Eventually there will be one at all three schools. And we do have a curriculum specialist in outdoor lessons inherent, so I think it's a good investment. So those are the two things that we're looking for tonight is board's approval to take that money from those reserve funds for those purposes. So what I need the board to do is just approve and change to the agenda, and to add that approval to the consent agenda. So second? Second. Any questions? In favor? Aye. We're removing that spending of reserve funds, I guess. OK, so tonight we're going to just spend a little bit of time just reviewing monitoring and the purpose of monitoring. We're going to also spend some time seeing where Lane is in his development of the budget. And we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about our linkage with our ownership in terms of reports for voters at the end of the meeting. So that's sort of the focus of this meeting tonight. OK, so the other thing that we need to get started is a meeting evaluator. We have a volunteer. Oh, I'm on it. I have to talk to him. The leader for me. OK. So before we start public comment, I wanted to just, and I had Linda bring these two brochures to the meeting tonight just because I had gotten a message from a community member just confused about what the rules were and around how we're managing public comment. And so I was just looking around and I found that in this brochure and also on our website under our required policies, we do have sort of a stated section. So if you look in the one brochure that says understanding the mission work and procedures for the OSU, school, blah, blah, blah, if you look in under the third panel on the right, there is a section there that sort of outlines how we're supposed to manage the public comment. So if you see there, it says we set aside public comment time at the beginning of each scheduled meeting. In some cases, a time limit may be placed on how long or many times a participant may speak on a particular issue. In addition, the chair will ask for comments on agenda items before action is taken by the board. That was something that I hadn't been doing and hadn't realized that we actually had a procedure on that. So I would appreciate board members keeping me on track to make sure that I'm doing things as I'm supposed to as the chair. And then just reading a little bit further down, every effort will be made to hear all comments appropriate to an issue. But the chair may rule out of order comments to breach privacy of student parents or school employees or that do not comply with board policies on complaints. So anyway, I just wanted to bring everybody's attention to the brochures so that we all sort of are familiar with them. And if we feel like they're no longer appropriate, we may want to make some changes to them. For now, these are the procedures that we have. So with that review, I'm going to open up the meeting to any public comment. And I also want to recognize that I did. I had that one public comment was an email. That's why I was researching this. Right. And that was from Nora Skolnick. And then we also had an email that, thank you, Brian, for pointing it out to me. Because for whatever reason, it did not come to my email. It's only because I responded to that email and it went to that dog. It went to me, which is so bizarre. Yeah, because I checked my trash. I checked my spam. And I had no email there. But anyway, we've had an email question to the board regarding the attendance protocols for major sports that I responded to. Those are the recognition of our electronic public comments. Did anybody else have any? I mean, I don't know if at some point we want to add maybe something about how we want to respond but it's electronic. Because when we do the public comment in the meetings, we don't respond to the person. When I get an email, I often respond. So I'm going to say, this is Manaportima. And I'm the one who sent in, obviously, the email last week regarding the athletics. And I don't know if now is an appropriate time to speak up. I know by the time I heard back from you and I had drafted an email back, it was too late to get anything on the agenda, obviously. Manaportima, just stop you right there, just because I want to answer Anne's kind of more general question about we should have policy on electronic comments. If someone writes to just one of the board, they're not necessarily meaning it to be a public comment. Or are they? I don't know if we can determine that. I think that's maybe something we might want to think about for our procedures is how do we want to manage email communication from community members? Right, because our emails are up there. But if they choose to do that rather than public comment, is that a, you know. And how do we want to manage that? I think that's important for the board to think about and come up with some procedures to talk. OK, sorry, Matt, you want to? Oh, no worries. And as a person who typed in, I don't know how many emails to get it to you all, it would be awesome if there was a group email for that would address the entire board. So that would, one click goes to all OSSD board members. That would be very helpful because at any one point you can type one of those characters wrong. So I did inquire about the sports attendance. And Mr. Millington, I did read your email, which I've, you know, I appreciate the fact that you took into consideration other schools and whether it was in the local area or within the leagues. I'm not clear necessarily which one, it doesn't matter. So I do appreciate you guys getting together and trying to find some common approach to it. And I do appreciate the fact that we're leaning towards allowing the spectators. As a parent of an athlete who had to miss last year, winter sports watching our child, it's not fun. It's not a great way to interact with our kids. And our kids aren't seeing our support in that way. It's very challenging to be there for your kid when you're not allowed to be. And while I appreciate the environment that we were in last year, it would seem like everybody is, you know, not everybody, but most people are in Vermont are following the protocols or following the vaccination guidelines or doing what they need to do. And Mr. Millington, you and I have had discussions in the past about the liability to the school and I understand that the school is not protected. So I can also appreciate that. But in your response to my question, you communicated that the board has chosen to delegate all decisions in this area to the superintendent. And while I can respect that decision, I would also ask that as the board, that you also take into consideration the parent's perspectives and needs to be involved in their kids. And especially when it comes to some of the things that we are allowed to participate in, like the sports, it's crucial that we're there. It's crucial that we're part of our kids' lives. And missing out that on a second year is just not, you know, an option I would think for our students and for our parents. As a coach, I know that parents can be difficult during these times as well. So I can appreciate there's one or two parents that may pose challenges. And Mr. Millington, when I read your email, I felt more threatened honestly than anything because it seemed like if there was one action, then that's gonna affect all parents and all students. And I don't think that's the appropriate approach. As a part of the school, as a parent, as part of the Boosters Club, that's just getting kicked off again. If there's anything we can do to support the safety of these events, we will volunteer to do so. If it's taking temperatures as they come in, if it's reminding people to wear a mask, if it's handing out masks as they come into the events, we wanna be there to help. I know schools are stretched thin and resources are thin, but let us help before our unilateral decisions may need to just block parents from being a part of our kids' lives at these events. We wanna help, we wanna take part in whatever we can do. Please let us do that before some rash decisions being made. And on the second part, I know there's stuff happening in the state. One of them substantiated a soccer game, the other one's still being investigated. I hope our fans aren't the behaviors that we've witnessed or alleged witness by other folks. And I like to believe our fans are not in that mode. But again, the email was very threatening to say, hey, if we have an instance of this, we very well may do X, Y, and Z. So please don't let one or two community members that may or may not follow the intent of all the goodwill parents are trying to do affect those trying to be involved in our kids' lives. And please, when we can, let the parents help. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Matt. Appreciate it. Is there any other public comment? I think one that David, David White. And again, with this public comment, remember that we listen. It's not, we're not engaging in a dialogue. We go through this. So the other thing that I, the other brochure that I wanted to just make sure everyone had a copy of is our complaint procedure, which is also on our website under our procedures. And this is just something that we all should be aware of. And again, as a board, if you review it and you feel like, wait, I think we need to make some changes to it. Please, let me know when we can put it on the agenda. That's something to work on. But for now, this is our complaint procedure. And I've had all of these brochures are, they're located in the OASA office. And I believe they're all also some in each one of the schools in the district. So they're out there, but I don't, I don't always know if people know that they're there or if they grab them. So anyway, I just wanted to make sure that we all had it and are familiar with it. Okay, so next up, I wanted to talk a little bit about monitoring just because as we are continuing on and trying to learn and get better at being board members and learn how to follow our policies and the monitoring part is pretty important in terms of holding Wayne accountable and being sure that we're doing what we need to be doing. And at the same time, hopefully getting a system in place so that we're not spending hours and hours looking back in the past, but spending our time looking forward and engaging with our community, engaging with what's happening in education so that we can continue to improve our system. So one of the things that I wanted to do was to just hopefully everyone had a chance to review the material from our training in the summer. And I put together some questions that we could just sort of talk about and make sure that we were all sort of on board and clear about the role of monitoring in our governance. So we're all able to kind of review those sections of the training where people are able to get to them. So are you able to, so I'm just gonna kind of go, I'm gonna pose those questions. So what role do our policies have in the monitoring process? If we were to sort of think about that, what is the purpose of our policies? Our ends policies are executable limitations. Have we all had a chance to kind of think through that and digest from the training? Are you able to jot down that question? I didn't get to it so. So would it be helpful for the, if we look at that material together as a group and just sort of review it, the monitoring information? Or do people feel like they are clear on how the monitoring fits in the way our board works? Hello. So, Anne, I appreciate you putting together these questions to discuss the monitoring because I think that's helpful just to get the thought process started. I guess I feel like it's pretty clear, the monitoring process, it's pretty clear. And from what I've seen over the last few meetings, since I started, Lane's very thorough sort of description of what he does to sort of meet those, meet the monitoring standards seems very clear and like it doesn't need to be fixed. That being said, other than him reporting back, I don't know how to go further than that and have it be like checked by other people. And if that's a process that needs to be put in place on the policy level, I'm not quite sure. What are people on the board thinking in terms of when we do get these monitoring reports, do we feel comfortable with the evidence that's presented? I feel comfortable with it, but it's still that same issue that's always come up. And just what Chelsea said is everything looks great and is fine, but we don't know anything else is the real thing. And I don't know how you would find anything else out. I mean, I don't have any reason to suspect there's anything going on, but we only know what's in these reports. That's a good point, Brian, like for instance in what it's about relations between this party and this party, if it's being recorded and the rationale and the evidence is being. Yeah, I mean, I have no reason to suspect there's anything different and Lane seems to be doing a great job of, I have no reason to suspect anything else, but we don't know, we're exactly. And I don't know how we do that and still meet all our policies. What else you would ask to see? Exactly, I don't know what we would ask, but. I think like in some cases, you have outside folks that are checked into, especially on the financials, which is the biggest outside of the kids, it's the biggest secret trust that you have. And so that's the auditors that are in working every year, which I think is important, but this was a quandary way back when I kind of started and kind of looking back at the past and going, yeah, this is a limitation here. So I would argue a few things is if there are things that are concerning there and I'm not providing you with an adequate explanation, or I provide you with an adequate explanation but people are still coming to the board, you know, months later complaining about the same thing, those are things that you might want to do a direct investigation with. And usually that's getting an outside person to come in and say, hey, these are the things that we're concerned about, go take a look. And that's perfectly appropriate and you should do that if there are concerns. And the PSBA would help us with that, right? What's that? The PSBA would help us with that. Oh yeah, a PHO would guide you, he would connect you with an outside person who does kind of investigations. Taylor, the specific pieces that you're concerned about. Has that ever been done in this district that we know? I have at my level for things that this might be a conflict of interest if I'm the one that's looking at it. So we've had folks come in and take a look or what they needed to look at was so nuanced in terms of the law, I didn't want to screw it up. And so I wanted somebody else to come in and do that. I think one of the things that should have happened a little bit more often years ago was there were times that the board was hearing repeatedly of the same concerns and whatnot. I think being told that things were okay but yet the concerns were still there. Those would have been times that it would have been time to have somebody take a look. Because usually the community kind of knows or the teachers kind of know what's going on. So I think that's important but that's usually the tell-tale sign. If you're getting serious complaints and concerns and I've come in and I said it's been resolved that there's still serious concerns coming up months later that's the time to take a look. It seems to me too, I mean the way our policies are they're covering so many aspects that it would be hard if it's not monitored if we're not getting evidence from one area we're getting it from another area. But that's where I think as we look at these monitoring reports and we look at the interpretation that's made of giving us I think we need to be thinking about it is this reasonable. And then the evidence, one of the things I was reading about and I've heard Susan the trainer speak about is observable conditions. Like what would you see? What would you see? You'd see job descriptions, you'd see this and I think you'd see systems in place that so I think as we look at evidence we wanna make sure that there's sort of a systemic sort of process for things in the main functioning of the organization so that. And if folks haven't seen these especially with the monitoring reports when it's possible the sample evidence I try to actually include it in the narrative. It's not always possible. And so these that the current two that we're working on are always sitting on top of the bookshelf that anybody can come in and look. But the supplemental evidence is always in there. And that's always good to look at too because if you look at it in, if you look at it and go, well this doesn't really fit what he's saying or there are other things that we think would be a better indicator. Those are things that the board certainly has a right to request. So that's important too. That's the type of thing when we're looking at that interpretation up on the monitoring reports that we are going on. Oh, okay. That we look at that interpretation closely when we're looking at the monitoring reports because that's where we would take a look at his interpretation and maybe ask for something more or say, but I think part of the concern is that the more that we may want wouldn't necessarily come from life. The more that, you know. Right, right. Or we could say, right, but his interpretation could include, I don't know, an anonymous survey or, you know, something else or. I think what would be nice is even if it's just we could get some information that would confirm that Lane's stuff is that is right on. I mean, and then it just feels like we're going through the motions because I mean, everything that Lane gives us looks like everything's good. Do we just assume that? I don't know. I don't know any different that we don't do that. And, but I don't know how we would, especially with our policies where we are kind of limited to only real contact with Lane. So how do we interact with, to get that kind of confirmation that his information is correct? So usually the, you know, that would be a, hey, you know, it would be brought up in a meeting and say, hey, you know, we'd like a little bit more. The board would make a motion, we'd move on it. I mean, there are people in the district that can take a peek at things. You know, there's always Robin in the business office if it's on the financial, you know, we work closely together, but we're separate entities. And if she's fit and she's up the creek, you know, as much as I am in different ways. And so, you know, you've got a person who's probably going to be pretty straight up honest with you. The, you've got the tech directors, you've got the principals you can shoot the breeze with and those sorts of things. But usually it is, it's the proper process would be, hey, you know, we've got these concerns. This is what we'd like to see. And then the board would just vote on what you wanted to do because there is always the right for an outside inspection. But you can't approach them individually, correct? Right. Board, but you have to have the board's authority too. Right, right. And that's where, so the way we've been doing the monitoring is we've been trying to, after we monitor a couple of our policies, that's why we keep going then to taking a look at those policies and seeing if we want to change them at all. Because first, we're going to be monitoring and if it seems reasonable, it's interpretation. Then at that point, as long as it seems right, the board looks at it and says, yep, this is a reasonable interpretation of the policy. And he's provided evidence to support that reasonable interpretation. Then we accept and we accept the report. But then what we can then do is change that policy to dive a little bit deeper. But we feel like it's not getting enough of what we what we need in order to feel comfortable at things that are working because we would want them to work as a board. I ask it. Chelsea, why don't you go first because you don't want to and I'll go after you. Can everybody hear me? I'm having a little bit of a hard time hearing the discussion that's happening in the room, I think. But what I was going to say and I don't, in an effort to not create more work because it seems like every single topic could use a subcommittee just to get stuff done before the next meeting, it would seem like a subcommittee would be an idea that would look at next month's monitoring reports or next month's monitoring questions, I guess, and be like, how can we check in on this? Should we ask this outside person or that outside person and then report back to the board? We'd agree with Lane's monitoring report or we disagree and we want to look into it more or we disagree and don't want to look into it more. I mean, I don't know, it just seems like everything needs just a little bit more time and effort put into it than what we do. It used to, in the, I think it was my first year here, what used to happen was the board would, there was usually two people that were kind of designated and they would at least show up at the office, they'd go through the folders, they had a little rubric because rubrics are still in the folders by the way and they would just take a deep look at things and then kind of report back to the board when you guys got to the point where you were approving or voting on the memo, was they going, hey, yeah, no, it looked good or no, it looked like there were some things missing that we might want to ask for. And so that was a process that was in place, I think my first year. The other piece to know is that as an agency that was receiving funding from both state agencies and federal agencies, there are a lot of folks that are coming in, always looking at things and be guaranteed that if they see something that's out of lat and the first person that letter goes to, it'll go to me and it'll go to the board as a whole. And so that's another protection that's there as well. We're failing to do something that's required and there's a lot of things that are required to do. The agency of education, the secretary of education say, hey, it looks like you guys are missing this and this and this, what's going on? And that would go directly to the board. So along the line kind of of what Rachel said about, we don't know, we don't know. I'm wondering if there's ever any way to, we have our policies right now, we're kind of, I feel like we're kind of like the cat chasing a tail right now because we don't know, we don't know what we don't know and we don't know what we should be asking for, we don't know how we should define that in our policies. Is it worth looking into, I don't know if this is a service that the BSBA does, but having somebody review our policies who understands school policy and is like, okay, this has been however many years it's been since they've been created, these are some things that have come up in the preceding years that maybe you want to frame some language. I feel like we don't know where the language needs to change, but we're continuously having these kind of conversations that are just spinning in that circle and maybe those things that someone else could come in and would be able to look at our policies and say, okay, these look good, you may want to specify some language around this aspect here, this is what other schools have got to be helpful, it helps with their monitoring reports on this end and you'll get this information included. So, I feel like we could just talk about this first. You guys actually have one of the most well-developed policies in terms of yell that are out there, but you are right if things have changed, do other areas that we should be looking at other things differently, because the regulatory or the landscape has changed around the world, if it's a good point. It was 2016, right? Is that when they were adopted? Yes, yeah, I think so. You guys probably had a couple of years of work before that, I'm sure. Adopted in 2016. And that work was not done, that work was obviously done in conjunction with somebody advising them, I'm assuming. Yes. I thought. She did. Megan, did you have a comment or a question? Megan, do you have a question? I don't know if you guys are speaking to me and I'm sorry to interrupt if you're not, but earlier in the meeting I could see the room and I could hear everybody and now I can't, when everyone else is talking other than Lynn and I can't hear anything. We might just be the distance to the owl. But it was okay in the RTCC? Meeting? It was fine earlier, even in the beginning of this meeting was fine and now it's cutting out. I think we're talking a little softer too. Jeff, we're in theater, right? Okay, did you have a question about, or a comment regarding the monitoring discussion? Megan? Yeah, she can't hear me. Not necessarily, I didn't hear everything that was said so I was just trying to see if we could fix this down. Sorry, I can't hear anything except for Lane. All right, we have an IT person taking a look. Hopefully that'll make a difference. Okay, so should I wait? What do you think? Okay, give it just a sec. No, you just do it. I was like, is it just staring at me? It's like it's staring right at me. What's that, the owl? Yeah, the owl. That's whoever's talking, it's whoever's talking. It's the density of it. That is much better. Okay. I mean, I don't know. Were you having problems too, Chelsea? Yeah. How about now, Megan, can you hear me? Oh, yeah. Can you hear me? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so what had come up, Megan, was Hannah had, or no, it was Katya was saying that maybe what we need is to have some kind of, maybe somebody from the BSBA or someone who's familiar with policy governance at the school level to take a look at our policies and help us kind of think about what areas maybe we might want to tweak them one way or the other. Okay. I don't know if somebody said this before, but I was looking at the monitoring discussion questions that you had sent out. And I feel comfortable with the overall monitoring process, but I was feeling like I don't know enough about the policies themselves, whether or not we are sufficiently, approving whatever Lane is providing to us and knowing whether or not it's enough or if he's not, you know, it's hard to know. So that was my only concern was just like, if we had clarity around our actual policies, I would feel the same way. Like I would feel better if I knew more about the policies themselves versus, or I guess before we go in and monitor them and say, yes, this is good, like is it? What do other school districts do? How do we know we are including everything that we need within the policy? Or do we not have enough? Or does Lane agree with the policies? You know, like what is his take? Does he wish we asked for more, less, you know, things like that? I don't know. That was kind of my overall feeling. I don't know what other people said. Sorry about that. No, that's okay. Sorry that our tech wasn't working right. It almost feels like people are expressing a need to feel some ownership over the policies, right? So we know if we're getting what we want because they are our policies, the people who are actually on the board now. Sure, I would agree with that. It's our policies look good to me, you know, but is it enough or is it too much? So maybe someone from our board should reach out to the Vermont School Board Association and sort of get organized with them about looking at them, seeing if they're current, seeing if they're adequate, and then a couple of people from our board should look at it and every month sort of say, is this it? I mean, we could just implement the process that was in place. Like Lane said, the first year he was here, I'm not quite sure why that stopped, but it sounds like that was what we're all kind of talking about. Like two people going into the office, taking their form, just making sure that everything fit into the boxes, in terms of being complete and being accurate and being successful, I guess. So I'm actually hearing two things. I'm hearing maybe looking for a consultant or someone to help us review the actual policies that we have. And then also I'm hearing, and maybe we wanna try the old way of having two people. So you have another board member to sit with and look at a policy together and look at the binder and have a discussion as you're looking at the evidence that's supporting the monitoring report and looking at the interpretation of the monitoring report. Is that what everybody else heard? Yeah, and I think both both hold value. I don't think it has to be one or the other. Right, right. So I guess from here, Rachel. Oh, Rachel? Yes, one thing I wonder about is if that was the way it was done and it's not done that way anymore, is there a reason? And is it a good reason? And if it's not done that way anymore, was there a failure and where did the failure come? Why did that, why was that policy or that way of doing things where two people would go and look at the binder? Why was that moved away from? That's asking complicated questions. I do know that I was frustrated about preparing the binders when nobody was coming and looking at them. There was a lot of transition. And I think there was a lot wrong with the, there were a lot of things going wrong with the district at that period. In terms of, yeah. And I think the board had no idea. And I think things were dysfunctional. And so, you know. So the board looking at this, like the two people going to look at the binder didn't protect us from things going wrong. True, but again, that was, and I was actually the one that brought it up to the board, the exact conversation that you were happening three years ago. As I looked and I said, the problem is, is that you're only getting information from the superintendent. I can put whatever I want in there. And as long as it looks good, you're not gonna know the things that I'm not showing you. And so we still never, we even had a training on it. I don't know if that was the first year. It was sometime in there. It was probably closer to the beginning of the second year to try to come up with, well, how do we resolve this? And the only thing that I could come up with, and even though the trainer couldn't come up with anything better, it was just that idea, is that if you are getting complaints, and that was the idea that I presented, if you are getting complaints, and I told you that I fixed it, and I've shown you evidence, and you're still getting complaints about the same thing, it's time to take a look. Because when I look back to previous years, that seemed to be the pattern that would have told people something was on. And so that's the only solution I was able to, and we didn't get a good answer from. Well, the answer we actually got, I think I remember her words, was if you can't trust your superintendent to be putting those things in there properly, you've got other things to be worried about. That was her words. I mean, maybe we do just what you said. If we don't hear any complaints, we just assume everything is good. Because there are outside checks on the major things. But treatment of staff and things like that, if you're getting constant complaints, he's coming in and he's screaming at people all the time, and you come to me and you ask me about it, and I can't explain it in a rational way, or a way that makes sense, and you're still getting complaints, and you're being dang it, you need to check. I think this connects, though, to our discussion coming up about ownership linkage, about how we hear complaints, what we're allowed to do with the complaints. I think we need a lot of clarity there in order to be available to receive the information that may or may not contradict what we're getting in the report. But your conflict resolution protocol, it does a few things that are very important. And the first one is, it's making sure that the complaint goes through multiple tiers so no one can control, no single person can control the information. I mean, there is that aspect to it. That's a good way to set things up. Because if they're not happy with what I've said or what I've done, they've got the board. If they're not happy with what the principals have done, they've got me. If they're not happy with what the teacher has worked with them, they've got the principals and on and on. So if somebody were to actually get all the way after the board, they'd be happy with what they've done. If they actually get all the way after the board, they've had five or six people that are in the loop on that information and what's going on, who can talk and the board could check in with, you know, by the time you got to the level. So that is a pretty good system. That's one of the reasons to maintain that, those levels. Outside of the fact, it's just good relationship building. They're trying to get people back to work. Again, I'm just making, I'm thinking off the cuff. So it's just, it doesn't mean I'm right. So is there any more, any more points that folks want to make in terms of the, so how do we want to proceed from here? Would you like, you need a contact at the SBA? And should we do that as a separate training or education process? Or do you want me to find the information first and then I can let folks know, you know, we can do this with a subcommittee or the trainer says we should all do it together or what have you. I thought that it was more of a consultant kind of looking at our policies, not that the training part would come later but that the first reaching out would be about, if they even provide that service for someone to move and see how current they are. I would imagine they would want to do that with us. They're not going to want to do that. I don't know for sure. But I don't think they'll just take our policies and like look at them and then give us a report on them. I suspect they'll want to sit down with us to look at them. I think a good thing would be is if we could explain, you know, some of our concerns to these, you know, an expert say just like what we said, you know, we trust the information we get from Lane but how can we write in the policy to try to get a little information that doesn't come from Lane. You know, if we have these concerns, you know, I don't know enough about how to write a policy to get any additional information but that would I think would be handy to have is to be able to, you know, kind of ask somebody, you know, how can we write it to get what we want? They did do, they do offer a service to the SBA to do a review of policy. We actually use them. Took them a little while to get going on it but we use them to do the, your... Not the governance policies but the federally required in the state. So I don't know if that service also goes to a governance policy. I mean, the state does espouse policy governance. So it seems like they would have somebody who might be able to do that. But they wanted us to, they had a group of us sit down with them to do that. Yes, I went to your office and sat with... Oh, but they reviewed the policies. They reviewed the policies, they had a report and they found it went through the pieces and said, this is what you missed. Yes. Yeah. Right, but they looked at them and analyzed them. And gave us the report and that conversation. So we're looking for somebody who knows policy governance to look at our policies. To do an audit. Yeah. That's probably the best way. So I can do that, report that information back to the board and then we can decide if we want that. Or does the board want to go ahead and make a motion that they contact somebody and if they do have somebody at the SBA that will do that, do you want me to go ahead and engage them in that? I see, yeah, go ahead and engage them. Let's move. Yeah. So, okay. So we should probably have a motion to that effect. So make that motion. I move that and contact the BSBA and inquire whether they provide a service to audit our policies and if so, engage them to do so. Second? Second. Actually, any discussion? I'm looking at you, Chelsea and Megan, just because I keep forgetting. I'm looking at the room and forgetting that I need to look up there. So can we call the question then, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. And I probably got it off time with that discussion, but I think it's important because I think we've been struggling with this for a while, so hopefully this will be helpful. So next up, I just wanted to put on the radar that we are gonna be working on an annual report to the voters, it's gonna be due in January. And I wanted folks to think about what we wanted to report out to our voters. Well, isn't it pretty, like typical year-to-year, what is an expected for us to report out on? I have to look at past ones, so I'm assuming it kind of follows the similar. Yes, but this is also a time, we as the board can decide what we wanna focus on and share with the community and what we think about. It seems to me that we should share the ends report, like was reported last, at the last meeting, which brings me to my next question. And how do we shift the finances so that we don't have a $3.2 million surplus and we can't meet our ends because we don't have the people or the programs in place to meet the ends? Like, how do we change that, that I'd like to know? But I think that the community should know that that's the thing and that should be reported. But I don't, I'm only one person. I didn't know if you wanted me to answer the process, what the process would look like or is that more just a general process? I don't know, I don't know where to begin. General process, so whenever there is money that's left at the end of the year, it's called surplus. And then typically what we do is we go out to the voters and ask them to put that extra money into reserve funds so that we've got money sitting there so that we get big projects that come up. We don't have to go out to bed and take a loan out and whatnot. When the voters vote, they vote for what purpose the money can be used for, like we have a facilities reserve fund that you guys will be potentially tapping into today, to do that outdoor classroom. The voters set the parameter, the whole townsfolk when they vote in March of what it can be used for. And then after that, the board gets to decide if when we're coming and making requests for it, if we're allowed to use it. So then it turns over to you. So if you were deciding that you wanted this to be, we've got a significant amount of money sitting in facilities and transportation. If you decided that you would like to see that being used to help out with staffing, the thing that we would have to do is put on the budget vote that comes up in March is a request to the community to transfer that money from the facilities account to the operational fund. Because the operational fund we could then use for staff. And so that would have to be a vote that the communities would have to make. And if that were an intent, that would need to be something that was well explained. And that might be something to explain as part of the annual report to the voters. This is what we need. This is the goal that we were attempting to achieve by this. And so we hope for your support. Because usually the annual reports are really to kind of inform the voters before they go to vote. This is what we've done. This is why we want your vote and what we're going to be doing. Okay, that makes sense to me. So just process-wise, so the annual report comes out and then for the town meeting, for the school budget, like for Brookfield, is that a thing that Brian and I have to go to? Or is it just decided in Randolph? Or is it like, how does that work? Sorry, I'm in place to talk about this. Yeah, Linda's actually the voting expert. The reality is, is the process for the towns and their voting for their budgets is completely separate from the schools. They happen on the same day and the same time, but we are separate entities when it comes to budget. And so this is a discussion that the board itself could have. But again, there are certain pieces, like if that money is sitting in reserve funds and you want to use it for a different purpose than the town voters originally said it should be used for, you have to have them make another vote to assign it for a new purpose. Well, and we do have the annuals. Okay, one more quick. Oh, sorry. One more quick question. How much is a reasonable amount that's necessary in those reserve funds for transportation and facilities? So in terms of the reserve funds that I didn't, don't quote me. If I had, we're a little bit more awake, I'd go right into the financials and tell you how much is there. There is probably 2.8 million in the facilities reserve fund. And one of the reasons that we held on so tightly to it was because we had no clue how much it was gonna cost to replace the roof at Randolph that was coming due. We expected it to be in the one to $2 million range, I believe, and I gotta go back and get the numbers. I believe the cost to actually replace the roof and all the mechanicals up there and do the HVAC upgrades was less than a million dollars. So I would argue a million to a million five is probably gonna cover any major expense that we might have coming up in the facilities fund. The Transportation Fund, typically what we try to do is we use that to try to replace the two oldest school buses every year. And so a school bus, I don't know where the supply chain issues this year, a school bus is usually about $88,000. But we also use it, we have various fleet vehicles in and around the district, like that was you guys are potentially tapping into the Transportation Fund today to replace two of the aged trucks that the facilities crew uses for a variety of things from plowing to moving things around and not having to pay people 55 cents a mile to drive between the buildings because they're so far apart. So that one would take a little bit more math. I would probably say if you had to call me on it tonight if we had 600,000 in there, that would be reasonable. How much is in there now? My guess is, again, don't quote me, but my guess is probably in the one to $1.2 million range. Lane, it's on here. Oh, you've got it on there. Yeah, yeah. How far off am I? You're right on, actually. 2.6, 2.7. Okay. So you have some outside evidence and they actually do review the financials. Can I just say two things? One is that I can send out if you guys want to report to voters from last year just so you have a sample if you don't have an old town report, you don't have the town reports. And the other thing is next month, I'll be bringing the first draft of the warning and that's where the budget amount will be on and also what you'd wanna figure out for insert funds. Yeah, and that's the piece that goes out. There's a certain time transport that tells the voters, this is what we're asking for. You might wanna get informed about why. But yeah, that's important. Yeah. The other piece to recognize is that during COVID, we did kind of shift priorities and this is actually part of the budget discussion that we would hit anyway. So it's apropos. We were traditionally always taking surplus money and we were pumping it into the reserve funds. One of the ones that we still should be putting money into is the special education reserve fund because they are revamping the entire way that special education is funded starting this July. And they have not done their requisite training the folks of what the impacts are gonna be and what it's gonna look like. And things are still kind of up in the air on the weightings and whatnot. And so two years ago, anticipating this, I requested for a reserve fund to be put into place so that if we got into the middle of a year we had five kids move in that needed significant services. We had a way to cover it without destroying the whole district budget. But other than that, what we did last year because of COVID, instead of putting the money into reserve funds, we put it into an operational fund so that we could use it to subsidize the next three years budget. So we put a whole bunch of money in there. We took half of it out to subsidize this budget so the taxpayers weren't gonna be on the hook for as much. And then the half that is left, we're gonna use half of that half for next year. That's what we guaranteed the voters we would do and half of that half in the following year because we figured by the end of three years whatever negative impact COVID was having on the educational fund would be cleared up and we would be able to do our own thing without those subsidies again. Before we decide as a group that, hey, we don't need to be putting money in the reserve funds, we just continue to use those surplus to subsidize the next year's budget. I don't know if I made any sense or not and I'm hopeful that I did. It was a lot. So it seems like we should report to our owners some of that information so that come tax time or come voting time, we can move some of that money over to the other side so that we can meet our ends in a more timely way. And that could be a very good use for that, yeah. I also think that in the report to the voters, we should acknowledge the staff in the past year of working in COVID and the way that people, the way that this team within these buildings modified their roles and responded. So I think there should be an acknowledgement of that. Great idea. Okay, we're gonna have some time to kind of get this report together. So I'm gonna, unless somebody's got something that they're dying to say, I'm not folks to be thinking about sort of the other questions. I think I sent that out to sort of like, if anybody wants to get to be involved in the actual writing of the report and how we want to do this, just sort of think about those things and we'll probably be revisiting this because it needs to be ready for January, actually. Right, we've got to have it, I think. Okay. Okay, so I'm gonna move on then to our next agenda category where we're gonna be looking at those monitoring reports. So again, we can kind of use this as an opportunity to kind of look at the interpretations that were given for these monitoring reports and judge whether or not we feel like they are reasonable and decide if we feel likely have sufficient evidence for the interpretation that lane has given us and then we'll take a vote on the monitoring reports. So I'm gonna have us start with 2.1 and this is the report on the treatment of parents and community and the question is, the questions we need to be looking at are, is his interpretation reasonable and do we have sufficient rationale for that interpretation and the compliance standard that he set forth and then also is the evidence or observable conditions sufficient to establish that compliance? I just have some, I have some, I took the time this time to kind of look more carefully at these reports and one of the things that I found is like under provision one in this report, it would be nice if it was more observable conditions to assure this outcome. So we have no information has been collected that exceeds either that needed to inform the board's ends and initiatives or that needed to comply with state federal regulations and mandates and what might be helpful for me is just enough, I don't know what you already collect. So it's not like I need to see what you collect but we collect, you know, just sort of a list. You know, we collect this, this and this and who does it and the other thing that I was thinking about is you might list to what policies and procedures are in place to guide employees and the system has a hole in regard to collecting information just to have that listed there. Now, like we have these policies, these procedures so that, you know, again, as board members we kind of know this is the system you have in place so that we're assured that if we went in, we would see that. You follow me? And I don't, that's my opinion, board people. I don't know if others feel like that would be helpful but again, as we're looking at our policies and looking at his interpretation, you know, the interpretation too, it's sort of hard to, your interpretation is that families will only be asked information that is required for the district but it's, so how do we know what I mean? Well, that was one of the questions that we had is sometimes the evidence is a lack of evidence and how do you, Right. What I tried to do in the report was I made sure that everything that we collected that was above what was required by the state for us to submit, I listed. That's what the narrative is talking about. So, you know, we talked about the modality surveys that we were collecting last year to see, you know, where people were in terms of remote and those sort of things. So any kind of out of the norm data collections or that was the purpose of trying to list them there was just to say, hey, these were the odd ones that we don't usually do. So I'm presenting it to you to decide if you think this fits or not. Yeah. Well, what I'm wondering is, do we want evidence in there that says these are the things that we typically collect? And these are the policies and procedures that, you don't necessarily have to tell us what, but these are the policies and procedures that govern who collects what and for what reason. This is where they're, where they are. I don't know. I'm just, I'm just again, kind of thinking about what one is easy to read, because when it's lengthy and a lot of words to read, it sometimes makes it a little bit harder to kind of assess. And again, what I'm thinking about is it would be nice to see sort of a systemic things that are in place to manage the district and manage information. But I may be, that's my opinion. I don't know what the rest of the board is thinking, but that was one of the things that I noticed in that. I feel like that's a level of detail. I don't need to have that the state has certain things that our schools have to know about students coming in. And our educational professionals know what those are. And families aren't complaining to me that they're obviously being violated, that they're being asked inappropriate things by the school. So if he's saying he's not doing it, then you're okay. I'm okay here. Got to be my opinion. But that's my opinion. I second my opinion, but I think it's, if you don't hear it again, if we don't hear anything else, I think it's probably, we shouldn't worry about if there's something out there that we're not hearing. I think all of us are involved enough in the community that one of us would hear something if it was out there. So I like the report, kind of the way they are, we're being fairly simple. But I appreciate your, not going to cut you off Brian, sorry. Oh, go ahead. I appreciate that you're thinking critically about what else could we be examining here? Like what are we not seeing? Right. And I feel like that kind of thinking needs to be applied to each of our, like each point of each of the policies. And that's actually what we're getting at when we're like, what are we not seeing? What don't we know? Right. The only concern that I have is I don't want to spend every month just writing reports. Exactly. Because there is a significant amount of, just so if there are critical things, I would argue certainly you tell, as a board, you tell me the additional happy to have, but if we were to add something, because that is actually a pretty major piece. I could do chapters on what's collected, why they collect it. That's pretty simple to do. And most of it's just demographics and it's the data they need to see if we're maintaining equity between our different subgroups is a lot of what they collect. Like in provision four, with the evidence, it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And that sort of lets you know, okay, these are the observable conditions that we will see. Yeah. Provisional one, like you said, a lot of it's hard because it's one of those, it's a lack of. Right, right. Right. Evidence that makes you meet it. So is everyone ready? And they've looked at this policy, feel like they've got a reasonable interpretation and evidence. Yes. So do we have a motion to accept it? I make a motion that we accept policy 2.1 as submitted, the treatment of students, parents, guardians and community, the monitoring report, except the monitoring report. Do we have a second? Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Okay. And then the next one is treatment of staff. So same thing as we take a look at lanes and interpretations of what that means and the evidence that he's providing for that. People, we have some discussion on any of the interpretations that he has for that rationale or evidence. Lane, are you back this year to doing the weekly visits at the different sites? I started out early the first month or so and it's falling apart given everything that blows up every day. Right. We're in, and I mean this kindly, the staff legitimately are very overworked. There's a lot of tears. There's a lot of trying to find the best way to say it. Things just self-destruct right now because people are under a constant state of tension with COVID and everything else in the world. I mean, we're going in our third year with COVID now. And so, and I predict that that is going to get worse probably at least through February. It's gonna continue to go downhill. Hopefully by February, one of two things are gonna happen. It's going to break in such a way that, like sometimes arguments break, right? All of a sudden people wake up one day and it's over or it may break down. I can't predict, but things are in a tough state right now. And that's across all schools across. It's not just here. And so yeah, that's made it difficult. My job is 100% human resources right now. That's all I do from time I walk in the door until nine, 10 o'clock at night. Linda can, you can see Linda shaking her head. She knows. And just try to, you know, some of it's more severe things. A lot of it is, you know, like today, a lot of it was just people that are tense and just need to come in and vent for an hour and get it off their chest and need somebody to listen. You know, so that's a lot of the job right now too. It keeps things moving forward. It doesn't fix it. That's, whatever's happening in the world's got to change for that to be fixed, but it keeps things moving. Now that has been extremely difficult this year. So, given that you're not doing those. Remember, this is looking at last year. Oh, this is last year. Oh, so it's going to be the next year's monitoring. Let's see, that's where it might be helpful to have a list. Like the plan is to go monthly and you can have kind of a chart. And again, even if you're not necessarily doing what you said you were going to be doing, you can explain it. And if it's a reasonable explanation, we, you know, you can accept it. But I don't, I don't know. I mean, what do other board members think? Or should we be saying, oh, you're supposed to be doing that when you haven't done that? When we look at the next one. So the whole time during COVID, well, during COVID. We get evidence here, because it says hindered somewhat by COVID. You just get evidence that, you know, it was not able to happen as it normally does. And maybe my question was out of line asking about this year, saying, no, this is the last year report. I was just curious. That's why I wasn't trying to. No, it's usually, it was, it was good. Usually how it works. And again, that's part of the, when we get into the budget discussion that there's only one of me. Usually how it starts in a good year, if it were without COVID is usually right up until heavy budget season, probably December. I can be rock solid consistent about it. And then when the other work starts to take over, they just physically is not the time, you know. And that's, you know, one of the things that I always laugh when you do like interviews for administrators is because one of the things the parents are, are you going to be out of the playfields? Yeah, we'll be out of the playfields, but you got to recognize that you're out of the playfields all the time. Where should I get that? So you either want somebody who's doing the work or hopefully somebody can find a balance in there. And right now things aren't balanced. The amount of increased work. It's just, it's ungodly, it's not the only way I can put it. I'm kind of wrestling with something here. Given what the discussion we were just having, where if we still are receiving complaints or have evidence to the contrary, that that should be where we say, that's not what I'm hearing. So there were no incidents in 2021 and no complaint has been lodged relative to this provision. So that means too late, correct? Because- Which number are we looking at? Sorry, provision number two, the discriminate against any staff member for non-disruptive expression of the said. So if I was given information otherwise or presented with an opinion otherwise, is this when I, this is what I'm wrestling with. Right, right. So that's where when we, well, first of all, it kind of depends on who it is. So if it's a parent or a community member, they would go through this complaint procedure. And if it's an employee, we have the CBA. So if it's, you know, they would, there's a complaint and grievance procedure through that. And then there's, I would imagine, Wayne, and again, that is there a handbook for staff? That was one of the things I, for staff that are not, not part of the CBA, did they- That's your conflict resolution for the call. Okay, so they would be following this? Yeah, and usually even the principles are usually pretty good. If, you know, the principles will say, hey, you know, if you're not happy with this, you know, the next step in the process is to talk to Mr. Millington, whether people follow up or not, that's their, their, their priority. Usually the principles will give me a heads up about that. And if I don't hear anything, usually I'll reach out. But they also will give them, you know, the brochure a lot of times as well. So if you're hearing from people. So this is, I guess this is a question in two. So let's say that's the, and not that I'm saying that there is, but if the conflict's not internal, like if the conflict is against you, where does that individual, you know, they're having a co-con. They should be going to you. They go to us. And I would direct them to do that. Okay. Because if that happened, then how can I accept or approve the, that you're in compliance with this provision, if. You investigate. The investigator also has to take in, come and talk to me about my context, if something did happen. Because it's not just what somebody says. It's, there may be more to the story. So it's got to be a fair and reasonable process. But yes, that would be the appropriate thing to do. We would probably want to have an executive session without Lane to make that decision to get an investigator to do that investigation. And then they would report back to us. And if they found that Lane was in the wrong, then we would have to make a decision. We would definitely say that the report wasn't correct, but that's, I think that, I think that's the process that we could go through. The usually the best thing for you guys to do is if there's a concern you follow in the executive session and say, hey, this is what we're hearing, what happened, I tell you, and if you believe me or don't believe me, that's your prerogative, then you decide to go from there. Or if I tell you it's been resolved and you're still hearing the bites and you certainly do get an investigation. But the piece that you can't forget, and the same thing as with staff and with students is you always have to talk with the other person to know what's going on. That's the due process. So that would happen before we got an investigator? How would you know? We would talk with you. Yeah, because you don't have enough info to be able to, until you've talked with us, heard both sides and then you guys make your decision. And then we decided to get an investigator. Yeah, we could. So what's the process of bringing something to us? So is contacting one board member? And I mean, we have our complaint procedure, so they would contact a board member and the board member would let's see, what is it saying here? Well, now you've got me curious. Well, I'm hypothetical, but it's like it's always important to know that. So if a person is not a member of the, if it's not party to the CBA, otherwise they would go through the CBA. Well, if they were CBA, they could still get to the board. So with the CBA, they go through the steps of the grievance, right? So the first is direct supervisor. It's kind of the same process. Second, after the direct supervisor, which is usually the principal is me, that's the step two, step three is board. And then if they're not happy with what the board says, then it's mediation arbitration. But really as a board, for us to make any action, it's really good to defer, if we get contact from somebody, it's if it's a complaint of superintendent, then we do some, if it's not, if it's a complaint about the principal, we turn it over to Lane. If it's about me, you do what I do with the principal, is you tell him then and say, hey, I heard this, what's happening? Yeah, that's it. And then if we hear something about Lane, that's probably what we do is, we pull Lane and say, what's going on? And then if we don't like his answer, then we can investigate it or investigate it ourselves with top to the complaint in or get someone to investigate it for us. But I think if it's, we follow these procedures, that if it comes to the number five here, that's when we step in, but anything else, we push down the line and they have to go through those procedures before we would get it. And the other piece on your product resolution is unless they have been directed to talk directly to me, if that has not happened, then that's where they should be directed to go. Unless they're accusing, unless they're saying, oh, no, he sexually harassed me, or if it's something of that level, then no, it doesn't get pushed back to me, that you guys do, you know? That's a whole different category from a... I'm still unclear with what I would do if someone came to me with a complaint in kind of an informal way. If it's not something... And it has to do with you. If it's not something horrific, your procedures are clear. They need to talk with the first person that they're having an issue with. So I turn them back around. They should be talking to me. If they haven't talked with me first, then it's a problem. If the complaints after they've talked with me, that's a board. Unless it's something major they're accusing of, like I got brought a gun to school, got threatened a kid, that's crap. You put me out on leave, and then you guys talk to the pH or about the best way to investigate what's found out. What kind of goes in there? Does that get you fully confused now? Does that get you fully confused? Not, I wouldn't say confused, but I'm still wrestling, yeah, internally. Well, hopefully having this now to help. To a certain extent, but I think it's hard to apply everything to this very... That's why I'm wrestling, right? I mean, I get the very stark line between egregious and, you know, he, I don't know, made me stub my toe. I get that. It's that gray area. It's that, you know, I would say if you got it. Intimidation is very gray, right? So it's hard, that's what I'll say. That's why I'm wrestling. It's often hard for me to apply a very, this is the card and this is one, two, three, what we do and I'll also say a little frustrating because I feel like some of these things have happened to a certain point with this group and then it kind of fizzled. And so it's frustrating to say, well, we'd call them executive session and we, you know, you know what to do and we did. I think at this point in time if there are accusations out there against me, I am demanding an executive session to hear what the accusations are because right now we're talking about me publicly, which is a little annoying with all these statements that could be people to believe that I had actually done something wrong, which is quite bothersome, especially because I don't know what the heck we're talking about. I can understand that, and which is why I, I can understand that. I'll stop there. I'm not gonna credit, defend it or anything. We need to talk about this and say, this is executive session. Clear the air on what it is. Sure. Okay, so are there any other questions about the treatment of staff? And again, as Ashley pointed out, this is a look back to last year and this year is happening now. But again, when we are looking at these policies later on and maybe we'll start skipping that section until we have our consultant, but that was one of the things later on in the agenda we wanted to kind of look at. Do we need to tweak any of these policies as they currently are? So anyway, so are we ready to take a vote on either accepting or rejecting or is there any more discussion on the interpretation or evidence put forth in 2.2 treatment of staff policy? I make a motion that we approve monitoring, monitoring report policy 2.2 treatment of staff as presented. Do I have a second? Any other discussion? All those in favor? May I? Aye. Okay, so there's the thing to pass. We're going to have an update on the budget now from Wayne. Yeah, and folks will give me a moment or two. I just gotta get the presentation up. You good? Yeah, I'm good. All right, sorry. No, I'm fine. So kind of budget process and I think the biggest thing right now for folks to know is that we are early. So you're going to see two or three renditions before you get to the point where folks have to make a final vote in January. What we have been attempting to do over the last year or two, COVID has made it a little bit difficult, but typically what I found is the best way to build a budget is from the bottom up. There are the overall kind of arching goals that the board has set, which is your ends. Those have been interpreted to critical ends that we kind of talked about at the last meeting that the principals are well aware of and have actually been working on for a year or two. And in this year, what we put into place was a revamped evaluation process for teachers. And one of the pieces of that evaluation process is that they develop goals that are based upon supporting the ends. And so it makes sense that if the teachers are doing this actual work and setting these goals that are gonna help support the work that we need, that they are able to communicate upwards to us to say, hey, if you're asking us to do these goals, then we should be able to ask for the resources that we need to achieve them. And so that is the process that we've been slowly moving to. I know the principals have been meeting with their respective faculties after they've done their goal setting. And so this budget is based around the information that came out and through that process. A couple of things to be aware of is that things are very early right now in the budget season. And so not everything is complete. There is a lot of information out there that we are still waiting for from the state before I can give you all the details. Act 173 is a huge one. Act 173 is changing how special education is funded. It is going from what's called the reimbursement model. So pretty much every time we get a new kid in, regardless of when it is in the year, we can always be assured that 50 or 60% of the cost of that new student coming into the district is gonna be borne by the state. With this transition to what they call a census block model, what that is going to do is they don't take a look at the number of special education students that we have so much, but they take a look at our overall population of students and say based upon that, and based upon a couple of waiting factors, we are gonna give you a block sum of money at the start of the year to carry it through. And so that was one of the reasons we talked about a little earlier about the idea that we put a special education fund into place, reserve fund, was because if we get that block of money at the beginning of the year, and we have what usually happens here is we get three or four high need kids that move in in the middle of the year, sometimes costing anywhere from 100 to $300,000 per student, that could have a dramatic impact on the budget that we have to work with to do everything else that we do that a budget does across the district. So this is a big unknown right now. They have given us a preliminary formula to use to try to calculate how much that we believe we will be receiving from the state when it turns to a census block grant. It seems to be about the same amount of money that we are spending right now, but the legislature last year went out and asked for the creation of what's called the waiting advisory. They have been looking through what they call the waiting. So if you're a district that has a whole bunch of students that are considered students of poverty, you get a little bit more money. If you're a district that has a high percentage of students that are on education plans, you get a little bit more money, recognizing that those students to give them equitable services are gonna be a little bit more expensive. And so this group is actually reporting out this week. And the scary part in terms of a budget is that they're reporting out this week and the legislature decides to change the formulas. Those formulas probably won't be changed until after December and in January when we have to do our votes. Kind of like the situation we found ourselves in with healthcare a few years back. And so it's incredibly hard to predict what's going to happen. The law right now is that this census block grant has to go into place in July. The other piece that we don't have a good handle on though we know it's to our benefit is what they call average daily membership. This has to do with the number of students who actually live in our district to attend our schools. We get a certain amount of money out of the Ed fund kind of per student. The more students we have, the more that we get from the Ed fund. We'll talk a little bit about how much our population is up this year. There will be a significant increase at least on a revenue stream probably anywhere from a quarter to a half a million dollars because of our increase in enrollment. So we don't have the finalized numbers from the state at this point in time. And then the last piece that's the great unknown is we're back into that situation we were two years ago where the state is actually negotiating with the state level teachers union about healthcare changes. And so those negotiations have not gone well. I don't remember if they're in mediation right now or if they're through mediation and headed to arbitration. But again, the odds are we're not going to hear the outcome of that arbitration until after you have probably voted on what the set budget is. And so these are the great unknowns as we're going into this for folks to be aware of. Most of what we're going to talk about tonight is expenses because that's what we kind of have data for. What we don't have solid data on which we just kind of talked about as the revenue side, the money that we have coming in from different sources. So the big and the positive news is we've had significant increases in enrollment across the district. At the elementary level, we're in excess of 46 students in RUHS, it's seven students that are living in district, moved in district. And so they count in terms of the ED fund. But we also have a significant amount of revenue that is coming in from tuition students, students who choose to go here or paying tuition to go here and that will be in excess of $300,000. We've had, and Felicia did a good job about talking about this. We've had a significant increase in enrollment at the tech center, at least 40 students. It fluctuates up and down. It was 160 the other day, which is huge. And so there are benefits, again, it's the same thing, the more students you have, the more money that you have access to. We've also had a significant increase in our enrollment in preschool as we have fully put the preschool model into place where we are offering free full day preschool to all four year olds across the district. And then the other piece that needs to be considered in this that you're not gonna see in the calculations at the end because not all of this is solid yet, is that at the end of last year we had that big surplus that we worked on, knowing that we're gonna have to manage COVID for a while. We spent half of that surplus for this current year that we're in to help subsidize, take the burden off of taxpayers. We have half of that money left over and the agreement with the taxpayers was, hey, if you put in this operational fund for us, we will take half of what is left over for next year's budget and in that final half we'll go in the third year out. New expenses and things that we are looking at. And again, this is not a final budget. This is, hey, these are our goals. These are the goals that you're set that are helping us out. What do you need? And these are all the requests that have come back. So I call this the ends budget. This is like, hey, if you want us to do everything all at once, this is what you're looking at to get us moving in the right direction. So the first piece that's on there is at $65,000 for technology that's across the district. There was a significant amount of training when we moved to remote session a year or so ago on probably about, I think it was 52 different software packages to help teachers at different levels and at different disciplines be able to connect with kids. We are maintaining those right now, but a lot of that first year was SR1 money. It is possible that we will be able to use SR3 for it, but it is unclear. The teachers are still using it. We still don't know, even though hopefully, we got shots going in little kids' arms in another week that things are gonna turn the corner, but we don't know for sure. As it stands now, we have two or three classrooms a week that there's an outbreak in and we're having to shut them down. And so we still need access to this software. The OSSD pre-K coordinator, we're looking for a 0.4. Pat Miller has been serving in this function. Again, one of the pieces that is geared towards achievement of the ends and especially the foundational knowledge is that we realized early on, based upon the testing that we brought in, was it when the students were coming in to their first grade that they enter our district, whether it's preschool, whether it's kindergarten, they are deficient in most of the skills that you see in students that are coming in at that level. And so we said, heck, that's something that's hurting them for years because they don't have those foundational skills under their belts. So we're gonna build this whole new grade for four-year-olds to make darn sure that by the time they hit kindergarten, they have those skills in place. And so this is kind of one of the last pieces of making sure we've got the personnel in place to keep that preschool program going. Some of this has been in grant-funded positions up front. We're trying to get the last couple of pieces out of the grant-funding positions because this is a permanent part of our district at this point in time. The other possibility is that with a new plan that may be coming down from the federal government, a lot of these costs may end up being covered because they're looking for expanding pre-K nationwide. And so the hope is that there'll be some funding now out a little bit with this. We are looking at potentially a website conversion. The website that was put in the year prior to me coming was done through a single operator who had his own prioritized software, his own software creation that he created that website with. Shortly after the website was built, he said, I don't wanna be a website person anymore, I'm gonna go do construction in Florida. And so right after the website was built, we scrambled around, we found Ben Merrill, who has been awesome. He learned that proprietary software. He does all the work kind of updating it, but it's an expensive proposition to be handing that out. What we're looking at is potentially bringing the website in-house, having somebody here who can physically do that. And that's the reason you see the tech support specialist under there. We wanna bring the website in, change the software to something simpler that's a little bit more open that pretty much anybody can use. And then bring in a tech support specialist who can do two things. One, maintain the website for us on the fly. And two, if he has additional time on his hands, he can help support or she can help support our tech team here. We have three tech people that manage across all the schools in the district and every kid has a one-to-one computer. And we just talked about the 52 new software packages that came on board, they are overwhelmed. And so it's appropriate to try to bring that in. As part of the superintendent's report, we talked about this the other day a little bit. I went out and I did the research in terms of what the other districts have. And I looked at districts that were our size. We're about 1,100 if you include RTCC and smaller. And so when I did that analysis, there are three positions that are required by statute, by mandate. Superintendent, your business manager, and your special education director. So those were not included in the count because all districts have to have them. The only thing that I counted was people above and beyond those positions. And I believe it was 2.7 on average. And those were districts that were even half our size. 2.7 additional people in central office which explains why I'm so tired and burnt out. In most cases, what they had was a human resources manager. We have over 200 employees here. And in addition to the human resource manager, they also had a curriculum director. Curriculum director would be vitally important. I've cobbled together kind of a curriculum director with a few people because they drive the work on curriculum and the ends. So without them, we don't quite have the structure to really push ourselves where we need to go. Human resources is the other piece. That is a full-time job. It's even more so now with all the stress that's happening in and around COVID. And it's so filled with layers of laws and nuances in the law that you really need to have somebody who's specialized in it. I've been fulfilling that role as best I can. I've got more experience in it than most folks, but I do spend a lot of time talking with employers for the things that I don't know which racks up bills. I do not think, and nor do I wanna shift money away even though I think it's vitally important from the teachers and from the kids. Yes, this would help in the end, but the teachers are hurting right now and I know that. So rather than looking for two people, I would make an argument for an assistant superintendent. You will have two moderately overworked people instead of one incredibly overworked person. They typically do things like they manage all the grants, which are significant right now. The reason they manage the grants is because they're also in charge of curriculum across the district K to 12. And usually the grant money is used to improve instruction in academics. And so since they've got the knowledge of what they're attempting to accomplish in terms of academics and in our case towards the ends, with that knowledge, they can now use the grants and use them and tailor them specifically to those needs. We do a pretty good job, but it's piecemeal because this work is spread out of three of us at this point in time. The other thing that they could do that I think is gonna be very important would be to oversee the early education in preschool. Pat did a really good job of getting the thing built and there's still some more construction to do on it. But at some point in time, after that major work is done, the work requirements are gonna be decreased. And this is something that an assistant superintendent could handle. The other reason that this is important is because of your executive limitations for succession planning. Given everything that is going on with COVID and all the massive work that's across the district above and beyond the norm, including the testing, the contact tracing, the vaccination clinics that we're planning, all those other parts and pieces, if I drop dead tomorrow, you're gonna be hurting. And that's, we need somebody in there who's got their hands on things so that I can take a sick day. Whether folks realize it or not, when we did the last meeting, I had been throwing up all day long and it was only the medicine that got me through the meeting for the ends presentation. And it's not a complaint. The work needs to be done. I don't mind doing it. Last year, when we had the first MOU meeting with the union, two hours prior to that, I shattered my ankle because no one else was gonna be able to step in that meeting and run it the way that it needed to be run, especially with making sure that all the nuance was there, I was at that meeting and I sat for four hours in excruciating pain before I could go to the emergency room. So again, it's not a complaint. Stuff has to be done. I'm happy to do it, but there has been a real impact in terms of the work that's going on here. And I think it's in the best interest of the district to have somebody who can step in at a moment's notice if needed to take things over. And you guys, questions anytime along the way. Otherwise, you're just gonna hear me rambling the whole time. Braintree. In talking with Braintree, they're looking at a few folks and we'll go through the reason why and try to tie them back to the end. There's the social worker, a half-time social worker increasing the library media specialists that's there from one day a week to two days a week. They're looking for a building-wide parent and they're looking for additional supplies to support a lot of the new programming that's up there right now. The social worker, whether folks realize that or not, we are seeing new behaviors in children, both young and old, that we have never seen before. So this is far afield from the trauma discussions that we had in previous years. They are coming in, they blow out with temper tantrums. You ask them to do simple things that they may not wanna do, but they're small and it's an immediate breakdown into tears. It's a reaction to the stress of the world right now. It's a reaction to what they see the adults in their lives doing both locally and the home on TV and it's playing out in the schools. And so at least for a little while, assuming the mechanisms in the outside world that are causing this ever calmed down, we do need additional help above and beyond to try to mitigate these behaviors and the students that they can actually learn. How does it support the ends? If they're dysregulated, if they're crying, if they're bursting out all the time, if they're having a temper tantrum and it takes a half hour to get them calmed down, we cannot teach them. And so we need that support. In terms of the library and the media specialists at the elementary school, things are a little bit different than at the high school. At the high school, there's a seven period daily, typically teach four or five classes. So they have a lot of open spots in the schedule through the week to do their planning, to connect with the department, to do a lot of the work above and beyond the classroom that teachers normally do. At the elementary level, it's a different story. They are with those kids almost all day long. The only kind of breaks they get are usually their lunch and they usually have a break for planning or team meetings when the kids have a special, right? They go off and use it for a little while. Having the library media specialist there will do two things. The first thing is it's gonna allow for a little bit more time for those teachers to connect, to do the work that they need to do with all the initiatives that we have in math and science and VLA. Give them a little bit more planning time. And the library media specialist actually delivers a digital literacy curriculum which originally was gonna be one of the pieces that went into the technology and the board head. And so it will help enhance that a little bit. The building-wide paras are important. A lot of this is for equity. They are a body that exists in the other buildings but not in the two small schools. They do everything. They take a lot of the more mundane tasks off the hands of the teachers so the teachers can focus more intently on the teaching and learning with the kids. The other thing that they do is everybody has heard about the sub-piece. There's not enough subs to go around. They can step in on a day if they can't get a sub for a classroom and they can do that for the day. And then again, the additional supplies is to help out a lot like the math program that we brought in and the science program that we brought in to help support that. Brookfield is very similar. It's got the same asks with one exception. And that's pre-K, right? We have a preschool at all the schools right now to keep the one maintained up there. We need that 0.5 to keep the preschool physically at Brookfield that's up there. That 0.5 is currently being paid out of advance. So that's a part of that four-year-old holding preschool for folks. Randolph Elementary. We talked about, yeah, we got 46 new kids at the elementary level. Most of them got concentrated in Randolph Elementary. They're gonna need a new classroom teacher. You get an increase in students like that. It cannot be absorbed into the existing classrooms. Again, they're looking at a behavioral specialist for those behaviors that we talked about, those new ones that are showing up that seem to be a response to COVID in the country right now. And they are looking for a building para to serve that same, you do a lot of the mundane tasks to serve as kind of a permanent person who's there that can be pulled as a sub when we need one. Randolph Union High School. And this is one that may be refined a little bit. We have always been a little bit short in terms of nursing staff. And obviously with COVID, this is critical at this point in time. So they are looking at increasing their nursing staff a half a person. And that person would be shared between the Tech Center and the high school. The other thing that they're looking at is a new math teacher. Again, keep the numbers down in the classroom so that the instruction is more efficient. High school has done a very good job at keeping a wide diversity of programming for students. But with that, what you happen is we have a lot of electives that may have eight or nine kids in a class. And rather than cut those electives to create a math teacher position, we'd rather preserve those electives because those programs draw students. But we've got a lot of kids in our math classes and a lot of cases, you know, while the electives may have nine or 10 kids, a lot of our core classes have 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. And so this will help actually reduce the number of students in the math classes in high school. There is also the whole other side of the coin. So everything that we've talked about so far are kind of discretionary spending. Yeah, if we wanna do a lot of the work that we're trying to accomplish on the ends, this is kind of what we need to do that, but we don't have to, it's a choice. There is spending that happens every year that is contractual, it's mandatory. We win in the negotiations with the teachers and the teachers are gonna be getting a 4.5% increase the salary next year. We signed a contract on that, and we have to honor it. And so that piece is a part of this budget. The paraprofessional salary was 4.5%. This one is a little bit different, and let's see if I can explain this without a lot of graphics up there. You have folks like the principals, the directors, and the confidential secretaries, not me. Separate group from me. That every year for the past couple of years I've always budgeted 3% for them. Well, every year for the past couple of years the teachers have gotten more than that. And to put them in parity next year with all the additional pieces that the teachers have gotten, right, to keep that separation there for them, they would need a 4.9% increase to get them up in parity with the teachers. The bus driver salary, there's gonna be a salary increase. We don't know what it is. Their contract is currently open for negotiations. We'll talk a little bit about that in an executive session. This is something that the board has to decide is this something the board wants to negotiate, or is this something the board wants to delegate to the superintendent or another body or a subcommittee to negotiate on every half. And then in what was probably the most surprising thing about the budget overall is this is the first time in my life I have not seen a double digit increase to the cost of health insurance that we provide teachers. So there might be an increase in health costs depending upon the negotiated of who's paying how much of the health insurance. We're still waiting on that. But in terms of just the overall cost of health insurance, it's going up by 5.2% next year. It's usually double digits. It's usually in the 11 to 14% range. How do you know that if you don't know how much it's gonna be? So for a family plan right now it's $25,000. So what the insurance company is saying is for that family plan for next year you can plan on paying 5.2% more for it. The difference with the teacher negotiation piece with the state is okay of that 25,000 right now we're paying 80% they're paying 20. It might come back that next year we're paying 15% and we're paying whatever that difference is right? So two different costs there right? One is just the overall you know what's inflation in terms of health insurance? The other is who's paying what percentage of the health insurance? If we end up paying a higher percentage of it that's gonna have a potentially significant cost. Good question. So bottom line expenses and again this is the ends budget. This is not expected to be the final. This is, these are the goals people what do you need to help us reach it? Okay, this is everything people said that they needed to reach it. So this year's budget right now is 20 million, 171. All those additional pieces that we just talked about is just about a million bucks. So that would put the budget for next year 20, 22, 23 at 21, 176. It would be a 4.98% increase. Now, a lot of caveats here. Remember, we've just looked at expenses. There are significant additional revenues that would offset some of this. We don't know what those are yet. The state does not have to give us the formulas or the other information we need until December, which is usually when they give it to us. So, you know, if you were to ask me right now, you know, you're looking at a million dollars and expenses, how much is gonna be offset by revenue? I can tell you right off the bat, I know 300,000 of that's gonna be offset by revenue. I also know another 412,000 of that's gonna be offset because of the subsidies that we put there. I also know that we've got another quarter million to half a million that we're probably gonna get for ADM. I can't be sure until the state tells us, but my guess is that all those other increases are gonna probably compensate for most of this. My guess is that you're probably looking at a budget increase of after that revenue. It's definitely less than 3%. It's probably in the tourist range. But again, we have to wait for that. So, it's hard to do this budget this early because you can only look at expenses, so it's easy to freak people out. But it's not what it appears to be. So, that's kind of where we are in the process at this time if there's questions. Did I make any sense at all? I was gonna say thank you for the presentation and I really appreciate your kind of explanation behind everything because it made it very tangible. Are there ways, and as this came up to me just now, are there ways to get these, when you're doing these PowerPoints, can you send these to us after? Because I just feel like we're speaking here and it's really helpful sometimes to be able to go over it again. Sometimes because it's summarizing stuff, it may not be as meaningful, but I'm happy to. Yeah. So, either before we leave tonight or tomorrow morning, I'll shoot it off. I'd appreciate it, thank you. Usually, actually, Orca usually asks for them after the fact and they put them up on the site too, so it's good. And again, like I said, the biggest message right now is there's just a lot that's unknown. Is there comments about the budget? Colleen, I have a question about the financial statement, didn't we? Sure, that comes after the budget. That comes after, yeah, that comes up towards the end. And depending upon how specific it is, I might be able to answer it. If it's more than that, then we get Robin in here. I think you're gonna be able to answer it. Do people mind if we jumped ahead to the monthly financial report? I can wait. It's fine. Okay. So anything related to the projected budget for 22, 23? Awesome. Okay, so how about the COVID operating plan? Oh, good, that's sort of that. And again, you emailed us the sort of the protocols for what was emailed out to the community and we heard that take on what was sent out. So there's two things. So there's the updates that happened on, I think it was 1025 that went out. And a lot of that actually was quite helpful to us. A lot of that was changing the process for contact tracing. And so that was the last major update that was sent out to folks. Let me kind of go through the bullets here because there were a lot of little pieces and I don't wanna miss any here. To do, so the big thing right now is that rather than having our poor nurses calling all the close contacts individually, what it allowed us to do is instead we email out a quarantine letter when we've identified who the close contacts are. And then we also follow it up with a robot called to those folks and say, hey, look at your email. And so that kind of directs them in terms of what they need to do to kind of follow up. And it's taken a lot of burden off. Most of the folks that they call in these situations are nice, some are not so nice. And I'll leave it at that. And so I'm quite happy to be able to separate them from that, having to deal with some of that angst. The state did change the definition of what a close contact was when it came to the students. You know, it used to be if you were within six feet, for your 15 minutes over a 24 hour period, you're a close contact, they changed it to three for students. It remains the same, six feet remains the same though for the adults in the building. We no longer need to contact trace for exposures that occur outside. On the buses, which was always a tough time, even though we've got very good seating charts, we only need to contact trace the students that were sitting in the seat next to the positive student. If it's a student that was positive. The governor, we kind of talked a little bit about this that Matt had brought up. And this is the next big change that'll be coming of the specific protocols for winter sports. The governor kind of pretty much left it up to the individual districts. The second, the superintendents are that because we heard about it at the same time everybody else did, which was when the governor made the announcement. We said, you know what, it's probably wiser for all of us to get together and just do the same thing. So we are doing exactly the same as all the other groups in the Winooski Valley League of which we are a part. The basic gist is that yes, we do want people to be able to come in and be spectators, but you gotta follow the rules. In terms of the masks in peace, and I have to be very clear about this, because arguments over getting people to wear a mask would be extremely contentious and even violent, I will not put any of my staff in a role that might result in violence because they're asking somebody to wear a mask. So in other words, yep, they'll go up if somebody's not doing what they need to do. Hey, put the mask on, but the second an argument erupts about it, we back off and that's when we start to look at restricting who can come to our games. It's a tough environment, it's potentially a dangerous environment, especially if folks have been watching what's been happening on the airfields. And so I worry a lot about that. I have also told Ben one of the protocols will be and we're gonna have to spend a little bit of extra money on it. We will have police officers that agree with that to mitigate against that. The hope is everybody behaves and things are good, but I have a real worry and hopefully it's unfounded that folks will show up not wanting to wear a mask and I do not want my staff there not a quick to deal with that sort of an outburst. Concessions, we talked a little bit about it, really can't happen in the building because folks have to take the masks off to eat. We said, yeah, they could probably do it outside, but we're not sure how easy it's gonna be able to police to keep people from bringing it inside. And so that's kind of the basic gist of what the protocols will be trying to think. I don't know if there's other questions on it that might be sparking things that are in my head now but I'm happy to answer them based on what I know. So remember folks, the reason we're asking for these updates is just to understand this rationale and what he's using to make these decisions. This is the superintendent's all got together, this is what we're pulling on. There's still a couple of the fine details and the messaging piece of it is still being worked on but that'll be out shortly. So my guess is hopefully by Monday or Tuesday, I'm updating the COVID handbook with those final processes and procedures. So was there any talk on limiting the actual numbers in the gym? Is there anything to limit? If everyone wears a mask. If folks are wearing masks and trying to keep apart, one of the pieces of logic that I tried to express about that for some folks that were a little concerned about it is this is high school sports. Our liability is reduced because most of those folks are old enough to get a vaccine. You didn't get the vaccine and you get sick at one of our events, that's gonna be kind of hard for them to come after us for. The thing that we might do and this is one of the things that's still up in discussion is while we're under no real obligation to contact trace in a venue like that where we've got folks that are coming in and out, what we might do is set up sections to say this is the blue section, this is the green section, this is the yellow section. Please remember the section you're in because what we could do is if we find out that there's been an exposure, we could say send out that letter or send out a communication to say, hey, if you were sitting in the yellow section, you may be exposed, these are things that you may want to do. So that's one of the kind of final pieces we're picking around on. But the big thing is just, where the mask can have a good time. That's most of it in terms of other COVID pieces. Gifford's been great, they reached out about trying to set up a clinic here. Beth in Erika, we're having a good discussion with me today about it. The logistics may be a little bit tough, but we're gonna try to make that work. If not, then we will invite the state in to do a vaccination onsite. The state will come in, I think. But I don't think they're coming in until like mid-December-ish. But it's just the logistics on the other, maybe a little bit tough. Plus, I've got people that are just so overworked because we've had so many cases like that. They're going off the walls. The test-to-state protocols were also in the previous round. We are geared up for that. We finally did get the consent letters. We've got the software that's required to enter the data into. And I don't blame the staff, they handed that off to me today because for whatever reason, you have to prove your identity, so you have to give them a significant amount of personal information and financial information for them to be able to identify who you are entering this portal where the medical information is going in and that made them feel uncomfortable. So I'll be putting in my information in that tomorrow to get that up and running. The test-to-state could start immediately after that's done. The problem with it, however, is the fact that test-to-state is kind of like close contact tracing. It's awesome if you only have a few cases and it's really effective. When you got a lot of cases, it may not work. And right now, we've got a lot of cases. And so we're gonna try to make it work with the case numbers that we have. But people just need to be aware if we call up and say, hey, we're not doing test-to-state, it's because we've got too many students to be able to do each morning. Hopefully that's a rare event that we'll see. Have they looked into tapping into the medical core, the state medical core, or volunteers to help us, like medical volunteers to help us? They have, it's difficult. Folks are tapped out. We have a nurse who's leaving. We're trying to find a replacement for the nurse. It's incredibly hard. We did luck out finding a wonderful lady who was a medical assistant in the medical office, who has all the skills that are needed. Who's gonna be floating around between the buildings when the test-to-state piece is going on, we're trying to help out with that. So I think we're okay. A lot of it is, I don't know if you've seen those tests, the rapid ones. It's paper chromatography that they're using. So basically you put the antigen and the testing agent on the paper, it slowly works its way up and because different chemicals are attracted to the paper by different amounts, it separates them out. There's a very exact time that you actually have to look to read the test. There's a three-minute window, right? And if you're too early or you're too late, you're gonna miss read the test. So if you got, and it takes 15 minutes to let the thing run, so if you screw up the timing because you got 20 kids standing there, it's a nightmare. You got five or six kids, awesome. You get 20, 30, 40, 50 kids, it may not be doable. So we'll figure it out as best we can. We've got a great group of people that are working on it. I think that's all of the updates. I haven't seen much that's new today. I keep them in my fingers crossed because they tend to come in every day. So I don't know if, any questions on anything, I'm happy to answer. Do you have any numbers on, you know, preliminary numbers about getting the kids up to that 80% vaccination? Yeah, the, I actually, I can actually pull them up for you. So elementary, they haven't started yet. So we've got like two kids vaccinated in one school, one kid vaccinated in another. And I think the, the reason being is they probably had some underlying medical condition that made them eligible. The staff rates are ranging anywhere between 76 and 95% depending upon the school that you're in. In RUHS, I think the student rate, and please don't quote me on it, it's in the low to the mid 70s. Recognize that the guidance from the state has changed on that in terms of taking the masks off every month they push it out another month. Right, I know it's in the January right now. Yeah, so that's the hope is, and that's why I was picking February, you know, saying that, you know, things are probably going to get a little bit tougher before they get better. The hope is, is that if shots start going into arms and people are supportive of that, you know, that might be a good turning point at that point in time. We might see some real improvements, you know, by February. I'll keep it my fingers crossed for everybody's sake. Okay, we'll move along now to the financial report. I mean, I didn't know if you were ready. I'm curious why this week, or October here today, is less this year than last year, because I'm assuming expenses went up. Is it reflective of fewer staff? Are you on? What news are you on? I am on the Orange Southwest School District, it's the first page of the financial report, and I'm looking at expenditures. And under instruction for October 2020, it was 1.6 million, but October 2021, it's 1.3. Yeah. And is that, I was curious if that's a reflection of less staff? It is probably a number of things. We had quite a few folks that were high on the pay scale that retired. And again, when we're building a budget, we build it based upon what we currently have at the time. And a lot of the staff that came in were lower on the pay scale. So it's not a reduction in staff, but it's potentially, if you were to ask me without having Robin look into greater detail, it was probably a reduction based upon the fact they're lower on the pay scale. Not paying them as much, so you're not gonna hit as much at this point in time. Because almost every area on here is less. There is also, we did what we could, one of the things that we were asked to do with the ESSER funding is to try to use it to cover as much of regular expenses that fit under ESSER as possible, because that's helping them out with the ed fund. Okay. Thank you. Good question. Anything that we should be concerned about? No, actually the one that usually comes up over the course of the year is talking with Robin about it today is the food service, right? You know, the goal is that when you have a food service come in is that they at least break even. We've always subsidized. Usually I think it's to the tune of about $30,000 or so to cover it. And usually they're still in the hole of it. And that's just, that's how food service works. With things the way they are right now, with the federal government doing reimbursements pretty much for every kid, they are actually paying us $4 a lunch. And so they are actually in the best shape they have ever been in terms of food service right now. That was the only quirk that they kind of jumped out at folks kind of looking through the financials. Well, on, we were looking at, so this may be again something that we want to wait until after the review of our policies, but we were looking again at our board governance policies. When we had had our training in July, we were, we had questions about who our owners were. And so we were wondering if we wanted to take a look at 4.0, which is the policy where we talk about who our owners are. And if we want to clarify more or not, who our owners are. Can I move to table this discussion until further meeting? Because we are quite behind on our agenda. Or do we have a second for that motion? Second. Seconded by Brian. So we'll tinkle this discussion to the next meeting. Oh, oh, sorry. Okay. It's getting late. So did we have any discussion about tabling? Are we all, or so I'm going to call the motion. Are we all in favor of tabling the discussion on who our owners are until the next meeting? Yes. Do you say aye? Aye. Passes. Okay, so we're on to the next, which is again reviewing those policies. And this we may also, I don't know if folks feel like they want to table that as well, until after I contact someone. This is a required, right? This is a required policy. Oh, oh, right. We have the first one is looking at the first review of the required policy. Thank you, Katya, for catching me. I was moving on to the second. So that was the policy that's in our packet. And these are required policies by the state. And Lane, Lane, do you want to speak about? Yeah, this, part of it is trying to figure out why they're making this a policy. Basically what it's saying is that we agree as a district, you'll agree as a board, to make sure that we are following the special education protocols that are set down in the AUE's special education. My guess is, and this is true, every district has to pass, it's not just us. My guess is is that because they receive significant federal monies, this is probably a requirement placed on them on the guns. And so they will, from this, they would develop the guidelines that that manual does not yet exist as far as we know. We were looking for it the other day, it's in development. And so, once that comes on board, we follow that guidance. Which, even without the policy, we do have a little bit of sense. Was the, looking at whether or not we want to make any changes to our EL policy 2.1, 2.2 treatment of students, parents in the community, and the 2.2 treatment of staff. I mean, that was the one that I was saying. I'm going to make a motion to table that one as well. So you've discussed, so you've had a chance to reach out to the WSBA regarding policy review in general. Any second? Second by Ashley. Any discussion on that? All those in favor? Aye. And then next up, it was to talk a little bit about the report. Oh, no, it was to report on the BSBA. So, as board members when the BSBA meeting was tonight, so I wasn't able to attend. And the regional meeting was on our other board meeting. So, no one was able to attend that. So there's nothing to report out. However, I wanted to make sure folks were aware, and you should have gotten an email from the BSBA as OSI board members when we registered for the BSBA conference. They, you pay as a district. So that's why, hopefully you've seen in your email from the BSBA, you have access to the conference. It's, well, it started tonight. So they just had a speaker tonight. They were recording it. So I would imagine you didn't have access for that class somewhere. If you wanted to take a look at it. And then tomorrow they have a speaker in the morning, but at noon, and I don't know if people have lunch hour time that they do school board stuff, but there is going to be a session on this waiting. The waiting study and kind of where that is in terms of special ed, which is going to impact our budgeting. There's also going to be one on school governance. And again, if folks, we've been doing a lot about looking at how we're governing ourselves what our policies say, how is this working for us? So it might be something that you want to look at. And again, I'm hoping that maybe they'll record things. And again, because the district paid for us to participate since most people are having to work, we may be able to see recordings of these sessions. So hang on to that email and we're going to go back and listen to some of the sessions that hopefully they'll be recording everything, including the workshop. So I just wanted to make sure people were aware of that. Any questions? Concept agenda, we need to approve the minutes. And then the other thing on the consent agenda, Lane has already spoken to us about. Do people remember that is the approval of the, using the transportation reserve funds and the facilities reserve funds for, for building the outdoor classroom and for buying for the district? Are you ready to move the consent agenda? I make a motion and we approve the consent agenda as presented. I'll second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Sorry. Okay. Okay. Any questions about the superintendent's report or the principal's reports? Anything you want to, that you haven't already told us, Lane, that you want to know from that? Yeah, not much of these questions. Okay. So we are going, well, I have the task of reaching out to the DSBA for someone to help us review our policy, governance policies and to get them to engage with us if they do. We are going to revisit the discussion on who our owners are and we'll wait on that other review of those other policies if we get somebody who's going to review a full set of policies. Did I miss anything? Okay. Anybody have anything that they're dying to have on the agenda for next time? Seeing nothing, I will adjourn the meeting at 834 and we're going to go into executive session for to discuss negotiations and personnel matters.