 Are you doing Scott, hanging in? Thank you, Kari, I'm doing fine. Yes, how about you? I mean, you're the one who has the weight of the Hunger Mountain Co-op on your hands, or on your shoulders. I don't know, it's best of times, worst of times. Every day is different. I don't know what to say at this point. It's like, I describe it as giddy exhaustion, you know? It's all these... Giddy exhaustion. Yeah, yeah. Giddy exhaustion is a great expression. I like the giddy part, at least. You just don't have a post office with the ceiling. Regina is fetching that, at least you don't have a post office with the bazillion boxes. Okay, good. Glad to hear I don't have every challenge. That's good. Yeah, that can maybe support the giddy-ness along with exhaustion. Yeah. Here's the I.L. So let's see. So are we a full compliment, or at least enough of a full compliment? Yeah. So let's get underway. I'm going to note down coming to order at 504. I'll let Lisa know. And the first order of business is to go... And here's Joe, wonderful. First order of business is to go into executive session with Brian. And we're going in under title one, section 313A3, which is the evaluation of a public employee. So, hey, Jim. Oh, Brian. Yeah, do you have some notes? I was gonna, I've invited Carla to come in with me to help me take notes. Wonderful. Okay. Yeah, Carla, if you're entitled to to come in, yeah. And Jim. Yes. Greetings. Greetings, how are you? Very well, thank you. I wonder if you could please send board members and Brian and Carla into an executive session room. Absolutely. One of the things I'm going to do real quick is Brian, it looks like you got in before me again. So I'm going to ask you to switch the host responsibilities over to me if you could. If you go to participants, and then you select on the WCU, there should be a thing that says make a host. Just got, I'll move that we go into executive session with Carla. Well, Jim is doing that. Thank you, Flora. Thank you, yes. I appreciate you doing that. Is there a second? Dorothy seconds. Good. And all in favor, please click yes. And that will be our signal to Jim as to who to bring into the session. And you would be brought in even if you clicked no. So thanks again, Flora. Okay, I'm going to use those yeses and I'm going to start building the rooms here one second. Great. And Kari, Kari Radley should also be in there too. I'm sorry, could you repeat that Scott, please? Kari, Radley? Yes. I don't see a, thank you. Excellent, okay. So right now it appears that there's just two folks that are, and Dorothy, I didn't see your vote but you're coming into the executive session. You are on the board, correct? Okay, excellent. All right, great. All right, let me just see if there's anybody else I'm missing. Okay, so we're ready to go in. I'm going to go ahead and open the room. Okay, so we left executive session at 5.52 and Stephen, would you like to make a motion? So I would make a motion that we approve the superintendent evaluation process for as discussion executive session incorporating the three question protocols that Kari Radley outlined. Wonderful. Is there a second? I second. Caroline, I second. Thank you, Caroline. Okay, all in favor, please click your button, your yes button. And there are few enough of us that I think I might even be able to see you if you raise your hand. But at least as though it's unanimous, thank you very much. And let's hear it for woefully inadequate. How about, I'm sure it's all uphill from here. So how about we take a break until six? Does that be good? Let's start up again at six. All right, thank you very much everyone. So if you're within earshot and ready to resume, just wanted to welcome all of you. It's great that you're here. Award members and members of the public alike, including our teachers, administrators, other staff. Thanks to you for sticking it out. This is turning out to be my major social activity of the month. But anyway, dragging it out a little bit just to make sure that everybody is back or at least able to hear. We have agenda revisions coming up next. Does anyone have any? I'm not seeing or seeing any hands raised. So we can move on to 4.1. Student reports are tons is here, wonderful. I am here now. Please tell us. Yes, so, yes, awesome. Student report time. So this is a pretty important week for a lot of seniors. So this week, okay, this week is the week where seniors are gonna hear back from their early decision and early action college admissions. And also, as going with the college theme, we are approaching the time where regular admissions for colleges, the deadlines for those are either January 1st or January 15th. So that is coming up for seniors. Yeah, we also have the robotics club that's now meeting. So that's a really big thing and clubs are all starting to come together. The yearbook has started to get through its first deadline and we're supposed to have it done by around April or May. So really trying to start, get going with that. And I'd also love to kind of promote the U32 Chronicle specifically, I guess, an article I read recently from about homelessness and the pandemic and how it's impacting our local community. I thought it was really interesting and engaging and also an important tool. So if board members are interested, I'd encourage them to head over to U32 Chronicle and check out some of the student journalism that's being posted. And also another big part of that is that there is a large movement in where kind of statewide student journalists are preparing journalists pieces to be published in VT Digger. And I'd also encourage board members to keep their ears open for that because there have been a lot of great student journalism pieces published there. Is that it, Anna? Did you have anything more? I think that's about it. Very good. Board member questions for Towns and Anna? If not, thank you very much, both of you. And good luck to all the seniors who are waiting for, where they're waiting to hear on early decision or who are putting together their applications for the spring. Great. So that brings us to the superintendent's report, COVID-19 update, Brian. Thank you very much, COVID-19 update. Just we do, we are continuing with our monthly tests of our staff working with the agency of education and the Department of Health. I'm proud to report that while our, we had even had more over, well over 200 staff members take the, a large majority of our staff took the COVID-19 testing through the agency of education and Department of Health. And we were happy to report that we had no positive results. And so that was a, I think a very positive thing for our district and for our staff and our families and students. We're getting close to the end of the December. We're still in session. And we're keeping going, we're monitoring the situation and preparing to pivot if we have to. As of right now, it does not seem to be necessary at this time, but we're continuing to monitor the situation. Thank you, Brian. Board member questions for Brian on his COVID-19 update. I'm not seeing any. So then if that's indeed the case, we can move on to 4.2.2, the coordinator of early education and expanded learning opportunities. Now, this is an action item. So before we dive into it, just if you look at page four of the board packet, there is a suggested motion. Would anyone care to make that motion and second it? And then we can get into the discussion. Linda? You can do that if you want to. So I make a motion to authorize the creation of the new coordinator of early education and expanded learning opportunities position. Thank you. Linda moved. Any seconds? Second, Kari. Thank you, Kari. Very good. All right, Brian, would you like to introduce this? Yes, this is an opportunity for our district to, we're in the middle of a pandemic, middle of lots of things happening here in our district. And this is an opportunity really where we're trying to be proactive and basically redefining one of our positions that are already exists and making sure we update our job description for coordinator of early education and expanded learning opportunities. So this position would be kind of a combination of overseeing like community connections and those types of programs but also looking into developing our capacity around offering a more robust pre-K opportunity for our families in our district. This would also, right now this position is, this the pre-K piece is also being, is one of the many hats that our director of curriculum instruction and assessment have. And this would also allow that position to focus more on the curriculum and instruction and assessment piece as well. So it's an opportunity to be proactive and to also, we also believe that this could be something where if we continue to develop our pre-K programs and have a person really dedicated to doing that along with linking with the community connections program, we may actually find more families. And if we get more families coming into our programs, we're hoping that will increase enrollment and we all know that that helps our formula. So it's also an investment. Right, thank you very much, Brian. Board member questions or discussion on this. Diane? No. Oh, I agree with this need and this has been a need for a long time. It's been a big part, you know, it's been a necessarily on Jen's plate and she's done an awesome job with it. I just question the timing of it. It's something that we have been needing and I hear what you're saying about it's an investment. I just worry as we're juggling all these different balls if this is the time for that because pre-K is any positive move you make one way, the expense goes up as well if you're doing it right. And so it's not necessarily a revenue generator, it's not necessarily a money maker. And I'm not saying it's not important. I just wonder about the timing in this year. Thanks, Diane. First Chris and then Linda. Okay, so Brian, in this position, is there any, is it being substituted for another position or is it just being newly created? It is a, it would be a newly created position. We would have to post it at the same time. It may be an opportunity to dissolve a different position if that person who applies is accepted into that position. They make sense? No, can you explain that a little bit more? Well, if you can, if you can, that's fine if you're meeting confidentiality from a confidentiality perspective. If you can, I understand that. If the opportunity exists for someone who is already doing something else in our district that appears to may be a good match for that position, it may actually be, it may not be a full, it may not be a full position. It may be someone may be doing a position already that's similar to some of this, but not all of it. So as a result, if that person is interested and we find that that person or whoever that person may be wants to apply for this position, it may be not a major cost difference. I'm trying to make sure I'm not breaking any rules here or laws with personnel, but if someone, basically the idea is if there's a different position in the district, what I could say is this, we just, the three positions you approved last board meeting were absorbed by three other positions that were now eliminated. Does that make sense to you? That does now, yes. Okay, thank you. I have another question on this. Is this a position that you foresee as being a permanent one over the long haul or is this something where we could kind of put a sunset on it and give it a couple, three years or so and see how it's doing, but that it would sunset after three years and we would have to re-approve this position. I would see this as more of a permanent position. We already have a permanent position in the budget that is doing something similar. If you notice that, again, going back to the example of the three positions that the board approved in early December, they became three positions, but they did absorb a position. So we went, so there was a position that was ultimately cut from our central office, but we repurposed that position across three positions in our district and that's what that job description did last, the last one that the board approved. This one is kind of like a very similar along that idea of possibly absorbing another position that is permanent already in our district. Okay, thank you. Thanks. Thank you both. Lindy? Yes. From what you're saying, it is not an administrative position, is that correct? That's correct. It could be in the future, but it's up to the suit. If you leave the job description, there are things in here where experience and what's the word? Experience may be determined for additional credentials by the superintendent. Okay, and my other question is in here it mentions, I think it has like bachelor's degree or something, but it doesn't say anything about teaching license. It doesn't require a teaching license, that's one of my questions. I think we had it as our preferred, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's required at this time. Okay. But I think we did put a teaching license in here though, trying to make sure, I thought we did have it. Just scanning it again, I had read it, but. Yeah, I thought we did. I thought we had a teaching license in here. I do believe it is in there and it says if and preferred early childhood, but not required. All right, that's what it is. Thank you. Thank you, Diane. And it may be that it's on more than one page. My other question is it doesn't say how a salary is being, like are you using a teacher's, whatever that thing's called, able to decide a salary or. Yeah, we, it would have to be something similar to probably, well, ultimately a teaching type of salary that we have, but it would not be necessarily a union position. Does that makes any sense? Because it would be a coordinate. Well, that's what I was when I was, when I worked there, I was, because I was paid for grant money on, especially, you know. Yeah, the literacy grant, I recall, yeah. Yes, and I feel like because Jen did this job before, you know, the early childhood part before she was the curriculum director and then became the curriculum director and had that job, I can see the need for somebody with all that 170 something pages of guidance for pre-K to be working with that. So that part I understood. Thank you. Yeah, and Lindy, just so you know, yeah, on page seven it says other duties as assigned by the superintendent or the superintendent designee. In that, in that case, I believe that would be Jen. So the designee. Yes. Yeah, I figured it probably would. Thank you. You're welcome. Sorry, Anna, Faber, and then Chris. This job is different. And then just like community connections, is it based around like creating something for that or is it like that itself? And how does that work with COVID and all of that going into the winter? Yeah, so basically, Anna, the answer to your question is, it's basically doing the community connections piece also taking on more responsibility with the Act 166 position with it, which is our pre-K program. And with regards to working with COVID, we're all working with COVID. So we're all making sure we implement the precautions and following the precautions each and every day. All right, thank you. Thanks. Great, thanks, Anna. Chris. Can I have some clarification on what constitutes an administrative position? Because I thought I heard before that this is not considered to be an administrative position. And if it's not, why isn't it? Typically, administrative positions require administrative licensure. And that means that they can evaluate. When you have an administrative license, you can evaluate. Okay, and so that's the distinction that we are using in terms of saying who's an administrator and who is not. Yes, that's correct. Thank you. Thanks. Jonas. I think I want to start by saying community connections is an excellent program. Really benefited my family. It fills a real gap in before and after school care for kids. My son had a great time. I'm looking forward to my next son going to community connection. So I really support this focus on it and the pre-K stuff about the qualifications. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but I do believe that it says a Vermont educators license, preferably with an endorsement and early education is there. So it does look like there is a teacher's license requirement. Okay, and just one other little bit. The letter says that for FY21-22, the cost is in the draft two budget as a 0.25 FTE. That's on top of additional costs or is that the FTE of the position? So I mean, I think it's an idea is if we're, if we end up taking the community connections to salary position and it's absorbed, there will be additional responsibilities that have been added. So that warrants the difference in the salary. Good. Any other questions or concerns for Brian? If not, are we ready to go to a vote? Okay, all in favor of authorizing the creation of the new coordinator of mission and expanded learning opportunities position? Please click yes. If you're opposed, click no. I'm seeing 10 yeses and one no. Yeah, 10 yeses and one no. The motion carries. Thank you. And again, it isn't because I don't support the idea of the position. To me, it's the timing. And so that's why I just felt I could not vote for it at this time. Thank you for that explanation, Diane. Very good. So let's move on, I think, to Winiski Valley. This is the exchange, the annual renewal of the Winiski Valley exchange agreement. Would anyone like to move that the board approve the agreement for 2021-22 and authorize the superintendent to sign on behalf of the school district board? Who moved? Thank you, Chris. Is there a second? Second, Laura. Thank you, Laura. Great. Okay, Brian, do you want to kick it off? Yeah, this is the normal agreement that we do every year. So, and it's just a continuation. We typically do this in January, but we were able to get out in front of it and do it in December. The former U32 board members are very familiar with this. Are there any questions from those of you who have never dealt with this before? No, I'm seeing heads shaking in this case. Oh, Jonas, please. I don't remember if we did this last year or not, honestly, and I'm sure there's a really good reason to this, I'm just curious, why we accept no fewer than 10, but can send out up to 40? Why the disparity? What's the logic there? Are you asking me, Jonas? I'm just gonna make sure. Yeah. Are you asking the board? Yeah. U32 Board of Governors. For what I understand is that's been the agreement that we've had for many, many years to change it in the middle of this COVID year. It's just been kind of, we have to also follow this number, which is provided by, it's on the page, Act 129, Section 34, 822A. It's been something that we've been doing for many, many years. That's what we've been, it's just been kind of like the understood agreement and it's just been what we've been doing this for the last, since we started doing this. Yeah, I'm not advocating we do anything different. I'm just curious. Okay. Great. Yeah, I think family members of people who are even on this, attending this meeting have taken advantage of this at the lottery and all of that. If there is no further question or discretion, we can move to a vote, all in favor of approving the agreement to join the Manuski Valley and statewide choice of public high school collaborative for the 2021-2022 school year and authorizing the superintendent to sign for the board of school directors of Washington Central Unified Union School District. Please click yes. And if you're opposed, click no. And I see unanimous yeses. So the motion carries. Once again, thank you very much everyone. So now 4.3, leadership team report. This is essentially a question opportunity in case, as I understand it, Brian, please grab me if I'm mistaken. A question opportunity for board members. The leadership teams reports are in the packet from page 12 through 15. Are there any board member questions from members of the leadership team? Lindy. Mine's not a question, it's just a thank you for pointing out highlights that have been going on that we could read and see across the district. I thought they were well written and informative as to what's going on. So thank you. As they said, Lindy, agreed. Thank you. Other board members, Flora? Just to, but I really like adding that, like I think one of them, I think it was Steven, one of them had the newsletter link, but it was a good thing to remind me as to that we get them in the email. I got it, but it was a good component of both, just the, so thank you for the work for me. Thanks. Your audio was a little bit garbled. Sorry about that. My internet is really unstable today, so hopefully it's gonna go well for my finance. Can you hear me better now? Yes, thank you. So just thank you for the link to the newsletter. I thought it was great to have it there because since we're taking the time that day to read or whenever we're doing it, it's nice to go back into the newsletter. So it reminded me to do that. So thank you to all the administrators for their work. Yes, that's great. Thank you. Dorothy. Yeah, I wanted to say how much I enjoyed the weekly newsletters from each of the schools. It's very nice. Yeah, I think the overall message here seems to be that you're doing a lot right. So many thanks to all of you. Is there, are there any other questions or accolades to bestow? If not, we can move on to the education and quality discretion. And Brian. And I can just let the leadership team know. I know we're talking about budget and a lot of other stuff tonight. So if they wish to stay, they can. If they don't, they're also more than welcome to get some rest. So the choice is theirs. Great. Wonderful. Thanks. All right. So education quality discretion. Kari, may I turn it over to you? Yes, thank you, Scott. I'm gonna leave my audio off or my video off since I've got the poor connection as well. So our information starts on page 16. And this is the second review in our ongoing process to help the board better understand student achievement both in terms of our educational efforts and then the outcomes that our students are experiencing. And of course, our topic this month is transferable skills. These are the skills and abilities that our students will need to be successful regardless of what specific field or endeavor they pursue. And I remember that when the U32 board was developing initially doing the development work on the student learning outcomes, we had several engaging debates about the relative importance of this part of our education. And I know that from that, that you can make the case that the transferable skills are what our students will really be relying on long after they've forgotten the details of geometry or American literature or the other content subjects. So hopefully you got to take a look at the presentation slides and these cover the variety of topics that we generally wanna focus on with each of the student learning outcomes. And our committee spent more than or a full hour on this topic and it wasn't enough. So our goal here tonight is really just to share an overview and a couple of the insights into the richness of this particular topic. So I'm gonna turn it over to Jen who's gonna give you a few highlights from this month's presentation. Thank you, Kari. So as Kari said, there is so much to talk about and we put a lot in that presentation. I just wanna highlight a few things for you. So I'm gonna share my screen, move you all out of the way so I can go into a presentation mode, right? And bear with me when I am gonna share my sound in a few minutes too, but it's not intuitive for me yet to do that. So the first thing I wanted to share is just a reminder of what our transferable skills are. So the six of them are listed right there. And they reflect certainly the expectations of the agency of education, but they also really underscore the importance in AU32 and in Washington Central about expressive communication, creativity and practicality in terms of problem solving, being engaged citizens. So I think what's important to know is that these skills start in pre-K and they build all the way through graduation. We've worked hard mostly with our teachers and administrators through our annual curriculum camp experience at the end of June each year to really flesh these out a little bit more. What do they look like and sound like at various grade levels and in various learning spaces in our community. So within that, the presentation is a link to the learning progression and a link to all of those performance indicators. So the most important things to take away are that we've worked really hard to create coherence and a logical sequence of expectation for students. I wanted to highlight for you, oh, that is not what I wanted to do. Sorry, hold on. I wanted to highlight for you a few things. So last year, for those of you who were sitting around here about this time or so last year, you're gonna recall that we spent some time at East Montpelier Elementary School and we heard from a group of fifth graders about a unit of study in which they were engaged on monarch butterflies. And there are a few things that were important to underscore. I'm gonna get out of full share and I'm gonna show you this for a minute. This is just a quick overview of the performance indicators that were addressed in the monarch unit. And so there were standards around literacy. So some writing and research were taking place. There were expectations about speaking and listening and about the command of the English language. There were also transferable skills. So these were the four of the six transferable skills that were addressed throughout that unit of study. And they were grounded in this study of the structure and function standards. So I think it's important to underscore that because what we want to ensure is happening is that transferable skills are transcending content. As Kari said, when our graduates are long gone from U32 it's communicating effectively, working collaboratively, being deeply aware of themselves as learners and as humans that we want to have stick with them. So that content is really a means to that end. We wanted to share with you an example that's gonna be somewhat familiar to some of you as well. And that is just a little snippet from this student video example. So I'm gonna play it and I'm gonna hope that I can share my sound. This is the one part where I kind of get myself confused here. So hang tight and I just need to, there it is, over it, more share computer sound. And we're gonna watch this example that again is an illustration of the content and the transferable skills coming together. Here, only the size we can add. If an average size, I think we're gonna add 2,000 times because our first size should be even bigger than a school bus, not a basket. It is. In this movie, you will learn about the challenge. So I'm gonna stop it for now but I wanna make sure that you all know that the link is right there and you are free to enjoy it anytime. A few other things that I wanna point out to you are a little bit about assessment. I guess before we totally start, remember when we're analyzing data in an ideal world, we've got multiple sources of data so that we can triangulate to see if the results are sort of in sync with each other or if there's some discrepancies so that we can make decisions at the systems level and for our individual students. In this particular case right now with our transferable skills, what we have is the classroom level assessment. So a work for us down the line is to continue to calibrate and to think about ways that we can make sure that when we're observing together and giving students feedback that we're on the same page about that. What I wanna underscore for you though is an example from this year's current 12th graders. So what you have in front of you is the data on the graduation scale at the end of the junior year. And so what you can see for each of these transferable skills is that by and large, the majority of our students by the end of their third year with us in high school had achieved or exceeded our expectations in these transferable skills at the graduation level. What you can also see though is that we do have kids who had not yet done that. And there are a number of reasons. Some they might just not have had enough opportunities. They might have come here from another school and we're still trying to work out those discrepancies from one school or school system to another. And in some cases, as we've analyzed this data we've recognized that we as a system need to ensure that there are ample opportunities for kids to demonstrate their transferable skills to get feedback and to continue to grow. And the two that are the most pronounced areas of focus, the bodies of work in which we need to engage our engaged citizenship and informed, integrated and critical thinking. This is not unlike certain analysis that we did in some of our content standards a few years ago when we realized, for example, that in the engineering standard in science we just were not systematically giving kids opportunities in all of their courses to achieve proficiency in those standards. And so we've reexamined what is happening in science to ensure that we're giving kids more and more opportunity. So those are the things that I wanted to underscore the most with you. And Kari, I'm going to go ahead and forward to the takeaways from the Ed Quality Committee so that that's in front of everybody as you speak to that. So I'll advance these slides. There you go. Great, thank you, Jen. So yeah, just a few words on what the committee, how we think the committee might be able to add value. Our challenge is really to take in this information and then try to glean some of the implications that can inform the board's work. And we use the Making Meaning Protocol to serve this idea as I just wanted to share a couple of the insights from our last discussion. So this first slide, some of the responses to the question, what strikes you as significant? For one thing, the committee recognizes that the transferable skills are just fundamental. They're really at the heart of our educational mission and that the importance and the large scope of the transferable skills reinforces the need for a sound system to do the best possible job that we can in developing these abilities in our students and that's across schools and across ages. So next slide, please. And then this is about implications. One implication of the analysis that we could share is that it really felt like the board plays a critical role here. The board defined the transferable skills as essential. We oversee the system that makes it happen or not. We need to help develop the strategic plan that will help us do even better in the future. And generally we will provide leadership to maintain transferable skills proficiency for our students as a priority for our district and for the community at large. So it's kind of cool to see that, the importance of the board's work and it's a pretty significant responsibility. So that's our summary and love to hear if you have reactions or questions or ideas for the committee. Thank you so much, Kare. Board members, do you have any questions for Kare? If I may, Kare. One of, thanks. I'm wondering if something sort of may sound a little bit, you know, bold fashion perhaps, but something like ethical behavior, is that worked into the transferable skills or is that something separate? That's a good question. Jen, do you have a response to that? Yeah, so we do talk about the importance of making decisions, the roles and responsibilities and engaged citizenship. And we also talk a lot about empathy and perspective taking as well. One thing that kind of brings to mind that from that question is, and it also relates to the point about what a responsibility we have in defining these is, huh, did we leave any off? Are there any other transferable skills that we think are gonna be really important? You know, one that came to mind for me was leadership, you know, that we're gonna need to have, these are our future leaders and what are we doing to help them with that? But maybe there are other transferable skills that we haven't yet contemplated yet. So anyway. Jen. Yeah, I would add to what Kare said as well. I mean, I had mentioned, and you can see in the slideshow before, that this work is iterative, it's ongoing. It was our best work at the time in the thinking and we've done some amazing, amazing work around it. And we have things with which we're still grappling and the world is changing, right? So for example, the scoring and reporting piece, we're having a lot of conversations about that. We're talking about the difference between transferable skills and what some folks might call habits of work. Both of which are important and they're two distinct things. It's the other thing, just yesterday, I was having a conversation with some educators about the transferable skills and we've been doing a lot of work around universal design for learning, trauma-informed practice and racial equity and are wondering, should we take a look at our transferable skills through those lenses as well right now? So I think that it is important to raise the point that this work is in the spirit of continuous improvement. We wanna make sure that it's meeting our students' needs. So definitely stay tuned for more on that as we continue to engage as a community about what's valuable for our students. Thank you very much, Jen. Other board member questions or comments, this does seem like a really central part of what we're all about. So, Jonas, did you have anything on? Sorry? I'm just curious, because social justice is one of the themes that I've often heard you, you know, recur to over time. Yes, so I'll speak a little bit about that. In the conversation with someone yesterday, I mentioned how important I thought it was to develop citizens in addition to developing lawyers or English teachers. We need to be turning out citizens. I've always thought that the focus on transferable skills is a really important part of what we do and the data in those slides, in addition to the charts from the current 12th graders that we saw, I thought was a really good sign. In general, maybe I'm reading the data wrong, but it seemed like the numbers went up over time as the students got older. And I thought that was great. I commend the district for this focus. Thank you. Flora and then Dorothy. I just wanted to mention, I agree with what Jen just said and Jonas too, so second that, but I just wanted to mention that Anna, our student board member, was part of this conversations and her input was really helpful. So I just wanted to mention that for she sat in the meeting with the committee. And actually engaged citizenship, which I think excellent. Way to go, Anna. Thank you board member, I would say. Dorothy. I just wanted to add a little to what Jonas and Kari said. Kari mentioned having leaders and Jonas mentioned having good citizens. We better not have all leaders. We need some citizens too to take part of these board meetings and town meetings and all the other things that happen. So we need both. We need good leaders and good citizens. And this will help us, I think. Thank you, Dorothy. I think in a way that the two may actually join together since one idea of leadership at least is that of setting an example and good citizens certainly do that and exercise leadership in that way. Even if they're not necessarily in an exalted position like, oh, I don't know, school board chair. Anyhow, any other questions or observations to share with Kari and Jen and the committee? If not, we can move on to the finance committee segment which has a lot going on. And before I turn it over to you, Floor, may I invite a motion on approving the Dental Premium Refund and Fund Balance Transfer? Yeah, so. Would you like to move that, actually? Yeah, so you asked me to prepare, so sorry to be filling your thunder here. So yeah, to start, authorize a dental fund refund to active employees for the amount of their five payroll dental premium deductions in the amount of $23,870. And it has a second part. And I think we can just do it together. Authorize the dental fund transfer to the general fund in the amount of $125,000. Thank you very much. A second? Oh, is that you, Chris? No, but I'm glad to do it. Oh, okay, thanks. Happy to hear it. Thank you. So Floor moves, Chris seconds, Floor. Yeah, so we just, I'm sorry that you can't see me, but my thing is really, it's really unstable. So I apologize for that. But just to, I don't mean to run you over through this, but we're going to try to do the first two items, if not the first four, like really quickly so that we can spend more time on the budget. And I'm going to make an assumption that everybody had a chance to read through the information page 43 for the dental fund. And all I can say is that this fund has maintained a balance equal for six months in estimated claims. And it's because of this, that we think we, you know, Carrie also shared with us that they have done something similar at the co-op too. And we feel that this provides enough at six months reserved for any claims that will come. So we don't need to, you know, worry. So this is what was recommended to us and the finance committee spent some time asking questions to Laurie and anonymously recommended this back to you, Scott. Thank you, Floor. So unless there are board member questions, we don't want anyone to feel eroded into informed or in informed decision. But I think Floor basically summed it up. So would you like to move to a vote? Yes. I agree. You're all in favor? Scott, you're breaking up a little bit. To authorize refund and the, thank you, Chris. Is that better? A lot better. If you can hear me now? Okay, excellent. So all in favor of authorizing a dental fund refund and a dental fund transferred to the general fund as Floor just moved, please click yes. If you're opposed, please click no. And I'm seeing unanimous yeses. So the motion carries. Thank you, everyone. So how about a motion to authorize the revised health reimbursement account budget? Would anyone care to make that motion? So I have a right in front to authorize the revised health reimbursement account budget using the rates of $1,503,000. Is there a second? Oh, second, it's Kari. Oh, thank you, Kari. I heard Jonas first. So maybe have Jonas for the record on this as seconding Floor. So again, not to rush discussion. This is on page 46. If you want to scroll down to that page, when we approved this back in the fall, we wanted to see if there was any possibility of savings in December, and this is where we are. So this is a recommendation that the committee received. And we felt that it was a good time to do that right now. And wanted to recommend that for the board. If you have more specific questions, we have Laurie and Brian here with us too, but there was a really good explanation at the bottom of page 46 that pretty much explains the motion. Are there any questions? I'm not seeing any questions. So if there are no objections to moving on to a vote, all in favor of authorizing the revised health reimbursement account budget as moved by Floor and seconded by Jonas, please click yes, opposed click no. And once again, I'm seeing unanimous yes. So thanks everyone. Floor, do you want to carry on? Sure. So the next item on finances to review the tax and comparative information, and that would be 4.531, 32 and 33. And I'm gonna attempt to do a summary of those three items so that we can move on into the meat part of the budget. So the comparative information was in page 49 and it was the tax letter. And really what stood out at least for me, you guys had a chance to read it, is that there's two elements that impact the forecast for this year. And this is the downturn in the non-property tax revenues for the Education Fund and the downgrade in the revenue forecast. And that means that we would have downgrade the revenue forecast of four cents on property tax rate. So then the second part is that the retirement fund for the teachers this year, this account, let me see, which one is 38.1 million and it's up 6.9 million from last year. So that means another hike of 3.5 cents in between those two. And those were the two highlights of that letter. We have basically no control on that. So once the session is back in, I'm sure there'll be a lot of us lobbying for different things, but for now this is the reality. Then the tax rate projections on page 50 56, do you have that in front of you? And that is mostly the equalized pupils. So I think that was the most important part of that, that for 2021, we had 1,440.65 equalized pupils. And for this year, for the following coming school year, 2021-22, our projection is 1,422.30. So we're showing a decline. So it's about a 1.27 decline. So for, if you go to the following page, it meant that for, there's some projections there that they showed us for draft one A and the draft two that we have right now. So the draft two that we're looking at is 3.9 cents if we move forward as it is. So having said that, if there's no questions on that, I would like to give the stage to Brian to start us in the budget conversation. I'm not seeing any heads say no. So please Brian and Lori. Well, thank you, Floor. And yeah, I do have a lot, there's a lot to talk about and a lot to go over tonight. And I just want to first start off to the board and our community and those present tonight. Thank you for attending this important meeting. This is quite a historic time that we're living in and we all know it. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it. Sometimes it comes real quick and you're like, yep, this is a historic time. Tonight is definitely one of those times where you definitely feel like it. And this is quite a historic budget cycle. We're up against a lot of different things happening all at once and we're gonna get into that tonight. I think the aim of a superintendent in preparing a budget proposal is always trying to, I'm gonna use a football term as a former high school football player, moving the chains. You're trying to keep moving the chains no matter what's happened, trying to get those first downs until you get into the end zone and achieve your goal. So I think in any budget cycle it's trying to move the chains forward and minimize the impact of reducing any types of services and protecting the classroom in particular. I think that this budget that we're gonna, you're gonna hear about tonight which is our second draft budget is does that. The budget reflects ultimately our collective efforts of myself, of the leadership team working to follow the board parameters based on the best information that we have available at this time. Before I get into anything else, I just wanna let everyone know that while we're gonna walk be happy to answer questions and welcome our questions about these. As you know, there are some significant reductions in our budget tonight. I just wanna let you know that I do not plan on discussing any potential questions that may be a personnel matter or a personnel item because we don't wanna actually say certain things or put things out there that may or may not be accurate. And so when we get into personnel types of things I always find it has to be very careful especially when you're talking about budget cuts and people's livelihoods. So I may be intentionally vague in certain areas but at the idea is I'm gonna be we're gonna be presenting the entire budget for this draft and we're gonna hope to answer as many questions as we humanly possibly can that you have so that you understand the budget and our community understands the budget and what went into it. So that being said, I'm just gonna talk a little bit quickly about the parameters because I thought the parameters was the are very important because that's what we built our budget around. So you had given us five parameters. The school board first one was establish a budget that is less than 3% net impact on taxes. That budget, this budget does do that. Find ways to pay for the three initiatives and strategic planning process, facility director and health instructors and potentially using fund balances where appropriate. This budget also does that. That's in this budget. Prepare a list of contingencies if needed. I will say that one of the areas that's in here for the contingency piece, we do have a, we did put in a reduction of $390,000 from administration that is, we're still working on that. So we do know that 90,000 has been identified but we're still working on the additional 300,000 and we'll have to, we're still, once we have an idea of what that may be, but we did put that in there as well. And I'm sure there'll be questions about that tonight. The fourth piece was establish a budget that is less than the excess spending threshold amount per equalized pupil. So this is gonna be, this is something that is also driving our budget this year. There is a, I'll let Lori will talk more about this tonight, but we have a, there's a big question mark around this item. We're hoping to get approved for a transfer of funds that will allow us not to get into that threshold piece. If that does not happen, it would be very difficult. It would be a very difficult, it will become even a more difficult budget year. So I'll let Lori talk more about that piece, but we are currently believe we are in that, we are following that parameter. And then last but not least the budget, establish a budget that will move towards supporting a multi tiered system of support in all schools. So in meeting with the principals, I learned that we're in various stages of implementing MTSS. And so developing a strong multi tiered system of supports is going to take a little more time than just this budget cycle. So what we're doing is we were able to, I was able to get a up to $50,000 from the agency of education to help us support us in this area. And we're going to be trying to work to standardize the MTSS system across our schools. And so you'll be hearing more about that in a future meeting when we're prepared to share that information. So again, we believe that we are moving towards that and that the additional money that this agency of education is providing us may end up helping us and help minimize some of the impact to our budget at least when we determine how to move forward in this important area. One important thing is this budget protects all of our current interventionists that exist across the schools. We're not reducing any of those services to our children. But we're also looking to standardize our approach across the schools. So how do we get here? So how do we get to addressing these five parameters? And that's a question I think it's important to understand and know how we got there. The first thing is we met with a lot of folks over the last several weeks. We met with principals and the leadership team to get their input on the budget. This was, we had at least two full group meetings with the principals as a team. We met with the leadership team as well, at least twice. And we held 18 individual meetings with principals and provided numerous opportunities to meet and talk. So we had a lot of our conversations with our leadership folks. I will say that the discussions with the principals and central office leadership had been very collaborative in nature, but they've also been tough. This is a different year. Just like everything else this year has been different with the pandemic. Folks, the principals, I wanna let the public and the teachers who are in attendance know that the principals and the central office leadership did a very good job of advocating for their schools. I mean, no one wants to get cuts. No one likes getting cuts. It's not fun, it's not fun for me. It's not fun for anyone else. And they advocate for their programs. And I think that's to be expected. So, but the overall philosophy of this historical budget cut again was also to spread the reductions across the different items in the budget cycle and not have one group take it more than others. So, one of the other big things is just to let you know that we're gonna ask for your board feedback or I'm really looking forward to getting your feedback for the draft three budget tonight. I know that in putting this together, there have been some challenges in putting this together. And again, maybe they're always like this. It's always like this every year, the challenges of getting the information from the agency of education and the state and different pieces. But it seemed like this year it was more challenging. And I think it's more challenging when you're talking about making cuts and reductions. So, when you're making increases to the budget, it's easier even when you don't have all the information, but when you're waiting for different things to come in. So, for example, why is it a bigger challenge this year than other years? Well, declining enrollment is a huge thing that's happening in our district, calculating the equalized pupils, still not knowing what the common level of appraisal is. Will we be able to transfer the money to our capital fund to avoid the threshold? The numbers change and we constantly have to recalculate these various formulas. And so it's challenging, I know, for myself, but also some of my members of my leadership team, when we sit there and we say, we think we have the number and then we get new information and we have a new number to go for. So, I know this happens every year again, but it's definitely so much more difficult. So I just wanna end my little spiel and introduction to the budget tonight, but just saying that this is again, our best shot is a proposal for tonight. We still do not know the common level of appraisal, equalized pupils from the agency of education. We can guess about what these things are, but we don't have it written in stone. Can we transfer the money into our capital fund to avoid the threshold? And what does that, what do those administration reductions look like? We do not have that information, but we're working on it. Thank you, Floor. Okay, Lori. So Lori, can we move into the budget? Thank you. So a couple of things. We did do a lot of budget reductions. And so to be fully transparent, Brian and I put together a summary list. It's in your packet on page 69 and 70 and what it shows you is kind of my talking points for tonight. So you can follow along, but I wanted to start by saying some of these budget cuts are pretty straightforward and we really appreciated the opportunity to have this creative thinking. I mean, we went through every line as best we could and being my final budget, it was a lot. So I'll start by saying under the negotiated items and I'm on page 64. What changed there was that the teachers have the opportunity to put in to move horizontally on the salary grid and they have to notify us by December 1st. And this year we had one of the lowest signups that I've seen. So we had a budget forecast in there previously for that amount and we were actually able to reduce the budget by $68,000 without any other impact. It was just a financial estimate in the first draft. So that was great news. The second area was health insurance and there's kind of three moving parts to that. The first part is that you just approved tonight reducing the reimbursement transfer. So that saved $231,000. So we were able to cut that out of this budget draft. Another item was the inflation went down from a 10% to a 9.6. But we actually had a budget increase there because we had more people sign up for the January 1 opened enrollment opportunity. The other area that we recommended using Fund Balance for was to transfer the first year payment for the early retirees. The health insurance is only offered in the first year. And so if we transferred that and utilized a fund balance and made the payment in June, that would actually reduce the budget for a one-time budget change of $67,000. Other than that, we went through every line of all the other benefits that we offer that are related to salary like workers' comp unemployment disability insurance. And we made sure we put in a reasonable estimate by doing so it actually saved $20,000. So that savings of 325,000 is solid. I don't believe it would need to change for the next draft unless the board changed some of the parameters that we were given. So that's good news. When we went down to other staffing changes that was where we spent the most time. We went through and looked at every position we met with each principal and each administrator and went through their staffing. And we were able to utilize grant funds for 2.3 FTEs. So that saved 164,000 by just transferring employees who are eligible to be paid from a grant. Actually, there was two grants. There was a Medicaid entitled 2A. So that was good news. The early retirees, we had 15 people retire. And when we got done looking at not just the early retirees but others who have given their notice, we revisited that and we put in this draft that 6.4 positions would be unfilled. That's not in the cheat notes but the dollar amount is 563,000 of that. We also took out COVID positions because in getting COVID reimbursement we realized that if you budget for positions and you pay for them locally, you aren't able to submit to any future grants that we might receive. So we felt it prudent to take those positions and put them as a reserve fund balance. And we also were able to update the cost because of the health insurance savings. So that was a budget reduction of 206,000 but it was only a reserve of, let's just see, 190,000 of fund balance. Additionally, Brian just mentioned the administrative cost reduction. We did confirm one unfilled position at the central office for 90,000 and we also have a $300,000 reduction. So the total is 390. We're still working on the 300,000 right now but it is in this draft to get to a 3.9 cent tax increase. This budget includes adding the new positions for facility director that we hope in the future is actually going to save us costs by streamlining our purchasing throughout the system and helping with oversight for projects and the needs of the schools for plumbers, electricians, et cetera. This position also has been brought up many times by the principals as we got to have it. It would help them become more instructional leaders. And so we did fit that position in this budget. Three of our schools did not have health instruction and came up with a plan to implement health instruction and that added a 0.5 FTE for the three schools combined. And this evening, you just approved the early ed coordinator position of a 0.5 FTE that's in this draft. So all totaled, there was still a reduction of staffing changes of $887,000. And our combined total of salary and benefits is 200 and almost 3,000 less than what we're currently running. So we were very appreciative of the early retirement program and how it really did benefit the budget so that positions could be unfilled and not necessarily riffing staff. Lori, can I just jump in there again and just say that again because I think that's a very important thing. Just wanted to thank the board publicly because when you're doing a budget reduction like this, it's very difficult when you have to cut actual people and it's very difficult. But I think that the early retirement incentives that you put in last year helped us really, helped us a lot with this budget cycle. So just wanted to give kudos to the board here for doing that last year. So thank you. Valerie items, I left the food service transfer at a zero just so you would hear my speech. The food service program is currently getting funded by a change in the CARES reimbursements. It's also getting funded by some of the eligible costs going to CARES grant that I was able to receive approval for. But right now, we don't believe that we would need to have any kind of additional fund transfer. We do currently have about 149,000 in the budget but there's no increase for next year slated. We still need to look at that and that might be a future request for a fund balance transfer. So that's why I left it on here with a zero. So we will know more in the next few weeks on that. The technology service program, we were notified by the state that we should reduce expenses for the E rate reimbursements that we receive. We previously had been putting that in as revenue. So this is a budget reduction, but it's a revenue reduction, so it's cause neutral. At the last meeting, we had an increase in the budget of 363,000 for the operation of plant for repair and maintenance that was previously funded through capital funds. After reviewing that list, we've increased the budget by 100,000 of that. And we are going to continue to monitor that list to see if a reserve for fund balance would be needed and how much. We had some good news that the tech tuition that we pay primarily to the Spalding program, to the various program, was only going to have about a 2% increase is what I left. Their budget is about 1% increase, but because we also send kids to other programs, I left a 2% increase in here for the tech. It had previously been an estimate of 6%. So that was the budget savings from the last draft of 20,000, but it's still an increase of 10. Our transportation contract was fixed and that has not changed since the last draft. The 44,000 is the amount of the inflation in the current contract. So the next line, last year, I promised in the principles saved me, we went through line by line at each and every school and we were actually able to save $76,000 throughout the system. Some lines needed to go up and some needed to go down, but at the end of the day, it was a budget savings that historically has gone to fund balance at the end of the year. The pre-K program costs have changed somewhat from the last draft. It actually increased by $16,000 because the tuition that we're paying to other schools for our students there's a tuition increase predicted by the state. So we received that inflation estimate in the last few weeks. That's the nature of the increase beyond the last draft. It's still an overall reduction because we had students move into special education kindergarten and we also had savings in students leaving the district. The last item is special education and the only change there was a student moved. So we reduced that by 34,000. And I think that highlights the non-salary items. So it was a total reduction of 468,000 over the current year budget. And going down to other items, we used to have a philosophy that the amount of the debt service reduction would go as an increase to the capital fund transfer. It was more of a philosophical decision. Plus I realized you probably would want a nice round number in your capital fund transfer instead of all these small dollar amounts. So you have 725,000 down there on the right going into the capital fund transfer and the bond payments are up above it. And those are based on the bond schedules we currently have. So all totaled, if this budget was finished tonight, we're asking for 670,000 less than the current year budget. That's the first time I've presented a budget like this in 27 years. We also have revenues that are going down. We had talked about the tuition income last meeting that we'd have five less students next year and we have four less this year. So we would be projecting 186,000 less. The small schools grant, I still left it at the current level did send an inquiry to Janet Ansel because I realized that schools who voluntarily merged were eligible for continuing with small schools grant and having a whole harmless provision in the equalized pupils. So she is looking into that on our behalf and also the other schools who did not voluntarily merge and I think there was 13 or 14 districts. And so she's researching the law to confirm that we would still be eligible for the small schools grant because this is an increase but the total amount of the grant is actually, let's just see here. It's about 200,000. I think we're gonna get 175 to 200 depending on the final formula. I'm almost done. That Erie revenue I have just mentioned as far as the expense reduction for technology. We are projecting some less income at U32 for miscellaneous income by 7,000 and our special ed reimbursements changed associated with the cost reduction I previously mentioned and as well as as the health insurance costs went down we would receive less reimbursement for the savings and special ed. All totaled, the net impact on taxes is 1% less according to the budget. It's 354,000 less than we're currently collecting. I guess having said that, the last draft had a 14.8 cent tax increase and that was quite large. And one of the things that we were also considering was what is the typical range that we have tried to attain which is less than four cents. This year, if this budget was approved unchanged it would be approximately a 3.9 cent tax increase still. And I may be off on the equalized pupil estimates. Brad James is trying to work with us to help us confirm those numbers. So the 3.9 cents could go either way. If the students change by 10 either way it's a 1.3 cent tax impact. So we did our best. I feel like this is a budget that we can live with. We can find a way to make it work. I do have to acknowledge that we've had some accounting changes in the last few years with regard to the assessments versus the way that we're currently doing business. So for the next draft, I do need to restate a couple lines for instructional curriculum and the superintendent because one year accounts were one way and another year they were a different way and I need to get that corrected so that you guys are comparing apples to apples in this document. It won't change the totals in the document. It just is, it's a matter of which line is it in because it was in one line one year and another line another year. So I'm gonna be fixing that. Is there anything else for that? You thought I should have been talking about. I think I covered what we discussed. Hey, I agree. Can you guys hear me now with the video? Yes, a few people off. So yes, that's what we were hoping and now we wanted to move into questions for the board. And first they try to frame those questions within those parameters that we said, did the Scott send a few questions this afternoon. So I'll use that too, but I want us to bring us back to, we asked them a pretty hard question, bring it the first one and establish the budget less than 3%, right? And that impact on taxes, which we have to decide if that's the right approach, but this is what this responds to. Find ways to pay for the three initiatives and they've found found ways that won't, that will be cost neutral. So not adding cost. And in prepare a list of contingencies and we know that that contingency that Brian mentioned to us, the 300K is something that they haven't been able to discuss yet. So we are looking at 3.9 right now, but with that in the budget, it would be 5.9 without that in the budget. So this is just a draft, right? That decision hasn't been made and they haven't, it won't be final until they're able to have their conversations as a team and see that is, so just remember that this is a draft. And then the budget corresponds is not going through the threshold to the excess spending threshold. So, they had answered that question for us and established a budget that will move and support a multi-tier system of supports and Brian was able to talk through those points. And then Laurie and Brian had added two things. They're minimize the tax impen and the cost per equalize pupil. But I also wanted to bring us back then when we were answering those question, the ultimate goal for us as a board is to improve outcomes for our children. So that's what we hope this budget will be, it will be four and those are the kind of questions that we can ask. And Scott, send three questions. Do you understand the budget? If not, what would be helpful? And what further guidance would you give Brian and Laurie? And then we can decide, I think the answering can you support this draft is a little hard today because we don't have all of the information but we can continue to send them a guide them in continuing this process. And with that, I will move into getting board members to give us feedback. Is that okay? Okay, I see one hand up, Caroline. So first I really wanna thank Laurie because the questions I had down, she answered like three of my questions just in the oral report. And so I really appreciate that. So is it okay for if I go through the ABC? I think it's easiest for the flow if I just list out my questions and the ones that can't be answered, you just say we can't answer. And that way it's not like back and forth, is that okay? Yeah, that's totally fine, yeah. Okay, so for the first question, do you understand the budget? My answer is I do understand the budget in terms of the numbers, but I'm really unclear about the impact. And I think Brian really mentioned that there are some pieces that we won't get answered tonight. I'm still gonna kind of ask my questions in case there's a piece of it that can be answered but I also understand if there's a reason not to. I'll just say that does make the third question of can you support the budget? Really hard for me to answer if I don't really know the impact on individual schools and individual student and just the overall picture. So my first question is from page 63 under other staffing changes, the unfilled vacancies and that number. I had asked how many positions, but Lori had said 6.4. So that moves on to my next question is would it mean that we would have to move to cover it within? Because we're not filling it. Would we have to move people, staff from one school to another? And would we have to split time between, so somebody who maybe is full time at one school would now be split in order to fill the gaps of where the retirements or resignations were that aren't being filled. The other one, you were pretty clear that you wouldn't be able to answer but under the administrative, the 390,000. I was curious how many positions, what positions would fall under the heading of administration or administrative, sorry. And would are we looking or considering sharing anything between schools for anything under that category? Those are the only questions that I had that I didn't hear answered in the oral. So thank you. Ryan? So Ken, I just want to ask a lot of questions there. So I just want to make sure I have all the questions, Caroline. So I think the first question is you asked, what is the impact? So I think the impact again is, I'm proud to say that the impact is, it should not be impacting any of the services or programs that we have for students in our district. That's the number one piece. Impact, it may impact adults who work in our district. So that's the one piece that's always difficult, right? So the impact though for students is there should be relatively no impact because we do have a declining enrollment and we do have teachers who have retired and teachers that will not be replaced, right? So, again, when I thank the school board just a little while ago, it was helpful that you did that last year in that regard. So the impact is, I don't want to say zero impact, but on the classroom piece, but that was part of the goal was to make sure we do not have, we're providing level services and we're not impacting the, what's the word, the classroom. So will there be, will there may be a situation where a teacher or two or a staff member has to be transferred between schools? Yes, and that's gonna be new for our district. I know in the past when Washington Central was a supervisory union, typically folks were given a riff letter and then they were either had to reapply for their job, that would not happen. So the advantage being a district is if we have a position and someone could be transferred, that would be more beneficial to our teachers or teachers and staff than offering riffs. So, I think we're in a much better spot because of that, really. The administration cuts, what falls under administration? Well, it's anyone really that works as an administrator in a school, but it's not just administrators, administrative tours. It's also folks that work in the office of the principal, folks that do some sort of administrative function, whether it's office administrative assistance, different types of roles and functions that exist in under those areas. So there are some areas that, you know, that does impact. Talking about specific positions, not gonna do that tonight, just not appropriate. Also, we're still talking in talks and trying to figure this out with our leadership team. It is a tough conversation to have with the leadership team because we're talking about cutting, you know, people that are very close to our folks and the leadership team. So it's difficult. So that is, you know, I don't know if you have any other questions in regards. Caroline, I don't know if I missed one. I know you asked a bunch, so I just wanted to make sure. Thank you. You got a lot of them. The only one that was missed was, would anybody go from full time in one place to being split? And it was both for the administrative and for any of the vacancies that are unfilled. I think you may not know at this time, but. I would not be able to know about administrative because we haven't determined any determinations regarding that. With teaching stuff, I don't want to say no because I want to leave the option open in case we get, you know, five new kids and 20 new kids or how many new kids that come into the district between now and the start of school next year. So I don't want to be quoted one way or the other in that regards, but again, we're trying to have minimal impact on staffing, especially with our teachers protecting the classroom, but we may have to be prepared if that happens in the future, if enrollment changes. Maybe we'll have an enrollment boom next year and we're in the future because we are one of the only school districts in the state of Vermont that reopened fully. So I'm saying that publicly because I'm, hey folks, come on, come move to Washington Central. We got to go on over here, you know? So, right, thanks. That was all mine. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Caroline. Who wants to volunteer? Everybody gets a turn, guys. So Chris, you're not muted, so go. I will go. Actually, thanks, Floor. So I'm having a hard time understanding how we're cutting this budget by $670,000 and there's not going to be some impact on the level of services that we're providing. I think there has to necessarily be a reduction in the level of services that we're providing to students and we should be clear if that is going to happen and we may not know it conclusively right now, but if there's a fair chance that that's gonna happen, we should be expressing and acknowledging that. And so, Brian, I'd like you to clarify the distinction between, because you said that there would be no impact on students, but potentially impact on the adults in the school systems. So please to the extent that you can without, again, going into waters that you shouldn't be in right now, explain the difference between those. Sure, thanks, Chris. Yeah, so ultimately the idea is we would have to look at, again, not cutting teachers and reducing so many teachers that we end up impacting services, right? So one of the things is a lot of our positions, a lot of this budget was absorbed by the positions that we're not replacing for next year due to the early retirement incentive that the board had done last year. The other piece is the administration reductions. Again, we don't know what those are, so it's hard to tell, but administrative tours and administration are, what do you call it, our positions that are necessary and required in our schools. However, there may be, we may have to look at how we do things differently within schools or also within our central office, give you a perfect example. When I first got here, we had four folks doing a variety of different things. We are now going to have three people doing those jobs by moving things around and being very strategic in what we did with their job responsibilities. The other piece is what we just did tonight with the community connections marriage, I don't wanna call it marriage, but combination between community connections and pre-K. So there was some opportunities there to make us more effective or efficient in those areas. So that's not going to actually reduce any services that is those types of changes end up enhancing and making folks more effective. Okay. There in Lori's presentation, and this on page 69, she talked about utilizing fund balance for other one-time needs. And is there a sense as to what those one-time needs would be? One was already described in terms of the health insurance premiums for the folks who are taking early retirement, but has there been discussion about what those other one-time needs would be? Listed on page 70. And so would you like me to just quickly review that list or did you wanna just read it? So all the other one-time needs, those are- Well, we've listed them there. Some of them have an amount to be determined. Okay. And others, we plan to come back on January 4th with a more comprehensive list. We just kinda ran out of time. Okay, and so you're telling me that those are what you're referring to when you say utilize fund balance for one-time needs on page 69, you're referring to page 70. True, thank you. Okay, thanks. So I think I'm with Caroline in terms of a little more information before supporting this budget. But I think you've done a great job in terms of our current financial circumstances and present a budget that I think will be workable. At least based on what I'm hearing. Thank you. Who wants to be next? Jill, sorry. I think I was double muted. I don't know that I have anything to add to what Caroline and Chris are asking. I definitely understand the math and I really appreciate the page 69 highlight because I do think it made it really, it was really helpful for going through an understanding. It is just a little hard to understand the implications of the cuts that you're proposing without the detail. So I understand the complexity of that and why that's hard to do, but it is just really hard to understand what it really means in the real world. So I'm wrestling with that. Thank you, Jill. Anybody else? Lindy, go ahead. Yeah, good questions coming up. I still don't understand, well, I understand the budgeting part. I have questions about on page 69 where you have the other staffing changes. You have reduced administrative costs by 390,000 and you're saying this isn't going to affect our students. I find that hard to believe. I have been a big fan of our leadership team and felt we have a very strong leadership team. I also have felt like in the past, some of the changes that I might not have agreed with were to make sure the administrators in the buildings were able to be more of an instructional leaders versus unclogging toilets and checking the heat and doing things like that. And I think this could affect that. I also don't quite understand how the halftime health instructor is 39,000, but the quarter time early ed edition is 27,000 when that's only a 0.25 difference in the two. So some of that it's getting nitpicky, but I'm concerned about our leadership team and what this all means. When you say in central office, you had four people doing something that three are now doing, those aren't administrators. So at least I'm pretty sure they're not administrators in the central office. So I'm just concerned with what these reductions are and need more information on that. I think that's my real focus as I looked through this and I have not been somebody who felt we didn't need some cuts. I'm just not sure how we get those cuts. I also know that the needs of students have increased dramatically. Our schools are not just educational places, their healthcare, their mental health, their equity, their social justice, they're all these things that it used to be, you went to school to learn to read and write and do some math and that we're now the social hub for all of the ills of our societies, the schools have taken those on, which concerns me as far as not that we don't need to make some cuts, but I'm just not sure about them. So those are my concerns. And can I support this draft? Not without more information about what these cuts mean and the collaboration around where these cuts came from as a team. Thank you, Wendy. Diane? Yeah, so thank you. This is an awful lot of work and I really appreciate the detail so that I could kind of make sense as I was looking through it. So thank you, Lori for that. Lori and Brian and other members. Lori, just a clarification, because I think I misheard you on page 69, the non-salary item reduced on the paper, it says 423,000. Did you say 460 or something like that? Lori, I thought you said 4. Right, the sheet shows you the change from the last draft. The page 64 shows you what's left. Okay. So they're not the same. We were just trying to give you the notes on what changed since draft one. Okay. Sorry for the confusion. So again, thank you to Caroline for starting this off because those are the same exact questions that I understand the math and the work behind it, but I don't understand what it means without specifics and not to micromanage, but just to better understand what that ripple is across. This is one of, we are expanding in our understanding and our working together as one district. And so to really fully understand how one ripple might be to the next, specifics are what really would help us so that we know what, did I vote for that? I don't remember. So that part of it is pretty important. We had put in that request of that parameter of being below the 3 cents before we got the letter from the tax department, not to say that that's different, but it kind of changes up and what we need to be thinking of. And again, not without those understanding of what it is not only the ripple, but the equity behind that. And then also, is there the opportunity for leadership team or others to prioritize? So again, absolutely understanding that facilities manager and that that would help free up our principles and our leadership team. However, if we're then reducing some of the administration team within the buildings, are we then also ratcheting up the expectation and the work of what's expected? So again, yes, that you're exactly right, Lindy. We are the social hubs, the community hubs of our towns. And so how we can best even support the work that isn't book learning, often all that administrative angle is there. That's not to say that we know tough cuts are needed, but a better understanding of, as you were saying, the collaboration behind it and what it looks like. And also what it means, yes, there is declining enrollment, but unfortunately, it doesn't happen in nice little pockets where you can then say, okay, but this teacher can move here and that. So what does that declining enrollment look like in each area? Again, not to micromanage, but just to better understand where the decisions impact. Thank you, Diane. Jail. Yeah, so I understand the budget, the numbers, how it breaks down. And I agree with Lindy. I need to see, I guess, more like real life examples how these numbers will impact our district. One question I have is in terms of the process in how state funding works and federal funding. And if we pass this budget and then the voters pass it in March, but then things start to get better. We get a lot of stimulus money and we get more students to who enroll. Will we have to actually make those cuts over the summer or then would we readjust the budget? How, what is that process? I guess is my question. Brian. This spring we look at student enrollment and we realign class sizes and we look at student needs and we update all of our staffing. So historically, if there has been a dilemma, usually it's too late to riff if it goes the other way, but if it's to add, we usually come back to the board and discuss permission to use fund balance or to just make you aware of a situation where we might not fill one position but fill it a different way. So usually that does happen around April and the end of April, I guess is the best time. Thank you, Lori. Any other questions, Jill? Or is that just good? Dorsey? My turn, huh? Sorry, I didn't bring you. I'm going by the screen order that I have. Sorry. Well, I understand the budget. There were some suggestions I was going to make and I may make just to throw them out there but one of the things you did, or you as a group did, was to combine some administrative jobs. In other words, apparently you have three people doing the work of four now, which I agree was probably needed to happen and often needs to happen. I was going to make some bizarre suggestions and I am going to say this basically because at this point in the pandemic and everything that has happened, we really don't realize what an extraordinary event this is in all our lives, in our country's life. Now, I was going to give you a little example about how people in the great depression handled this. This was before the days of the contracts. My father was head of public works of New Fort Rhode Island at the time in the 1930s and they didn't have any money to pay their men. And so the men came to my father and said, well, I know you can only use half of us but the other half of us need work too. We need to be able to feed our families. And so they said, would you do this? And half of us work one week and the other half work the next week in order to make it through this depression and that's how they made it through. And so now we have teacher contracts and all kinds of contracts. And my far out suggestion might have been that the people who are not on the teacher contracts, I guess you would say the administrators, decide if they would like to not, and I don't think would amount to what they need to save but somehow work together so that, and I think you've actually done this, so that one person doesn't have to lose a job, that several people can do the job and a piecemeal or whatever but kind of with the same idea. But I don't think anybody will realize until you guys are my age how really tough these this years are and what an amazing job we have done and our school leadership. And to some extent the whole community by keeping our community safe and able to have the in-person school that we have. So we need to all pat ourselves on the back but also remember, these are really hard times and we do have to make some uncomfortable decisions. And I think the people who've put this together have made some good ones and I'm hoping it'll see us through. Thank you. And I can support it. Thank you, Dorothy. Jonas. So thanks for having me right after Dorothy. I wanna echo what Dorothy just said about the whole community being responsible for keeping us safe. We wouldn't have had zero new positive cases and our schools would not have remained open here and in other districts where kids are still going to school at least part time, that wouldn't be possible if our community had not continued to do responsible things and keep themselves safe and follow guidelines. So I completely echo what Dorothy says there. About the budget, I do understand the budget and going this late in the process, most of the good questions have been taken. So I'll eventually be curious to know what the final impact on the total number of FTEs, right? Of FTE staff across the district, right? So Brian, when Brian said that four positions were consolidated into three, in terms of the work that people were doing, did that result in a lower head count in the central office? So knowing what that head count impact is going to be will be an interesting data point and I hope we can see that, which sort of leads me to the next thing I wanted to ask. Given that we've heard that this is essentially a level service budget, we're just trying to pay less but it won't be harder on the kids but it will be harder on the adults. Does that mean, again, that fewer people will be doing that same amount of work? And which leads me to the next, right? And I think Dorothy said this as well, oftentimes that needs to happen, right? And you do need to consolidate and there's additional bandwidth and people can pick up roles and responsibilities. But I think as Dorothy intimated, some of this seems like really common sense stuff. The things that Laurie went through, and again, I'll echo everybody by giving all the praise and kudos to Laurie and everybody who worked on this because it's really an amazing result. But a lot of this seems very common sense so I wonder why we weren't going to do this or have the estimates, the changed estimates in place, in the first place. So looking at the staffing changes line in the budget for staffing changes including early retirement and unfilled vacant positions, comparing that to I think draft one, I mean, that's like more than a half a million dollars of change. The delta is more than a half a million dollars and I imagine that's because that line now includes unfilled vacant positions. But if we can operate the schools with level service and we could have absorbed, leaving those positions unfilled, why weren't we planning to do that already? And I think that gets to services, are the services really level? Even if you guys are confident that services will remain level and you can't provide details about a lot of details and I totally understand that. It would be good to hear what the downside may be even if we don't know that for certain. But all in all, I think this is, you know, really, you know, the numbers are really impressive, but I'm also hearing a lot of other people saying, you know, that we really just, you know, again, I think we want to know what the downside is. Even if you don't know it yet, you know, we'd like to hear, you know, what the categories of downside will be right or what it would rhyme with. Thank you, Jonas. Brian, do you have any comments to that or we'll wait. I don't think so. I mean, I think Jonas did a great job of summarizing, you know, a great, I wondering type of question. So Steven, look, I'm leaving the finance committee to the end because we had our chance to. I understand the budget. I can support the budget as presented. I appreciate the work that was done. It met the board parameters and I don't need to know specifics. I don't believe it's the board's position to get into specifics. They met the parameters that the board had. The only thing specifics would do for me would be if we were going to adjust the board parameters. And I think it's too late in the process unless we were going to adjust the board parameters to make it easier on the administrators. They've done exactly what we've asked them to do. I appreciate it. And I have the information I need right now to support what they've done. Thank you, Steven. Scott. Thank you. I think the budget has been very well explained. And all of its sort of boldness. I think it's a politically savvy budget for the voters. I expect that this budget. Would be received with comparative. Approval by those who have to vote on it. There's so much in addition to what you, Laurie and Brian have already described, just in terms of the, in terms of the equalized pupils and the common level of appraisal. And Gile mentioned whatever the federal government might do. And who knows how that will affect us. So in terms of, of guidance, although like Steven, I can, I can support this direction for sure. I would just suggest that you be prepared for anything. And, and have, as the, as the parameters said, have contingencies and have also a perspective that, that extends into the out years past next year. So that where you're able to kind of voluntarily. In consultation with everyone involved. Compress this budget. Without having to be forced by under duress, either from stances or other political. I think that's a good point. Thanks to all. Thank you, Scott. You were starting to break up a little bit at the end, but you came through a carry. Yeah, thanks. So I think I feel like I have a reasonable understanding of the budget at the board level anyway. I can definitely support it. It met, it met our parameters and it exceeded our expectations. So I think that's a good point. I think that in terms of guidance, I would say that. As you're considering the. Reductions of positions and that includes the administrative ones that haven't been identified yet. You know, carefully consider, of course, the savings versus the impact. I know you'll do that, but I, I recommend you help us understand that. Be straight with us about the impact, even if it's minimal. It's good for us to have a sense of that and, and then two competing things to keep in mind. One is that I have a sense that the community might support more than this. So if a reduction, if the impact outweighs the savings in some sense. It's my sense and I might be wrong that there, there may be, there may be support in the community for a little more. At the same time, I made this point yesterday, not that I know anything more than anybody else, but I'm looking down the road. I think next year is going to be as hard. Sorry, I'm going to stop my audio. I think next year is going to be as hard or worse. And reductions that we make this year for this next budget are. Or maybe say it a different way, reductions that we don't make this year in this next budget could come back and be added to a new reductions next year. And so I think where there are opportunities to make reductions, there is a benefit to do that in, in the short term that helps us in the long term as well. If that makes sense. Thank you. Thank you, Carrie. So I guess funny enough, I get to go too. So I was part of a, I was part of the conversations and I really appreciate that. And I really appreciate the work and they exceeded like everybody's been saying the parameters. I do, I do have the same worry that the first worry that Caroline mentioned, and I support what Carrie just said too. So to me is more. Did we, I wanted you to be honest. Did we set an unattainable parameter? I'm not as worried about changing the parameter in, especially the 3%. I don't want the impact and I shared this with Brian at the meeting and I share it with Brian after I, I really believe in instruction leadership and it's been, you know, we need leaders that are instructors and we need superintendents and, you know, both Kelly and Jen also need to be instructional leaders. So I, I worry about reducing that administration, but I'm not going to micromanage that. I'm hoping that is going to be a collaborative process. But if we are, I agree that that if there's any, be any time been, if there's ever been a time where our communities understand what schools do, this is the time. So I please do not put a budget forward just worrying about politically what it means. It should be what the outcomes for the kids are in understanding where we are right now. And just in honor of what Dorsey was saying, this has been on my mind for a while. So you're going to have to bear with me since I have the stage, you don't get to say no. So we, we have all the tools to build our societies. I didn't write this. I knew reform our ways of thinking, fix the inequities and the end and end the discriminations and choose earnest wisdom over snippets of information, choose empathy over hatred, choose humanism over tribalism. Yet we don't have much time or room for error while we're losing the planet or our only home. After the pandemic, we don't want to go back to the way things were before. And we shouldn't. What we call the beginning is often the end. The end is where we start from. So as Carrie said, next year is going to be more dairy. So I really want the board to start grappling with the question, are we really structured the best way that we should be structured to best served. Our kids. And that's that finalizes that part of the finance and we can move into. Pressing issues about poor members running for office. Laurie. Sorry. Miss Jonathan Goddard. He didn't get to give us feedback. He's on here. It's on the second page on my screen. Oh my God. So sorry, Jonathan. I didn't. Can you all hear me? Yes. Oh, good. Okay. So, so yeah, I think everyone has made has made valid points. And I suppose I would just my, my, my feedback would be that. While it is true that, you know, student enrollment has been declining statewide for a number of years. I mean, let's call it a trend. I think that's really what it is. I mean, I think that the, the, the, the needs of individual students is increasing, not decreasing. So it's not, and I've said this for years, it's not so simple. The equation is not so simple as to say, because we're having declining enrollments, therefore we should have declining budgets. It's just not that simple. So that's just sort of, sort of a cautionary tale. That I'll put out. And, and yes, given, given the pandemic, we're still in the middle of it. And we're going to have to make short-term decisions based on doing the best thing that we can with the information we have. Does not mean that, that next year or the year afterwards, that some of the decisions we make now may have potentially detrimental consequences in the future. And I would agree with, with what everybody has said, certainly people that are current and former educators on the road that really where the rubber meets the road. The teachers are absolutely key and all the people that directly support students are really the, are really the bones are really the, you know, the, really the framework of the school and our educational system. So any, any cuts in that direction, I would really have a hard time supporting. Thanks. Thank you, Jonathan. So Scott, do you want to do the four point. The board. I mean, I just moved my stuff around. Yes. Sure. The, the morning. May I just ask, Brian. Do you need this to be approved tonight? Or is this just to kind of show us what you've got and, and we'll approve it. At a future meeting. I think it would be helpful to have approved tonight. If it's possible. I mean, you probably have to get it out there sooner rather than later, because I do know that the things are, I know, I know it's getting close to the time where it's actually, I don't have the exact date here when it's due, but we do need to get it out there. I know that. Well, then. I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. The board. I'm sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry. I was just wondering what Lori. To answer. Okay. Good Lori. Please. Typically, what we've done and I know Brian was new to Vermont is we, we give you this draft. You look it over. If there's any glaring errors, Michelle has called each town to confirm times. The thing that was on here last year's article. amount of the budget so article six usually comes back completed. So typically this is your first run through and the second meeting in January would be when you would officially adopt it. So this is like a first reading, basically. Sorry, we didn't. Yeah, I'm sorry we didn't tell Brian that. Welcome to Vermont. So the floor. So Lori, you just said we were gonna, because we just saw this again, you were going to check on the Worcester timing. So Michelle did that already. No, okay. Any other questions tonight, but that one question came up was is Worcester really from 10 to seven or is it. Is that, you know, 10 a.m. to seven the other towns are like eight or seven to seven to just validate that that time range was correct. I think you see any other questions or issues you could just email those to Michelle. Okay, Lori, you're going to want to check in with Katie Winkle and John, but yeah, the polls open at 10. Okay, so that's legit in the middle of town meeting. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for verifying. Great. And also just talk to Katie confirm that Katie. Thank you, Jonas. Just to point out also that a virtual public hearing will take place at 630pm on March 1 2021. So, mark your calendars. Anyway, any other, any other comments or or questions or advice for Lori. Chris, sorry. Chris, can you unmute please. Sorry. To the extent anyone knows if the Congress actually passes a stimulus package that includes aid to the states. Does that have any impact on the financial considerations in this budget. It is unknown at this time. Are you on mute. I'm doing my my invitation, my my stomach, my so invitation. You have a similar smile. So yes. Okay, thank you. That's an answer. Great. Thanks tones. I don't know if this is necessarily the, the right place to maybe talk about this but I noticed it while I was reading through the, the warning. And that is that I think it's very, very important. That the board consider increasing the compensation that board members receive. I know this has been talked about before but I think that it is critical that being a board member is accessible to all members of the public. It doesn't, it doesn't mean that it doesn't that people don't have to choose between, I guess, providing for their family and serving on this board. And that, you know, in an effort to also make both make it more accessible and to increase the number of people who can apply that it's important that that amount is raised. Wow, thank you towns. Luckily, I was muted. Otherwise, you would have heard the chorus of cheers that greeted your suggestions from my kitchen. And perhaps what we should do is include this as the future agenda item for our next finance committee and board meeting. I think it's an it's an excellent point towns. And you have any other any other comments. If not, then I guess we have the first draft, the first reading of the warning and floor, hand it back to you for the next bit. So, so then after the just women's, we have several back in seats in our other people are running so Caroline and Jonathan who were who we appointed to the board need to run for short. And then Michelle, reach out to all of you so I will love for the board members that are here that have to run to please raise their hands and affirm that they're running. They don't need to affirm it today, I guess, but that they know that they need to run, at least the thumbs up so that. Okay. Okay, I see. I know I need to run in order to be on the seat past March I have not decided that I am running so I want to make that clear and. Yes, I decided I wasn't running and then my husband's like just do it and so now I have to rethink it but I'm not 100% that I'm running. Okay, we would love to have you so I hope you do run is everybody. That's exactly the same for me Caroline. You don't have a choice Lindy. Thank you. Okay, so I know that's pretty informal but as long as everybody knows that they need to run that was the main part and Michelle was doing the outreach to you guys. And then the big conversations is the town report. We had a conversation as a, as the finance committee. So in the past, a two of our towns, three towns do not publish any school information in their town reports and two of our towns East Montpellier and Berlin publish information of the school. Can you still hear me. Yeah. So, the question was that we don't want to be having time of our administrators in trying to format it differently for each individual town so we because we're a separate entity now we would publish the report as we published that last year separately. And then we would give the information to the two towns that have requested information and they will be in charge of formatting it and including it in their town plan without the unified district, carrying any cost for for that. That's the, I will look for my other board members on the finance committee to back that up but that's sort of that was the consensus that we came up to so that there would be more information out we are a little worried about different information, going out and not having a unified message. So, you know, obviously the unified report is what what carries but it would be good to continue the tradition with the other two towns, as long as the unified union is not responsible for producing the for formatting the information as as needed so we would share what we're putting in the report. I'm looking at, you know, okay, Lindy and I know Scott I don't know if you had a chance to reach out to Korean in Berlin and they're all set. Right. Yes. Okay. Um, I, if I think East Montpelier wants to publish stuff and so that the electronic file in the same way they used to get it. It doesn't have to be the exact information. I didn't mean it that way has to get to them in time to get to the printer, because of their and what was brought up last year. They didn't know until pretty late that it wasn't going in their book and they had saved those pages. And it became a bit of an issue and when they looked back in the East Montpelier book, it has been in there for 20 plus years. And so they requested information at the time to have and made copies and had it available at town meeting that kind of mirrored what had been in there in the past but they didn't get it in time for their book. So yes, the information that will be shared is just the information that will go in the report. Right. So they need to talk to the town to find out. And it probably should be with the town administrator, because he's the one that works with the person who puts the book together and that's where a lot of that went on. I guess the final question is to the board does the board in general, thumbs up agrees that we have just one report, and we will share the information if a town wishes to to print they can print at their own cost. Yeah. Okay, what's that one agree but specifically the I'm sorry at the, the point the public was saying last March was the one I heard the most was publishing the salaries, and that had specifically been cut out so we could still include that in one town report, right and just have more salaries listed. I'm going to let Brian talk about Scott and Brian talk about it. I don't want to be the only voice in this. You're doing great floor. I think the problem with the salaries is that you would have every single employee I forget how many employees are there again Lori or Brian 349 I believe 349. Plus, there's a question of how that information is presented. I think the better and the more reasonable and and I think just more suitable way is to have it publicly available. It is public information and to provide the link to it, maybe have it live on the web. And where it can be, you know, kept fresh and have a link to it that is then shared in town reports of towns. Want to do that. Um, is that, does that drive with your understanding floor. Yeah, I mean, I mean, you heard the budget presentation tonight. We've also understand there may be some more difficult roads ahead in the future years, putting people salary in there during budget times we're talking about reductions I don't think it's a great idea. I think I think if it is public information. So if we got public requests, we could have that information available. But just, I think it becomes a, I hate to have someone become a target because they have their salaries and published. It's a, it's a difficult one for me. I'm not very, I like to be transparent. And, you know, we follow the laws and rules if someone requests it, but putting it in there when we're talking about reductions and it become it could become a it could become difficult. Thanks. Chris, do I, do I see your. You do. It is a frequent request every year to have the salaries available and published. And so they should be available in some way and we should make an effort to, if we want to do it on the web, I think that that's probably a great idea to do it that way just in terms of collating all the information and then publishing it all. But we should get a link out to the towns. It's available for town meeting. These are the salaries. If you want to look at the salaries. This is where you go, rather than try and bury it someone just just because people ask for it. And, you know, the console, if they ask every year we shouldn't, we should accommodate that request this public information, and we should make it available. And, you know, I can understand Brian's concerns about in a tough budget time but that is still publicly available information that we should make available easily available to our constituents. Thank you. I have always objected to it on the principle that I have. It's very sure that it's public information, but to print it in the individual town reports. I have always objected to, as our town used to and now no longer publishes the list of delinquent taxpayers. We don't do that anymore either. When we first came to town, we had to pay a tax, a full tax, the full tax was in effect in Vermont in the 70s still. And that list could get put in the town report. I don't really object to individual people being listed for any particular reason on a list like that. Obviously they'll be there for other things. I just on principle would not like it. I totally agree with the idea of having a link where they can get all the salaries for all the, all the employees of the district in one lot. I believe all state salaries are available at one link and you can just scroll down to find a name and find out what they make. And that too should be public and is public in that way. So I would go by that. Thank you. Okay, so I think we have some consensus we'll have a link to it. Mary and Brian can coordinate that with Carla and see what is the best way to do that, but the information that go to towns would be the same information that will be published in our report and they can publish however they wish to in their town reports. Okay, and I think that concludes my part. It's got so back to you. Go floor. Oh, except for Jonas hasn't signed up 10 seconds last year a member of the community pointed out the, the high quality and glossy nature of the annual report. I would, I would, I would echo that again, you know, classic, you know, town reports style, no glossy colored, you know, papers card stock cover. That's what I'd prefer. That's actually a very useful observation. Thank you. It's less promotional material than, you know, government government document, government document style. Exactly. Sounds great. Floor. Many, many thanks. So we can move on then if there are no further questions to board operations and this item is one that I asked for. It's, it's more of a plea than anything else. Basically, it harks back to what towns and Jonathan and Diane and Lindy were saying and also what I was reading in the leadership team reports, every school is doing a kind of gift giving program for families in need students in need. And even though I realized it's in the nature of things that this, at this time to be disconnected. I'm feeling especially disconnected from that, from that segment of our population, which people who need us the most. Since we have become basically not just an educational institution, but a platform for social services and public health. So, essentially, what I'm hoping to just to plant in your minds to think about how do we make contact with with that part of our constituency. So we can understand better. How we can serve them how we can help how we can know, give them recognition and respect and show solidarity as as we should. I'm not expecting anybody to have that answer, but just wanted to start. Start you thinking about it and, and perhaps even Brian, some of your leadership team can can help us out I know you've had suggestions about this in the past about focus groups and and organizing, you know, meetings and that that kind of thing. I'm just feeling it as a really strong need. And I don't know what the others of you are thinking on the next few minutes, we don't need to spend a lot of time on this at this meeting. But is this a legitimate concern, or is this just a scouting or Diane. Well, I'm especially mindful of it as well as we're looking at town meeting day and what town meeting will look like for our communities and knowing that it's going to need to be virtual. It's it to me lends this opportunity. Well, how do we engage all of our communities into the work of the school in a virtual way so that this might be a nice bridge to the changes that have been happening for town meeting so I'm kind of thinking of it along that way and wondering if we could have a creative way of, of sharing the great videos that are out there of our schools and and getting a tour going that way to engage our our communities. Good idea. Thank you. Yeah. So, unless anybody feels a burning desire to say something, we can leave it there. And just, if you don't mind, if I might ask you just to have this percolate in your heads and any thoughts that you have in future, I will be very happy and grateful to hear. We can, if there's no nothing further on this, we can move, I believe to the consent agenda. Is that right. Right. Okay. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes of December 2. I moved to approve the minutes of December 2. Jonas. Chris seconds. Thank you. Are there any changes. Jonas. Yeah, it's Chris. No, no, no changes. No changes. Okay. Anybody else have any changes or All in favor of approving the minutes of December 2. Please click yes. If you're opposed, click no. And I'm seeing all yeses. Thank you very much. Approve board orders. Yeah, thank you, Linda. I even had my cursor on the right screen. I made a motion to approve the board orders in. Can I just do the total each time I give the single ones, but then I realized there's a total right there. Does it matter? Doesn't matter. The grand total is fine. Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you for the grand total of $374,899. 60 cents. Thank you. Is there a second? I'll second. Was that Caroline? Yes. Thank you, Caroline. So Lindy moves Caroline seconds. Any questions? If not, we can go to a vote. All in favor, please click yes. Opposed click no. And once again, carries unanimously. Thank you very much. And floor, I think may already have. I'm typing away. I'm typing wonderful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for reminding us all to send our emails. In the U of signature. So the agenda shows personnel, but. I don't believe there are any personnel actions today. Is that correct? Excellent. So that brings us then to public comments. I just wanted to make a comment at this point. If you're able, please to click the raise hand icon. Which you can access from your participant screen. Or if, if you have a problem with that. You can just clear your throat loudly off mute. If. No one has no member of the public has. A comment to make. Then we can move on to. Our executive session. About personnel and negotiation. We have one. Oh. I'm right here. I'm so sorry. No worries. I couldn't find my little hand. So I just, I just wanted to jump in. I know I was here a month ago and I thanked the board for the half day Wednesdays. And I, I fully. I'm so appreciative of those Wednesdays, but I feel like we're at a point at the end of, with December ending and the new semester starting and how well things are going in terms of COVID. So I just wanted to, I just wanted to say that I just kind of want to illustrate what Wednesdays have looked like for me personally. And I think this speaks for a lot of teachers, especially in the middle school, because we're the ones that are getting those half days. What they've been for us. And I use the word reprieve a month ago. And I feel like I need to, I don't want to backtrack, but I want to reframe what I meant by reprieve. I've been able to now focus on students more on those half days. It's not a reprieve in that I, as a teacher, feel like I'm getting a break or have a moment to take a breath. It's more that I feel like I can do my job, which is to serve students. And I'd like to illustrate for you for a moment what that Wednesday looks like. So the students leave. And then we have about 40 minutes of individual time. And usually during that time, I'm department head. So I don't spend a lot of individual time planning. I spend a lot of time either meeting with Amy or running around to talk to the other middle school. People and checking in on how they're doing. Seeing if they need anything problem solving. And then we go immediately into our team meetings. So in the past, we've had two hours a week. Two plus hours a week of dedicated time, not including our PDM on Wednesdays to be able to have those team meetings. This year, since we've had half days, we have about an hour and a half. In that time, what we're doing is we're focusing on student needs specifically. It's our time to be able to meet with all of our team members and meet with all of our faculty members. And then we're going to have a special educator and talk about student needs. Be able to differentiate for our high need students. Figure out how to modify lessons in our current environment. Figure out how to provide enrichment for students that are meeting the standard and need more. And then all of a sudden we look at the clock and we say, oh no, we have to log on for faculty meeting because it's still something you're always going to hear from teachers. So I don't want to harp on that. Then we go into faculty meeting, whatever it is for the whole school. And then we go into our content meetings, which we spend from about three o'clock to four 15. We have this year, many new teachers or new to the subject teachers that we're spending our content time. Updating them on the curriculum, helping them modify, helping convey all the things we just heard from our special educators. And then helping figure out, for example, in science, how do we do science in classrooms that aren't built for science? How do we move our carts around but still do experiments and problem-solving all of that, which might sound silly, but it takes some time. And for teachers that are new or new to the subject, it's really scary, I guess, is the best way I can put it. Without that time. So for example, today, I spent that hour and a half showing demos to two new teachers for our next unit so that they would feel comfortable doing it. And then we figured out how to set everything up so we could move it between the classrooms and do it in a COVID friendly way. So I guess I could go on, but I don't want to waste your time. My intent in saying all of this is just to illustrate for you, half-day Wednesdays are really important and what they're doing for us. They're not taking off the stress we feel personally. I'm never going to be able to have enough time in the school day to grade and give students feedback and do my own personal planning. I realized a long time ago as a teacher that that's something I have to do at home. I'm not going to say that my kids see me as a model of someone who works hard and not someone who's absent from their life. But those Wednesdays are a time for me to collaborate with other teachers so that I can better serve my students. And I'm really scared that they're going to go away. And I'm not sure what the rest of the year is going to look like as a result of that. I just want to share that from my personal perspective so you understand what we're doing with that half-day. Thanks for listening. Thank you very much, Daisy. A day in the life, it sounds like, yeah. I'm glad that Wednesdays are working out, though, for what they give you. Are there other public comments? I just jumped in. I'm Elizabeth Marks and I'd be happy to speak as well a little bit to my experience with the half-day Wednesdays. Of course. Thanks. So Daisy was mentioning that part of her time today was spent supporting other teachers that are newer to the middle school and I am not in her department, but I'm one of those teachers. I spent the past two years at U32 teaching in the high school. And so everything that I'm doing this year is completely new to me. I'm teaching both social studies in Spanish. And although I had been doing that in the high school, the eighth grade curriculum is completely different. I know actually that everybody else on my team is in the same boat in that we all moved from different jobs that we had in the past into completely new roles in the middle school. So we're really kind of using our planning bands that are built into the day to figure out what we're going to do the next day. And just trying to keep our heads above the water a little bit. I was certainly feeling that way until the half-day Wednesday started, that it was just like day to day, even sometimes using my planning band to figure out what I was going to do the next band, which didn't feel good, but it was kind of like survival mode. And having the half-day Wednesdays has allowed me to meet with the teachers that teach the same subjects as me and get that support that Daisy mentioned. I've been able to start thinking way more long-term about units that I can get kind of excited about, that we might start teaching in March. I had a lot of really, I think, idealistic goals at the beginning of the year about how I was going to really revolutionize my teaching. And then it hasn't really been possible this year with everything being so new. But it's starting to feel like I can have some goals like that again with the half-day Wednesdays because I have time to talk to people and meet with an English teacher and make it an interdisciplinary unit and meet with the other social studies teacher and sketch out like two weeks ahead. And that's like such a victory for me when I can have two weeks just like ideas about what's going to happen. And I felt incredibly supported by admin and I felt incredibly supported by the other middle school teachers this year. But frankly in the schedule that we have right now, without the half-day Wednesdays, there's just no time for us to collaborate and meet. So if we're able to continue with them, I think I can make some of my goals happen and without them it's going to go back to the survival mode. And I really hope that we're able to keep them around. And thanks for listening to us. Thank you, Elizabeth. I appreciate that. So, um, Lindy, I would just like to clarify, I went to the minutes from the last meeting, but it must be a meeting before we did extend them. And I couldn't remember if it was January and February. And I was wondering if somebody could clarify that for me. I don't know. I don't know. We tried to do that to the end of winter, but we told them the end of December. So I'm hoping that is not going away. But we haven't heard it back up. No. Public comments, everybody. Sorry, but I know that. Right. I personally don't remember. We gave, we gave the superintendent authority to schedule. I don't know if it was, I don't know if it was, I don't know if it was, I don't know if it was, I don't know if it was scheduled to be on Wednesdays, but it was up to the superintendent. Is that what you remember, Brian? I see your thumbs up. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I agree with Caroline on that. It was, it was. Yeah. Excellent. Very good. Um, thank you. I see Ellen has her hand up. Hi, I don't, I can't turn my video on. I don't think I have enough bandwidth for that. So I apologize. You may not have enough. You were just cut off. Your bandwidth may not be good enough for audio either. I'm afraid. Ellen, that, that didn't come through. Okay. I'll try again. Can you hear me now? At the moment. Okay. Sorry. I just want to speak out in support of the Wednesdays and to say that. In the past, uh, we've been able to get subs for professional development opportunities. So we've done things like. The. Ellen, I'm so sorry. We lost you again, but I think. I think we got, um, we got the essential that you two are, um, are in support of, of continuing the Wednesdays. Um, I think. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. The message is clear. Um, suggest. Are there, perhaps if there are, um, thank you, Ellen, for, for giving it. The old college try. If there are any public comments, perhaps that are not about Wednesdays. Um, and then we'll be going into executive session on personal negotiations anyway. So. Are we good? I want to thank all of you. It's actually extremely interesting for us to hear. About your experiences teaching. Because, um, and everybody feels so isolated from. Um, each other's realities. And, um, we're just very grateful for everything that you're putting into, um, your work for, for our children. And our, our towns, our people. So, um, thank you very much. And because this is the last board meeting before, um, before the holidays, I just wanted to wish everyone. Uh, who's here whom we might lose once we go into executive session. Um, wonderful holiday season. Um, so I will entertain a motion to go into executive session. For, um, personal negotiations. I'll move to go into executive session for the purpose of personal negotiations. Thank you, Jonas. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, floor. All in favor, please click yes. And, and leave your yes up so that. Uh, Jim can see who to pull into the room. And, uh, Brian, we're bringing Carla. No, not Carla. Lori. Lori and you. Okay. Okay. It's unanimous to go into executive session. Um, very best to everybody who checks out at this point. Have a good evening. Scott, do you expect any action? Um, I don't. Just a moment, David, let me check with the people in the know. Brian is making a sort of, um, I don't think so face. So I would say, I love the little places. So, um, I guess not. Alrighty. Thanks. Okay. Of course. You too. Thanks. Bye. Thank you.