 So, opening the meeting of the Roxbury-Mott-Pillier-Roxbury School Board of Directors meeting September 20th, 2023, at 6.34 p.m. Our first order of business is public comment. We have no one in the room, so if anyone on the screen wants to give public comment. So, we have at least one member of the public. You can, well, since you have one member of the public, you can just come off mute and introduce yourself and give a comment. I'm Dana Hoek, and I have a student at UES. I just lost you. I can't consider updating the cause. Sorry, if you want to start again, we lost you for about 10 seconds. Okay. It's Dana Hoek, and I have a student at UES. I'd like to be able to consider moving quickly to update the policy to re-enact so that recess time can go back to what it was before the change. Great. Thank you for weighing in, and I know that's the policy committee has that before it, so we'll, I think we'll be looking at that in the next meeting. So, thank you. That concludes public comment. I don't see anyone else from the public online. So, next order of business is the consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? I'll move the consent agenda. Joe, second. Second. Additional. Oh, thank you, Rhett. Yes. I move the consent agenda with the inclusion of the September 15, 2023 warrants for payroll and accounts payable. Great. Do, okay. I second that. Great. Any discussion? Yeah. I think that's a couple of questions. Well, one question and one comment, Libby, on your superintendent report from this week. You have a sentence in here. Our professional learning communities are into their first cycle of units of instruction. Can you tell us what that means? Thanks. Thanks for letting me wonk out a little bit, and I apologize. I'm not there. And thanks for allowing me the flexibility tonight. Yeah, they're professional learning communities. So there are groups of teachers who teach the same content. And so it would be the first grade team, or it would be the algebra one team. So they teach the same content in units of instructor instructional cycles or of course like a unit of instruction. So it could be You know, it's a unit of instruction that's around one theme. They plan it together. They plan, they understand what the priority standards are. They understand what the proficiency scales are for those priority standards, and they design common formative assessments on the priority standards. They do some teaching. They give the common formatives. They come back and analyze the data, split the kids into who needs more work. So that's where the timely system interview comes in, who needs more time with one of the priority standards. Come back, look at the data again, reteach again if necessary. So the units of instruction are typically six weeks long, six weeks long. So they are well into their first unit of instruction. Thanks. That is very helpful. And then my comment is just really thrilled to see the website updates. I know that this was a big, big lift. And so big thanks to you, to Mike, Peggy Sue, Jess, and Anna especially for maintaining all of that. We've been hearing from parents for several years that they would like access to this information. And so I'm just really thrilled that it's out there and available to families. And I know that it was a ton of work to make it happen. So I just first wanted to say thank you for making that happen. And since not too many people in our community probably read your superintendents report, I was wondering if we could also publicize that that's happening in this principal newsletters. If you hadn't already planned on doing that. Certainly can do that. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great suggestion. Now, and thanks for all the work on that. That's a really well organized, easy to read with a lot of, I think, information people are hungry for. Anything further? Great. Thank you. Anything further on the consent agenda items? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great. Next item, board business facilities committee update on the committee charge draft and the ad hoc committee request for applicants draft. Kristen, do you want to take it away? So facilities and energy committee, which is Emma and I. And then we also have Tim favorite who consistently comes to our committee meetings and contributes incredible value and substance. And he's been with us every step of the way. And, you know, essentially in the last month or so, we've really just been trying to break down the resolution that the board passed in the spring and kind of break it out into action items so that we can create accountability for ourselves to make sure that we are following through on what we promised in that resolution. So one of the, really three of the big things that came out of the resolution is that we said that we would create an ad hoc committee of community members, students, experts, you know, from the energy sector to kind of come together and kind of serve as a guiding group to help us navigate some of these big things. And those are shown the drafts are here. One to kind of come up with this committee that would then help us to develop a net zero evaluation tool, which essentially would serve the function to guide us as a district, you know, as we, you know, need to make facilities changes and upgrades. And we've been working directly with Andrew just, you know, really kind of providing like that compass of how we go about making decisions when it comes to our facilities and operations and fossil fuels usage. So the ad hoc committee would be dedicated to to that effort and then also to blanking the net zero evaluation tool and roadmap. Thank you. The decarbonization roadmap. Yeah. So essentially that is really kind of getting into the nitty gritty of, you know, how would we go about actually arriving at net zero. And I think we would also be looking to the ad hoc committee to advise us in terms of we do have this earmarked $50,000 part pot of money. You know, there could be a role for us, you know, trying contracting with, you know, outside expertise to to help kind of get into some more of the technical aspects of getting to net zero. So we'd be looking for their support on that. And tonight we just wanted to get these in front of you all we weren't necessarily anticipating an approval tonight but just an opportunity to get feedback from everybody and take that into facilities and energy companies. Meeting that we have on Friday to incorporate the board's feedback and then ideally arrive at something that is a final draft and have before you at our next board meeting for for approval. But if it's also just looking quite, you know, complete as is we could we could consider about tonight. So taking on comments and feedback. I gave a quick scan. It looks very good. I'd love to read it. I think a little more closely. But but a lot of good work and a lot of good thought into this. Yeah, and as far as the charge goes, that was something, you know, kind of structurally was modeled after the SRO committee charge. Libby helped us to remember that if there's going to be a designated ad hoc committee that it does need a charge that needs to be approved by the board. So I think that structure is is complete. But that's kind of that's where that came from. So yeah, and I can appreciate if folks, you know, need a couple more weeks to dig in. I think we'd love to get some substantive feedback before moving ahead with it. Or I would also say if you have time in the next 48 hours and want to give us any feedback in advance of our meeting on Friday, that could be really helpful because then that could just be a focused working meeting for us. It'd be great, I think, to just email any feedback that you have edits or revisions or additions to Kristen. Yes. And then we can discuss it. I don't have, I don't have any feedback. I had one question, which is, but I think I know the answers. I just wanted to confirm it. The there's nothing in the charge or the description of what the roadmap might look like or to that speaks to budget decisions. So my guess is that maybe the roadmap does include budget decisions, but that obviously the board, the roadmap would be like a recommendation to the board and the board would need to adopt the roadmap is how I was imagining the process would go. There is the tool would help Andrew make decisions about replacing equipment and stuff like that. So that so it wouldn't it's not necessarily like budget approval for the school board at the school board level. Right. For the tool, but the tool would that is another piece to it. Yep. That the tool is designed will in our imagination it would be designed to help Andrew make decisions when he's like out across roads of to replace equipment. Great. I have a question. So at the high school, we have like a student club like earth group that's focused on sustainability. And I was wondering if there would be opportunities for maybe student representatives from that club to join this meeting or conversation perhaps. Yeah, we would love that. And I would say that the student earth group is very much part of like the origin story of the resolution and the board's commitment to two net zero. They came and presented to the school board in March of 2021, I believe, and they had made a direct request of the board to adopt a net zero policy. This is not a policy. It's a resolution so slightly different. But, you know, I have met with them a couple of times. They were also invited to all our work and kind of developing the resolution to review it to provide feedback. We had two members who actually came and attended kind of just like a round table feedback meeting that they came to and spoke with us and spoke directly to the resolution and improvements that they wanted to see in it. And specifically listed in I think in our resolution is that we would like for students to be involved, you know, in this work moving forward so absolutely and we would love it if you all, you know, could be messengers. You know, once we finalize the ad hoc committee like request for applicants, I would probably reach out, you know, to be a Libby to Tom Sabo who I think is probably the still the teacher advisor on that and see if I could, you know, join a meeting and talk it up and see if we could get some applicants. Yeah. Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. Yeah. I'm actually a member of earth group. Great. I just wanted to say that we appreciate the, I think I can speak at least a little bit on behalf of the group that we appreciate what you're doing and we hope it continues to move at a good pace because, you know, obviously this is very urgent. And I will definitely bring this back to the club and make sure that folks know that this is going on. Great. Thank you. One thing we might want to consider and this is that could be based on this feedback is it says to students on in the proposed committee composition. But perhaps we add another bullet point that's like two members of the MHS earth group, like in addition. The other thing is, you know, all of these meetings will obviously be open meetings. So anyone is welcome to attend. So we could just have there could be like a rotating presence of somebody from the earth group to report back to the earth group on the progress being made. I think that would be great. And I think that section, like in terms of composition was was one piece that we wanted to give some more focus to on Friday. So recall. If we don't, do we need to approve the charge in order for you to get the committee going? That's a process question. That was my understanding, but I don't know. I would look to folks with greater knowledge and who precede me. Yeah, you have to approve the charge. Okay. You can approve the charge and change like slight composition. I don't I think if it doesn't change the intent, then it's not a bit that big of a deal. Do you need the approval tonight in order to get going or could you wait until the next meeting? I personally don't have a ton of bandwidth in the next couple of weeks to like make anything major happen. Right. I mean, it's always good to get the word out like the sooner the better just getting the word out into the community. But I think we're okay. Okay. Great. The intent would though would be to come back at our next meeting on the fourth and get approval on the charge and ad hoc. I think approval with probably some minor changes is going to, so if you can, you know, if there's like outreach you need to do with outmaking commitments, like you can probably start that. Okay. Okay. Awesome. I have a kind of embarrassingly basic question. Right. Are the Montpelier schools owned by the city, the school buildings? No. So is the city of Montpelier, do they have any role in energy transitions for those buildings or do they sort of seat it to the Montpelier school board? The UES as well. Andrew, maybe I'll answer it better than this. Yeah. The city is on district heat, but otherwise I think we're our own. We have a contract with them for, it was a 20 year contract that we're about a year 10, but we are our standalone, none of their decisions have any impact on what we do. We have to make our own decisions. Yeah. Okay. The city had, what was it called, a process by which they hired a consultant to do their net zero sort of planning. Right. And so this, our resolution is aligned with the goals of the city. So we sort of use that as, you know, it was a helpful starting point. The city's net zero goals. I forget what the plan is called. Do you remember, Kristen? I think it was net zero action plan. Yeah. But I think in one of those documents, there's a kind of a rehashing of the history, sort of how we arrived into this place. You know, one of those factors is working with the city, you know, the Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee, who I'm Tim favorite, who's been working with us, serves on that committee. And he's been coming before the board kind of presenting data, presenting the report. So they've been like an important, I would say instigator to us, you know, taking this work on. Yeah. And I'm happy to answer any questions to outside of this meeting if you want any more background. Yeah. I think I might do a little more homework and then I might have some more questions. Okay. Great. Awesome. Further questions on that? There's one thing we should have put in the agenda, which we did not. I have a slide and a little litter, which is when welcome Jake to your first meeting. I don't know if Mia talked to you about committees at all and we don't have to make a decision tonight, but yeah. But we do have several committees, which also about about two. Seiji was on facilities and equity and equity. You might be a great candidate for finance. So we so basically the way committees work are we all serve on on a couple. They have different charges. We have policy, which deals with the policy that we used to govern and that they hope we need new policies. And it deals with that updates policies. You know, it takes feedback on policy. We have the equity committee, which is relatively new. Actually not that new anymore, but is focused on the district's, you know, diverse equity inclusion work and making sure that that's integrated into everything we do. We have finance, which the finance committee basically when we get a lot of budgetary things. The board gets relatively high level, budgetary information and the finance committee meets at the quarterly reports and they get like a much deeper dive. And basically the role that committee is to figure out if there's anything more detail that should come to the board. And not to volunteer for that, but I know you've got a background in budgets. And we have the superintendent evaluation committee, which works to put together the superintendent evaluation, which also comes to the board. And that's basically we've got a form that we use that and then some processes that we, you know, we go to to we use a survey of Libby's direct reports. We use some kind of, you know, environment surveys and just data on how the district's doing. And then we use, you know, our own observations to do that. So that's another committee. We have the facilities energy and just facilities energy, which deals with topics we just discussed and works with Andrew to kind of do a deeper dive on our facilities needs as well as our energy use and climate policy. So no need to make a decision tonight. Oh, negotiations, which is the most fun committee because you get to sit across from your kids teachers and argue about how much they're going to get paid. But that's actually, yes. No, that's actually it's we've had actually a lot of success with them. We have a really good relationship with our union, fortunately. So there are three unions. So that's actually been been pretty pretty rewarding, but it can be time consuming and the outcomes are not always guaranteed. And that's that's a committee that is either inactive or very active, depending on where we are in negotiation cycles. And I mean, I was I was saying the first thing in jest, but it's, it's, you know, we don't agree on everything and sometimes it takes a while to agree on things. So, you know, I definitely know that there have been people who served on the committee who have not been super comfortable, you know, negotiating with their, their child's eighth grade teacher over, you know, the terms of their employment for good reason. So, yeah, so it's a it's a it's a good committee, but it's it can it's, yeah, it can get contentious at times. Usually it isn't, but yeah. And the time commitment is sort of very concentrated during a certain time and then it like goes down to no meetings at all. And other committees meet, you know, every other week and other committees month. So it's sort of like each committee has a different time commitment. I feel like we came up with a document. We had a document that sort of like outlined. Or did we just talk about creating a document? I think we talked about creating a document and didn't do it. I think there is a description of all the committees on the website. Yes, yes. So you can go to the website and go through that and there's there's like a paragraph or two and then you can look at some of the minutes if you want to get a feel for it. You can get a sense of time commitment looking at the agendas though about how regular. Yeah, most are, most are relatively regular as Emma said. I think committees do a good job of keeping to the allotted hour, hour and a half that's slated for most meetings. Yeah, negotiations can be different. It can be potentially very, you know, very intense. You know, some of the meetings are oftentimes two or three hours. I once experienced a nine hour negotiation, mediated negotiation. So it's a little, it's a little less predictable. But, you know, any year like now when we're not negotiating contracts, it's completely. When is the next round of negotiations? We're going to negotiate one contract this year. Oh yeah, we're going to negotiate one contract. We're going to negotiate that next year. And when does that start? I think it starts soon, doesn't it? It should start very soon, yeah. I forgot to mention, you know, we haven't had a time, a chance to really meet in depth with, but Zach and Merrick did not serve official, in an official capacity on any of the committees. And mainly because it's a big ask of students who have so much homework to do. Yes, and the meetings are up straight in the school. Yeah, but you are always welcome to, you know, if there is one committee that you're like super enthusiastic about, you can just sort of be an honorary member of that committee and attend when you are able to. And all the meetings are open and posted publicly, so you're welcome to hop into any meeting that you want to anytime. Well, what we did do with Zach and Merrick is there are a couple of times the committees would ask, yeah, something where it was really, we felt it was extra important to get student input. So we, you know, asked them to participate in a few meetings and then try the schedule at times that worked for them. Great, continue with that because I don't think I can commit to a committee. And we can talk more about that too. I mean, one thing that was that Zach and Merrick, one of their goals for their committee was to improve a specific policy that they had heard a lot about in students. So they were fairly active on the policy committee, but not like super regular attendees, but they were working on a policy. So something like that. Can I ask what policy it was? It was the diversity, equity and inclusion policy, and it was around curriculum. Okay. So there was, and I can fill you in more detail on what they, and give you handover drafts of stuff that they worked on. Yeah. Jim, did you bring this up because we have an agenda item to add from the superintendent evaluation committee? We could, we could do that too. We do. I forgot to mention it at the beginning of the meeting. Okay. I emailed it, but forgot to mention it. Okay. And add an item to board business, which is to launch the, the evaluation of the superintendent by showing everyone the newly updated evaluation. Yeah, excellent. We could do it right now, but sometime under this heading of board business. We might as well do it right now. Well, I think if we do facilities report then Andrew can go home. Sorry, Andrew. Okay. Let's do that. And then we can add superintendent. Yeah. So maybe next meeting, give it some thought and we can, because I think it'd be good to have some other members here. So we can, if there's some switching that we can do, we can do that then. So those put in a good word that facilities could use extra help. Yes. Because, because Seiji was on that committee and there's only the two of us right now. So that would be great if you were interested in joining that. Yeah. Andrew. Thank you for being patient. Yeah, make it quick. So Anna sent you, I believe Anna sent you the updated report the other day. And what I will do is I'll just go over the comments, some of the highlights and give you folks a chance to read and go through it. One of the things that Anna and I had talked about and one of the things Anna and I talked about was getting some pictures for the website and things of that nature. Some of the stuff is on the face that's pretty dry, but when you actually see a picture of it, it can, it brings it to life. So let me just, let me give you a, let's start with a quick update of where we are with regards to the, specifically to the flood stuff before I go back too, too far to the year. But we are in the process, all the boilers will be up and running. Two of the three boilers were we all up and running and functioning as intended by the end of next week. The third one, we are waiting, still waiting for some parts, some insulation blankets and things like that. And that's not going to happen that that's not going to get here for another couple months. But the school needs to operate so I'm not concerned that it's not going to, we're not going to be able to make enough heat, we certainly will. If anyone's been by the high school recently, the lawns are coming in quite well. This last week they've really turned, you know, they've really, they look, they look green again. We are meeting with FEMA next week to go over what they have to offer us with regards to outside repairs. So that, that's in process. We have, I have met with Doug O'Donnell, who is the Visbit, our insurance, I don't know if he's an adjuster, but we've met with Visbit to go over our property claims, all the stuff that was lost in the basement and the process for that. We're waiting for quotes on a couple of things from our furniture supplier. But as soon as we get that, we'll send it along. If we don't get it by Friday, we're going to send the package along anyway on Friday. So that'll be good. I know we've already put in a big, a big claim for some books and they've already approved that. So that's, that's moving forward. So that's in good shape. We continually, we continue to have the air monitored in the high school once a week. We have it come down and consistently has been coming back. That is, there's, you know, fundamentally you're, you know, you're testing for mold and there's more outside the building than there is inside the building. So that's good. And it's only going to get better with regard when we really start turning the heat on in a couple of weeks. So we're, we're in pretty good shape. A couple of things we've got to follow up on really is, is getting the paving sorted out. We've got stay mad in there. So we're not, I'm not too concerned about it, but it's really a matter of coordination with the contractor when they've got a bigger project going on. That we can sneak it in. But that's where we're heading back there. The next big piece that we'll have to do is we are technically, the school is technically, if you look at a floodplain map of Montpelier, the high school is this little island that sits in the floodplain because it's elevated up a little bit. So by code, we do not technically have to move our electrical closet out of the basement with the entrance out of the basement. Whereas other, anybody else that is does like by code in Montpelier and Berry. We've met with the electrical contractor and we've got a really luckily where we would put it is right above where it is now. So it may, whether we need to move it out of the basement or not, it technically might be easier to build it and then connect it versus trying to rebuild it in a spot where it already is. So parts and pieces for that are months out anyway. So we got a little time to chew on that one and figure it out. But otherwise, we are in good shape. I'm meeting with, prior to the flood, we actually had a plastic membrane underneath the gym and the auditorium or the stage. And we had done that, Tom had put that in many years ago just because with the wood floors there, it was an extra layer of protection with regards to moisture. So we're actually meeting with a contractor on Friday to go poke around the basement and look at getting that reinstalled again. Whether we do the entire basement out, that's still to be determined. Adding another layer of something is never a good idea in my mind. So other than that, it's moving along. Any questions that anybody have on any of that stuff? Just the flood stuff. I think you answered it. I was going to ask if it made sense to move the electric stuff in any of our other buildings in Montpelier up a level, but probably not. Now, electrical stuff is really expensive to move. It's shockingly expensive. And there's plenty of, yeah, no, the water would have to get awfully high to affect Union and Main Street. I have a question. Do you know how close the water in the basement came to the panel? Oh, it covered it. Oh, it did. But it didn't disable it? No, no, no. That's why we did kill the power to the building for a week because it was underwater. No, never shorted anything. You wouldn't have known it. It didn't turn off a light bulb. And is that just luck? No, electricity doesn't really jump. Water is not a great conductor. It's a conductor, but it's not a great conductor. It's not like touching two wires to stuff. You can, the dopey thing, but in model, for model boats and stuff, you break in engines by running them underwater. So you can run stuff electrically underwater. So why is FEMA so insistent that people raise their panels? Well, because what's not FEMA, it's Montpelier and Barry. It's relative because in the older buildings to go, luckily, when they put the addition on for the library in the science rooms, they put the big Frankenstein cutoff outside the building. In the older buildings, that stuff's down, so you actually do have to go into the water. I'm not saying it's a bad conductor. I wouldn't want to stand in two feet of water and have to pull a big lever to kill the power. So in these old buildings, most of those are still down in the basements and they're still in the water. But like I say, the high school, it's actually on the outside of the building. And that came about because, like I said, in the addition, when they did the science and library addition, they put it on the outside. So somebody knew the flood was coming? No, we had to go out there and do it ourselves. Afterwards. But yeah, like I say, you can run electricity underwater, but I wouldn't want to stand next to it underwater. It's still dangerous. So we'll have to work out the logistics on that one and see what makes sense. Yes, Kristen? Yeah, I had a question about meeting with FEMA, so what might be in FEMA's purview and possibly be eligible for any student's funding for? Primarily for exterior work, for the replanting of the grass, out front the parking lot. It's stuff outside the building. It's stuff outside the building. Insurance really isn't going to cover much outside the building. Okay. They have it very specific that if you have damage on your site, in the beginning they were a little bit encouraging. Like, well, maybe we have something and then by the time they got done with it, they were looking, pulling out clauses saying damage due to flooding isn't covered. Uh-huh. So again, we're fortunate that, I don't want to say there wasn't much, but it was manageable. So FEMA, we'll see what they do. We'll see what they do. And I don't, I know the city, or I understand the city is like FEMA covered Irene, the baseball fields for Irene, the dog or a field, but I don't think they're covering them this time around. So, I don't know. And will they cover like reimbursements, you know, for work that has already been done, they could reimburse? Yeah. Yeah. And then also work that hasn't been done. Well, there really hasn't been any work that hasn't been done. Yeah. But we did it. Yeah. We had to get school going, so we did it. Yeah. Um, we'll see. Yeah. We'll see. It's new for us. So, we'll find out next week. Okay. Yes. How long was the basement under water? Um, it, at its height, and I won't go messing around with pictures, but at its height, you saw that when it was the boilers, about that deep in the boiler room. Um, by day two, so it was probably four feet on day one. By day two, it had gone down about a foot, another foot, and then they started pumping. It took another couple of days to pump that out. But by Saturday, it was, it was, they couldn't pump anymore. So. And the first two days of water level going down was just draining out. Drained out. Yeah. Okay. And what is the word on the softball field like? Softball field, when we talked with Chip, our, at Diamond Tech, the consultant who helps us in the mountain, he said that the field itself got washed away. The clay got washed away. But he said, that's a field that you can build it and use it right away. So like the baseball field, those infields. Um, now this isn't in thinking about it. It was the rush of the moment, but, um, if we did clay, you know, you can, you can install it and play on it. The next day where some other materials, you actually got to let sit for a year or so. So he said, no, you can, you can wait on the softball field. We can do that in the spring before the season starts. So I said, all right, let's, let's wait on that. So we'll just, it was heating up the capacity to take care of it. And we knew we could wait and still get the season and not delay the season. So that's why we held on mine. Um, I was wondering if you could go over, I'm not sure if this is somewhere in the documents, but if you could go over how the athletic fields are affected. Right now. And if there are any teams that are able to play on their fields. No, uh, we were very fortunate in that the, so what if you think of the site and the bridge, when the bridge, uh, was overflowed. And it kind of the river and the building in the corner of the building by the, um, the old mud lot and, uh, the backside of the auditorium. The water was moving pretty good there. That's why the softball field got washed down because the water was moving pretty quick. This is my take on it. By the time it opened up again towards this, the, the, um, field hockey field in the baseball, it wasn't moving nearly as fast. It was deep, but it wasn't moving fast. So the baseball field didn't lose any soil. Now it's a different type of soil, but the, the, the covers on the mound and the batting, uh, area, they didn't even move. Um, so really most of the effect was right when it was really rushing over the, over the bridge and towards the monument in that corner by the, by the bike path. That's why there was so much silt and muck there on those fields. But by the time it got to the, the, the main game field, it really moved a little bit of the track around, but we were able to repair that. So the, the game fields and, and, and Tom Allen and his crew and Chip Stevens, it was get out there, aerate it, aerate it, aerate it. So they went out and they punched holes in it every other day for about two weeks. And that made all the difference in the world because you could, you could have seen after the flood that like there were grass, there was lawns. It was like, oh, it looks okay. It's still green. And then two weeks later it was all dead because all that silt just suffocated the roots. And by those guys just going out there and aerating and aerating and aerating made all the difference in the world. So the, so the game fields in fine shape. It's in great shape. The field hockey fields in good shape, great is as good a shape as it ever was. Baseball field again, the baseball field we chip will come back in the spring and he will clean it up for the baseball season. He'll get the weeds out of it and all that. But unfortunately we rebuilt the baseball field last year because it had a lot of organic material. So weeds grew in it and just looked terrible and it was a pain in the neck to try to keep looking, looking good and playable. So actually a year ago we had that all, we had four inches of it dug out and new material. That's all new, now filled with silt and organic material. And you saw it just turned to grass soon after the flood. So he'll get it in playable condition for the spring. And then next summer we're going to have to dig that out, have to. We're going to want to because it's just going to be, it's going to look crummy if we don't. It's just going to be full weeds all the time. The practice field over by kind of between the baseball field and the softball field was okay. A few washouts, a few sink holes, but we've got that together. So that's been usable as a, as a, as a, as intended the practice field. The mudlot actually is probably going to the mudlot field, which we kind of used as a practice field. We basically added a little topsoil, some grass seed a couple of years ago. That actually is probably going to be much better than it was before because it's all been rototilled. All, it's actually got some more organic material. So this is where the organic material was actually a good thing. And, and on the other side, the other, the main practice field, same sort of condition that they went through. They rototilled it all. They actually, you can go out there and there's a marker where Chip has his grading equipment. He sets a mark and with lasers and magic and all that, his machine goes up and down and makes sure that's totally flat. So I think those two fields actually, as long as we stay off and we're probably not going to be able to use those for another year, we really should give them another year to really grow. But once they get back, they're going to be better than they were before. Middle school, now we've, so we had a little bit of the practice field that like half of it that people can practice a little bit, they can't fold. So the middle school is practicing up at, middle school soccer is practicing up at the college. And we actually chipped in, they've got an onion river soccer has an agreement with the college to use that field. And so we actually had an agreement with Onion River Soccer to do that. And because we knew we were going to use it so much, we actually, I don't know if I donated, but we contributed to maintenance on that field, knowing that it was really going to get used a lot. So Chip went up there and he did some work for Onion River and we said, yeah, well, because we're not going to, the dog river fields that we traditionally use for soccer, those, I don't know when those are going to get back. So, so the Sports Act, we were fortunate, we were fortunate that we've been able to accommodate everything. Great. Thank you. Yeah. So that's kind of where we are at that piece. Throughout the district last year, I would say that that really the couple of the primary things that really stood out to me was how Tara and Mickey really came into their own in their buildings. Tara at the elementary school and Mickey at the Tara at the elementary school, Tara, Mickey at the middle school. You know, they've got a year under their belt with those buildings and they know them now and they're very comfortable with them and staffing and organization and making the buildings really work. They've really stepped up and that was one of the great things that with the flood that was when we lost the high school, you know, we had to move and we had construction at the elementary school, Mickey picked up the slack. We moved meetings, we moved part two over there. We moved people over there to have that and Mickey just picked up, did it, you know, was able to accommodate that. Tara, with all the construction that was having at Union, she was able to deal with that and it really allowed Tom to do what he needed to do at the high school and that was a great relief to the effort and if without those guys in those schools, we would be in much different shape. So they're doing exactly and they're working out exactly as Tom had intended and had vision for those folks taking over those schools. With regards to sort of the bigger projects that we've taken on, we've started the ESSER 3 projects. The little gym at Union will be turned over to the school on, we lost a little bit of time with regards to the flood. People just lives needing to take care of their own thing, just slowed everybody down but the little gym at Union is going to be turned over to the school on Monday and we'll have pictures. It looks great. We took $40,000 worth of asbestos out of that room, gutted it right down to the concrete and structure. They've got pictures that will be, I think they're in the report but we'll also put them on the website. Our asbestos contractor did an amazing amount of work over there over the course of two weeks, three weeks. But new rubber sports floor, cushion sports floor, basketball hoop, lighting, looks great. The auditorium at the elementary school, again we had that abated. They were taking off literally half inch slabs of asbestos that was underneath the tiles. It was used as like a leveler. So they were in there on their hands and knees for weeks in late June. So that's all been abated out of there. The room is just about completed painting-wise. We're putting seats back in, carpet will go down and those who have seen photographs of it, it looks amazing. It's beautiful. It really is as beautiful as we expected it to be. I haven't shared too many pictures because we're just a couple of weeks away from really being able to show it off. One of the important things, again a little thing but important is we probably have invested $20,000 in door hardware at Union between the auditorium and the little gym. Anybody remembers in there basically it was a D pull on the outside and a push on the inside and a little thumb turn. So you couldn't lock the door or if you locked the door you couldn't get out. It was the locks from 1939. So we went through and did that on the little gym as well as the auditorium. So now you can actually lock the door from the inside. I don't know what can get in but if there's an emergency a little kid can push the bar and everybody can get out. So it's a little thing but an important thing. Over at Main Street we started the cafeteria project. One of the main things was Julie had a vision of re-changing the circulation as you guys both went to Main Street. So instead of going down the ramp now you actually come in and there's a set of stairs that drops you straight into the cafeteria. There you go. So now people can come in and we flip the serving line. So people can come in, get their food, go sit down and then come back out. And actually we created a hallway that allows them to. So now we have basically one-way traffic instead of two-way traffic. And it's really changed the dynamic of the room and Julie was spot on when she had that in her mind. So that was done this year. Next year we will tackle the kitchen and the finishes in the cafeteria. We also will start on the playground out there. I'll be honest, the cost of things. You know we were asked to put numbers to these things back and could have been 2020, maybe 21. So the scope of probably the playground of the middle school is probably not going to be nearly as large as it was. But I think the improvements that we will make will make a big difference. So that first money spent will make a big difference over there. At the middle school we also created a, we took the old wood shop and we created a guidance suite down there. So now what was the wood shop now has two private offices in a common area for the guidance. The folks guidance making a big difference over there. The other future ESER project is the special ed suite over at Union and we're still, you know, thinking about what that wants to be. All these projects have to be wrapped up by September of next year. So once we figure out the finances of this summer, get a better handle on that. We'll know how much we have left to spend and make the adjustments that way. With regards to and down here, we, it sounds like a small thing, but it took over a year for playground equipment. Playground equipment is still the longest lead item in the economy because everybody with all this ESER money said, let's get kids outside and let's build our playgrounds. And so it literally took us a year to get a new set of swing sets out here and installed at Roxbury. We now have accessible swings over here. One's for sort of an older kid that kind of straps them in and allows them to be safe. And then a smaller, I've caught a bucket one for a little kid that we've had installed out here. And finally we're able to get the wood chips underneath it and all that. So that's a good improvement down here. With regards to next year, really the big project that I see with regards to just our continuing improvement, we're going to do some work at the exterior of Union Elementary. At the top of the wall, the parapet, there's decorative limestone and the caulking up there has failed. And you can actually, if you go by Union, you can see it's efflorescent. The salts are coming out of the brick because moisture is getting behind. And we actually had a couple pieces of stone fall this spring. The water got behind, freeze thaw, cracked it and dropped. We weren't sure what it was. A student reported it to, I don't know if it was Katie or Tara, that said, hey, something fell. So we did have alpine restorations who specializes in historic masonry. They actually had a lift over at Middlebury College, luckily. So they came over with a lift and tapped on everything and shook everything and made sure everything that was up there was solid. What we will do this spring or this fall before the winter hits, we are going to put up some safety barricades along just the front portion of the building where that fancier dental work is so that through the winter, if there is anything that freezes and breaks, it's out of the way of the kids. But we do need to have all the old caulk, which of course has asbestos in it. We have to have that abated and then have a masonry contractor come back through and re-cock all of that basically at the top of the building. And then there's an option to do a secondary, I don't think it's actually lead, but basically a protective tee that they put into the caulk that protects it from the sunlight that basically makes the caulk job going to last 100 years kind of thing. It's an extra $15,000, $18,000 to do that, but again, it's going to double or triple the life of the caulk. But that's that one beyond the sort of other projects that we're doing. That's kind of has the biggest, I've got my eye on the biggest, and it's going to be a big chunk of money, but we're fortunate in that this sort of steady making improvements kind of falls within that, I think. I think it'll fall within that. That's kind of the, I'm not going to bore you guys, but I'll go through. We also spent, as always, more cameras, better quality cameras at all the schools. At the middle school, one of the things that we did, which was really nice and it was Essar Money, was if anybody remembers the middle school, we had the rack that had all the server for the cameras was sitting right in the lobby and you bang your head and we moved that to the basement. It was a little thing, but it's going to make a huge difference. I'll let you guys read the reports. If you have any questions, if there's anything that you'd like to see more information, less information on, let me know and we'll get it in there. And like I say, Anna and I have already talked about the idea of getting some more photos and like I say, I think the auditorium and all that, you guys will be blown away by. It's really pretty, it's really pretty. I have a few. Thank you for the report, Andrew. So you didn't mention windows. It's in the report, but you didn't mention those are going to start next summer. Yes, I think we actually are in a position. You know, the sort of COVID's over. This is over. The money is sitting there. We've got enough that I think we can start them. We should start them. Some of this other stuff is past us. And we've, because Tara's got her feet under her over there and she's gone through a season, actually she's gone through two seasons of construction. So she's, she's, she's well versed in this. So she'll be able to handle that. Yeah. It seems like a necessary improvement to both UES and MSMS for, you know, the quality of life inside the classroom. I did wonder, it's a lot of projects slated for next summer. Can we do all of those things in one summer? We have to. Okay. Inflation is on our side. So we don't have to do nearly as much as we planned on. Oh, maybe we can't spend as much. We can't do as much as we want. Just had to do the math in reverse there. There were a couple of roofs that it looked like we might need to start thinking about soon. Is that the kind of thing that would go into the capital plan? Or should the board be thinking about saving? The problem with going into the capital plan is it just some other things out of the capital plan. Okay. I'm less nervous about the roofs than it was last year. The one that was kind of a little bit of a concern was the high school. But some of the problem areas we actually have fixed, I think, and they've been working well. Even with all this rain. Even with all this rain. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. We've got two months worth of rain over during the flood. Yeah. So that one is, like I said, I'm less concerned than I was. But they're big expense items. Right. So we don't want to... I think I've got five, ten-year projections out there that we should keep in our mind that those will need to be done at some point. And it's better to do them before they become a real pain in the neck. Right. Right. Yeah. So I'm just thinking like, what's the point at which we as a board have to make that kind of budget decision? It's not this year. Yeah. But it just seems like it would be good to anticipate that and not have it be like, oh, we have to make the decision this year. Right. Right. That's a finance and strategy decision. Okay. Then I just spend it. I don't plan it. We do look to you for advice in order to be able to make the financial and strategy decisions though. We appreciate... Olivia is literally shaking her head. I have one final question. Thank you. Which is we're about to do the process to survey our facilities and get input from the community. And I just was wondering if any... If you have any... Like how that would work. You have a whole list of potential or future projects. And if any of those you're like, oh, I don't know. Let's see how this plays out before doing any of these. No, I don't think so. This study is... And it's going to... When we get into that strategic, and I don't want to... Libby can speak more to that. But when we get consultants on board and we get people to help us with this process, they're going to guide us a lot more than... They're going to clue us in and make and push us in directions and ask us questions about how to develop that. And I'm not sure any one of these particular projects would change anybody's vision of, oh, we should move to high school because it's going to need new roof. Right. But would it be the kind of thing where we'd go, oh, actually maybe we won't invest in new windows at MSMS? I don't know. That's going to be one of the questions they're going to have is timeline. What is the timeline? And I guess we'll have done that process by the summer. So we'll have some sort of recommendation anyway. Okay. Thank you. One last piece. So the state of Vermont did their facilities report for all the schools. The reports are supposed to be released in October. That's where they had an actual outside consultant and walk through all of our buildings and, oh, how old are your windows? How old are your boilers? And they are still... I don't think they're going to release... I know they're not going to release all 380-odd schools or however many schools that are all in October. I think their plan is they're going to release them as they become complete and move them forward. I talked with Marty Spaulding, who's helping, who's working with the state on that. And he said, we'll probably know in a few weeks where we stand with everybody. And so we'll have a piece of that. It's really kind of a... It's actually where my report doesn't really speak to numbers. This actually will speak to numbers. It'll say, oh, your boilers 10 years old, you're going to need no one in 10 years and they cost X amount of dollars. I would take those reports with a grain of salt because the gentleman who came to our building, a really nice guy, smart guy, but he's from Minnesota and he doesn't know what the cost of a project happens when you've got to remove $40,000 worth of asbestos to get to that pipe to replace. So it'll be a great tool. And the results are actually going to be posted on a state website that actually is going to be kind of a living document so you can adjust things and change things up. It'll be interesting. It'll be a good tool. It'll be a good tool and it will at least give some guidance. Thank you. That will be coming forward. So I think a lot of the projects that are planned in the next few years are not maybe going to like spark a lot of public interest and just seem like it's like routine maintenance mostly. And some of it, it doesn't really make sense to solicit a lot of feedback like a cafeteria. I feel like those decisions should be made by the people that work in that space and understand it best. But something like the, I've been hearing a lot of excitement and anticipation around the middle school playground. And I'm wondering if the facilities committee might be able to help if you want to solicit public input on anything. Well, I know Julie has talked about the idea of when we figure out where we are and what we can do that, inviting the kids to be part of the conversation, maybe not help necessarily design it but give their input kind of thing. So I think there's definitely, Julie has definitely has talked about that. But now absolutely, and the building and facilities group, I think we will get to where we've been sort of between net zero and floods and things like that. I think once we get past that hurdle, that will be great to, that's exactly the intent of that of, hey, this is what we've got or you guys think and you know, given our options and what's ahead of us, what do we think we prioritize and that kind of thing. So I think that's a good, we're almost there. Do you have a rough idea of what the budget is for that particular project or has it used the playground? You said it sort of shifted. Well, the way we looked at it, the way I looked at it was I wanted to do, because construction was still up in the air, I said let's pick the easy ones, the ones that have the least unknowns to get those kind of out of the way. And the ones that, because the playground has, it's going to be the most expensive, like for what you get, because just earthwork is expensive. And again, I thought it was a project that, if we, if you imagine that playground with that old crummy retaining wall gone and a nice new retaining wall with some seeding areas and a couple of trees and a few benches, it would be a huge improvement, you know, like a little bit of, the return on investment is going to be really high in that playground. And a lot of the other stuff, like a swing set or a different piece of play equipment or whatever, we can keep adding that to it. So it kind of by design was left because the investment was going to have great reward, but we had a lot of flexibility. We, we start to tear apart the special ed suite. We kind of got to finish it. You know, we can't just say, oh, we'll put those doors on later. Like we got to put the doors on. Whereas the playground, we can say, all right, let's do the retaining wall. Let's do some seeding. And next year in the budget, maybe we put a, we put a new apparatus or something. So like just to manage expectations, because I was like, I don't know when people come to me and talk to me about it. I'm like, I don't really know what's planned. I haven't heard much about it. But to manage expectations around that, it's not like going to be a bunch of fun playground equipment. It's more about earth movement and retaining walls and stuff like that. And social things. It's going to be more social things and way kids can interact with each other than there are, than it is play equipment. You know, because the older kids don't really need the play equipment. They need social spaces. It's an ability for some, not everyone can use some of the equipment that's on the playground, but they can still be included in conversations and having fun. Yeah. One of the things that we did do over there that worked out really well is that we put the Gaga pit in the gazebo. Oh. And, because the Gaga pits are really enjoyed by everybody, but once the snow comes and they get filled with water and ice and all that, and the gazebo with its table in there was a, was a, was a, its own social club after hours. And so the idea was, well, why don't we take the table out and put it in there and see how it works and it fit perfectly. And now people can play with the Gaga pit even when it's raining out and it seems to have worked well. So. Two more questions. Yeah. First one maybe for the board. I was wondering just for context, I know there's been discussion about the location of the high school, about moving it, about a potential merger. And I was just wondering if that's informing the decisions that we're making about maintenance at the high school or any new projects or if we're just going ahead with anything at the high school. I'm going, Libby can jump in and stop me when she, when she wants. The middle school, this is me talking, the middle school suffered for a long time because there was a lot of what ifs and maybe we should and all that. And anybody that's been through the middle school, you guys went through the middle school. What grade are you guys in? 10th. Say that? 10th. 10th. 12th. 12th. Have you guys been in the middle school lately? No. Go to the middle school. I have. I go there for mentoring. How does it look compared to what you used to look like? It's quite a bit better, yeah. Say that again? I think it's quite a bit better. It's quite a bit better. And that's exactly. So for me, and Libby can stop me and you guys can stop me. The idea of, well, we might do something in the future. So let's not. Like, if you do that 20 years, the school just goes, you let things go and then people really go, well, why are we fixing this up? It's junk. That school suffered for so long for people saying, ah, it's terrible. It's junk. Why are we investing money? And all we did was got the mechanical systems working, got the floors cleaned, you know, boxed in pipes that were half boxed in. And now you go over there and go, wow, you know, save the windows. You go over there and go, well, this is a nice place. Great. So that's me. That's me. I don't think waiting for future decisions. Yeah, I mean, I think whether we want to move forward with the process that we started is because one of the things that I'm at least concerned about is that with the flooding, we're going to get this constant, well, it's in a floodplain, why are you investing in that school? And I think we need to answer that question. And if we want to keep the location of the high school, I think we should make a decision to do that in a reasonable period of time with community input, with all the facts and say, yes, like, we're in a flood plain, but we're going to continue to invest in the school. This is going to be where our high school is going to be, at least for this foreseeable future. And we're going to do it in a way to make those investments as flood resilient as possible. And if we come up with a different answer, we come up with a different answer. But I think it's unhealthy, as Andrew said, to kind of have these conversations just in the ether of like, well, hypothetically, we might merge with U32. So why are we spending money on anything? Or hypothetically, we might build a new high school? Yeah. Yes. At some point, but I think we have some immediate questions like, you know, is a merger realistic? Is it realistic in a time frame that should affect our decisions? Is moving the high school realistic? Is it realistic in a time frame that it's going to affect our decisions? And if the answer to these questions are no, then we have to continue to make sure we have a high school that is being updated and meeting the needs of students. Well, and even if the answer is yes, but it's going to take 20 years. Or even 10 years. Yeah, exactly. Then we have to invest in that one. And Mia had made the point about, so last, at our last meeting, we approved the request for proposals to go out with a firm, an architectural firm, to survey all of our facilities and then make recommendations, like present the board in around May, with a series of recommendations of how to move forward with the facilities. So if one of those recommendations really resonated with the board and included closing the high school, it would be with enough notice in May to not move forward with some of these more expensive capital improvement projects for the high school. So I think it's like a, let's wait and see what that report comes back with, and then discuss our options in May. And then if we need to pivot and make changes around improvements, we can do it at that time, you know, or with that in mind. But I think it's more likely what Mia also just said is that even if there is sort of an option on the table that looks appealing, it's not going to be happening in the next few years. Yeah, even if it's like, you know, like a five-year time frame of we're going to go to high school, it's going to take like a year to find land, and then like a year to map it out in two or three years for construction. We would, I think, continue to invest in the current high school in a way to keep it up. But there might be some things that we, like, you know, if it's one of those things where can we stretch the roof for a little longer, we might do that. Yeah. And the beauty of what Tom is built there at the school is he was really, he's been there for 10 years, and he was always the chip away out a little bit all the time, a little bit all the time. And so we are, like this year, we typically do, you know, two, three classrooms in each of the buildings. This year, knowing how much we had going on at the other schools, we said, well, let's just do one, let's just do the classroom 101 at the high school, just because that's where the public after-hour meetings can have a look. Like, you're always moving forward. So if you slow down a little bit, it's okay, you know, if you put your effort somewhere, but you're always moving forward a little bit, because if you stop moving forward, then you're like, then you really got to spend a lot of money to make it nice. So, um, and it's... And one more thing to add to that, one more thing that we did a few years ago, I think in responsible schools, I think there were two things going on in the middle school. One is kind of the conversation of why are we spending money in the middle school? But, you know, is it the best place? The second is we didn't really have a capital plan or kind of a real systematic schedule for continued maintenance. And we instituted a capital plan. So every year there's a certain amount of money that the voters approve that goes towards continued maintenance. So that way we are kind of systematically keeping up with the needs of our buildings. One other question, just to be abundantly clear, because of the rumors that I keep hearing around the high school, is it safe to be in all of the buildings? Absolutely. Absolutely. Like I said, there is... We do air testing every week. The results are on the webpage. You can look at them yourself. And that's our goal every day is to make sure the buildings are as safe as possible. Safe. Safe as possible. Safe. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We had a kitchen part, too. The high school. Before school. What is the timeline for the proposals? How does that look? So the proposals are due October 2nd, I think. We've gotten... I've started to get some feedback. We posted them on Works and Projects, which is an industry construction and consulting clearinghouse. That... So it's been posted there. It was posted on the AIA's website. I actually sent it out to firms that I was aware of and shared it with them and asked them if they knew other people that were interested so that it went directly to a few firms. I'm starting to get some feedback. Got some questions from a firm today, which to me indicates they're interested and they want to know more. I've also gotten feedback from an educational consultant who did some work up in Burlington years ago that, no, they're not interested. So I think that if we... I think Libby and I discuss this about, you know, let's give it a little place, see what the feedback is, see if we're getting lots of... Firms are not shy to say, hey, we're interested, but we just don't have enough time to put this proposal together. You know, can we get an extension? I think if we... Libby and I will circle back with each other and kind of decide, well, do we amend it and, you know, give another two weeks out there for people to put proposals together? Or we stay with the October 2nd and see what comes in and work with that. But I think we're about to that point that next week we'll have to make that decision where we stand. Unfortunately, it was a short timeframe and unfortunately it's just the world we live in now. I submitted it to Works in Progress and it took a week before someone, before I get a confirmation that it was up in the right spot and it wasn't. And so we lost a week there. Same thing with AIA. I sent it in. Didn't see it. Didn't see it. Hey, did you get it? Well, let me see. Oh, here it is. We put it in. So, you know, we took a relatively short timeline and we lost a little bit of time in just the process. So, yeah, go for it. My question is about back to the flood. So at the high school you recovered really quickly and due to a lot, to your hard work and also anticipation. What, what, so the, if, if the water level had been higher than it was by X number of feet, do you feel like, you know, the high school would have been worse off? Oh, gosh. If we, if, I think if, I think if the water was eight inches higher, we would be, we would be renting space at the Berlin Mall for classes because all we would have had to tear all the, all the carpet. We would have had to, luckily there's not a lot of jit board in there. You know, a lot of its walls, but anything that was wood or jit board or any of that would just, it would have been like any, any other store downtown. We would have gone there and gutted anything that was wet. That finger. Yeah. No, absolutely. No, we were, it was inches. It was inches. Okay. That's good to know. Yeah. And I had, I had never, I hadn't heard that anywhere else. You know, one thing that, this is kind of wacky, but I'm interested in, if it, if it doesn't already exist, developing a contingency plan. So if the high school did have eight inches more of water and a, and a flood, you know, where would the students go? And to have that prepared ahead of time. Thought out ahead of time. It's not a bad idea. I guess. It might depend on what's available to at the time. Also, is it possible to build anything that would shield the, not really? You can slow it down. But I mean, you look at, I mean, the post office had flood, flood mitigation, those barriers in front of the, that was flood mitigation. I don't know how people's bank, I know it's not people's bank anymore. You can, you can slow it down. You can, you can, you can reduce it. You can, you can certainly reduce it, but it's never, it's never going to be totally dry. Well, but just, you know, making that eight inches, 12 inches is a big, you know, get saving four inches. I mean, that's building, you know, that's space that, that's a lot of, a lot of potential damage, you know, four inches is a lot of damage. Yeah, I'm not sure. Unfortunately, the wall goes right down. You know, you'd have to, you'd have to. Check it out. Yeah. You'd have to build a moat. You'd have to build a wall, essentially build a wall around it. That have sections that pulls out that you could then drop back in. That's to move us a lot. A little bit. Yeah. This is the reason a lot, one of the reasons why we put out the RFB. Yeah. So we could spend time talking and make it that close, or we could wait for the people, the architects and engineers to come in and give us some options on this. That's, that was kind of a question. Is there, are these types of things in their purview? Yeah. That's, I mean, it's going to be, there's going to be a lot of, you know, we went at this. Possibly. With what, what could we do? So there's going to be a lot of options. And, and whoever we get will help us with those and manage them. And so the one last piece and we can go to the next phase is we did have, before the construction at Main Street and Union, we did have the buildings tested for PCBs. They all, they all came in and all the, all the buildings came in under any of the actionable levels. I believe this building is scheduled for the spring and the high school next year. No? I think it's on pause the program. It's 2025. It's 25 for both of them? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I didn't. So have they unpaused the program? I don't think they ever paused it. Oh, they didn't? I thought that they had, they were talking about it, but I don't think. Oh, but they never officially paused it. Did not pause it. And, but the levels of the number of schools who are coming back as having massive PCBs in them are, are mounting. So the question of who, who is responsible for fixing this when we have full high schools that need to be replaced is, is going to come to the legislature very soon. The session. Yeah. I had a question that doesn't need to be answered now, but just thinking about, you know, the state report that's going to be coming out, that's sort of doing an inventory of all the schools statewide, you know, the flooding that's occurred, you know, just how that conversation will play out at the legislative level. And discussions around funding. Like I'm curious, will, and it's a limited pot of money, but, you know, will there be thinking about, you know, kind of climate crisis resiliency, you know, funds for, you know, schools play a major function in our communities from educating our kids to being emergency shelter spaces. You know, so I'm curious if there will be any discussion, like at that level of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, is pushing school construction. I don't believe there's a particular bend towards climate change because many of our schools, regardless of climate, are old buildings that are falling apart in Vermont. So but school construction money is going to be a topic of conversation in the legislature this year. Okay thank you. Other questions or the next item. I think this is super important obviously facilities is going to be a big part of our discussion this year so appreciate all the fantastic information and great work and I'm sure we'll be seeing more of you. Well sticking with facilities Andrew can't leave yet. Yeah Andrew can't leave yet. One of the pieces that we want to put in front of the board because in preparation for budget season is district space needs. So I apologize that this didn't get out to the boarders and it wasn't in the public packet but I'm sure Anna has it up on the website or we'll have it up in the website shortly. I'm sorry. We got hard captains here too. Okay so just to go through this relatively quickly. In the last five years we've added 11 positions to our district-wide staff and these are non-classroom positions and so with any non-classroom positions you have to find a place for people to hang their hats and do their work and that's an increase of 61 percent so there's been a lot of positions and on this first page of overview of district staff and Anna if you're still around if you want to put this on the screen so the public and Orca can see it in real time. So the bolded items on the district-wide staff that have been the added ones are bolded on this sheet and what's really nice is Anna linked all the websites to this as well so going back to the superintendent's report one of the things that we've talked about is upping our website game here so if you click on any of those links they go straight to our website and you can see what some of these people are doing but 11 positions are certainly a lot so Anna let's keep going. Most of the central office and district-wide staff are held at Montpelier High School and Andrew and Anna did a nice job at putting maps down for you so you could see just in real time in real color how much of the space is currently being used by central office staff so this is current space use that is in front of me we've just lost you on audio in the room. Can you hear me now? Yes, thank you. Okay I feel like a cell phone commercial so this is the current space use as you can see some of the things just to point out both and Andrew who is probably our most important employee over the summer in terms of flooding at Montpelier High School did not have an office space to lay his head he was walking around aimlessly and trying to find spaces that didn't have people in them and so Andrew currently is in an office at Montpelier High School but him and Nick Connor have moved for the past three years so Nick's moved every year he's been there and Andrew almost has moved offices every year that he's been working for us and that will be the spot for the electrical closet if we if we move our electrical out of the basement that's where it'll go 127 127 here okay where it says facilities director that will be that will become the electrical closet so that will no longer be available as an office space um pretty shortly so we take up a whole lot of that first floor of Montpelier High School the whole second floor is not actually um represented here because uh because district wide staff is not in as much in the second floor those are mainly classes but if keep going Anna so proposed for Montpelier High School um they we've run out of space for curriculum and programming at Montpelier High School uh we need space for non-classroom teaching professionals there we all of our teacher advisories which happen um I believe daily Miriam and Alara would be able to tell us that um we don't not all teacher advisories have room um so they meet in alternative spaces conferences and that kind of thing there's very few spaces for private specialized instruction or caregiver meetings um when a student needs a space to come down there are very few um spaces that they could do that in the high school that are not public or you know directly in front of a main thoroughfare for students um so private de-escalation spaces we are in need of adaptive learning spaces to teach life skills our world language classes our teachers flip-flop classes because there's not enough classes classrooms available our essential the flexible pathway space is quite small um and they do a lot of things they have a lot of plans to bring people into the building for um to give students more access to different career paths and currently we can't do that um we'd like to we're really interested in expanding of some of our curricular offerings but it's really hard to do that when you don't have any classroom space for that expansion for PE they do all their classes so if kids are doing some sort of um pen and paper assessment they're doing it on the floor in the PE class and there is some class work that PE wants to do that could do that they could do more wellness kind of stuff um wellness learning they had more classroom spaces um and project-based learning spaces it's pretty it's uh pretty limited right now with what we can do um we have one classroom that is dedicated to product drop two classrooms if you can if you include the wood shop dedicated to project-based learning the rest are set up as strict classrooms so there's a lot of uses that Montpelier high school is eyeing um and with central office taking up so much of the space these become uh pretty much impossible for them to do in terms of visioning and innovating for the future keep going Anna so some more proposed usage um we are looking for more intervention spaces um again we're going to be losing an office because the electrical panel will be moved there we're looking for some dedicated de-escalation spaces word languages expanding that program math rooms multilingual classrooms um right now all these spaces are shared uh which makes it pretty hard to um to really find a foothold with with uh teachers and students and then having a very dedicated social emotional learning and special education suite for specialized services when kids need that keep going Anna at union we have fewer district-wide employees this is their the map of the second floor or part of their second floor um district-wide employees aren't necessarily in the first floor um but that's mainly that square at the top there are is our that special education wing um or special education suite that came from when union was renovated I think in the 80s um and you can see our instructional coaches are there the special education evaluators there right now the school psychologist is there this is primarily the only the only rooms we had left um and they're pretty tiny spaces that were meant for one-on-one student work when the when that area was built we do have money dedicated to renovate this space and the renovation ideally will be more focused on student social emotional needs and specialized learning spaces much like what the high school would like to do um so right now it's an adult space and we'd really like to renovate that to become a student space but we have to get district employees out of there to make it happen and then we have instructional coaches and more of our tech people at union elementary school so I believe yeah the proposed spaces more space for students and families to work privately so currently at union we have two school counselors they share an old classroom um with temporary do you lose me again yeah we can hear you oh uh so the school counselors at union share one classroom with a temporary wall and you know like a replaceable wall one that can fold up uh which doesn't add much privacy for families or for students in need um of private spaces to talk with an adult uh Katie's really looking to add flexible learning spaces for teachers and students we have a book room inside the conference room at union which the board saw during the retreat so that makes the book room not accessible when the conference room is being used the conference rooms use quite a bit for meeting spaces for families and teachers and they're looking for small group learning spaces at the middle school not many district-wide staff is at the middle school because the middle school is quite literally completely out of space for everything though there's not a whole lot of spaces that aren't classrooms at the middle school but we do have some of our tech team there and we do have one instructional coach and in a very strange type of room on the third floor there um so we do have some district-wide staff there and the middle school would eat up the chance to get district-wide staff out of their building so that they could use these for student uses and their proposed student uses would be to increase the small and small group and individual learning spaces create an appropriate conference room the middle school currently does not have a conference room um which they need for meetings of a larger size they they simply use classrooms now um you can keep going so we're proposed we will be proposing to the board to move central office out of our Montpelier school buildings um the advantage of this is that the directors the central office directors will have immediate access to their teams um for example Mike's tech team is all over the place it makes for very for a lot of inefficiencies with response to tech needs less moving of offices each year we would like Andrew and Nick to have one space and the rest as well every year if we add any type of position and even if we don't add it's always meetings with the principals and walking through spaces saying hey could we move this closet we've renovated more than a few closets to become office spaces we have I think two closets left at the middle at the high school that we have discussed making into office spaces for people and they're they're simply not appropriate there's reduction in the amount of parking spaces used at mhs the board has heard particularly from our students representatives that we run out of parking every year at in the middle school especially when our sophomores start getting their license and driving um the proposed location is central to the Montpelier schools it's in downtown Montpelier there's a there would be a dedicated common space a beautiful space for school board meetings that would make it more accessible for our public especially when they're in house at our meetings to hear um it's not a library space that makes um hearing and seeing seeing presentations and things difficult um there'd be more secure and central storage currently our our storage is at Montpelier high school in a um non-ADA and compliant room since we can't use it for students since it's not ADA compliant it's upstairs with no other way to access the space except for stairs um so our employees have to access it and and it's not ADA compliant a welcoming space for visitors when visitors come into the central office there are literally two chairs in the main court between two desks for people to sit not exceptionally welcoming to people we have very few district-wide meeting spaces we mainly use um mhs's meeting spaces which takes up more of their their space and there's a lot of pressure on custodial staff with all the outside usage for particularly at mhs some of the disadvantages of consolidating central office off-site and if you want to keep going for me is the cost it's expensive there's we're talking about a lot of people who would need space and so there is an increased cost to moving the central office out of the schools which we'll get into in a minute and less student contact from central office ministers i like being with the students every day so i would i would certainly miss that and i know that the people the rest of the the central office staff would miss that we would have to up our game and in terms of making sure that we are making contact with students more so the proposed space is over behind skinny pancake it is currently where the um vermont i'm going to get this wrong andrew vermont cities towns leagues yeah that space there they they are they are almost entirely virtual now so they're looking to find somebody to rent out the rest of their contract we actually would not take their entire space because it's ginormous we would split it um split it in half essentially or the the people who own the building would be splitting it in half for us the cost includes everything it would be all inclusive so our custodial staff would not be having to take care of us um and includes parking and all of that kind of thing for our employees we would have to pay for internet and that piece and there'd be some initial costs for startup in this space um but if you keep going in it would be a true central office space so anna and andrew have kind of put a little put some ideas you can see how all of us would be right together and consolidated um so that we are easily accessible to each other at all times and that we would also have a nice seating area for any guests who came in a couple different conference rooms to use in terms of district and community usage and um it'd be just it would be a space for the central office team to to be together and have more space in our buildings for for students which is what we really would like oh and there's just a couple pictures of the space right now um that top right corner the yellow with the yellow wall there that is the board room I believe which is which is a nice space for for board meetings to occur um so that's something that we wanted to put in front of the board because it will be a big ask during budget season and this budget season may be tricky a tricky one um but we did want to get it in front of you early so that you'd have plenty of time to think and and uh talk that through as a as a group questions for liby I mean I I think it's a great needed idea that the cost is something we have to very seriously consider but right other trade-offs in the budget that will make it possible or is it purely additive is it purely additive yeah right is it is it just plus adding on to the ask of the budget or are there things that are in your mind that are gonna provide space budgetary space we haven't gone to that level of detail yet right in the budget planning um but we have spoke all of our principles are are right on board with this idea so um we have talked about if this is what we want for this this budget year then we're gonna have to make some some um we're gonna have to make some choices elsewhere in order to make this happen and everybody's understanding of that but we haven't gotten into the level of detail to be able to to share with you yet more to come uh how long is the lease that we'd be picking up how long does that last so the way it's set up is the the league has this space locked in for I think it's another two years and um but the realtor the owner of the building they're also very flexible they could buy them out if we committed to two years or be a sub letter to them so there's but fundamentally this is it's a two year and then the longer we made a commitment for the happier they would be and sure more negotiation we would have with them uh huh okay um yeah I mean I think it makes a lot of sense um and I think I mean I would venture to guess that most other school districts have a separate building for their central office staff um so I think it does make sense and I'm surprised we've been able to sort of like cobble it together and make it work for as long as we have um I do have a couple questions so my first questions was so when I look at the list of employees um are instructional coaches only adult facing or do they also interface with students sorry turned off my video instead of instead of um they are primarily adult adult teachers they're teachers of adults primarily that's not to say that they don't work with students occasionally it's particularly if they're demonstrating a teaching concept to an adult but they are not responsible for for students okay so yeah and again just kind of what you touched on on one of one of the sort of potential drawbacks the other thing I think of when I look at this list is is there any benefit of any of these folks on this list remaining in the buildings like is it an all or nothing or could we look at some positions maybe wellness staff or something being you know remaining in schools because they want to have closer contact with students or are you really seeing it as sort of like the pre-k through fourth grade SEL coach would obviously stay primarily at union um and visit rvs and the k and the um sorry there's the fifth through sorry the fifth through eighth grade SEL coach would obviously stay at the middle school and not be um they probably have a space at the at a consolidated central office for when they need to be there um but they would their primary home would stay in those buildings okay and then my last question is just around like money it's a little bit of sticker shock it's about $250,000 a year um to pay for the lease and I'm just wondering if it's been floated by anybody or if you guys have discussed the potential of purchasing a property rather than leasing well I'll let Andrew answer that question um not not in two weeks I made a couple of inquiries primarily initially over to um uh to Steve Avery over at the credit union about the building on the corner they were trying to decide whether they were going to keep it sell it lease it um but that the flood kind of changed that so this was this was an opportunity that this building we're kind of using this as the test model because it's big enough it's fit up it's ready to go if if there is a if there is a desire to push this even further and look at it further um we absolutely would reach out to a broader base of and and the real estate market has changed in Montpelier in the last two months so uh there may be opportunities that weren't there two months ago and there may be less opportunities in some respects that there there was two months ago so this was just this is just a really good test case of it's a good space in the right location it's a great space in the right location and with a you know with a with a some real knowns about how many people would fit there and how much it costs to actually really rent a space like this so i think absolutely that if there was a desire to go further we would keep looking yeah yeah you finding proper office space yeah it does feel like in in the two-year lease we're going to spend close to five hundred thousand dollars and that feels like a good down payment on a property you know just but so that's that's my biggest sort of concern is like is this an opportunity for us as a district to invest in a property that becomes an asset for the district rather than renting which seems like a good question for the survey process we're about to enter but that does remind me of a follow-up which is were there any other spaces you considered and then turned down we were we were in the process of continuing to look again the sort of this was one level one space not ten thousand or eight to ten thousand however we you know wherever it's a lot of space to find in one level and and then it started to ring so oh some of this further fine tuning of space searching kind of gotcha okay backseat so it might be helpful if there if you had a chance to do a moderate survey of what's out there just to be able to make a comparison this looks ideal there's it's not hard to see that this looks ideal for some district central office staff but just to be able to give us as we're thinking about the impact of the budget if there are other options that we can say yeah we could do this but it's actually not as good for these other reasons or hey actually we found something that's even that's maybe not quite as good but it's going to cost way less you know I don't think that's going to be the case yeah I certainly certainly think that looking for other spaces is prudent you know we should continue but this is this is realistic yep this is real this is what it's it costs to get good space that that's going to serve people well the people are going to want to be in and people are going to want to come visit and and you know isn't going to be all right you go down the stairs to go visit my assistant or my co-worker or whatever that's in one level I guess my first question is for Libby are the 29 district staff all in person every day okay the reason I asked that is because of like you know sort of creative modern office space you know where it's like more of a hotel-link situation where like people may not have dedicated space but it's sort of a shared space and that can potentially reduce footprint but then that might not be a possibility here if everybody is in person every day but you know the other thing like that is apparent to me is that you know when you think about 11 new positions you know the the costs associated with them is usually like their salary and benefits but in this case you also have you know the 11 new positions precipitate the rental of a $20,000 per month office space so you know it's something to consider like optics wise you know like you you're incrementally increasing the positions and then it comes to a point where you need a whole new office you know building so yeah just wanted to say that I think something that stood out to me also was you know not only just that you know the need for more admin space and I'll echo too I mean it just like geographically if you look it's like this space is like it is literally like this central hub between the three three molecular based schools so I certainly see just sort of the ease of that and folks to kind of get to those schools easily and almost in equal time but I'm also just looking at all of the kind of the identified needs that aren't currently being met and I'm thinking about those things in terms of like what of those kind of things can be solved just by way of like swapping spaces or just adding a new space and then I'm seeing like and you know additional things that would actually require seemingly some investment of resources like an adaptive learning space to teach skills on like project-based learning classrooms that sounds awesome you know what what are we what would we be looking at you know for something like that or like flexible teaching spaces so I am curious about some of those other things and it feels like these ideas are really exciting and I also wonder you know how this can kind of be used as a document to sort of just help inspire some of the conversations as we pull community members together when we're talking about like the future use of our schools I think sometimes like for parents invested you know caregivers and families like we spend very little time inside of the schools and where many of us are also not in the world of like education innovation so we don't even necessarily know what's possible you know what could be in our schools so some of this just feels kind of helpful for that dialogue that will be upcoming but so I guess yeah what I'm also thinking about is like you know the added cost of you know a monthly rent and then I'm thinking about oh you know and are we going to want to do these things too and what are the costs and how does that fit into capital plan and and things like that so that's just something that stuck out to me like exciting things and also some of them certainly seem to have a price tag and as and this is just like the other in the in the kind of wheel of options renovating existing buildings adding on to existing buildings I have no idea I mean it's even viable worthy you know I know main street middle is like tight it's on a small you know lot UES you know they're like very old historic buildings I have no idea but I just wonder like in the wheel of options and things you've considered you know as we have to you know represent this to the public in our communities like you know these are all the things that kind of were looked at and are just not considered to be viable for you know next number of reasons so that could be helpful is I mean I'm sensing that the desire is to have a space for next school year is there you know beyond I mean I understand like sort of the limited space argument but like if there was a need to wait a year is that possible or is it sort of like you've really gotten to a point where you've outgrown the buildings and it like really kind of needs to happen by fall of 2024 would argue that we have outgrown the buildings there is no more space we have students who need de-escalation and we literally have no space to do that at the high school that's not public that that other kids can't see it happening and for a high school kid that's just not okay so I'd argue that we are out of space we cannot innovate at the high school in particular because of the the amount of space that central office uses so there is no space and they are sharing classrooms now particularly world languages and the other piece that I would worry about in granted things have changed because of Montpelier's flood so is that this space would not be available in a year they are moving and on the space and they've already we already had more space available to us at the city place area and they've rented that out to food pantry and other good uses as well already so they're already kind of dissecting the space and moving on so I would I would say that we would need to find a different space and that might be possible based on what has happened in Montpelier you know like as Andrew said earlier it's a it's a completely different world in downtown Montpelier right now and no one really knows what's happening there so I know that he's talked to Andrews talked to the the state to see if the state had it because lots of state state employees are working from home so could we rent some of that space but now it seems as if the the state is trying to get those rebuilt and renovated now so it's it's up in the air totally up in the air I do think this space would not be available to us in a year I just echo Kristin's feeling of and I think other people have mentioned sort of like the the need for information on like what other options have been explored and because I know like even even during the discussion on front porch forum that happened around like moving the school or getting rid of the high school there are several pretty public like that that are in the public awareness buildings that people point to like why wouldn't you be able to use this or that or this and so like for example Vermont College will be one of them that people will say you know did you look into renting space up there or buying one of those buildings and so I just would like to have that information at the fingertips to be like this is why buying you know a million-dollar property in Montpelier isn't the right way to go and it's better to rent this is why building new wouldn't work this is why renovating the high building a third floor in the high school wouldn't work you know this is why we narrowed down all the options to this particular space so cognizant of time it seems like there's interest in pursuing this with the board but we want a little more information on other options and so probably the next step right I think it's really important that you have space that allows you to do the highest quality work that you possibly can do and I just want to put that out there that the space allows you to just have no environmental inhibitions or prohibitions I don't think that UES's basement is good for that but there's a lot of space in UES's basement that's not being utilized necessarily and I don't know what it would be used for but it's a lot of space there's a lot of junk in it I know that yeah but I mean I don't know what I don't know whether or not I don't know whether or not it could be used for anything but creative more creative people than myself might think of things not central office that's not what I'm suggesting I think that you should yeah no that's that's not I think that I think it's important that you have space that allows you to do the highest cost quality possible work that you can do I agree with Brett and I saw a lot of nods around the table to that sentiment are you what is your timeline is this something that's going into the budget planning process for next for next year's budget or is this you would like to move out of your offices next month oh no you don't okay right so when we see it again maybe there would be those other like here with other things we've considered but don't make sense kind of information included yeah I I think I think exactly that we're gonna I think we want to want to be able to explain the community why a quarter million dollars at space x is the best and most prudent option and I think you know right now the fact that it was the only one before us is not that explanation so I also totally wholeheartedly agree with what Brett said and I'm just sort of like is there a better option that's just more economical for the long term and if there was sort of the appetite to purchase a building or build a building um you know financially if that sentiment were to be um palatable to people on the board and in the community would there be some sort of like graduated plan that could allow you to create the space that you need in the immediate sense that would require less way less office space and therefore be a lot cheaper just for like next school year like if we were to move all of you know the people who are in the central office suite that you're in out and would that create enough space to sort of like alleviate the immediate pressure or something like that maybe half of the office space that you're presenting or a third you know like let's say we did that for like two or three years while we got the plan in place to build a new building or purchase another building I think that would probably fall under options that that you've all asked us to look into so I think that would that's where that would fall okay yep excellent yeah no um yeah I think we're all very supportive of making sure you have the space uh we just need to bet the expense a little more especially um they don't think this is going to be easiest of budget years so uh we've got community outreach uh concerning budget development and future presentations we're at 830 we've also got superintendent eval launch but I think that will actually be really quick yeah um do we want to delve into that now with a few people out or do we want to kind of put that at the top of the agenda for the next meeting which what's the that you're talking about the both of those two items I'll say on the community outreach thank you Andrew right can we say yes let Andrew go thank you um on the community outreach opportunities concerning the budget we have one that's coming up before our next meeting which is the fall festival yeah where does that table go the center table um and I would really like to get as much board participation in that as possible because the whole community will be there and it seems like a really great opportunity um I would I think it would be helpful for us to know what we would like what information is good to share and what questions are good to ask when we're approaching the community about the budget because we're not going to I don't think we're going to just ask open-ended questions like what do you think we should spend money on I think we need to frame the conversation a little bit more so I think it would be helpful to talk about that tonight just so that we're prepared for the fall can can really make the most of the fall festival I mean go to the fall festival and have a good time too but it does seem like a really good community engagement opportunity in advance of budget season two um so I'm actually helping em see the fall festivals so if you want to give me like a little script I can stand up in front of people and be like I'll try to make it a little funny because that's what I like to do but I'm a resource for that if you want thank you we could use all the funny when it comes to talking about the budget she's very good that's awesome thank you yeah no I think that makes sense um at least to frame up kind of what we want to do for the fall festival I'm suggesting that I have I think we talked about this earlier Mia is maybe put some sort of idea board at a table and put it in buckets of kind of you know where people feel their needs like academics facilities um yeah are you staffing this table Mia I'm um hoping we there will be many board members staffing this table oh because I'm already staffing popcorn maybe we can stand next to each other right could be right there yeah and then you all can volunteer for popcorn as well just rotate back and forth yeah so your idea of an idea board Jim is that people would then like like a sticker yeah like they take a sticker and say this is where I think academic like where money should be spent is that what you mean sticker or I would say just just have a pen some markers and they can write what they're like new playground at msms yeah under facilities got it cafeteria like okay yeah um maker space maker space uh-huh a pool uh-huh more parking yeah parking around okay and how much do we want to frame up the challenges of that we are anticipating when it comes to the budget around I think for the fall festival we can I mean actually that's one thing that was gonna mention to Libby I think it would be helpful to get a sense to the extent we have a sense of what we're facing from the equity waiting change um and I know that's probably ballpark figures at this point but I also know it's it's not nothing um so that that might be good just as we go into the the budget conversation it would be nice to have some sort of little takeaway like piece of paper flyer with the schedule sort of you know with anticipated um public meetings yeah listed that you know want to voice want to share your voice on in budget season you know our budget creation and then like some opportunities to do that be nice to and it could have like double sided like one side could be the sort of like bullet list of potential dates and then the other side could be some of the like major bullet points that we're going to be considering for the budget this is the right context but I thought the cost the the waiting study the consequences of the changed people waits would be just would sort of occur over multiple years is that or is that not true because it's all happening at once the it happens the waits will all happen at once for FY 25 so next school year the budget cycle that we're getting into it's not it's not a phase but um there is a boom they did put a provision in there that tries to cap um year-over-year tax increases by school district um and that uh you know they're gonna their legislature is going to be talking about that and how that's going to work um kind of uh during the session I think which is after we determine our budget essentially yeah so not not great timing but um but yeah so we have some ideas of how to bring the budget to the community at the fall festival I think we can pick back up at the next meeting on the rest of the community engagement um and how would you like to handle volunteering at the board table she would do that over email and that's like fine to do because it's like scheduling it's like carpooling or like you know what you can't do is like we're not going to spend our money on this let's have a google but we can we can schedule carpools and okay I'm happy to put that together and be very encouraging of my fellow board members to join me at the table okay I hope you do I hope you do so we're gonna have a talking thing again yeah that's happening apparently you haven't been invited to be dumped so maybe you're off the hook this year yeah I've been dunked in the past I tried to dunk Jim one year I did not have a very good aim so he stayed dry when I was throwing the ball no other people have better aims so yeah some of them just walk right up and anyway okay I digress moving on um okay great uh future presentations um I mean I just to to throw out there and I think we should talk about it the next meeting too uh we do have a couple board members who I don't think have had a presentation on communications which I think would be great um and I think with all the new data on the website it would be great to have you know something to go through that and I think just the regular ones like an update on social emotional social yeah yeah that um and uh would be great for you to think some ideas of some presentations might want from a student perspective so yeah let's let's do that the next meeting too and um and let me like how many slots do we have for presentations as many as you want basically you're the board you tell me I mean we want to throw some trainings in there too because we haven't um I think it's always good to uh you know again communications because like you know Jake hasn't gone through the you know how to communicate as a a board member um I think getting the latest on hazing harassment of bullying from Heather is always great uh I know we've done that semi recently but uh we've had a couple new board members since then so yeah so right now we're just putting it out there that board members should think about should think about presentations presentations they're interested in and trainings and trainings you'd like to have yeah and we can come back to it at the next board meeting exactly yeah um and just as an fyi for board members who don't know and the public who doesn't know in the agenda that goes out on the on the public there is at the bottom of it a link to the board calendar so you can see what is already planned and upcoming so for example there's already three presentations on data data that we get every year and I think those are already in the calendar so and then you can see like oh okay um uh you know when could we have something around that or a follow-up presentation on something after the data presentations it helps helps put that stuff in context and should we just email you to and and liby with our like desires suggestions definitely and then we can you know take a little time in the next meeting to synthesize those yeah and and jake feel free to suggest whatever because you have not had much information yeah same same to you Laura and Miriam I mean basically it's like any function of the school district if you want to hear from any of the people that work for the school is about a specific topic or um if you hear from other students that they want to hear about something then you could ask for that okay any other superintendent evaluation yeah great new and improved think I'm a bob yeah it's very exciting um Libby can you do my Vanna again or actually maybe it's Anna who is Vanna I think Anna has control but Libby does now Libby's gonna share her screen so that everybody can look at the I did email this to the board um but now it's now in front of everyone and including on so the very quick background here is the board has been doing a formal evaluation of the superintendent for three or four years now at the end of the process last year when the board was deliberating on sort of like the finalization of the evaluation of Libby's performance we found ourselves really challenged to be able to say use our the scoring that we had because the scoring we didn't really know how to define like what is a four versus a five versus a three and um that's one of the reasons that we decided to do an update to this another was because we I had spoken with um Phil Gore who used to be on staff at the Vermont School Board Association and who's um he was just a really helpful resource around how boards can best use a superintendent evaluation and get a little bit more aligned with district goals superintendent goals all that stuff and that was always a little bit muddled for us so we um one of his recommendations was to look to the state of massachusetts which spent a lot of time and money on establishing a statewide rubric that they that every school committee uses that's what they call them in massachusetts and it's all on their website and he was like yeah go for it just use that and so um that is going to end up saving us a ton of money um but the eval committee um ret jim myself and anaket before he had to leave the board um spent a bunch of time looking using that one and comparing it to what we had been using because the language of the previous eval had a lot of our values and a lot of the things we there were things we wanted to make sure we didn't miss by porting over to this new um evaluation and so we did a lot of updates to it to make it our own but it is um i think a much better um framework for us to use so it has it follows this framework of four major areas of leadership and within each of those areas of leadership there are indicators that we would be looking for and for every indicator there's proficient exemplary like underperforming and needs improvement um and so liby if you want if you could scroll we'll just give an example of that so people see what they're looking at so this is the first standard instructional leadership um curriculum is one of the indicators in there and then you can see the four columns this is what unsatisfactory looks like this is what needs improvement looks like this is what look proficient looks like and this is what exemplary looks like and that is repeated for the rest of the i think it's like 17 indicators i don't think we should spend time going through every single one of those tonight that's what but i wanted to give everybody a chance to see it all together so that you know what we are what this looks like before you start using it um and the what we will be asking of the board and then liby will do this in her own self-evaluation and just as in previous years we will ask liby's team as well for them to fill out an evaluation as well is deciding where did liby land in this 2022-23 school year because we're looking at last school year's performance on curriculum was she unsatisfactory needs improvement proficient or exemplary so that's the basic gist of it and it'll be up to you as a board member to say which one of those you think um you're we are not going i wanted to show everyone the word this is the word doc form of it but we are actually going to fill it out in a google form so that all of the answers get dropped into one spreadsheet so liby can you show the google form please so we see what that looks like it's all the same questions it's all the same information i just wanted to get it in front of you so you can see what you would actually be filling out and it says mr ps superintendent evaluation 2022-23 the oh no longer accepting not accepting so let me open start that i forgot that that needed to be open okay should work now maybe you just need to refresh to make it work so again it's like all the same language and if you scroll up a little or down a little liby we'll see first you answer which one you are and then it goes to each one of the questions and the same language is all there in in unsatisfactory needs improvement proficient and exemplary we did add a radio button for i don't know so there are some things that liby does that we just don't see in which case we'll be drawing more information from liby herself and from her team and it'll be perfectly fine for anyone to say i just don't know what this looks like um so just wanted to point that out as well so everyone will just go through click the radio button that you think makes the most sense if you scroll a little bit further liby i did add at the bottom of each section so again there's four main sections at the the last question is for liby for her team for us to provide any examples that would support what we you know the the radio buttons that we've clicked so do we not have the performance indicators in the form it's just the four are all of these sections of the rubric in the form all of those are in the form okay but they're they're broken up into four sections so that's why you didn't see all of them as liby was scrolling you have to fill out one section and then it'll take you to section two i see yeah great wow any other questions to feel ready to start filling this out i have a quick question i just wasn't sure why there were some rows that were highlighted blue that was done in the wood the way it was on the mass website to just i think to set rows apart from each other okay and then the reason you might see two in a row that are not blue or two is because there were some indicators that massachusetts had that we got rid of because they weren't things that were germane to our district got so the blue doesn't mean anything okay it's just a visual this is pretty gotcha and when are we when are you wanting to get the timeline for this is we'd like the evals to be completed i think by next friday bless you and i can email that as a reminder to everyone yes well october 6th that's not next friday is it two fridays from now two fridays from now you may okay there wasn't an well yeah be a board member board member yeah okay because it's really just offering your insights and again one totally finder to click i don't know okay thank you what is it specific about performance from 22 22 to 23 slayer yeah yeah if you would like to not if that's okay yeah i don't really know yeah right paying much attention right that's okay well right and same with our student reps like they weren't you weren't serving in a board capacity at the time that this evaluation window that's true that applies to community outreach and community engagement so if you've got a sense from being a student or being a caregiver or being a community member i mean i think it might be worth scrolling through and see that there's a few where you do know yeah i think we can look at any other questions all right yeah i know thank you for putting that in a very user-friendly organized form um policy monitoring reports motion to approve yeah 21 public participation of board meetings c1 education records and d3 responsible computer internet network use i move we approve the reports for each one of those policies jim just listed do i have a second second any discussion i just have one question liby do you know what the vermont student privacy alliance is is that a question for mike berry it's it's a statewide piece that uh it's like a conglomeration that that does some work for us to just become a member and then they do some of the privacy screenings of different softwares and we can look up software or programs for kids online and check to see if they sell student data or not oh okay it just it just does work for us yeah yep and then i also just wanted to say in that same policy i really appreciate both the emphasis in the policy under this digital citizenship and in the how much it's playing out in our schools by way the i can see it as a parent in the what my kids talk about when they come home and then i could also see it show up in mike's report so i just want to say i think that's really critical it's probably one of the most important things our kids need in order to be able to have be a human being in the world once they leave our the walls of our schools any other questions or discussions about the policy uh all those in favor of approving them i i any opposed also our course pass um motion to adjourn second you can make it yeah uh motion to adjourn do i have a second i second all those in favor okay thanks everyone