 I think we can go ahead and get started. Do you think so Sophie? Yes, I think so. Okay, good afternoon everyone. I'm Churchill Hines. I'm the chair of the board for the Vermont State Colleges calling to order a special meeting of the board duly called for August 12th at one in the afternoon. This meeting is being held through Zoom conference and it's also being shared via YouTube live stream. We have a very important and busy agenda today. It will include an executive session shortly, but we do not anticipate that the executive session will be a lengthy one and then we will proceed through both routine business such as the reports from the finance committee and special topics regarding title nine and related issues as well as the VCCS forward task force initial recommendations and hearing from our new colleague and ally Jim Page in Maine. But before we go any further, I have a personal announcement I'd like to make. Today I will be stepping down as your chair and retiring from the Vermont State Colleges board. There is rarely a good time or a right time for these actions. Nonetheless, I think I could make a sound argument that fresh new board leadership should parallel and support the fresh new systems leadership being shown by Sophie, her team, including many new members of the Chancellor senior team and of course by our presidents and deans and others across the system. In addition to that there have been some quite persuasive personal voices that are also urging me to make this decision. I'm in my 20th year as a trustee over two terms if you will, the first beginning in 1987 and then returning to the board in 2015. 20 years is the longest relationship in my life with anything other than my family. Others might say it's taken me an awfully long time to graduate, but I share that with many of our students who experience the same thing. Many of you know I kind of look at the world through numbers. I have served under five governors, each of those governors and I have been able to develop a first name relationship that lasts to this day whenever I see them. What a gift to an old Vermonter. I've worked with over 60 trustees, five board chairs. Going back to Chancellor Dick Bjork in the early 1980s, I have worked with five, not now I'm sorry with Sophie, with six chancellors of the VSC. Roughly 20 different college and university presidents. I've attended 40 something commencement ceremonies and have celebrated over 20,000 new VSC graduates. The VSC mission to benefit Vermont came naturally to me. My family has seven generations in this grand little state and when I was tapped on the shoulder and asked if I had something to offer I was more than happy to do so and I would encourage like-minded Vermonters to watch for opportunities in your lives to make a commitment as well as each of our trustees have made and who are attending today. The college's mission has a way of embedding itself in your cellular level and it will be there with me forever. So today's my graduation day. Finally I will be a VSC grad and I thank sincerely the current trustees that I'm serving with as well as all of those that have been with me prior to this. To Sophie our absolutely stellar new chancellor. How in the world could we be so fortunate to have you in this role Sophie? To our gifted presidents, President Judy, President Collins, President Moulton, President Spiro, hundreds of committed and talented faculty and staff and thousands upon thousands of students. Thank you to all of you who support our grand VSC system. It has been a great honor and a great pleasure and I will treasure these memories of 20 years with the VSC forever. I would ask Trustee Dickinson if she could present a motion that would bring us into executive session. Again we don't expect this will take very long and then we will return to the board's business. Trustee Dickinson. Thank you. Thank you church. I move the VSC board of trustees enter executive session pursuant to one VSA section 313 subsection A3 to discuss the appointment of a public official. The committee shall make a final decision on any such public official in an open meeting and she'll explain the reasons for this final decision during the open meeting. Along with the members of the board present at this meeting and it's discretion the board invites the chancellor to attend so moved. Do we have a second? I'll second that. We have a second from Adam Grenold. Any discussion? Adam? How will we be going into this session? Is there a link or are we being moved into it? Break out room you'll get an invite on your screen. Okay. Thank you Adam. Look for Dylan as well on the phone. Just out of curiosity. Dylan is here. Yeah but he's on the phone. I don't know if that works for him to enter the breakout room. Yes it does. Okay. Then all those in favor of entering executive session for the purposes as described in the motion by Trustee Dickinson please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? We will go into executive session and be back before too long. Thank you. Okay as I said we have returned from executive session. No action was taken during the executive session but we do have an action item related to that session and Trustee Grenold will now make that motion. Thank you. I would move a slate of the officers as follows. Chair, Trustee Dickinson, Vice Chair, Trustee Kluver, Secretary Trustee Lanu with Trustee Silverman to remain. Do we have a second? Second from... Second. He check. Thank you Michael. Is there any discussion? Trustee Dickinson. Yes I just want to say thanks to Church for all of his hard work and full-time commitment to this position as chair. You leave very big shoes for me to walk in and I appreciate all of the things that you've done. You've reached out to me and given me support as vice chair and you have really been done above and beyond. You have spoken to presidents of colleges and board chairs of other colleges and received a lot of advice on a lot of issues that we face and I just want to say that you know the work ethic and the effort you've made is just huge and I know that this is the second time around and I'm sorry to see you leave so soon because you really were a very knowledgeable institutional memory oriented person who understood a lot of the history of the institutions and the people so as I know I don't have the ability or the or really even the time to go to this that you did but I just want to say thank you very very much. Appreciate that Lynn. My faith tradition stresses the importance of atonement and so this has been an opportunity to atone for a rebellious youth and I think I'm just about squared the tables. I think we're about back to where I can have a rebellious elderly period and see what comes after that. Is there further discussion? Michael. Thanks George. I just wanted to echo Lynn's sentiments and say thank you very much for your for your work on behalf of the board. I know when Martha stepped down as board chair a few years ago I didn't think anyone could you know fill her shoes and you did that ably and I know Martha would be proud of the work that you have accomplished over the last few years and just want to thank you. That means a great deal. Martha's been role model for a lot of things in life. Jim the middle bencher. Yeah the middle bencher. Just to be short when they let us back into Hulio's again church I'd be glad to buy you a beer. I'll be there. Thank you church. Thank you David. Thank you. Let's proceed with a vote if we can on the on the motion as made by trustee Grinnell establishing Lynn Dickinson as chair. Megan Kluver as vice chair Karen Luno returning to her role as secretary and David Silverman continuing in his role as board treasurer. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. We have adopted the resolution congratulations Lynn. No thank you. I got I got the gab on you right. Passing it over to you. She can't wait. Okay well we do have a full agenda and I'm going to start with the approval of the minutes from July 6th of 2020. I'm looking for a motion to accept the minutes as read or corrections. Sure. Okay Jim made the motion with someone like to second that. I'll second that. Adam will second that. Any comment any corrections any any omissions anything in there that needs to be changed. Wishing to support the minutes of July 6th please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any no's. Okay the minutes have passed. We now have Jeffrey Nolan here who is an attorney who will be going over the policy 311 and 311A. These are the things that we need to change or update on our Title IX regulations. I'll turn to the chancellor and she can introduce the attorney and we can go from there. Yes can you hear me okay. Welcome Jeff. Thanks again so Jeff and I actually worked together before I came to the VSC but Jeff has really built a national reputation and a national practice on Title IX issues and on other issues but specifically on Title IX and then given all the transitions we've had this summer we asked Jeff to take a look at our policy 311A and revise it in accordance with the new Title IX regulations that came down in May. I know I've been flagging this for for the trustees there's something that was coming that we needed to do. The deadline is on Friday the 14th so it's terrible timing because not just for us but for across the country a ridiculously short amount of time to enact these new policies and procedures when people are dealing with the pandemic and we're not even together to talk about things so we're very appreciative to Jeff for stepping in and helping us out. He did have some familiarity already with our policy 311 and 311A so probably not quite as heavy a lift as it might be if he was coming from the outside but thank you so much Jeff and we look forward to being educated about our new policies and the Title IX regulations. Thank you so much Sophie thanks for having me today I do really appreciate it. I've had the opportunity to work with some of you in capacities at the VSC and some in other places and it's just really nice to see everyone my office is in Boston now I was it in Vermont till last summer now my office is in Boston although I haven't been to that office since March because we shut it down as well as shutting down all the other firms the firm has offices all over the country but they're all closed and I'm happily so the the trees you see behind me are in fact Vermont trees and so I've been happily here since March which is a nice way to spend your summer it's just fine with me not to be driving back and forth so it's really quite nice despite the the terrible circumstances we find ourselves in and as Sophie said the timing of this couldn't really be much worse I guess you could say that for virtually anything as it affects higher ed and the and the covid responses and our return to campus plans and and all of that but here we are the Department of Ed made clear that they wanted to move forward with these new regulations and that the effective date was going to be basically as soon as they could possibly implement them I don't know I mean I don't particularly need it but Patty we had worked on a PowerPoint if it's something that is pulled up on your end that's fine if you need me to do it I suppose I could although I don't know that I'm screen sharing at the moment but just give me a yell if you want me to do that I wish we did share your PowerPoint with the trustees but obviously better if we could if we could have them up on the screen would be helpful for everyone else so I don't know if Jen or Meg can assist with that or make you the a host where you can share it hold on one second you should be able to share if you'd like to okay hold on one second well that's going to take a few minutes to come through that's fine and I don't I don't need it here we go just give me one second I'll pull it up I can just add by way of background you know for the trustees and for anyone else that's listening we had two policies going into this policy 311 which was our non-discrimination harassment and related unprofessional conduct and then we had 311a which we had created back in 2014 in response to the guidance that came out of the Obama administration and that dealt specifically with sexual assault domestic violence dating violence and other sexual misconduct so with the new regulations we've had to kind of mix and match a little bit here as title nine did straddle both policies so just by way of introduction and looks like we're good to go okay there we go okay so it's I've pretty much been living and breathing this stuff as Sophie said I work with schools around the country on these issues and I'll have been working in their own way to move forward Todd Delos reached out quite a while ago I would say that DSC is relatively organized on these issues which is nice because there is a lot to do and a lot that we need to be cognizant of big philosophical issues for campuses was how much of their prior practice were they going to retain and that'll be pretty much the theme as we go through here it is safe to say that there must be colleges has chosen to retain the manner in which it protects its community prohibits miss certain misconduct on campus really has not changed those protections has not taken the invitation of the federal government to narrow the scope of what is known as sexual harassment but also includes sexual assault and other matters as we'll talk about has really stuck with the same prohibitions it has had but has had to implement some new procedures to give you some sense of in order to comply with the new mandates so again August 14th a deadline there is a potential for injunction but one of those motions in the southern district of New York action filed by the Attorney General in New York and probably some colleges as well was already denied and others are pending but here we are two days out I'd be surprised if it's enjoined but anything can happen even if it is enjoined we're in a world where there's expectations around what schools are going to do process wise particularly with public institutions like VSC so you know the injunctions will just have to see what they say if any is issued what we know is is that the heavy lifting has been done to change the policies has necessary a lot of the back and forth has involved questions around around how far should schools go with protecting one constituency or another is how people put it in a polar environment I tend to think it's not so polar as the media might portray it to be because really when we do the hard work on our campuses we see that these cases tend to be very nuanced and difficult and there's a lot of gray area it's not so much where it's easily cut and dry as to what is right and what is wrong obviously sexual assault stocking dating violence domestic violence are horribly wrong but it's not always easy in our cases to see what has actually happened when we look at the facts in front of us 2011 the Department of Education moved forward with efforts by guidance to say that more should be done to protect complainants people who report that they've been subjected to sexual violence without particular interest or or attention paid to respondents rights because traditionally respondents had had the rights again particularly at public institutions like the SC guaranteed by the constitution to notice an opportunity to be heard to address issues that have been brought forward whereas complainants were treated essentially as witnesses and witnesses alone and the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter changed that and further emphasis in 2014 further strengthened that emphasis and strengthened that objective there were arguments that it was making things less safe for respondents and less appropriate that things were unfairly shifting I don't particularly ascribe to those arguments I think that schools were probably seeing more reports because there was more confidence in systems that were better adapt and enabled and adapted to the needs of reporting parties as well as respondents but be that as it may there's been a lot of political back and forth on these issues and the courts have weighed in and said at times that schools didn't follow procedures that they should have the Department of Education under the new administration has shifted focus and said number one we don't think guidance is the way to go we think formal rulemaking is the way to go they announced that in 2017 at the time that they withdrew some prior guidance they then follow a process that started in November of 2018 where they floated new regs for comment by the public received over 125,000 around 125,000 comments they had to address those comments in 2000 pages of preamble to the new regulations they attempted to do so the current lawsuits are battling over whether they did it effectively or whether what they adopted was appropriate under title nine we'll see how that hashes out in the meantime what we've done is we have amended proposed amendment subject to your review in the policy realm to the vsc policies to address what the new regulations require because we're being realistic about where we are one thing emphasized title nine always did this but it's stronger than ever um title nine is about prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded programs we often think about issues related to these matters that affect students but they affect employees as well and title nine covers employees as well and that's brought out in the new regulations which also cover employees explicitly prior ones did but they didn't say anything particularly controversial so much more attention is being focused on that now the new regulations focus the scope of sexual harassment that schools could choose to prohibit and they say this is what the department of education is going to be enforcing and investigating the new regulations increase procedural requirements that has to be applied across the board we have some leeway as to what we do with what we prohibit narrower definition you've probably read about this quid pro quo harassment is covered always was under vsc policies and state law effectively and federal law in exchange um having to do with sexual behavior is quite clearly sexual harassment a heightened standard for hostile environment sexual harassment it's in the middle of the screen severe pervasive objectively offensive heightened from severe or persistent or pervasive um seems like a subtle change but it's going to have a difference in practice for schools that only adopt this but vsc is doing more and then sexual assault and sexual assault and other issues defined in the clear react include not just rape and fondling without consent as defined in the clear react which is your statistics law and your campus safety disclosure law but also dating violence domestic violence and stalking those are things we dealt with before because as of 2015 we had to as higher ed institutions that receive federal funds now they're being pulled into the title nine definition as well so the rules about how those are addressed are even more prescriptive than they used to the scope of where you have to be have to be a note regulating has narrowed as well department of education now saying it's only a title nine sexual harassment matter if it happens within the school's education program or activity and you see the language here conduct that occurs at a location event circumstance where there's control substantial control over both the respondent the person reported to have engaged in the misconduct and the context this clarifies some previous ambiguity on these points that wasn't always well answered by previous guidance this is helpful in terms of saying what we must address but again bsc is going to go broader because we can against a person in the united states if it's going to be title nine those words are in the statute so they're saying if it's title nine it's got to be involving an occurrence in the united states so a study a broad issue or something that happens on a on a trip to canada or what have you would not be covered by title nine but we can still cover it if we choose to under broader policies and that's the way your policies have been written so we have this language domestic violence dating my sexual assault and stalking are covered sexual exploitation is something broader than sexual it may be sexual harassment but it doesn't always need to be typically sexual exploitation involves it's taking undo unfair sexual advantage of someone or the benefit of anyone but the person taken advantage of it often involves um video recording audio recording um without consent sharing of video of sexual activity or nudity without consent um so those are things that may or may not be sexual harassment covered by title nine but even though they're they may not be the state colleges have said this is still behavior as it was before that we are going to prohibit in our community and we're going to hold people to a higher standard than the federal law requires so that's something that's still in there um there's an expanded definition of retaliation we'll get into that in a second that we must apply now which is which is fine it's it's a it's it's not a problematic thing it's going to be protective of the community so that's not a problem there is some nuance around requiring people to participate that we'll discuss in a minute we neutralize some of the terms uh previously and this was borrowing from Cleary language so it wasn't something that we were making up there was use of terms like victim or survivor really tried to make that more generic to complainant which is sounds legalistic but it is more accurate because in the course of a policy like this we haven't made a conclusion as we're investigating as to whether someone is a victim or survivor of of a sexual assault because we have not yet concluded that one has occurred however of course when working with someone who comes forward your support offices counselors and so on they're going to use different terms that are more empathic that are more appropriate for that setting but when we write a policy like this we use the more legalistic terms to convey the neutrality that we really have to have across the board again respondent rather than criminal justice type language like a a fender alleged perpetrator that's something that we do across the board as well um so we've got two different definitions now we for reasons way too obscure and boring to get into I will spare you but we basically have to say we have title nine sexual harassment and then we have non title nine sexual misconduct so what we are able to do by having these two categories is have conduct that's defined by the law uh within our program or activity in the United States be prohibited and addressed through certain procedures but also we can prohibit conduct that is outside program or activity but still has enough of a connection to the vsc that the institutions feel like they should be regulating it you know off-campus conduct between students or something that happens in the study abroad program of the institution in another country we want to be able to address that so that's something that we have the ability to address or these things like sexual exploitation where it's not literally sexual harassment under title nine but we still want to prohibit it that's something that we absolutely can do under this other category that the way we do it is a little bit different again we already have this list that's going to be in the in the document I've already talked about the scope of of coverage again we have a little bit broader stocking may include non sex based stocking so it doesn't have to be about a relationship that has ended or a relationship that someone wants to start but they're behaving in ways that come out to stocking it could be stranger based stocking relatively rare I do a lot of work in this area but it can happen we're covering all of that in the policy as revised so no narrowing of any of that so one of the reasons that we want to do the split definitions there's the obscure reason that's too boring to get into the more practical one is what we're doing is saying where we absolutely have to follow all of the title nine regulations for process we are doing that those involve some some increased notice requirements which are not particularly onerous those are fine there is mandated in the new regulations an opportunity for unabashedly according to the department unabashedly adversarial cross examination process now we will be appointing hearing officers who are going to be managing those processes and well adversarial is used as a description because that's what the legal system would do people are not going to be allowed to behave poorly we're going to have to quorum expectations people will not be waving fingers at each other and yelling parties will never be addressing each other personally any cross examination questions have to be done by advisors who are brought in by the parties themselves or appointed by the institution if they don't have one those advisors pose the cross examination questions so that parties never have to hear the other person asking them questions about the conduct that issue right to access evidence there's a little more right to access it early on in the process mandated by title nine it's not on the slide but there's also some evidence rules that are problematic frankly they have very strict requirements in the regs about if a person doesn't appear for the hearing and submit to cross examination you can't rely on anything that they've said and that can be quite narrowed down to even one question that was relevant that was posed and they if they absolutely refuse to act to answer it you could be in a situation where their other testimony gets excluded that can have real practical effects when you have a big investigation report that they've contributed to or statements or text messages they've sent that could be relevant so we want to minimize the effect of those things to the extent that we can so we basically have two tracks we have a procedural system for title nine cases that follows all the rules including some of those that are a little more difficult to follow but we follow it explicitly and in good faith but then where we can soften some of those less easy to work with rules but still provide a very fair robust process we're going to do that for the non-title nine sexual misconduct so that's that's the approach that was taken and I have clients doing different things clients across the country are doing a range of things I would say that what VSC is doing is is quite representative of what I'm seeing but it's but there are different ways to do it the retaliation definition is here you'll have the power plant for your reference one issue is there is a change in the duty to cooperate we used to say community members have a duty to cooperate with our investigations now there's language in the retaliation provision that says you have a duty to refuse to participate so therefore it's it's unlikely we're going to take disciplinary action against someone who says I don't want to be a witness I don't want to talk to you they have a right to say that we certainly will try and encourage them because we really that's very much want to hear what people have to say if it's relevant but we are probably less likely to be saying you have to you have to participate because we don't want to run afoul of the retaliation issues there are confidentiality requirements which certainly will be respected supportive measures is something that is very much touted by the department is being part of their whole system they view it as when a when a report is made they come to a title nine coordinator on one of your campuses and they say I something happened to me I'm not sure what I want to do about it and rather than diving immediately into an investigation the title nine coordinator instead says the first thing I want to emphasize you is that we have a lot of ways that we can support you we can change your class schedule we can change where you live we can provide a campus safety escort we can do any number of things that help you and sometimes that can even include changing the other parties classes and all of that if it can be done without unreasonably burdening them short of an investigation and a finding of responsibility but there's this balance around you can't be unreasonably burdening people unless you follow the whole procedure so the idea of interim suspensions and so on has really fallen aside under the new regime but the hope is that we provide support first and we respect the complainants wishes as to whether they want to go forward with a formal complaint sometimes the school has to go forward even if they don't want us to because we really perceive a significant safety issue for them or the rest of the campus so that's something that has to be weighed out but the the perspective of the new regulations is that that should be relatively rare or more rare than might have been encouraged under prior guidance from the department all right so this is what this slide is portraying is different outlines of things and the things that will be in the policy 311 procedures that the chancellor will be issuing but those have been drafted to this point yeah this is the really boring part we won't get into if it's not a title nine matter you have to technically dismiss it from the title nine process but then we can immediately transfer it over to the non title nine process which is very parallel which is which so that it's not really a effective dismissal we move forward quickly advisors can be at meetings that's not new for us we have investigation reports that parties can look to and then we have the hearing officer piece and and a distinction between the title nine hearings and the quote-unquote non title nine hearings which are going to address similar issues is in the non title nine hearings we don't have the advisors posing questions and the advisors can be attorneys we don't have potentially attorneys posing questions to the parties cross-examination questions we have the chair doing it and the chair can ask questions that the chair thinks are good and fair and appropriate to to seek clarification from parties and they can also use questions that the party submit to them and to the extent that they're relevant and appropriate no doubt the chairs will pose those questions the idea is there's probably just as much effectiveness in doing this without so much of the anxiety of the idea of an adversarial situation just so you have a sense of it being trustees of a public institution the rule that said you got to have live cross-examination in an adversarial way was really rolled out by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals two judges in that circuit in Ohio ruled that that was the way they shot it thought things should happen at a public institution involving sexual assault allegations that involve credibility determinations the first circuit in Boston much more recently in August of 2019 Sixth Circuit was in September of 2018 held that this sort of model where a chair follows what's called an inquisitorial role and asks the questions it has to ask good questions and seek to interview for clarification that that is a perfectly permissible model under the Constitution so that would be fine under the first circuit obviously you're in the second circuit in Vermont but I think it would be persuasive because other courts have not gone the Sixth Circuit route yet the Department of Education went the Sixth Circuit route and has applied something to all schools across the country public and private that is more stringent than what courts have said in some cases at least is required even for publics like the VSC in any event our processes are all going to be fair and robust across the board there are just some details that the Title IX process must include that frankly was determined that we're not going to be all that helpful to resolving matters and getting to the truth by a preponderance so those were shaved off in order to facilitate the resolution of non Title IX cases that still involve these really delicate issues to the extent that we can sanctioning is going to be done by deans of students president or chancellor with employees we're going to follow collective bargaining agreements there both parties can appeal one significant difference is and you may you may hear requests for this or information about how things are going since 97 2001 definitely 2001 there was a document from the Department of Ed that said you cannot mediate sexual assault cases sexual violence cases it was reiterated in 2011 feeling that the power dynamics were not appropriate for that kind of resolution some schools did alternative justice because that's not literally mediation it's different in the meantime but a lot of schools shied away and said no we we're afraid of the department on this one this Department of Ed is saying it is a fair option if both parties want to participate in it and the Title IX coordinator thinks it's appropriate so we have in our policies in 311 said the informal resolution is appropriate if the parties want to engage in it so you'll probably hear more about that as things develop and different models well approach that okay so just so just so everybody knows someone is not muted so we're hearing your conversation on the line but I'll continue to talk it doesn't matter to me um a bit of a policy update to policy 311 clarifying that the allegations sexual harassment that meet the definition of prohibited conduct must follow 311a procedures conduct that does not meet prohibited conduct broadly defined there do not and with that I will stop rambling and um ask if you have questions for me I'm happy to answer them is anyone have any questions if not uh I'd like to ask the chancellor um this must be approved by august 14th is two days away um I can't remember I don't think there was a resolution that was introduced in our packet this with this is an action item is it not action item yes and I just want to flag that Ryan had his hand up I know you probably didn't see because it was down the sign uh down the side so I I just I'll defer to Ryan for a moment sure thank you yes thank you um I wanted to clarify on the cross examination part so as I understand that of course the parties will submit their questions and the third party in this case would then ask the questions during these cross examination hearings would the two parties in the same room when these questions are being asked that's a terrific question so even before covid even before we conducted our professional lives on zoom this issue was anticipated not not the covid issue obviously but the idea that um these issues were going to be hard enough to not have people have to sit in the same room with each other by practice in higher ed we've been doing this for some years but even in the proposed rulemaking floated in November of 18 it was said if schools want to facilitate virtual attendance everyone does have to be able to simultaneously hear and see each other in a title nine covered case that involves this live testimony but they don't have to be in the same room so even if everyone's on campus back in the olden days when we did that um or when we were together um that's okay they can still be in separate rooms and zoom or their technology can enable them to be participating that way or if people are on different sides of the country that's okay as well obviously we know from the technology we're on that we have the ability to simultaneously hear and see each other and and the way it will work is it was and that was something we anticipated in this decision from the sixth circuit as well and um and in some schools I mean I work with schools in the sixth circuit one in particular um and they've been having these hearings for some time the way that it works uh there and the way that it will work under the department's rules is uh only relevant questions are to be answered that way so if persons is the advisory they're asking the questions they pose the question they look to the chair the chair says go ahead or no you don't have to answer that depending on whether they think the question is relevant now that is intended to build a pause into it so you don't have this rapid fire it's like you'd see on television hammering away cross examination that's the hope but you're still are going to have folks whose profession that is to do just that and they're going to do whatever they can to move things in that direction and get into a rhythm and and do cross examination the way they would like to in a courtroom it's going to be a bit of a struggle back and forth um to maintain some semblance of an educational setting and environment while complying with these rules and you're going to have to have a strong chairs who are able to enforce the quorum rules but i will say relevance is a very broad standard so anything that makes a fact an issue more or less likely because the old evidence has been considered is relevant so there's going to be a lot that's going to be brought in you can't repeat you can't badger for no reason but these these hearings are going to be long and they're going to be difficult for both parties and people are just going to have to work hard and your chairs are going to have to work hard to to try and draw out what's fair i am gratified the department um recognize that we can approach these things one thing i do a lot of is trauma informed interviewing and um investigations and some had criticized that and said well that's that's too favorable toward complainants it's unfair to respondents that was included in comments to the regulations and fortunately the department cited a paper that i did to the contrary that said trauma informed can be fair it can be done in a way that's fair to all parties we interview for clarification etc and the department cited that eight times in the preamble so we know we're on solid ground and i know from all state colleges would subscribe to those kinds of approaches we're on solid ground using it because the department is specifically cited to the work that i did to say this can be done right be careful be fair to everybody but you know the point about are they going to be in the same room no they don't have to be and you can take advantage of that but there's still going to be some challenges and we're going to have to work through them but um we'll do our very best in good faith so if i may to follow up on that based on what you've just explained to me you don't believe in policy and people have written this and resources don't believe that forcing these hearings to happen having people maybe not in the same room but still seeing and hearing each other and having these questions asked you don't believe that would decrease the amount of people coming forward that people would feel challenged by these my concern is with these hearings now people are going to step up and say something that's my concern here i feel we're putting people in that corner but you're from what you're telling me they don't believe that would be the case so this is not at all about what i believe i'm telling you what the department is saying right from the beginning and i'm i'm on record in the chronicle of higher education saying from the beginning and and victims advocates survivors advocates can say it a lot more convincingly than me this is going to chill report i have no doubt this is going to make it less likely that someone when they hear about the process is going to want to go through the entire process and again if they don't they can they can give statements to public safety they can give statements to title nine they can go with an investigator but if they don't appear at the hearing and submit to cross-examination and answer all the relevant questions we can't consider anything else they've said is that going to chill reporting you bet it is so we're going to have to do what we can to keep our processes as respectful and appropriate as possible the department's view is that is a risk and we think the due process side of it for respondents is worth that risk there is a massive political divide as to how that particular view is is viewed hence the 125,000 comments not all of which were on that point but a lot of them were on that point so now that we are we are in this world where this is the system we have we're going to do our very best to separate people physically require decorum use trauma-informed practices as permitted by the department to build our investigation file there are ways to address things with hearing officers i do training for hearing officers around the country on this where they can ask questions in a way that is appropriate and trauma-informed but also gets to the clarifying matters the way we need to in a way that's fair to everybody but it's not easy it's a challenge for sure when you were formally had models where people and i think vsc i know uvm had models where investigators did the investigation and there was no hearing that is obviously a lot less difficult for either party and frankly i think those systems can work very well where you have good quality investigators like you do the department doesn't agree because they got some horror stories in the summer of 2017 when doing listening sessions that some respondents had bad experiences and they very much took that to heart then that was validated by this court decision in 2018 but it's it's going to be a challenge but we're you know we're up for it to do the best we can for folks and then what the department would say and what i know is what we'll try our very best is they'd say look if someone does not want to engage in a hearing then we're going to provide supportive measures and we're going to do everything we can for them whether they participate in a hearing or not that's okay that's fine but to me where you have a situation where something has happened that should be addressed that may not be addressing campus safety issues in the way that you want either so it's it's a challenge no doubt about it Brian i would just add that we we did at the bsc did submit comments to the department addressing your specific issue about our concerns around having live hearings and cross examination having a chilling impact so again we weren't alone that was a big huge issue a lot of people submitted comments but this is where the department has come down and i i jeff i would assume if there's a change in the administration in november that could well be a shift back absolutely i was on american and i got you linda i was on american council and education task force that submitted a ce's comments to this so a ce represents thousands and thousands of institutions through all of their associations across the country and we couldn't have been more strong about this exact topic that you just shouldn't be turning an educational system into a courtroom and all the ill effects it was going to have the department went the way that it went um i i you know i have a a slide i'll be i presented it yesterday i'll probably be talking about it this afternoon in another webinar that puts all these different media clippings of various things and one of them i can picture down in the right hand corner is uh vice president biden saying essentially if i am elected these are going away um so i you know that is something that if they are rules they are regulations it's not as easy as withdrawing guidance but i am quite confident that if the department of education under new administration decided we are not going to enforce these as written and we're going to tell people we're not enforcing them that schools are not going to enforce them unless they want to and i tell you beyond the a ce and working with schools around the country schools are not happy they are going to comply in good faith i have no doubt about that and schools absolutely care about respondents rights as they did before uh despite arguments to the contrary yet there are parts of this that are just unnecessarily uh legalistic so i think that aspect of it will fall aside and public institutions like bsc can do a lot to be fully cognizant of respondent rights without doing all of the things that these rules rather um awkwardly attempt to do linda had a question yeah linda be just a second i'm just going to tell everybody an easy way to go and raise your hand and be recognized is at the bottom of your screen there's a little thing called participants and it shows on the right side the list of all the people here and down there there's a little thing where you raise your hand and then you can lower your hand i'm going to ask jen to monitor that if she can is that something you can do jen worry yes i can do that now did you want to open it up to public comment right now or just trust let's just do trustees to begin with um linda is next but if you want to raise your hand that's an effective way to do it without having you can't see everybody on these screens anyway so linda go ahead thanks uh jeff how are we as um trustees gonna be able to have a sensor sort of monitor or have have a sense of how this is impacting reporting how um how complaints are handled um on the vsc i come at it i had it's it's tough for me to get it and i come out of from um seventies my four years of college i had not only a good friend who was a victim so these procedures were important but i had let's say good acquaintances they were roommates the women who proven and they then admitted they just falsely accused people uh um and it went to hearings and such and and since they admitted to many of us that they were falsely accusing people there were several of us who testified against them so you know i i sort of i get a sense of i have this experience that makes me really in tune to both sides of it so what i want to know as a trustee is how do we as a trustee best understand the impact it has on our campuses and um how do we make sure that that that that the campuses are handling it well and fairly yeah so i would say that you know the data will be there to be able to compare your internal cleariac numbers versus how many cases are going through um adjudication full hearing adjudication so you may have a certain now people to go to your counseling center their numbers are not going to show up in your clearing sexual assault numbers and frankly your sexual assault numbers are so low anyway um that it may not be a statistically relevant or even uh anecdotally relevant thing but um you may see a drop in reporting you may get anecdotally from counseling center folks who say look i can't get into the details but i am hearing more hesitancy on the part of people who come to us i would say you know you can you can learn you can ask sophie about that and and and she can pull folks for you i don't know if the vsc does sort of an update on how those things are going on campuses some schools do a lot of schools don't it's not something you have to do but that may be one way to do it as far as the fairness side of it i mean there's there's so much robust process built into this now uh and a full opportunity across examination in title nine sexual harassment cases and even in non title nine cases there's going to be a full hearing which is much more robust than a process that didn't involve one so this the system has moved toward uh procedural um requirements well in excess of what i think constitution requires so on that on that sense the fairness side of it i think i think i'm pretty confident that you're good there i think later in the past we had reports each college is reported in the summer um gathered for the the previous academic year and reported to the epsil committee on the number of reports and investigations and we just we haven't done it this year on in fact our system investigator was laid off in in april um so we will be looking to fill that position right now we have a comparable position being posted so um but yeah we we have been reporting the epsil committee the trends for the past few years trust me check thank you lin um and thank you jeffrey i i do have a a question or maybe it's more of a confirmation but just some commentary also i i do have to agree with ryan's concerns and i just sort of generally you know and express disappointment in the federal uh department of education at a time when there is a national reckoning with um you know individuals behaviors at all levels including in higher education among students that the department of education would go in a direction that is contrary to that that sort of makes it more difficult for survivors and for victims to report or at least makes it less likely they will because of fear of the process that they'll have to engage in it it just seems at a step and and i think most people would probably concur with that my question is that sort of what i asked a couple of months ago is you know there's no possibility here that we can ignore this requirement it's something that is tied to our federal funding as i understand it um and just wanted to make sure i could i could get that confirmed but otherwise hopefully you know the v sc can provide all the support that we can um to to any to survivors you know while this rule is in place hopefully it's not in place for very long um and i do also want to just compliment um you jeffrey and your presentation and what you provided to us in terms of um policies because it seems like you did your best to lean in favor of survivors rights and drafting these so um i appreciate that as well thank you mike i really do appreciate that i um in terms of confirming whether you have to comply with these or not if you would like your students to receive financial aid right and you pretty much have to comply with these presuming that that's relatively important to your existence as an instance um yeah the department wouldn't be fooling around on this you know there's there's there's some laws ferpa for example you might have heard the education privacy there's no enforcement teeth to ferpa and the people that in that that look at that law are you know they're very good to work with they educate you know if someone were to say look we're not following this the department would quickly move to enforce and they would get you know the u.s. attorney's office involved in the whole night there was really no option there um you know basically i think that the philosophy of this has been we absolutely are going to comply in a way that's fair to all of our students and employees all of whom are community members um there are ways to uh navigate these sensitive difficult situations that are um as i said trauma informed and fair to everyone and that's something that's been a stock in trade for me that fortunately was picked up by the department's ensemble and it's something that i think philosophically that the bsc would agree with that there are opportunities within a very legalist system to be empathic to be decent to both parties we do not have to behave in a way that involves yelling and finger pointing and acting like we're in a tv courtroom drama um and we're going to be able to maintain that um and that's that's something that's really important it's going to be more difficult i think the department's view would probably be it should be difficult because the consequences of being found responsible for section assault are life changing which is true so um so there you have it um i think we're going to do our very best to work within it i'm hopeful that where things need to be addressed through a disciplinary process that people aren't willing to do it with the support of uh neutral folks who really are there to focus not on you know do we favor complainants or do we favor respondents or do we favor women or men or people of any gender identity instead we focus on proven misconduct and if that has been demonstrated through a fair process we take action before that point we're neutral and fair to all community members and i think that's that's the most that we can do ethically for everybody are there any other questions i don't see any chair dickinson okay um well you don't have a resolution to read that would move this along but it sounds like we have no choice but to um make a motion to accept or this this uh this change in our policies because there's someone who would like sir had gem muted so move men thank you and we need to move to uh approve the revisions was to policy 311a and policy 311 yes we have both the 11 and 311a would you like to adjust your um motion to accept the revisions in both of those surely would okay anyone want to do a second second okay that was david david good thank you any further discussion yes yes yeah i appreciate the work that's been done on this i understand the frustrations that um many people have expressed or several people have expressed i guess the um the point is we just have to work through it as best we can and it'll be incumbent on the on the people facilitate these meetings are handling you know people on staff um to use the procedures that we've been dealt as effectively as possible protecting both sides when possible also so we we get an accurate result so i appreciate all the work that goes forward from this point this is the new starting point to a certain extent anyone else have anything to add seeing no more comments um we'd like to move the motion and those in favor of the revisions to policy 311 and 311a please indicate by saying i all right all right those opposed all right it sounds like the policies have been revised thank you very much uh to jeffrey knolan for his input and his work on this it's really appreciate thank you complicated issues and it sounds as if we're actually going above and beyond so that is good thank you thank you okay now one of the things that i was hoping because we do have people who have to leave early is that we would be able to hear from our special guest who is um item number six uh we have the report of the long-range planning commission and a presentation by james page who is our consultant who has worked with the legislative leaders and the treasurer to put out a three comprehensive report and so we're going to switch number five and number six we're going to do six first so um i don't know what we want to do with um it's it's it's up to michael p check who is the chair of the long-range planning commission but uh do you want to introduce uh james page or shall we just have mr page start off he's here from main and we really welcome him and appreciate his input i think lin i think he's a man who needs no introduction now in vermont uh higher ed the same okay in that case uh james page you're you have the floor good can you hear me all right not coming through yep all right well thank you folks for the opportunity to uh to address you today uh i want to first of all i don't know if uh if church is still on the on the line or not but he was the person that i worked with from the board in preparing my report uh and i could not have had a better uh you could not have had a better advocate i could not have had a better source of insight and information than what church provided during that time so if you're still on church thank you so much uh and uh i certainly join all of you in extending thanks to him for all the work that he's done here uh i also would like to just take a brief moment and say uh how impressed i've been uh in the last couple of months with the speed with which you folks uh with which with the chancellors that may has been have been really centering on these issues and that she's been building her team getting things in order it's very considering that the academy often has a reputation sometimes justified of moving a bit slow uh this is this is very encouraging and i hope you're encouraged by what you're seeing with your team and how this is being put together uh i did do the report uh that was under the auspices of the joint fiscal office and submitted that in parallel with the the treasurer's report uh back in early june uh since then in full disclosure i think you all know but i have entered into a very part-time consulting relationship with you folks working directly with the chancellor so what in in talking with the chancellor what we thought would be useful would be to repeat for me to repeat uh basically the outline of the legislative briefings i gave and i gave three of them to leadership uh different groups almost the same presentation each time depending on where the q and a went uh but with a slightly different emphasis the three points that i uh focused on was first the challenges and in particular demographics i'm going to repeat that pretty much here uh the second was the role and issues around the legislative select committee and while i mentioned those i don't intend to spend a lot of time on that here and then third was uh issues around a vsc and in the legislative readings i did not spend much time in those issues but i reversed that and spend a little bit more time here and then uh open it up to what you folks would like to do in terms of q and a or general discussion i should also say that even though i'm falling under the agenda item of the long-range planning committee uh that i was i've not been part of that process um and so the recommendations that are just coming forward on that and then the work that they've been doing again with uh my uh appreciation for how fast they're moving into the seriousness of it i have not had input into that they have not worked with me on the other things so we're a bit running in parallel here so with that i'll start uh in terms of the first item uh i want to i certainly don't want to diminish the seriousness of the covid uh pandemic it is an extraordinarily serious issue for everybody and especially for our higher ed institutions or for education in general someday however that problem is going to be resolved uh i don't know if it's going to be two months from now or two years from now but someday someday it is when that's done you're still going to be facing this basic demographic and related challenges that you had before so in terms of long-term challenges while covid is is right in everybody's face and we have to deal with it successfully um we can't be considered to be let that mask if you will uh the longer term structural issues specifically around demographics that vermont and indeed all of the northeast faces uh the pool of prospective students is shrinking and that's just a fact and it's it's not going to change shy of major major changes in migratory patterns and economic development strategies by the state that's not going to change in the next 10 to 15 years um so a situation which was always serious is going to become more serious and if you look at my report there's a very important graph put together by the joint fiscal office that says that shows how that works i would also recommend to you i'm not getting any percentage of this but there's a there's a book and i'll leave jen the the title and they're called demographics of the demand for higher education by a very very fine statistical demographer named nathan grau this is the best study and it goes down to state level of demographic trends in public higher education for the next 15 years that i'm aware of anywhere uh it's a it's a relatively quick re skipping over the highly technical parts of the of the mathematics but the story that it's telling for the country as a whole and the northeast in particular is confirms in a very factual basis uh what i'm sure you folks all know which the demographic challenge for new england is severe that doesn't mean that everybody should simply throw their hands up far from it uh the responses that there are a set of responses that people need to uh figure out how to do and which should achieve priorities which are more most relevant to vermont and pursue but a course in in those just to name a couple of the more obvious ones is to increase the core student profile are you serving all vermonters as well as you're serving the 18 to 24 year olds uh the answer to that may be in certain instances yes but in other instances there may be room for improvement are there opportunities for increasing the percentage of students uh who are coming out of high school or who are near young adults if you will who are attending some form of post-secondary education and then if they are improving retention retention is a excuse me an issue that is uh alive throughout the country and uh those those institutions who are doing the work and in the carrying out the work to improve their retention are showing the largest benefits of against these various challenges that we're seeing so uh there is there is many things that can be done and so this the demographic issue should not be a a sign of despair it's just a very serious issue that the numbers have to be have to be dealt with um the second item so I'm going to pass on from that I think I hope that's fairly uh straightforward the second item I talked about with the the legislators was the legislative select committee and there I encouraged them to focus on three tasks um that I felt was certainly within the intent of what they were trying to get at uh one was to set priorities uh rather than certainly well let me jump to the end for a moment I'm a great believer in the in the old adage that structure follows strategy so get your strategies in order first before you do your structure um in order to do your strategies you need to know where you want to go to so set your priorities at the and for legislative group uh that should very much be uh in my mind for a public higher education system external priorities what do you want for the citizens for the students for the businesses and communities of Vermont that vsc can best uh provide not so that you would articulate those priorities in terms of external measures and secondly make them measurable make them measurable everybody agrees on the value of quality higher education simply reinforcing that won't meet the legislative intent but secondly once you've set some priorities address the questions of resources uh the Vermont state college system is not a rich system it is uh it is lean there's always areas for improvement etc but uh you don't have the you don't have the size you don't have the critical mass that would allow you to you know use the term cut your way to success and that's we're almost never a strategy anyway do there have to be changes yes but simply expecting the those changes to come by a cutting of the expense side rather than a growth of the revenue side or better a more efficient use of the resources you have is the is the way you need to go but the legislative select committee needs to address the question of resources and ultimately it can't it's there's limited resources and we live in a resource constrained environment that's going to mean setting priorities in uh that are in some in some respects bring in a scope of issues that go beyond that of public higher education those are the chance those are the choices of the legislature needs to make the third thing they can do in addition to set priorities and address resources is to rally public support you folks have gone through an awful lot of difficult times and those have almost a necessity raised questions in the public mind about the value of the of the educational experience the educational experience in the Vermont state system is real it is incredibly valuable it is of great value to the students and the people of Vermont but that message is muddled at the moment so everything that the that the legislature can do to help rally that support would be critical as well so set priorities address resources rally public support the other item which was more sort of logistical and I believe the information I'm getting is that they are making an adjustment is that time here while you can't usefully or productively rush these things you also it's time is not your friend and the original legislative calendar which had the final delivery of the of the select committee's report due a year from this December runs you into a further year a second and even third year of of design and implementation the need for bridge funding etc all the while your background conditions continue to to chug along and worsen in most cases so that I believe they've adopted a more aggressive timetable on this I haven't seen the final decisions and report on this and I'll see I'll read it in the paper probably when you do but I've encouraged them to think of a timeline by which their report would come up by next spring the final version of it next spring which would working backwards would also require some interim reports to get public feedback to get all the processes that you need to do to to test those ideas in a fairly aggressive timeline considering it's now already almost the middle of August those were basically we talked a little bit more in some detail about some of those issues and we can come back but that was my my leading set of recommendations for the legislative committee work priorities address resources rally public support watch the time and and the way in which that report obviously feeds in and informs and is informed by the work that you folks are doing and others as well the third issue that I focused on in terms of the vsc I spoke briefly to these issues and here I'm going to expand it for the for the purposes of this group to repeat what I just said what I found in looking at the Vermont State College system was the incredible value that your folks provide in terms of programs and services to your students to the businesses in Vermont and to the communities in Vermont this is it is a it is an irreplaceable gym that it should that is not however to be read as a defense of the status quo it is that the things that are really working and that are critical to your mission need to be nurtured and supported and even grown but there's a lot of other things that are probably going to need to be changed in order to be able to do that your mission as you know your mandated mission is statewide it is for all of Vermont I love the fact that your mission starts with those three words for all of Vermont and the only group that can carry out that mission that has the resources and that has the mandate to do that is you the individual campuses are the delivery mechanisms that are the pieces that work together to form this great organization but it's a the system as a whole which is going to have to be responsible for and deliver to this mission and to do that you have been historically set up even though you have the statutory authority to act as a to act as a system and to act as a board in a is you know in a more aligned and aggressive manner if you will at the risk of being a little provocative than you than the board sometimes has in the past that it's the I found the system to be operating as a federation more as a system and my strong encouragement is to to to do the work as a system that means that's not easy because it's not simply a structural change in how you do certain things it's also a cultural change and and though many of you have been involved in in in businesses or in other organizations of this kind of complexity and you know that cultural change is the hardest kind of change to to implement successfully so this is not to say that this is an easy task if I look at if if I was making a set of recommendations for this next steps they mirror fairly closely the recommendations that I made to the legislative select committee with some expansion and those first of all that the board I would encourage the board to set priorities system level priorities that are heavily external because you're serving after all your students businesses and communities that are measurable everybody the the materials that I've been reading the headings under the categories I think are exactly right you and your teams have emphasized accessibility affordability quality of programs and relevance of those programs especially with respect to work and workforce opportunities I think those are exactly right but that's only the first step what does each of those four categories mean in terms of outcomes how do you measure whether or not you've been success successful in those I don't I'm not sitting here and I wouldn't claim to be sitting here with an answer to those questions because they're going to differ depending upon the context and may necessarily different from Vermont which is different from Massachusetts which is different from Illinois but the headings are right what are the right measures what are the right key performance indicators that you or as a board want to draw everybody's attention and focus to and ensure that the institution is meeting those once you have those priorities then it's up to a lot of parties and you'll figure out the organization of that together with the chancellor and her staff and the presidents on how to develop and assess strategies for meeting those priorities and those should be again the strategies need to be tied to the priorities as I just said then the next step of that analysis is to address the resources because it's only in the context of the resources that you have that you can do the multi-year planning the resource allocation and construct the audit structures you'll need to ensure that the measures the KPIs the priorities are being met and only then do you really get to the point where in my mind and in my experience that a discussion about structure comes wholly into focus and is really productive now it's an iterative process it's not purely linear obviously there will be input about one one of those topics out of order from another and you'll in the process of thinking this go through iterate the whole thing several times that's okay my main point however is that a discussion about structures premature if you don't know what you're trying to ultimately achieve and again structure follow strategies I think that I hope that that's pretty straightforward so I'll end up here one more thing in my report I don't know if you've had a chance to look at it but my very last paragraph or a couple of paragraphs I suggested that this really should be the year of the board and one of the reasons I'm really pleased to be able to talk with you all today is to really emphasize that point that all of the things that need to be done that in whatever order in whatever the details are are really only going to happen if there is an aligned agreement amongst the board and around those priorities it doesn't mean that every detail everybody's going to sign off on and it's not going to be a lowest commonator consensus but it's it means that when when the presidents when the chancellor are called upon to make to explain why they're moving in certain directions to to allocate resources in one direction or another they can point to the the air work with the board and say this is what the people of Vermont acting through the board understand that we need to do for them and then to to to carry out I mean not your it's obviously it's a volunteer organization so time is limited but to work with leadership either the chancellor's office and the president's to to ensure that those priorities are what you need and what you want to ensure that the strategies make sense to ensure that the resources are there to do it and to ensure and and and do the proper amount of auditing along the way because no plan survives is the old saying no plan survives first contact with the enemy these are going to be living documents that you're going to be reworking and revisiting on a regular basis the board has enormous statutory authority as the sole physical authority for for the institution I think that the chancellor is is recognizing that is putting together a set of teams and ideas and priorities and so far as she's she and I have talked at this far which are going to get you are really going to move in that direction I would be encouraged I hope and I hope you all are encouraged by the directions and the steps you've taken in the last couple of months and where your leadership is taking you but that is to say there's a lot of hard work as I'm sure you all know to come in the next few weeks and months so I'll stop there and I'll be happy to take questions about what I've said or what I've not said anything in the report or contribute to any discussion you'd like to have any questions we'll start with the board trustee cluver thank you and and uh jim thank you for that report you talked a lot about demographics in our last meeting um someone had brought up the point that we can't just focus on demographics and had suggested that what the system really has is a cost problem can you address that do we have both a cost and a demographics problem can we decouple those or really if we focused on cost could we overcome the demographic problem you it's a it's a your interlocutor raised a very legitimate question and point so thank you uh the demographics is just a fact of life and there's going to be uh to overuse and I apologize for the sports metaphor if you think of going out of recruiting you're going to have a lot fewer shots on goal so statistically you've you've got you've got that you've got that question of a shrinking number of potential students costs the cost problems are very uh legitimate and very real affordability and for if for no other reason than you they drive the affordability question they're one of the two major issues that drive affordability for students cost uh you know there's the old line I think I referred to it earlier that you can't cut your way to success and especially when when you're already lean to begin with uh you can restructure you can read uh you can move cost areas around you can reduce areas in one but you certainly got a lot of other areas you could usefully invest in cost short term cost structures which you need to do sometimes to just because you have to balance a budget and there's no other choices there can be a short term effectively but what you're really looking for once you get past the short term emergency in my experience is the ability to restructure your resource allocation your cost structures so that you're you're meaningfully and materially bending your trend lines of cost increases over a period of time and that's that requires real changes in and and how you do things but if you can do that because if you do a five-year uh pick a number a five-year multi-year analysis of of where your uh your your budget is likely to be with respect to a certain number of parameters both cost revenue and expenses uh you'll find that uh if if Ramon has anything like the rest of the country and I'm sure it's not that different uh that you're getting killed by uh you know three percent year over year here six percent year over the area there and when you're when tuition can never match that and shouldn't um so you could look at you know use health insurance as one one example and I don't know the the details of your health insurance program but if you do a five-year analysis and you can pick your health insurance costs at at at four percent rather than seven and a half percent you'll you'll know exactly what that means in terms of long-term structural savings so short-term cuts short-term pieces yes if they need to be there uh and and quite often they do we had to do them in Maine but in the long term you have to invest in your institutions and you if you're continually cutting you can't invest and if I may just to go on for one more moment um building off that question there is a there is a uh and I did refer to it in my report there's a often a misapprehension out there that if somebody gets to zero on a balanced budget they've done their work and goodness knows in the day you know times like this getting to zero is hard work at a real feat but if you haven't got a a margin in there for investment uh not just investments in in in your heating systems but investments in your programs investments in trading your people you're treading water you're not even treading water you're losing ground so long long went into answer to your question sorry uh Linda take the opportunity Lynn well Linda was next okay sorry um I was was interested in your um both in the reading and in your conversation about the point about the uh the board has power and it really needs to use it and we need to not we need to change the culture so there were no longer operating under this five strong colleges model not that we don't want this colleges to be strong but that was really the way we the language we used to say the colleges get to make the decisions we let them operate independently and we just support them um so I I really I'm a little clueless as to how are we culturally going to make that shift I'm glad to hear you I was actually glad to hear you say that um you're seeing some signs that there are things moving ahead like as a system like that because I've looked at some of this planning and stuff we have and what I keep seeing or feel like I'm seeing is that each college going ahead doing what they want to do and I don't feel like I'm seeing that system strong moving ahead goal now worries me well you're in the very early stages but there's been a number of discussions I've not been part of but I've been I've been hearing about where people really are starting to to uh to understand that they'll they'll work stronger they'll work better and stronger if they work together and I also know that uh that uh the chancellor and her staff are looking at and you've already taken I believe we're about to take a major step and for example uh if you've got a if you've got a an allocation resource allocation program which unwittingly has the unforeseen or unintended consequence that you you've moved your campuses into competition with one another so that I get more resources if I said my if I increase my enrollment even if it's at the cost of your institution uh those sorts of things are what I've already seen people getting an awareness of the awareness has to come first oh my goodness yes that kind of competition is is is damaging to the to the system as a whole and then starting to work that this will not be an overnight uh shift by any means and you're only in most respects you're only a little ways into you have the early example of northern example of northern Vermont university uh but and they're two years in but two years is not a long time uh to to get the full proof of the pudding to make these kinds of changes so yes time is not your friend but certain things take amount of a certain amount of time but the take for the early steps that you've taken or our your groups are taking uh they're good and they need to be encouraged okay Jim go ahead yeah yeah Jim can you hold up the book again that you'd like us to read yes uh I'll get I'll get to Jim the uh the uh the title is demographics and the demand for higher education the author is Nathan Graw G R A W E and it's Johns Hopkins Press and you can read all about Vermont in it and every other stage okay I think Adam is next thank you so uh given given the the short timeframe we have to really uh make a lot of significant changes your reference to the federation and the system uh following up on Linda's and previous conversation uh to to change culture I think we're gonna have a real challenge in that our culture we don't have a single brand typically a culture is a single entity within it we have already branded ourselves into the different uh institutions we don't have the Vermont state system um you you let off with this as one of your first recommendations for the board in an allocation of resource for the board's time and bandwidth and sort of capacity do you think this is the highest recommendation is this the thing that we need to focus on first and foremost uh where does that fall given our short period of time um well let me let me clarify uh my point around a couple of your early statements uh I am a big proponent and fan of mission differentiation so when I say when I say you know build a strong system it doesn't look uh it doesn't look the same to every you know the what what what ccv provides and where it develops its strengths and has real strengths is very different from the same point made about castleton they serve a a a they approach and they serve a different core I think there could be more of an overlap in that but that's not the point so I don't when I say all of this I certainly don't want to give the impression that I'm favoring a monolithic entity that is the same in Rutland as it is in Rattleboro's the same as is in Linden uh far from it uh what I'm talking about and I I'm certainly not advocating building a massive system office out of this the students don't go to a system they go to an institution to take a course or to have a longer term experience whether that's in castleton or in nv u or at ccv or from on tech and those the strengths that each of those institutions brings is is the goal is to optimize those strengths for those students and then to share those strengths in ways that are applicable because they're not all applicable across the board with others and to with the with the sister institutions and to enforce I'll use that term guardably but to enforce uh the kind of collaborative and cooperative thinking that amongst the organization and throughout the organization that would encourage those kinds of collaborations uh the cultural the cultural piece is is as much you know you can't write a memo and mandate that so that really is an iterative piece uh the light bulb goes on about oh wait a minute we're in competition here maybe we shouldn't be so that starts to change things another light bulb goes on oh what you're doing at ccv might make with respect to adult students make might might make real sense for us over here how do we do that uh there are other areas in which for example um in in uh an it where I think that you could work as a single you know the providing of certain basic infrastructure elements uh could be a single uh a way of doing it throughout the entire organization so it's not a it's it you have to look at the organization in detail in terms of administration in terms of infrastructure in terms of academic programs and services and you'll get different answers as to how those collaborations will develop depending upon which area you're looking at church you're muted yeah I'm unmuted friends I I do have to leave um I've got people out there who are calling from my head in a nice way but Jim I just want to say that as I step away it does give me comfort to know of your engagement you're a level-headed clear thinker I think you just need to promise that if you see us drifting from the truth if you will be very forthright and tell us to get back in line because um we really need clear thinking independent advice and I think that you know us well enough you know Vermont well enough you're very well well suited to do this for us and I appreciate it and I and I really enjoy hearing you speak this afternoon thanks everybody else I've got to run thank you is there anyone else on the board that has a comment or question hey Janet um it when you were speaking at the beginning of this you were talking about you kind of implied that we were lean or working our way to being lean did I hear that correctly well a let me put it this way you don't have much you the you don't have much margin marginal capacity for undertaking major there's there's there's no there's no margin operationally financially for you folks to fall back on and in that respect lean now I think some some areas and I don't know all of your areas at all I did not have the opportunity it wasn't part of my charge to look at each area I've seen some areas that I think are lean and I think there are other areas that are not but uh okay thank you I just needed but in part of that it's it's it's I would encourage I've been talking to the chancellor about this and she's going to get tired of me saying it one of the things that people when they hear the word lean they think of cuts or they think of two lean they think of simple hires just adding to the current structure um I would encourage you to be thinking functionally what do you need to what do you need to carry out your responsibilities in a really good way in a really high quality way uh in a functional way rather than uh well this campus needs two of these and that campus needs three of those and if you think of that functionally rather than simply geographically uh you often come to different answers in terms of your resource allocations I hope I'm not being too cryptic there I don't intend no I appreciate that and you know I come from a more of a manufacturing background or a manufacturing background um so lean to me means two things right it's somewhat it's efficiency but the other side is nimble you know and um I think higher ed particularly with our union structure um we're not very nimble and I think that's going to challenge what we have how fast we can move even if we see where we need to go nimble this is a very good thing is there anyone else that would like a question from the board because if not I will I'll bill upper let's do bill because then we have some other people who want to ask questions here we need to tell thank you Jim I'm um I want to ask you to talk to us as a board for a minute and talk to us about um what the realistic expectations can be for a board that is in fact a volunteer board uh where everyone is engaged in other important activities in their lives which require considerable time and attention so that's that's that's the one issue one part and the second part is that a board in my experience and I've I've worked for boards and I've served on boards but a board is a continually evolve a continually there's a constant turnover over time I mean today church as is leaving the board he's been the chair of the board and the leader of this board for some time uh we know that there are uh other board positions to be filled talk to us about what how we address our own functioning and responsibilities given the demands on our lives and that's the same time the expectations that the board fill this important responsibility one of the one of the uh yes one of the the geniuses of the system of public hiring system is the system of trusteeship that we have of having uh public volunteer public boards who represent the interests of the people who are investing their tax dollars and investing their family members in public hire education uh so first of all it's a it's a it's a tough job it's a necessary job and it makes the system in my mind it makes the system really work uh that's the easy that's the the bond apple pie piece it my board in the my the experience I had with my board which was 16 people so it's relatively similar in size um you can always look and there's certain operational things you can do around your agenda around the time you spend and around your committee structures but if I was going to say two things that I would recommend most highly for you in the coming weeks not even months is to focus and determine amongst yourself uh what the the the key priority outcomes are and not 12 of them some number between three and six and then align even if you don't aren't able in that period of time to say uh this is the actual outcome of two years but this is the category we're going to focus on and measure and then align around those and align around how you're going to work with the chancellor and leadership for them to to work out to manage those to manage to those items um all the rest of the stuff the stuff you're doing there's the generous key you know the title line and all the rest of this stuff is is part of what you have to do and it's a necessary important but for the general piece the piece that I'm here to to assist the chancellor with is if I was going to ask two things of of of you would be to focus and align and quickly focus around those strategic priorities measurable external well I would love that I would love to have further conversation about that okay with you Karen Karen oh thank you um thank you Mr. Page you've you've um so much information um and I take to heart uh your advice about what our starting point should be with priorities and how we've been later belt of structure I want to pivot a couple of questions more more from Janet's standpoint and I come from a little different background than Janet small business multi-generational business where frequently we didn't have the resources or we were in jeopardy because of outside forces and we had to respond to survive so we had to be creative and we had to make um very real and sometimes painful assessments of changes that we had to make in order to survive um and I know you have very astute studied eyes you come from the state that bears many similarities to ours we've got about 700,000 people here maybe a little less we don't have enough people to carry the water so to speak so we have very limited resources and however much it would be nice for the legislature to come up with enough money to pay for give us enough money so we can have free tuition or give us enough money so we can come up to speed with all the campuses we currently have we all know that can't happen it's not going to happen there are competing needs in this state that are just as important as higher ed so I'd like I'd like your thoughts about two things you hit on some of the high expense areas that need to be looked at and first of all I want to say I understand we've got to be focused on investment and on spending the resources we have well but I also agree there's a very different very different um and when you talk about investment and investing in program in my mind that doesn't necessarily mean investing in real estate so we can invest in in program and in program that's widespread to a variety of constituencies that we already have and that we need to develop and do that on a statewide basis and that doesn't nest I'm asking a question now making a statement that does not necessarily mean investing in real estate I agree with your statement question okay and I have a question now you know nationally as well as regionally what's happening with campus residency whether it's in vermont or in other parts of the country what what the direction is there so that's one area that I want to want you to address so I'm I'm basically asking you in a roundabout way our real estate is an issue we've got too much many have said we got too much real estate for a state of of less than 700 000 people to realistically support long term and that that might in fact get in the way of delivering program statewide to a wide range of constituencies um the second the second thing and I'm putting on my small business hat um from my immigrant forebearers who had to make do and look around at where the customer base was and where they were going to pull in um we are for all practical purposes the public the the public extension of higher education in the state of vermont that's really and truly what we are and I'm not knocking uvm I had a child who had a wonderful experience there and it's a wonderful school but it doesn't serve the same function as the vsc unfortunately we're not regarded by as that in my opinion we're not treated like that and we're not even treated like that by the pre-k through 12 system and I raised this point um when it goes beyond early early college it goes beyond um dual enrollment which we have the seeds of but if we're not really regarded by the legislature and that'd be a good place to start as the public extension of higher education um then a whole lot of things don't fall into place that ought to be the norm that would in fact fortify the vsc and give us that expanded service statewide service to wide-ranging constituencies and something as small and it's probably not real small I noticed in my own home district they were offering master's programs on site and guess who the deliverer was New Hampshire University you know the online so I went to the then president of castleton who had a nice online he had a nice program I said how come you let them in our market how did you let that happen and I never got a really good answer but I was really ruffled and and had I been in the position I would have asked I was the former chair of that school board I would have asked the superintendent what on earth are you thinking of we've got a homegrown product why didn't you buy from the homegrown product why didn't you do that and that's and that's an area that needs to be looked at I'm giving you my opinion now and I shouldn't be doing that what I'm asking is I see a confluence of things that we don't do that are not productive here in the state of Vermont we're not spending the little bit of money we have well we're not supporting one another you know if I want the grocery store in St. Albans to be successful I have to trade there I shouldn't be going to Burlington I ought to be staying in St. Albans and and that's a point that I'm so I I asked you a bunch of things but you have a sense of where I'm going I think we're spending enough money pre-k through through 16 and workforce development but we're not spending it as a whole we're not the only ones that don't have a systemic vision the state of Vermont doesn't have a systemic vision and we don't have enough money or enough people to not have a systemic vision the there are quite a number of points that I might address let me let me hit on two or three and if I miss something that's a particular importance let me know first of all this is not necessarily in the order you presented them the fact and I can speak here to to to my experience in Maine you're not alone in sort of being the the the second too often feels like the second thought to students would go want to go out of state they want to go to a private they want to do this and the the public doesn't think of the value proposition that Vermont State College too often doesn't think of the value proposition that Vermont State College just it brings the students and their families and the communities a mentor of mine once said you know you do you do all this work on Friday go home and have a nice dinner with your family because on Monday you've got no money in the bank and the shelf life now of getting these messages across to our citizens is about the weekend long it's a story that has to be the value that that that vsc and it's it's all of its people's programs places brings has to be continually in the front of the people of Vermont on a on an ongoing basis the days when any institution can take well Harvard okay can take can take their reputation as sufficient is is long over for any public institution most most immediately the regionals and the regional comprehensives but ultimately the the the flagships are coming under these kinds of pressures as well so having having a robust set of messages robust aggressive and what we're doing for you not what we've done for you for a hundred years what are we doing for you now needs to be out there on a continual basis and what are we going to do how are we organizing ourselves so that six months from now we're going to do even better in a year we're going to do it even better and have those things out in front your your experience with Southern New Hampshire University is one that is being shared throughout the country they are marketing budget is bigger almost as big as your entire budget for your system well it's a hundred it's over 130 million dollars they're spending on marketing every year but part of that is they have an incredible if you if you call up if you go online to Southern New Hampshire and start looking and poking around on their website within 60 seconds you will get an approach from one of somebody who understands the entire system it is aggressively going to try to initiate a conversation with you and those people are so well trained that they're going to be able to answer any question that you have on the spot they can turn around and make admissions decisions in hours and days not weeks and months so especially for students who are older or who haven't been necessarily right on a college track along the lessons that you can learn even though you'll never be able in position to match Southern New Hampshire in terms of their of their marketing and their resources they can bring to the table but advising is something that they they're one of the organizations that have created an art form of advising and advising now is being shown to be critical in retaining students and I was a faculty member at one time long ago and I was a reluctant advisor and advising meant oh let's look at your course list advising stopped meaning that a long time ago the University of Southern Maine has a very very robust advising program I'm a little out of date with some of its details but when I left the institution last year every incoming student had a nine a mandatory 19 minute one-on-one with an advisor who took them through every ask every educational social and financial aspect of being at the university and when they left not only did they have a complete with a student left not only did they have a complete accounting of what they could have for support services but they had a person they could go to and they knew who to call for any element these are professional advisors now that's not the entire answer these things are these things are complicated but Southern New Hampshire we learned that from Southern New Hampshire University are a version of that those are the sorts of things and when getting back to an earlier point the resources of any single institution within the Vermont State College system may not be able to support that kind but if you start working together pooling expertise and pooling resources on that now you've got a fighting chance without having to go spend a lot more money that you don't have on on residencies facilities I was actually speaking earlier today with a chancellor and some of her staff you have a you have a very substantial deferred maintenance charge that there is no way of exactly clearing clearing the boards of financially but when you don't have although I was encouraged that you might be not too far away from it but at the moment you don't have an easy access to data that talks about the readiness of your those the value of those facilities one of the net asset values you know what do they take to maintain what do they take to bring up to speed not just in terms of internet wiring or Wi-Fi but in terms of HVAC systems or heating you know heating and roofs etc that I was encouraging to think of get get some data in on that so that you can make so that the board can make some some rational decisions about facility usage and where you can transition to in whatever form that is over the next several years whatever the education program delivered your requirements are so I was encouraged as I said to say here that you've you've got people on the ground who know a lot of that stuff but it needs to be put together in a in a coherent cohesive and comprehensive way I probably missed a couple of the other points I hope we have more opportunities in the plural to converse and just before the pre-k I would like you to address this and maybe you don't have a thought about it but it seems to me in a small state with limited resources and great needs we might be spending our dollars and I've heard I've heard tell as they say in Vermont on the farm that people in the legislature are wondering maybe we should be looking at a whole public education spec spectrum plan and now that we have pre-k it would be pre-k through workforce development and and that we would have a plan as to how that works and perhaps that plan would even include the partly empty buildings we have across the state in high schools and in tech centers to help spread higher ed throughout the state in a more holistic way we've got a lot of resources here that aren't being highly utilized because of our demographic changes so I don't know if you've had time to ponder I know people slapped me on the head and said we have unions and we can't even deal with the unions we have you want to tap the NEA and pre-k through 12 too? Well I think it's a huge topic and I do think that the line the old traditional line between 12th grade and post-secondaries becoming increasingly a porous and artificial the growth of the successful growth in most places of early college dual enrollment speak to that also the fact that there's an increasing need for the ability to get people in to get credentialed in a way that's short of a full degree and maybe you stack those credentials to get a degree in the end but having the resources of and I mean primarily the human resources the capital resources are different that's a political matter but the human resources of K-12 you know putting their heads together with the colleges whether two year or four year and looking at ways you have you're like Maine you have a great high school education right and a relatively to many other states a relatively poor number of students going on to post-secondary education there's the reasons for those are very complicated and tough nuts to crack but you've got to think I've got to think that a K-12 system working in some form in tandem and cooperatively with two year and four year programs have an opportunity to break into that 35 40% whatever your current order is in a way that would make a real difference to the state there's a history of you know I one of the things that when I first became chancellor I heard a horrible story that horrified me of a K-12 of a city system K-12 system going to the university and saying what can we do to help you know what can we do to do do things better and the answer was send us better students and that was that was you know that was such a poor frankly stupid way to start a discussion it was the best way to kill us discussion that could have been productive excellent if there are any other board members that have a question because I have people who want to have other questions all right if not I have President Moten from VTC who has a question for you Mr. Page well thank you very much chair Dickinson and congratulations in your new role to all it's less of a question and more of a comment as Jim knows he had an opportunity to meet with the presidents to discuss the single budgeting process and I'm going back to the earlier conversation regarding culture change and one of the things that I had brought up as I understood as he was describing the process is I mean our process may be very similar but what's missing is one of the cultural aspects is complete candor between and amongst the presidents and with the chancellor particularly when we might see a particular president going down a path that is ill advised the best example I could provide was the possible purchase of the Green Mountain College campus and that we weren't open and fully candid in that discussion and that's something I think we're going to need to do the other thing you spoke of Jim too was in that single budgeting process that there may be an institution that any given year may need greater resources for whatever reason than another institution and therefore the allocation of resources may not be the same every year given what might be happening with members of the system and I'm willing to I would expect that if any of us would expect that certain resources to our institution would be diminished to help either bail out or provide some additional resources to another institution we're all going to be pretty well motivated to speak up to our sisters and brothers when they are doing something that we might find to be ill advised and so and I would expect I would provide that and I would expect I would get that and I'll just want to just say for the record I think more of the system this thinking and function has been doing really well since Sophie has taken the reins she's told some of us no she's forced us to go back to the drawing board and I think it's it's working we're seeing it happen in a lot of our COVID response so to your point about culture change Jim you can't send a memo to make it happen but you can get the tone from the top and Sophie has made that very clear and I think we're all going to see improvements and I just want to give the board some assurance of that from my perspective thank you thank you is there anyone else with questions chair Dickinson I do have a faculty member that would like to say something are we opening up to that it to them yet or do you want to wait well um we still have a lot to go um we will have public comment at the end and um I'm sure at that point we'd be happy to hear the faculty members okay perfect yeah thank you okay not seeing any further questions from the board um we do have a second thing under the report of the Long Range Planning Commission it is the report on initial recommendations of the VSC Forward Task Force and I'll turn to the Chancellor does she want her to do some of the material on that with Yasmin Weisler thank you yeah so I'm going to turn it over to Yasmin Yasmin has been serving as the chair for the VSCS Forward Task Force um I'm sure many and I don't remember exactly but I know a lot of trustees participated on July 23rd when we had the Long Range Planning Committee meeting and we heard from a number of groups and stakeholders um at that time um I know the task forces worked extraordinarily hard um we gave them or the boards gave them direction back at the beginning of July uh July 1st in terms of a charge to them on what they wanted what you wanted to hear from them and uh you asked to get a report back and some preliminary recommendations by August 14th so that's sort of what this meeting is is partly about um I will say the ground has moved somewhat since then back in uh as of uh June 1st we didn't yet have the report from Jim Page we didn't have the report from the state treasurer's office we didn't have any bridge funding we didn't have the additional CRF funds that the legislature gave us in the first quarter transitional budget so things have have evolved somewhat since then but I I just want to commend all the work and effort that has been done by the task force they have been meeting twice a week since the beginning of June they've had difficult contentious hard conversations they've participated in that I stepped out of attending those meetings once I became the uh the chancellor because I didn't want to inhibit their conversations and I was concerned that I would be a distraction if I was part of the meetings but I am aware of how much work they have done um so I just I I just wanted to thank them all individually to the extent they're here on the call and let them know how much we appreciate the time and effort that they've put into this and then I'm going to turn it over to Yasmin uh who's going to be going through their their report back to the board. Great thank you Sophie and I'm going to um I am going to share a PowerPoint here with you all um and I will do my best I understand you've you've been meeting for quite a while now so I'm going to do my best to uh to move through it um but do uh pause and interrupt me if you have questions along the way um just one last thing to echo to to Sophie's thanks you know um there's been a lot of conversation this afternoon about culture and culture change for those of you who don't know I'm I'm an anthropologist by training so um so I think a lot about this and I would say a hallmark of this task forces work it's a it's a broadly representative group um but it's a group that has really um learned from each other's distinct cultures and the distinct cultures of our students that we serve uh so there's been a lot of of you know listening uh and thinking in walking in each other's shoes I think through these past six weeks so I thank everybody for that um to oh I beg your pardon uh my slides are not advancing okay so uh just very briefly I think the the pieces that the task force um in looking at the charges the board has given them these are the kinds of things that have been guiding our conversations accessibility and affordability and recognizing we serve quite a range of students I will say finally that the task force has these have been challenging conversations because people recognize the need for change but it's also actually been quite positive and invigorating there's a lot of ability to reimagine the future a future that's robust that has some creative new solutions and that is sustainable so um people are are quite optimistic I would say in this task force about our our ability to pull this off and again apologies here I think I'm going to have to just bear with me for one second um oh I can still see you all okay great um so three things I want to cover with you all today the first is um we did just a week ago or so a a very broad based stakeholder survey and I want to talk you through some of the results it was incredible participation and then I want to review the charges the board gave the task force and the initial recommendations we have um and then finally finally just um return to this theme of affordability because it's really a place for a whole lot more work as as we've talked about or as you've all talked about today um so the survey um with a particular thanks to Rich Clark for helping us with this um this went out to all of our internal stakeholders um as well as we sent it out to the lists that we have of high school partners as well as employer workforce development partners and as you can see just from the numbers we have robust partnerships across the state and we had an amazing response over 2,400 responses in just five days that represents Rich Clark tells me over 400 hours that Vermonters contributed to give us feedback so a big thank you to uh everyone who who took the time because there were I would say there's probably in terms of text at least a hundred pages of comments we asked people some more quantitative questions about priorities that I'll share with you and then I think we hope to follow up with more detail on the kind of qualitative strengths and opportunities that people articulated but I'll give you a little feel for that right now in terms of priorities this chart shows you overall we saw incredible consistency between our own folks students and staff faculty and administration as well as our external partners in the business and who identified themselves as business and community members so these were how the priorities shook out you know starting at the top with affordability and access so I'll give you just a moment there to kind of I won't read you the entire slide but to just to give you a moment on that the next thing we did ask more specifically our employer partners about workforce alignment we know that's a really critical part of the work we do and satisfaction with our graduates people are generally satisfied and oops I apologize people identified you know need for more hands-on experience more focus on communication skills but overall some strong satisfaction about what the VSC is doing Jim you use use the word irreplaceable gem and that is true in the perceptions of our stakeholders we also asked some questions very specifically of our school counselor partners and we did send a targeted you know K-12 partners VSEC our reach counselors in particular so to the question of why are students choosing us affordability and this is I think primarily school counselors thinking about a traditional student right after high school affordability close to home and the small welcoming communities we have at all of our institutions conversely there there are Vermonters who are not choosing us and it's really because they're looking for something other than that they're looking in some cases for something more affordable or perceived to be more affordable or greater value and leaving Vermont Jim talked about that earlier and then finally I just want to return to highlight just from a through a student lens of the priorities students really were consistent with everyone else in the priorities they articulated and so that was that was really quite striking I will say we it was over 600 students who responded and while I don't have more detail right here for you on the kind of opportunities and strengths that students in particular articulated I would say we we did see a real distinctiveness between a student population that wanted a traditional residential experience and students who were really looking for a variety of things around flexibility around distance delivered education that that helped them maintain employment while they were going to school shorter term credentials so so within these priorities we do we do have two distinct student populations we asked students to reflect particularly on opportunities or everyone in light of what's happening with the pandemic and I would say a theme that we started to talk about was you know to be virtual or not we saw a lot more interest and recognition of the possibilities of delivery through some virtual means that were if I could paraphrase a student something like not the old way of doing online education so students are recognizing that we're doing a lot of new things we've adapted very quickly in the pandemic and there's there's more opportunity there I will pause there if there's any immediate thought or comment otherwise I'll move on to charges and our recommendations okay so you charged us with looking at addressing program duplication ensuring quality financial viability and access and I will say at the start that we talked a lot about what does program duplication mean because I think for some people that immediately goes to academic programs our task force continually talked about a range of kinds of things that could be duplicated functional areas ways of doing things so so we did look at that broadly and the first recommendation here however it does focus on the academics and the recognition that where we have academic program overlap it's between Castleton and Northern Vermont University and so really looking at ways to do things better and different would really best come from a group focused on that so our recommendation to the board is is that you you charge a group to move forward and look at how are you preserving access to programs at things like consortium agreements consolidation of programs to single majors or some of the things we talked about and of course new hybrid and telepresence kind of delivery models the group I would say with all of our recommendations the task force has a sense of urgency and the need while this is really difficult work to keep working as as expeditiously as possible so that is our first recommendation the second recommendation again recognizes and I would think some of the words that we talked about in the task force around ccv in Vermont tech in particular there's a lot of symbiosis already and a lot of possibility our task forces really sees a lot of potential for additional sharing collaboration and expansion of program offerings in some of the co-located spaces or spaces that could become more co-located in terms of delivery of programs so again charging those two institutions to to work further on this and identify what what could be done next is a recommendation and then two more recommendations on this on these same charges and I will say that these recommendations also were really consistently echoed in common in the opportunities and section of the narrative comments that we received first is to develop a single general education program core make this as transparent and consistently available as we can and obviously doing that online helps achieve that and then also looking at how we're delivering our course offerings now that we're doing them in so many different ways and coming up with a single approach or structure or ways for students to see what's available to them to be taking a full advantage of the system I know I know the board has talked about that a lot I think we're at a new stage of how do we do that operationally now that we have a whole lot more that we figured out how to offer and so with that I will pause again um final the final two charges I will say really represent more of a work in progress and essentially the recommendations here from the task force are that we we needed a deeper dive on data and I think some of the conversation um that the board has had with Jim uh just now speaks to this as well so this is uh our fifth recommendation is really about looking at the data in detail around our physical facilities and the task force really wants to highlight there are a lot of opportunities here to look at doing things creatively so we just and we received a lot of good ideas and I know in some cases they're already under very active discussion at some of our institutions so that is our fifth recommendation and then finally um this question of how should the system be configured and I think our task force recognizes that um forms should follow function uh that said uh Jim our task force I think everyone read your report in in pretty close detail and uh there was pretty universal recognition that the moving from a federation of institutions to a true interconnected system is where we need to go um but that said there's a lot of work to really figure out what would be the right approach here the task force very preliminarily uh talked about kind of a range of models and um what those could look like from single accreditation to kind of down the spectrum so but really the task force needs more time and I think I will close on that note of data and time to say they are committed to keep working if that is the pleasure of the board and I appreciate that because these are busy people uh finally to to come back to this theme of affordability uh obviously if if this is a true priority for us to address in anything the system does um that's we should be operating through that lens of that priority and resource allocation there are a lot of exciting ideas of ways that uh we can do this both within our system and and with in partnership with the state and state policy and I so this list represents some of the things the task force um pulled out both from input and talked about itself um as things that would really help address affordability for our students so with that I will stop sharing so I can see you all a little bit better um and see if there are any questions at this point right is anyone on the board have any questions uh Yasmin Sharon just just I wish I I wish you could hear me applauding it's wonderful wonderful work and um just wonderful work I can't thank everyone enough and it took some courage to put some of these proposals or thoughts out there um I think we need to um move ahead I think we need to do more work and I think I think the thoughts are going in a very good and productive direction and I think they offer promise of um of moving moving the Vermont State College system ahead to a new future so I it gives me great reason for optimism and thank you so much all of you and Yasmin you did a great job thank you Karen I will say this has been a courageous group who's really pushed themselves in each other so thank you for using that word I'm going to need a lot more courage too before we're done all of us yeah I have a question um Yasmin is it possible to get that PowerPoint and distribute that to the board members or don't believe that was in our package and it would be yeah right seriously to take notes but I think that we really need to be able to look at that with a little more a little more time absolutely and you know part of the reason for that is simply that the task force was working through this morning too and I was waiting for for some final thoughts from people so yes we will get that to you right after the meeting that was really very very helpful and the survey results were really really interesting too yeah you know one thing I probably went a little too quickly but I'll just say is that I think the task force people who were spent more time with the survey results think there's there's a lot of potential there for those to be useful to the board going forward potentially to the legislature it's it's a treasure trove of of information as well as you know good candid feedback so yeah one of the things that you mentioned is that the two different kinds of students both the more traditional high school students and the more other students adult students non-traditional the non-traditional the traditional the non-traditional in the survey results they did show differences can you break that down for us as well at least not in my minute granular details something so we can see that difference right I think that the difference really came out in the comments so students who were following that traditional category said things like I really value learning from my peers and and seeing them face to face and having those daily interactions I value the richness of that campus experience yeah and and the pope I would say post-traditional students are saying I really value the fact that I can take so many of my classes online that I don't have to travel too far so you know I really value the certificates I value the the friendly welcoming everybody values the friendly welcoming you know high-quality personal service but those are those are the big distinctions yeah I think we could probably figure that out but it would be nice to do the actual data okay sure anyone else have any other questions let me see Adam is up on the list great thank you I just want to echo Karen's compliments yes me and I was really great work to see and I think also picking up on those two different students theme I was really surprised by the low number or the low ranking of the importance of residential experience so I wonder as as we dive deeper into that data if it was just a higher percentage of off-campus students who responded that drove that difference there or if our students just are not valuing that as significantly as other you know for example access to a counselor that's a big disparity there right that's a great question Adam and we'll flag that for follow-up for you I will say that broad generally speaking I think we saw a very good representation across all of our campuses and students who responded I should put a big shout out to Alex our student member on the the group who was really good at getting communication out about participation so we did see robust participation I think is broadly proportional to our student enrollments great so and then you know I think just flagging that for future understanding is because we hear so much about the importance of either the access or the importance of having that residential opportunity close so understanding that data I think will be important as we move forward the other point I just want to make it's not really a question it's just that last slide really for the board to start thinking about how we can reach outside of of the system and bring other partners that will really be key in advancing that more pre-k through you know 16 uh system excuse me and how we can start making sure that we're bringing those folks into the conversations that we're having as a board yeah does the board have any more questions for yes me it doesn't appear at the moment I just want to say Beth whilst you have your hand up and I would like to hear what you have to say well and the same with Linda who's now it's our hand up we had a person from the faculty who wanted to speak in the last part of our presentation and I think what I'm going to have to do I don't want to play favorites here or have someone get a chance to speak and not have had other people chance to speak we're going to save those comments I've made notes that we're going to do this in public comment and we do still have stuff to do here so just hold on to that and we will get back to you when it comes to public comments on making a note for all of you anyone else the public has any other comments we will get back to you when we get to public comments okay so that would take care of the report of the long-range planning committee thank you very much jasmine we now are going to the report of the finance and field facilities committee we had a meeting as well was it last week just it was July 23rd yes it was feels like if they all blend together so we have some policy changes that we discussed and I guess I'll turn to Sharon Sharon Scott to start to start with and go from there well I'm actually going to turn this right over to David and David if you have things that you would like me to convey I'm happy to do so sure I'll take it from here so as Lynn said we had a very productive meet of finance and facilities committee meeting on July 23rd and yes it it was a little boy's back but everything seems the time seems to be jumbled up so we were very pleased to have Sharon join us as our system chief financial officer I feel and I think the committee feels that we're in very good hands with her leading the finance team you know unfortunately that is NVU's loss but the system's gained but we're very happy to have her on board and we have had some productive very productive discussions I'd like to echo Dr. Page's comments and just sort of summarize it in a very two or three word sentence which is essentially no margin no mission and we really need to focus on that uh so we have a few what I would call house or at least one uh housekeeping item that we need to tend to and it's related to a grant for the community college of Vermont this is their early childhood professional development system a grant that comes through from the state and this really is a increase in the dollar value from a million three sixty five to a million four thirty and change and really there's a also an increase in the value of the grant also an expectation for a bit of a larger scope of services under our grant guidelines I think it's uh any grant over a million dollars needs to be approved by the full board and so to that end I would actually make the motion that we approve the increase or the amendment of that grant second on that second that second any discussion okay um all those in favor of the the approval of the uh the grant to one one point four three plus million please indicate by saying hi hi hi any any knows okay here's what that passes uh go ahead David what's next okay terrific so we had a fairly lengthy conversation uh at at our committee about the role of the chancellor and and her designees with regards to the financial processes of the system focusing on budget as well as capex and other material expenditures and particularly in the current environment but even going forward as we try to change um our culture uh with regards to working more as a system and less as a confederation we are proposing some changes to several of our policies that deal with our finances to essentially provide some of those things particularly uh there's a amendment that's proposed for policy 403 that is the system annual operating budget um the primary change there is really dealing with some of the covid funds that are coming in uh where uh we're looking to have those funds be spent at the authority of the chancellor's office which we think is a more is appropriate rather than having that being decided upon college by college or university by university that was the most material change right share that is the most material change so it would be any extraordinary expensive uh monies coming in such as the crf money um bridge funding or others um so that would that's the purpose of that language change you know the second change is in our policy 429 which is uh regarding uh contracts and how we let contracts and so on and so forth and essentially really what we're looking to do is going forward is that any expenditure that represents spending $100,000 over the course of 12 months that in addition to the campuses providing approval that those be passed through the chancellor's office for confirmation or approval before they're actually executed so you know from my perspective in the business we're in uh you know we certainly have limits on where authorities lie and the highest levels go to a higher level so that is something that uh we're proposing finally does that pretty well cover it Sharon that does indeed okay and finally we were looking simply to reaffirm policy 407 which talks about deficits incurred and the obligation of the colleges to essentially follow their budgets so I guess I would entertain some questions if there are any for Sharon or I or Sophie Adam has a question yeah uh David just looking at this does that mean that the chancellor's office would be receiving the bids for anything that are exceeding $100,000 and approving the bids as well as approving the spending of the money I would presume that if we're in a bid situation that that the summary of those bids would be presented to the chancellor's office I'm not sure whether they would actually vet the bids specifically but I think that's procedural rather than policy well so the the the red line of the blue line version here uh has the insertion and then below it it says purchases or leases exceeding 100,000 require competitive bidding so it seems like we're getting a two for here so the the existing policy does already require either a competitive bid uh over so an RFP over $100,000 or over $25,000 a competitive bid process unless there's a sole source the additional language is intended to offer the opportunity for the chancellor to weigh in when there's an anticipated expenditure that's anticipated to exceed $100,000 in terms of total transactions today there is already a process for the deans of administration or president or chancellor depending on the location to approve specific individual transactions but when you're talking about a total transaction that could be occurring over multiple months or multiple versions of transactions over a period of time the opportunity for the chancellor to weigh in and confirm that it's an expenditure that's appropriate or to have the opportunity to really look at that as a system wide expenditure is that something that would be of benefit across the system where we may be able to do that with greater economies of scale um and deploy more resources across the system as a whole so that's the the purpose of adding the additional language I would I would just add in and this is to echo what Pat Moulton had said previously was we have already through the council of presidents and the business affairs council been vetting proposals that individual institutions have been thinking about entering into for two reasons one the cost does it make sense but also if it makes sense for one college one campus does it make sense to actually extend that across the whole system and I will give a shout out to our enrollment folks who've been working extremely hard to actually you know come together in terms of working collectively to get some economies of scale in terms of contracts that we're looking at for services so we're already moving in that direction and I think as as Pat indicated you know sometimes the answers no but sometimes it's yes and we've had wonderful collaboration from presidents who are like oh you're thinking of that we're doing this and being able to just be more efficient and thoughtful and creative about how we approach things so I really want to commend the presidents and the business affairs council for for their willingness to start talking frankly and openly about some of these things because I think we're already starting to see some benefits from that approach yes Linda oh it feels as and as though I'm hearing that a lot of this cooperation acting more system like they were hearing is somewhat in actually how you're working together it wasn't specifically because of changes in the policy or things like that would that be a correct understanding policy has not actually yet taken effect yet because you haven't voted on it but as we were discussing earlier this is part of culture and tone at the top so if he has been really very strongly working with all of us and the institutions to look at things as a system-wide approach where possible where that makes sense and is efficient this actually just undergirds that same sense of culture and allows us to be able to have a policy behind it as well as the cultural aspect so I was trying to as I read the policy changes there I guess especially on the budgeting side I was trying to grasp okay so what is the change here that really more encourages the schools to be working together rather than competing with each other and I guess I was well one of the second not fully grasping it so Sharon you probably have your finger on the pulse of that though one of the things that you might have noticed or grasped from the policies that were presented to you is that there were not very many red lines or blue lines listed on those specific policies and that is because those policies already gave the authority to the chancellor to develop a system-wide budget in fact it's called a system annual operating budget in policy 403 however the practical matter of the fact is that historically that has been delegated to the independent institutions as four or five strong independent institutions who work together as a confederation as a system but what we have been asking for as part of this is to say culturally we're making the shift to move towards this we already have the authority to be able to do so but we're asking the board to reaffirm that authority number one that's why we didn't ask for those changes but then modest tweaks to just reflect the reality of where we live today thank you sir i knew you'd have your finger on this Sharon help thanks anyone else have any more questions or discussions about your Sharon or Trustee Sildenman or anyone okay we have a resolution would the chair of the finance and facilities committee like to make a motion to a step accept that resolution assuming that everybody has access to it in their board package I would like to dispense with the reading of it since it's rather lengthy but I would make a motion for resolution number 2020-014 establishing a system-wide budget I would move to approve do I air a second Linda seconding okay any further discussion on it any questions hearing none all those in favor of us of approving resolution number 2020-014 please indicate by saying aye anyone opposed here's its past thank you very much now we do have an executive session um this should not be a very long one I hope um Megan do you have the um the motion on that that you can share with us please you have to unmute yourself thank you is that better yes um excellent I moved the VSC board of trustees enter executive session pursuant to one VSA 313A2 to discuss negotiating or securing real estate purchase or lease options along with the members of the board present at this meeting in its in its discretion the board invites the chancellor the presidents of the Vermont technical colleges dean of administration of Vermont technical college the VSC chief financial officer chief operating officer and the VSC general counsel to attend the board may as appropriate and permitted by law take action regarding real estate during this executive session okay um there a second of the motion second any further discussion on the motion to go into executive session not hearing any we are going to vote uh ladies in favor of going into executive session please say aye aye aye any opposed not hearing any we're going to pursue the same situation we're going to go into a breakout room is Jen Poirier going to help us do that yes you'll receive your invitation there it is okay everyone can remain where they are and we'll be back soon same situation public remain here the trustees will be back shortly okay I want to thank everybody for being patient we're back again um one of the things that I did not realize was an action item that um we need to act on as a board excuse me it was on the report of the long-range planning committee the initial recommendations of the VSCS forward task force they gave recommendations to the board um we'll ask for a motion uh to accept the recommendations the first four recommendations and have a discussion or questions after that madam chair yes look Karen some moves my some moves and then on those that we accept the first four recommendations of the of the forward task force a second on that please second okay thank you um so we have a a motion and a second on moving forward on the first the recommendations that are looking at a date of october 1st that we want to allow them to continue to work on with the chancellor and um our academic leader and with um the cfo so and work with them as well any any further questions or discussions yeah could I just get a quick um somewhere are these say are these four action items since the board will do chancellor's office will do just a brief summary please I can I can I can read them quickly for you so um it was that the board would direct me as the chancellor uh first to create a combined castleton northern vermont university academic affairs group to develop clear evaluation criteria for review of duplicate and low and roll programs including a proposal for consolidation increased investment and or closure with consideration being given to prioritize student access to programs through different delivery models so that was the first charge they had requested the second was um again for the board to direct me to charge the community college of vermont and vermont technical college jointly to develop a plan to consolidate back office operations and expand program offerings in co-located spaces the third one was to charge the chief academic officer in coordination with the faculty chairs of each institution's general education curriculum committee to develop a single general education program core that is available to students online and the fourth was to charge the chief academic officer in coordination with the bscs registrar's and business affairs council to provide a single framework for students to access online remote or telepresence course offerings across the system and the first two of those um the the task force had requested have an october 1st deadline and then i think the anticipation is that the task force would be reporting back to the board and requesting further direction from the board uh moving forward thanks that's helpful any further questions or discussions yes yes bill upper um i would like to this is this has to do with this but it has to do with the broader issues we've talked about today with jim page i would like to ask that the chancellor in perhaps in consultation with the chair of the long range planning committee or whomever she chooses to provide the board with a an overview of the various projects the various committees that are looking into the future of the bscs and to articulate the manner in which these these ranges of input are going to be brought together as we move forward with a time with a timetable and because it's one thing for us to say yes let's adopt these four recommendations but do these four recommendations fly in the face of the recommendations from somebody else and and that may be and we make choices and that's okay but i think where we set in motion whether it's a select committee that the legislature sets in motion the select committee or we have the bscs forward committee there are a range of groups saying we're looking to the future of the bscs and i think we need to have an overview of the way we intend to take that information into ourselves as the board and make a single set of recommendations moving forward i personally would find that very helpful and i would ask like to ask the chancellor to use this process and working perhaps with uh mike p checker the lawyer is flying whomever is best suited to do that yasmin to say this is how we're going to bring everything into alignment uh and review the recommendations and make choices madam chair i uh we we are inundated with information bill i agree but i recall in the myriad of information we got just in the past week there was such a concise the the chancellor did send just a concise donation slash definition with each group for each group yes and my understanding and i stand corrected if if i'm misunderstanding but my understanding was that for lack of better uh nomenclature yasmin's group was the catchall okay well that's that's not been clear to me and so that's that would that would be very helpful i have to say i have been highly preoccupied i know seriously i've been highly preoccupied with uh a real election campaign that's occupied most of my everything and so if i missed that i apologize but i that's that that would meet the need for them for me of what i'm requesting and you can say job done thank you chancellor because i really did appreciate you articulating what what each group's role was and uh because i think there has been at least for me and i'm sure it's not just for me there's been some confusion as to who's what name stands for what and who's doing what but thank you that yasmin's group is charged with that that's not what i'm hearing yes yeah if i can just add i'm gonna ask the chancellor to answer that oh yeah i think that's uh that makes sense i i do think one of the challenges we have moving forward is how does our vsc s forward task force and the board um and the vsc is a whole um how do we move forward in in conjunction with what's happening with the legislative select committee and as uh jim paid noted it's not yet been approved as i understand it by the legislature but they had originally put in the statute of an 18 month process and i think uh jim has advised um you know the the legislature and the leaders that that's really too long um and that we need to be looking at a shorter time frame but i think we uh we collectively the board etc we need to not um we don't want to get too far ahead of what the legislative committee is going to do because my hope is the legislative committee is going to help identify those priorities uh that that jim page was talking about in the sense of what is it the state wants the vermont state colleges to provide and then getting into the resources and and then ultimately once we figured out the priorities the strategies we have for accomplishing those then getting into what does the structure look like at the end not leapfrogging to conclusions at the end and i just i think we have to um that's something we just have to watch very carefully um how that's going to move forward because i'm very sensitive to the fact that we have a legislative committee that's been tasked with um it has in the statute it specifically indicates that they should work with the internal task forces that we've had so the vscs forward task force and it also lists out nvu and btc's task forces as well so they should be building on that information so my my goal would be to have everybody um you know working from the same the same page not not being often completely different directions but i know that's going to be something we have to pay attention to moving forward good that that all of this addresses my sense of this there needs to be a way for everything to come into alignment because if it doesn't we will we will not have a end point that we're satisfied with and that's mean i think you're going to add something i'm sorry thank you no that no that you are no that's quite all right the the piece i would add bill is that we are working with the forward task force with an external facilitator who's really there to ensure that we're taking in all voices and and and hearing and listening and and kind of doing a little bit to make sure that that's part of the process okay so good okay and congratulations bill oh yeah right any other comments or questions okay hearing none we have a motion on the floor and a second to um to take some action on the the vscs forward task force the recommendations to work with the councilor and uh our academic leader all those in favor any other questions none okay all those in favor please indicate by saying hi hi hi and opposed there are no on a post and thank you that's an action item we have now accomplished we now have a discussion number seven the uh adding the board of trustees meeting dates for 2021 20 and 21 any questions or thoughts on that does the chancellor of anything to say about that that would be helpful for us there's we have a normal retreat date in september where we're not going to go to a retreat we're going to do it probably by zoom yeah it's going to be a long two days uh we are working on that um and as um as the trustees know we have been contacted uh we're working with um representatives from across the system with regard to scheduling um a training for the trustees regarding uh racial justice you know diversity and inclusion issues so we anticipate that at least a portion of that time will be taken up with that training um so the reason I came back was because historically we've only had four or so full board meetings a year obviously we've been meeting a lot more often than that recently but it seemed a long time between september and december given the importance of the work we have to do to go without having a board meeting and so rather than be scheduling a lot of special meetings to try to deal with things it seemed it might be more efficient to just go ahead now and identify a date in november early november where we could uh meet as an additional meeting there is a full slate of committee meetings um in late october so it seemed like it would be helpful to have a board meeting after that um and again we could then um you know depending on what happens um you know well i'm sure we'll be hearing more back from the vscs forward task force um and having other conversations about getting direction from the board in terms of you know what direction you want us to go in and and what next steps you want us to take so that was really the purpose for this particular item i do have a question and i can um you know work with my pre-check as the chair of the long-range planning committee um the next meeting for that group is the 26th of october which also seems quite a distance away given the importance of the long-range planning committee to the work that's that's being undertaken to sort of re-envision the vermont state colleges um so i will you know work on that as well but for now it was simply a request that we meet again in uh in early november um on my wedding anniversary so it seemed like a perfect way to celebrate um so made it ruin a good day sorry okay i'm just um i said is um michael pichek still here as he be parted he had to leave um madam chair going right ahead caron luna um just just a point of history um years ago we used to have more frequent meetings i don't recall if they were monthly or a little less frequent than that but they were linda can attest to this and we reduced the number of meetings to replace them with overnight meetings in thought was that we would have more bonding opportunities as a group um doing it that way and now that we're going you know we're we're not meeting in person um it i think and with all that's going on i think it makes tremendous sense to be meeting more frequently yeah that's a good point we have a minimum of six meetings yeah yeah um i think i vaguely remember that when i first got on the board yeah absolutely yeah it was every couple months well one of the things we did discuss at a meeting sometime back in july maybe is that with um maybe about the time that we appointed sophie's the dot may as chair or counselor chancellor we'll get it right the point is is that we did talk about maybe under the next few months maybe the next four or five months having monthly meetings i don't know if we need to do that this is certainly um whether we need to have the committees do a little bit more or whether we need to have monthly meetings but special meetings that aren't too long might be easier if we um if we just focus on something that we absolutely have to focus on we got a lot of things to focus on but i think that but one of the things might be something that are more often but shorter is any thoughts on that well and i i'll jump in there i think more often and shorter uh we're the reliance on the on the trustees to do their homework coming into the meeting i think we can all find our way to to do that homework and maybe avoid it does cut down on some of the public opportunity so that we have to balance that um but if we're if the if the documents are public and we're just reading those in advance and not having to sort of go over them during the meeting if we're all coming in at the same point and really getting to decisions versus conversation yes yes anyone else have any thoughts legan you were shaking your head oh i agree with that completely and i apologize i also have to go and in two minutes for another meeting the other immediate thought on that lines is i think we still have one more agenda item which is pressing around the college reopening plans the race starts yes and you do have some thoughts on that could you just share those with us before you leave i can i i actually think it bears a spent a further discussion with the board um but i do just very briefly i would say i did read them all and i i appreciate and know very well how difficult and challenging finding the balance of of returning students to campuses but i do think it will be very important for the board to hear um from particularly our residential campuses on the how they intend to enforce quarantine and enforce student behaviors and exactly what the testing regime is because recent recent research has suggested that the the safe prudent return to campus is a twice weekly testing regime which is not practical for our colleges and may not be warranted and based on where vermont is in the pandemic but i do think it merits board attention in the very near future because i think we are we have a responsibility to those communities thank you i anyone else have anything to say on the meetings we can move on if we can i was just wondering would it make sense to schedule a separate meeting soon i mean like within the next week or two to discuss the restart plans because i know a couple of the colleges they were still in draft mode and i know they've been working incredibly hard to get these this done and up and running but it might be beneficial for them as well to delay that discussion for another week or 10 days if that's again going to adam's point of shorter more frequent meetings would that make sense to do it that way so if i may i do i believe students are returning to campus today so i do feel that this is more pressing than a week okay yeah some students have started returning to the campuses yeah as a as of the weekend it appears we have eight members of the board here we're going to have seven in the little very few minutes um what's the pleasure of the board yeah the board won't be able to vote with only seven because you have to have a quorum seems like we should schedule a special meeting to deal with that sooner if we're not going to have enough to vote on soon and sooner 10 days seems way too hate to say it but 10 days seems way too late yeah that's that's fine whatever's the pleasure of the board we'll find a date sooner than that if that's what you want to do i think so yeah what's happening monday can they have something for us that's more formal and finished by monday will the colleges have something i have to wait for the colleges to chime in on that um if there are folks out that it can can say about their plans go ahead pat um i will just add that the the governor has recently released guidance as relates to vans and libraries so some of us are going to be able to update our plans i would think for vermont tech we can have them pretty well updated by monday any other presidents okay i'm just gonna raise the question i apologize i i have not been able to read what has been submitted to us on this but i have had public folks say to me why would the state colleges not have one policy that's another question i mean i'm giving everything we've talked about here today yes why would each campus have a different way of approaching this i mean i don't know that they do if they don't and i i'm not wanting to put flies into the ointment but it's like help me understand why why that would be yes when i read through it there's a lot of a lot of common areas there's a couple well obviously ccb is a very different school a lot of commonalities between these different drafts um i think vtc is going to have definite on-campus options for limited students that's a little different maybe than the others but that is a very good question that i i've also heard people mention so just to respond to the earlier question um my position at nbu is that um these documents are kind of living documents and our guidance is changing moment by moment literally so we are going to have to continually i don't when you're saying finished i don't think they're going to be finished i think we are constantly evolving as we gain new understandings and new guidance is given to us good point thank you thank you thank you but if i if i could pipe in i mean we all are opening slightly different than the others so the plans may be different too the chairs point we are doing uh low residential lab weeks for our students so because the hands-on and applied piece is so critical to them to for them to successfully complete their education that may or may not be something at ccb is doing completely remotely with some very few exceptions and castleton and nbu are very similar in terms of some residential options so but we are all following the exact same template um from the governor's office in terms of the college guidance and what the questions we need to answer but we have slightly different approaches to how we're doing things but it the question is a good one to ask but i can't i'm just gonna i'm sorry i'm just gonna what does this require board approval these plans what why why why is this something that's coming to the board yeah my understanding from megan um and maybe the chancellor has some insight on this is that it does in fact uh require board approval i think megan megan's point is that other other institutions that she's familiar with across the country these plans have have been submitted to the board for approval i mean the challenge is i mean we've the the college is all presented to the um executive committee publicly in july what their plans were you know the overall plans um this is somewhat different i don't know that the board is required to approve uh the actual restart plans the the colleges are required to have restart plans uh by the the governor's mandatory guidance um as as president collins noted um nothing's fixed in stone we're all dealing with this incredibly fluid situation and one example is athletics because i think the governor is going to be releasing information about athletics for higher education um you know we're just waiting on that it could be this week it could be next week so everything it has to evolve to deal with all the guidance that comes down and even as as uh trustee cluver noted i mean there's there's new information coming out all the time and the colleges are in constant um you know transition mode of trying to adapt to all the different guidance that's coming out um i mean your bigger question is more just the plans in general right for returning um and again the colleges are in different situations depending on the particular institution and the needs of their students um and what what um their capacity is to meet all the requirements uh that the governor has has put out so um you know that there's a spectrum of approaches they're not hugely far apart there will be extensive remote learning um at all the institutions um but there you know they all fall in slightly different places on the spectrum um and as pat noted you know for btc it's obviously critical to get students um onto campus to deal with labs and experiential hands-on learning that you know some of the other colleges have that for some courses but not to the same extent as vtc so to me it's not one size fits all this is a place where the colleges are distinctive um and i you know to me it's that was a decision by the presidents in terms of how well equipped their particular institution was uh to meet the guidance um and to be prepared to come back in the fall but again the whole situation just continues to evolve i mean every day there are colleges that have changed their plans for the fall um and i expect you know it hasn't been quite the way it was in march but um i expect things will continue to evolve and we have to be prepared to pivot to being totally online because that's a that's a certainly a possibility that that could happen linda i'm even if the board is not specifically approving them it does seem to me this these there's a lot of risks on all sides in dealing with this at the very least financial risks if they have to all close down again i think it's important for us as a board to understand how the institutions are responding to the guidelines and i think it's important for us to understand it even if we are not necessarily you know rubber stamping and saying yes this is how to do it there's a lot of risks and issues out there david i completely agree with linda we have an obligation to hear about these plans and have an opportunity to comment unquestionably um if that's not today which i don't think it would be it sounds like we're gonna uh table this and reschedule that's fine um i have particular interest in hearing from the colleges about how they're planning on testing i think testing in rural vermont in particular is highly challenged we do not have the same access in our rural hospitals for quick testing that uvm mc has and essentially has a monopoly on um in rural markets uh those tests are still taking three to six days which you might as well not even test because you've got to be quarantined until you get your negative so we've got some especially the rural markets which is where most of our campuses are they don't have access to quick tests um i i'm a little bit this is a bit of a soapbox for me serving on the board of a rural hospital understanding that our largest hospital has access to quick testing but there's really a healthcare disparity between rural and urban not unlike all the other rural versus urban disparities that we have here in vermont so i'll pop off my soapbox but that's a real concern of mine now president collins just a response to that question um that has been a concern for us as well so what we did is we uh we contracted with the brode institute and we just brought 97 students in over the weekend by i think sunday night i had the results in by monday morning for sure that they all were negative so uh they are able to turn the results back to us in a very quick time but we are not relying on our local hospitals so it's a different situation but are those i'd like to add those the what is it the pcr sort of results that have the more um that have fewer false negatives or is that some of the um more of the antibody style of tests um jonathan davis are you there can you respond to that question yeah it's still a nasal swab but much less invasive than what you're finding at the hospital so it's the ones that have the might necessarily be having more false negatives more false positives thank you okay what's the fact that the template that the colleges are following uh be the same with variations depending on their needs is this something that would satisfy us as a as a board that we're really trying to get is that something that's accurate that we can look at as a system-wide examination of this taking into account the things that the president collins brought up that it's changing every day yeah i mean is that a question for me yeah that's really one but yeah you're a good person to talk to well we i will say we've had extensive conversations um internally about this we meet regularly talking about it our deans of students have done an extraordinary amount of work and they've really been leading the charge for their colleges and they've been collaborating very closely so this is one area where although it may not look like there's one uniform you know approach because the colleges have have different needs and whatever but in terms of the collaboration it has been extensive we've had tremendous conversations around it again the reference to the the Broad Institute that's something that that nbu is is using but we've been sharing information between the colleges one example is um the use of castle branch which is going to be a way for folks to self attest um and VTC was instrumental in in getting that um sort of alerting at us to that and the colleges are agreeing to use that as as an approach so there has been a lot of um a lot of collaboration around this um by the um particularly the deans of students but also our HR council our business affairs council and then the council of presidents so we do discuss these issues regularly about what are the challenges people are facing how are they addressing it um but what i'm hearing is it sounds as if we need to get another meeting scheduled um for next week um you know find a time uh that works for at least a quorum of the board um to talk about and have the presidents be in a position to share with you what they're doing with their restart plan so if that's you know what the direction you want us to go in then that's what we will do because i sound fine adam go ahead yeah briefly um you know i think my perspective of my interest in this is is the as david said an obligation to hear the plans to understand the plans it's to the the staff faculty the community of course the students i have no vision of us providing direct input into the plans um i think it's more ensuring that we have heard the plans that we're familiar with the plans and have the opportunity to ask questions about the plan but i for one don't don't feel if it's up for debate that we need to approve the plans okay and this may be something that will be revised along the way and we'll be hearing about it hopefully in less detail than we will in the next meeting so so so if we're going to ask you as the chancellor to go and find some way to go and have us meet next week get a survey and make sure we have a quorum and we can all listen to what the president's and that will be hopefully the only thing we have to deal with unless something else comes up but um we could start with that that's unsatisfactory to everyone we're going to table this issue for today yes good okay so the next thing on is other business does anyone have any other business they'd like to bring up if not we do have some public comment i don't know who the faculty member was they tried to speak during uh or asked a question during jim pages or after jim pages presentation but if that faculty member has a question please feel free to come forward and and ask hi lin uh is tyrone shaw can you hear me yes yeah you have the floor okay um if i understood correctly it seems the issue of possibly closing campuses was raised however obliquely earlier uh in this meeting today by trustee luna this board needs to speak very carefully even floating the suggestion could continue to undermine public confidence in the system and the and in nvu and vermont tech in particular both of which were seriously damaged a few months ago by such a proposal i hope we've learned some lessons from the public outrage and reaction to the former chancellor's proposal to gut higher education in the northern tier of vermont at the very least i encourage this board to strengthen and reaffirm our mission our system not to undermine it however unintentional less we forget it's more than a matter of real estate it's a matter of economic and cultural viability for the entire community's affected and for the social fabric that binds us it's a matter of aqua access equity and vermont's future i hope that one of the primary priorities of this board will be to advocate effectively for radical sustainable public funding not to accept the slow starvation of continued legislative neglect thank you thank you tyrone i'm glad we got a chance to hear you we also had beth olson beth linda olson and beth wash i think beth had her hand up first is beth still here now beth had to drop off i believe okay well linda linda olson you're next uh thank you for the opportunity i have a couple of different points based on all of the presentations the first i feel like obligated to bring up a point um during the title nine presentation um trusty millen talked about her experience with friends who had falsely accused people of sexual assault i i'm not doubting her experience what i'm saying is i don't want that to be out there as the norm because it's exceedingly rare for women to um falsely accuse men of sexual assault the research is consistent so this is an anecdotal evidence is not trump social science research i would be happy to bring my trained advocates in to educate the board about the issues that are covered under title nine they're quite well versed at these by now but that is not the norm or the reality when you look at the research second issue is for yasmin for the vsc forward task force you mentioned that there should be a consolidation of governance and i'm wondering whether you met faculty governance or whether you meant administration um because i think you probably meant faculty governance but i just want to remind this body that cuts have already been made to the staff namely 33 smaller than we were in 2011 um to the professional staff 25 percent smaller than we were in 2011 and to the faculty 25 smaller than we were in 2011 these cuts have already been made so if we want a courageous proposal we should be willing to turn a critical eye on the administration as well and whether or not that needs to be reduced and finally i just wanted to say discussions about um the return to campus are a bit tardy we're going back to school on tuesday our students are many of them are already back on campus some will be back on the rest will be back on campus this weekend staff has been on campus for a while already we're already exposing ourselves to these risks so this discussion if you wanted a systemic approach which i would have liked to have seen should have taken place ages ago thank you thank you listen thank you linda thoughts well low placed we we are catching up we do admit that but we appreciate your comments anyone else want to speak well if there are no other public comments uh we will be looking forward to hearing from the chancellor and she will give us some information as to when we can sit down and review these three start plans even though it's maybe a little late but we do know that they will change as time moves on so we just want to be as up to date as we can anyone else have any comments not hearing any i'm going to ask for a motion to adjourn approved hey david moved to adjourn anyone else second that second okay is there any discussion well those in favor of adjourning say aye hi hi okay thank you no i assume no one's opposed i appreciate everybody taking the time thank you very much i appreciate your help and understanding while i flake in here but thank you thank you lin for stepping in doing taking on this role okay thank you very much to all of you we'll see you probably next week thank you