 Okay. So then I'm going to start the meeting at 5.03. And since we have public here and it's a public meeting, we're going to open a public comment and I'm just going to read our expectations for public comment. The board welcomes comments, but it is not able to take any action on them other than to direct the public to the appropriate staff member or to the complaint procedure. Comments are limited to three minutes per speaker. Time may not be ceded to another speaker. Comments are to be addressed to me, the board chair or the board as a whole, not to any individual on the board, on the staff or in the public. Please raise your hand and wait to speak until you and please raise your hand and wait to speak until you are asked to by me. Please identify yourself with your first and last name in your town of residence. Please refrain from restating comments that have already been shared. You can express agreement with those comments. Order and decorum shall be observed by everyone. Shouting and profanity are prohibited. As the board chair, I will maintain the order and decorum of the meeting. So I will now open it up to public comment. So, Sarah, those of you online, if you can raise your hand if you'd like to make a comment. All right. So I brought this up last. Still got to do a name, you know, we know you want a name from town. So I brought this up yesterday, but many of you are not there at the forum, so I'm going to bring it up again. There's a couple of federal court cases that have come out. And I think they really shine a light on that the AOE's policy and this district's policies on the access and locker rooms is going to eventually fall pretty hard with the federal courts. And the first one's Mary Weather versus Hartop, which actually speaks directly to Travis Allen's lawsuit. And it was decided 3-0 by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, so it's not, it's not a minor decision. It's an appeals court, the federal district court, and they decided it 3-0. And they asked, the defense asked to have it heard again by the full circuit and they rejected their request. So the 3-0 decision stood. And it's almost identical to the current lawsuit where a professor was removed as he refused to accept the gender request from a student on a free speech and religious grounds. And so there's that decision, and now there's this decision, these versus the Sarah, who's the Sarah is the current Secretary of Health Human Services. And this is a district court, a federal court decision. And they talk about the difference between Title VII and Title IX in federal law. Title VII, if you don't know what that is, that is the requirements for employers to hire people to enter discrimination law. And that title does indeed talk about sexual orientation and gender identity, and you can't discriminate against people for those topics. And Title IX has to do basically with protections for women. And the court looked at Title IX and said that Title IX would reign when you're talking about women's sports in schools. Because it talks about sex, but not sexual orientation or gender identity. And it declared that it was biological sex, not gender identity. So the federal courts are leaning strongly towards biological sex versus gender identity when it comes to sports. And I would assume that would also drill down to sports locker rooms. And I really think the policy that you have here, it's going to end up like the Sherblatt decision versus Boston with the flags. For years, I've been caught and this administration not go down the road, they did with the flag, because there were going to be constitutional issues. Now, you didn't get sued over that, but I was right. But now you have a lawsuit and if more situations like this come up, I'm afraid it's going to cost the taxpayers money. And I would eat it. Thank you very much for your comments. Do we have anyone else? As far as you can tell. Okay. So we're going to move right along. Elaine, we're going to have Sam go first because he's kind of gets under a little bit of a time constraint and transportation. Arrangements. So we're going to start Sam with just having you explain to us why you'd like. I know you wrote us a letter and we've seen your resume. But we just like in your words, just to explain why you're interested in being appointed to the board for the next three months. So just so that you know, this will be a three months appointment and then you would then need to run for that seat if you decided you wanted to continue on. Sure. Hi, Sam Hooper, resident of East Brookfield grew up in Brookfield and know my community and neighbors well, a big believer in civic obligation and civic duty. And I feel with the open seat from Brookfield. I thought it would be prudent for me to put my hat in the ring. I'm a strong believer in quality education and and a strong public education that's rigorous. And that is inclusive to all community members. I understand. And I uphold fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers and I respect that. With that said, I don't believe in crippling investment in policy and in the school system that won't move it forward. So I'm a big believer in continuing to create forward progress on public education. I'm a small business owner in Randolph. I've got 12 employees, most of which have grown up in in the school district or have kids in the school district. So I take their feelings about our public school system seriously and I feel like it's a good time for me to engage in that while I don't have kids. I have two nephews who are both in the Randolph elementary school. So I'm going to open it up now for board members to ask questions. Sam, somebody want to start us off. You don't have any specific questions. So I have one question for you, Sam. We work from policies. So we are a policy driven board. And it is, it takes a little getting used to a little additional education just to get yourself up and running and to understand sort of how we govern the district. Do you see yourself having time in the next month or so to get yourself up to speed so that you can understand what we're doing and what our processes are. Definitely. I pride myself on when I aimed to do something I am to do a full commitment so that would mean getting up to speed as fast as possible. I sit on a handful of other boards and I understand the rigor that goes into policy making policy development and confidentiality. And I think it's important to think about boards because I have, you know, I think I had no board with sports experience before I came on to the board. And you certainly didn't understand the difference between government and management and the limitations of the board. And I think a lot of people who joined the board had that same experience when they were in support initially. I'm wondering if you if you feel like you have a handle on the difference between governing and managing and if that would affect your interest in serving on the board. I feel like I have a strong grasp on the difference between governing managing and activism. They all have their different roles in in civic engagement. But with sitting on boards you have a you have an obligation to uphold your responsibilities to that board and not let your personal beliefs kind of overly infect that. So, yeah, I would say I have a strong strong grasp on that. Do you have any, do you feel like you have any strengths that you can bring to the board as a whole that are potentially not present currently. I, I don't, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to suggest that I understand everybody's strengths and weaknesses on the board who sits on the board but my main goal when I do when I do sit on boards is to not take up space that's unwarranted to me. I am to listen, absorb and learn and then add value where I see fit. I'm not in the business of grandstanding or suggesting that I need credit for things. I'm merely trying to work in a collaborative manner to forward public policy. Any questions. Hannah, do you have a question for her. Okay, Sam, do you have any questions for us. No, I don't think so. I mean I appreciate all the commitment you guys do and the work you do and I acknowledge the time commitment and the effort that goes into it and my appreciate the opportunity to serve as a resident from Brookfield. I hope you give me a look. Alrighty. Okay, thank you very much and, and what's going to happen is we're going to interview Elaine, and then we're going to go into executive session and then we'll, we'll come out of that with a decision so email it out, as well as it will happen in, in this meeting, in this meeting link so if you want to try and hang on or whatever. Okay. Yeah, I'll try to stay tuned as best I can here if I have to go through security and drop drop off and come back in. Thanks a lot for accommodating me. Okay. Well, thank you for being willing to do it this way. Appreciate it. Okay, take care. All right. So, Elaine, we're going to put you on the hot seat now. So you sort of saw what what we were doing so we're going to give you a little time to just tell us why you'd like to serve for this three month opening. Excellent. Well, I saw it as an opportunity to try a school board on for size and see what that might look like right I thought about it over the years have not had the time for the commitment. But recent changes in my work where I'm working from home and make it a lot easier to get more involved. I have a student in our UHS and helping her to kind of be part of the community is has been really helpful. Seeing a lot of the challenges that the community is is facing that mirror a lot of things that are happening around the country has also kind of sort of a sense of well this is an opportunity to try without running through an election and doing all of that to see if I can contribute and add value. It also helps me get a sense of the policy implications of the school board and the and the role and responsibilities that you have your limitations right and the things that you can do. So I see this really is just this this glorious moment to kind of jump in see how it turns out and if it seems like the right fit. Then I could pursue continued to stay on the board if the community would like that. I think that my background is in education I am a college professor. So I have been with Champlain College for 22 years and I currently teach in Champlain College online. And I teach adults and continuing education and master's degree programs. I have worked with young people for a very very long time and I think that that brings a unique lens to the table when we're talking about academic integrity. And we're looking at data to say if are we a good school are not a good school and what that means and I understand a school board does not set curriculum. But I understand what it means to go through the curricular process and I know deeply what it means to help students achieve their goals and whatever that looks like whether that's continuing on to college. Whether that's staying in a family business or or working or whatever that looks like for them. So I think that brings a lens to the table that can be helpful. I've also been I've had a daughter in different schools over the years. So and I've had exposure to multiple types of schools from Catholic schools to public schools in South Burlington and in Wates River and in Calis at U32 and here. So it also I also have kind of that perspective. I have experience working on faculty Senate and other areas like that where we talk about policy and set procedure. So I do have that knowledge as well. Okay. So again, I'm going to start with with my question about policy governance. It's a little bit different from sort of the way some other boards might function. And as I mentioned before, and my other question, it does require a little bit of just some initial time to just sort of read through material and get a sense of how we operate as a board. We will I can meet with you and orient you a little bit. But it does mean a little bit of homework on right. Is that something that you feel like you have time that you devote to. Yeah, I've already looked at some of the links that you sent I watched the video I've read some of the materials I see the access to the Vermont State School Board Association. And so I am I am also a lifelong learner so it is always helpful to understand some of the ways in which our local schools are governed so yeah I'm definitely ready to do that. Great children want to ask you. I'm sure that's quick. Okay. Anyone else. No other questions. How about you, Hannah, do you have a question. No. All right, Elaine, do you have any questions for us. Yeah, I just, I would love to hear from different folks about, you know, very, very quickly, what was it that had you decided to serve on the board and what has it been like for you. Okay, I'll go first just. I think I'm the person who's been on the board the longest. And I joined when I had kids in upper elementary school, and I joined partly with this idea of, you know, sort of not knowing. So this idea of, well, this is my way of improving the schools. And probably with a little bit of a personal agenda of kind of making it and then as I joined and learned how a school board works. So in my professional life, I've worked for VSAC so helping students find their pathways after high school. And so I really, and I've been an educator so I really like sort of the, the, the, the, the looking at the system as a whole K 12. And sort of, what do we want our students to be able to do for skills and soft skills to be able to move forward beyond and into their lives so I really enjoyed that I was on the board when we merged our district which was a great money saver for the district as a whole. And it also allowed the board to gel a little bit more to be thinking about it's all of the students, not just Brookfield elementary students or brain tree elementary or Randolph elementary we really are now as a board. I don't feel any of the initially when I was on the board there was a little bit of, you know, these are my kids over here, rather than looking at the system as a whole so. And I've been doing policy governance for a while I, I think it's a, it's a, so it's a challenging way to govern but it's also, I think it's also an effective way to govern we're still working on it. There are some pieces that we haven't quite got down but I think it allows our administration to really try out some new things and and be innovative. And hopefully, you know, make some progress toward doing some really great things for students. That was a long winded answer. I appreciate it. Thank you. I'll go next. I'm Sarah hopped I represent Randolph, and I have two children in Randolph elementary currently I chose to be a part of board and the community also chose me in March of 2022. Because I had worked and volunteered in actually Randolph and some of the other local elementary schools, and I wanted to get more of a grasp on the other piece of it. Not just the inside, the outside to and the community as a whole. So, that, I guess, would be my answer. Thank you. No, you don't all have to answer just if you want to. I'd be glad to share it with you, but I don't feel like I need to take up the time to do it. If you can have a better story. Well, I will say I'm from Brookfield, and I'm happy to meet you and I know Sam. We were a couple of a year, year and a half ago, and I thought I was going to be making decisions about, you know, approving budget for new sports uniforms and like bringing that to the table and a little did I know the vast amount of social issues that have come across our table. Yeah, I think it's a it's a good group and it's policy governance can be difficult at times, but it's probably also the best way to govern these hot topics, I think. Right. Yep. Okay, anybody else want to go before we any any other question or I think that's great. It gives me a little bit of sense of some of the things that you came in the door with and some of the things you discovered and learned about. So I appreciate that. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, so at this point, we're going to move into executive session to deliberate. Give Elena chance to ask questions. I don't think you can. Yeah, I did. Sam, you did. Yeah. Um, so we'll So give me a moment. I'm going to, we're going to check out of this actual Google session for a little while when they're done executive session, they'll come back in. Yeah. So if you guys hang out. We will be back. Do we need a motion? Yeah. Well, we're okay. So can I have a motion, please? Move to enter executive session to do a great regarding a seconded by Chelsea. Any discussion? No, no. All right. So cut your next motion. Chelsea seconds. Chelsea seconds. Is there any discussion? I would be conflicted that just for us to be there. Okay. So just the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. unanimous. Yep. Okay. There's no public comment about when we're going to take a vote. The public comments. Uh, no. Well, when we come back, when we come back. We can do a public comment and then. We'll. Then we'll do our action. Switch things over. All right. All right. So before the board takes action. We've been asked to have public comment. So it will be the same rules as before. I'm not going to read through the preamble. Um, you get three minutes. Starts with a question. Last month, the superintendent report. I think I'm ready to talk about some land that we purchased possibly. For a new school needs to know if it or not. Oh, it's, this is to do with this topic. It is. Um, Yeah. I would, I would, I'm going to defer you to, if you've got a question, you can call the superintendent. Well, I need to know who. Possibly by the land. I'm wondering if it was. There was no discussion of buying land. All right. So do we have a motion for who we would like to appoint. For the Brookfield. Vacancy on the board. I'll move to a point. To fill the. Second. Seconded by Sarah. So all those in favor. We say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you very much for your interest. Elaine. Um, it was a hard decision to make. No worries. Thank you all so much for your time and the opportunity. Uh, Sam sounds awesome. So I think it's going to be great and you'll see me around at other events and things. Awesome. Thank you so much. Take care everyone. All right. You too. Sam, you, did you hear the news? Yes. Thank you so much. Appreciate the honor. Okay. So you need to, um, when you get back in town. Um, you need to get back in town. Um, in order to participate on the board, you do need to be sworn in by the town clerk. Uh, Okay. Awesome. I'll be on it on to the day. Okay. And then, um, we also have a, a laptop for you and a school. It's a school board email that you're going to be doing all of your school board business with. Okay. Okay. Okay. Linda and I will be in touch with you. Awesome. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Have a safe trip. Thanks everyone. Appreciate it. All right. Bye bye. Okay. So. We're moving on to the consent agenda. So that was, um, and remember consent agenda items are just things that lean needs in order to manage our system. So he is looking for, um, some funding for the locker room. Changes. And. I know I didn't check my email. Um, to know you were going to put out, uh, an email about sort of where things were today. Have you? Uh, have you not yet? I can. We actually, we talked about it about a state. Um, specifically about the locker rooms or where the heat. No, no, no, no about the heating system. That went out about two hours ago. Okay. I get a chance to look at it. Um, so. What are we looking at? You're going to make it. You're going to make me curse it by talking about it. Um, so the heating system piece at this point in time. Um, the facilities crew has been kind of scouring the planet to find somebody who has the parts. Um, and I believe it's out of virgins that is able to come in. They're guaranteeing that they can do the work. Have the heaters up and running, um, by December 2nd, which will give us two days over the weekend to kind of check all the pipes within the schools to make sure that none of them frozen, none of them have burst, um, do whatever other repairs in the hope is to have the kids back in the school on December 5th. Nice. Um, so that's going to prevent us. Um, from going out of school, but it prevents us from having to do that massive mobilization, um, to other locations, which would have included having to move all our equipment, um, there and back and in a short amount of time. Um, so I think it's the best of all worlds. So we're keeping our fingers crossed that they can do what they've guaranteed us that they can do. Awesome. So that's, that's where that stands. So do you have an amount then for that? Yeah, the locker room is about is 34,000. Okay. Um, the facility is reserve funds. It's just, it's going to be what it is. Um, I can give you an estimate, but I can't even tell you if it's in the ballpark. I would guess less than a quarter of a million. Um, the heating and that's assuming that we don't have to do any moving. You know, if something blows up at the last minute and then we have to kind of execute that mobilization plan, that's going to have the cost go up exponentially. When you are looking at that, was it, do you know how much it was going to cost? No, we were, we were, yeah, there, there's busing. We'd need to have an actual moving company come in and move the tables, desk chairs, the equipment that the teachers would use. Um, I give a lot of credit to both, both Vermont tech and white river Valley. Um, for, you know, working with us, but there, there would have been, should have been charges there as well. Um, plus there would be equipment that we would have to buy like Vermont tech for some of the students. It was just big open spaces that we'd have to put dividers up and things like that. Um, and so it was an ideal. Yeah. And then have to do it all again in reverse. Um, and the reason to use the moving company, the community was actually really good last night because they were talking about, you know, getting a community drive together to move the stuff, which is awesome. But if this equipment gets damaged, there's not really any insurance on it. Whereas if we have a moving company doing, doing it, you know, if you damage a $7,000, you know, piece of equipment that it's covered. So, yeah. So we're looking at December 2nd. December 2nd is, uh, when they plan on having the heat up and running. And then again, two days to check the system out. And then again, we actually need to get the heat up and running, and then have the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the heat up. Fix the pipe that. This is a permanent fix. This is not a temporary. At first we were trying to rush and get a temporary fix. But it wasn't possible. Awesome. All right. Can I ask a question and I'm sorry if it's been answered. Because. Children. But, um, So just procedurally. need to come back to us once you have an amount, it seems odd to prove, I mean obviously needs to be done and I'm not looking to vote against it, but it feels odd to be voting on an unknown figure. It's an emergency situation, so it's not a normal situation. The two possibilities are you do a vote, you put a cap on the amount, if it's above that then we get back together and talk about it again. The second option is what we always do anyway is there's double and triple checks on all these things, the auditor and Robin, but we could just do a report to the board, here's how much was actually spent, Robin can confirm that and here's the bills that go along with it. And so that's another way of doing that, doing that check and having that oversight. So those are a couple of things that I could recommend. We did talk with the state, usually there's procurement requirements, you know anything over $40,000, we have to go out to bed. They were very clear that given the situation that it's an emergency, those things do not apply right now. Our job is to get the kids back at school as fast as we can. So they were very good about that, but good question. So as part of the motion, you know, if the board wants that additional oversight, which isn't a bad thing, on those are the things that I suggest either put a put an upfront cap on it and then if we hit that we have to come back together as a group do another reserve request or just have a final report, you know, so you can make sure the numbers match. They will be checked anyway. You've got Robin as the person as the dual control and then you've also got the auditors. Go ahead, Hannah, go ahead. Just I feel more and this is just an immediate response. I do feel more comfortable putting a cap on it just again an open-ended approval just feel and it has nothing to do with trust or or thinking it'll be misspent or anything like that. It's just voting for a non-figure without any parameters feels. So and what was your estimate? It's hard to tell because there's a lot of costs associated with getting the temporary portable heating systems that were brought in. We brought in from Dead River, we had all the propane tanks, the 1,000 gallon propane tanks that were attached to each one. That was just to keep the high school warm enough to try to keep the pipes from freezing. We brought an extra for RTC because it's a smaller space to try to get the temperature above 65 so we can have the kids back on Monday. So there's that aspect of it and then we've got the actual emergency repair over potentially a holiday and a weekend. So I would estimate you know I would say somewhere in the 250 to 300,000 range if we don't have to do a mobilization if we don't have to move kids which is right now is what it looks like we don't have to do. Okay so a reasonable cap, I would say 300,000 or do we want to cap him if that's your guesstimate 350? Yeah and I made I may be way off but that's what I think. What if we cap him at where he thinks he's going to be and if you think you're going to be over that? But sometimes these come in well no usually you've got a bit. But since we're going on an estimate I'm thinking maybe we go with kind of your guesstimate of what you think you're going to need and then if not plus 10% yeah is that usually what well I don't know what to would like cost of materials and fuel going up? Yeah so is that is that you folks do estimates for people right? Yes. Is that not there yet? Yeah yeah I think 10% will be reasonable because some things also might take more time and inspect it. So 385? We don't know how much fuel we're going to go through with those propane tanks that depends on how cool it is. Right. I'm sure propane is through the roof as well. Yeah you know my guesstimate you know I would do the 300,000 and hope it comes in loss. 300,000 yeah. He said between 250,000. Oh I thought he said okay and then if there's more then we would just do another cost. Yeah I would come in and say we'll have we'll have firmer numbers at that point in time. Okay all right so we're going to amend this. You can do it as part of the actual renovation. Yeah so okay. I move to approve the OSST facilities reserve funds for heating sister repairs up to 300,000 dollars and we want to be separate for together as fine. You can do it together. And approve the RUHS locker room request for reserve funds for 34,060 dollars. Seconded by Megan. Any more discussion on this? All those in favor say hi. I do do have to say I want to say this publicly even the construction crews and the folks that were coming in to help us out everybody busted their hopes. It was incredibly giving and trying to help us with this so I'm very appreciative of that. Yeah well I'm hoping that's exciting. Yeah I don't want to talk about it. Can you please not have any major issue there? Okay was this just left over this or are we going into executive session? Yeah there's two things we should do. So I move to enter executive session at 5.59. Inviting the superintendent and assistant superintendent to the question. And we're going in for? For personnel. Personnel. Second. Seconded by. Take care. Thank you very much for coming. All those in favor? I'm sorry who seconded? Sarah. Sarah thank you. It was Megan. Megan seconded the approval. You did approval? Yes. Megan seconded it. Move to executive. That was me. Got it. Thank you in direction. Change it first. Yeah. All right so we're exiting this one? Yeah a little meet you over there Hannah.