 All right, so, I'll wait for you Ray, look at that. So call to order at six o'clock. Six o'clock. Six o'clock, what he says. Are there any adjustments to the agenda? Okay. Any adjustments to the agenda? Well, actually there could be one. 10-2, the discussion item was missed. Sorry, not 10-2, I apologize. The board goals, they got listed under possible action, but they didn't get it listed under discussion. I'm thinking you'll want to discuss it, so. So 10.3, we're going to add more goals. Yes, I apologize. And consent agenda, approve the minutes of Tuesday September 27th, which is a regular meeting. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Any discussion on the minutes? Hearing none, so moved. Minutes of Thursday, October 20th, which was the special retreat. You don't have those yet, I'm working on them. We don't have minutes to approve for that yet, so we will move those on to the next meeting. Are there any board correspondence and communications that we need to add in dream? Just to add a quick encouragement to everybody about the bullet points, we've been sending out about the Lincoln letter. If everybody can just encourage their board. We sent it home in our Thursday packet at our side, just so that, and we've got a couple parents lined up to send letters as well. But the more we can encourage participation in this, excuse me, the better the effect when we show up at that hearing, and they really see that there's some groundswell against this union. So just if you can please, if you haven't already, please spread that. And if you need it again, please let people know. Yes, and we will for sure get it to you. Thank you. Do we have any public comments? Not yet. Not yet? All right, this is our public comment time of the meeting. I'm just here to listen and say I support the school board. Just have to be a part of it. Well, thank you very much. Anybody on line? We have Simon Pod. Simon, do you have any public comment? And then we also have an unknown caller on. Are they on by phone, Ray, or? No, they're joined in the meeting. Okay. All right. We don't have a quorum because of Andrew just left. There he is. Oh, he just came back. There he is, okay. Okay. So hearing no public comments, reports to the board. Jamie. So you have my report in hand. I tried to embed some links in my report more often than I normally do. It's just to provide you more information, examples of the work we're doing. I hope you find them helpful. I didn't want them to be like additional documents that I think sometimes can be overwhelming. Plus some of them are like linked to our website. So it's just starting to demonstrate some student learning that's personalized that meets our goal number two around personalized learning some pathways. Also, I invented a link talking about the change in the state summative assessment and accountability measure moving from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. I put a letter out about that as well. And I embedded that letter just in the event that you missed it. We always try to share my public letters with you before they go out. But it's just again a reminder that that's happening. We expected the embargo to be lifted on that. Hopefully by now it still has not. The Agency of Education is still yet to lift the embargo on our spring results. I'm hopeful that that's going to happen this week and that you'll still get those in your November board meetings, track my progress and the state summative results. Why would they hold that up? COVID possibly and the impact of COVID on the testing results, I don't know. I don't have a good answer for you. The other thing that I'm excited tonight is part of your board development series is in addition to the work that may happen with a mentoring program that was discussed at the board retreat that will take up again in November. And we'll talk about it at local district meetings through the upcoming month to get volunteers for that. I was hoping in board development this year to just give the board a deeper dive into some of the work we're doing around our multi-tiered system of supports, around proficiency, base learning, and pathways. So that as we keep talking about these overarching goals, the board has even a deeper sense of what that all means. So this is just part one tonight to give an overview to the board about the changes that have happened in statute around Act 173 by how that also aligns tightly with the work we're doing as a multi-tiered system of supports. And so many of you haven't met McKayla Martin, a reminder that a Net Roads was our intensive programming coordinator originally. When Don left, that opened up that vacancy. We didn't fill it until this year. And a Net's doing work also, it's intensive programming, sorry, McKayla, intensive programming system support because what we're realizing within our multi-tiered system of supports, you have to work at all levels. It's not just special education. It's early intervention. It's also high quality universal instruction. So McKayla and a Net and Onda work really closely together as a three-person team. And we are in buildings on Tuesdays and Thursdays doing classroom observation in rounds as an administrative team and working with principals to discuss what we see. So example is we'll be at the White River Unified District Thursday morning and from 8.30 to 9.30, the principal will get to identify some areas that the staff is looking for feedback on. And then this team goes out and we are doing walk-throughs in classrooms and then debriefing that with our principals. And I could have just reigned on someone's report. I apologize if I did. But it's just something else that's going on that I wanted to just mention. And then just a highlight, I know it doesn't seem maybe like a lot, but this idea of leveraging public transportation to better meet our students' needs, to allow them to be able to access after-school programming is, I believe, a huge issue when we think about equity and access. And so we are working hard with Tri-Valley Transit. I embedded the roots. Know that that is hopefully just the beginning and that we're looking to be able to expand on that access to public transportation to better meet our kids' needs. One of the ones that we didn't get this year that I was really hopeful for was a late bus from Rochester up to Granville-Hancock. I've talked to both of those boards about it. It didn't fit in their route right now, but they heard this need and are hopeful that they're going to be able to meet that need in the future. And so that would allow our students from Granville-Hancock to access after-school programming and then have a late bus that gets them up to designated locations after five for our families. So I'll take any additional questions folks may have. You've heard a lot about Lincoln, a reminder to the board that we will be going back to the state board in November. Tara worked with her fellow colleagues at the Central Vermont Supervisory Union and at the Mount Abraham Unified Union School District business managers met here Friday to further work on contingency budgets and to better strengthen the numbers that we had around budget and finance. So we'll have those details prior to the state board meeting as well for that November 16th meeting. And I'll take any questions folks have. So have you heard the cool cats and are they cool? Thanks, I have heard the cool cats and actually the cool cats, this is part of the podcast that I embedded in my report. The cool cats led, their student led assembly on Friday morning at the White River Valley High School where students were acknowledged for being green, which is a whole piece of the high school acknowledgement system that's tied to lead them up and the cool cats led that. So I have seen the cool cats, I've listened to the cool cats podcast and seen them in person. I got a phone. I think it's the last paragraph. There we go. Keep those links going, coming. Yeah. I miss that. Any questions for Jamie before I move on? Can I just say it's really good to be here in person if you can be. I like to talk person to person. We're pretty cool cats to hang out with you. There you are. All right, on the chief academic officer when you're ready for your report. Oh, I'm so sorry I have one quick other thing. Oh, here's a message. I'll be really quick on that. We had applied, the SU had worked with Twin Rivers, Odukwichi Group, which services Sharon and Straford within the WRVSU and part of the work that was happening at the SU Energy Committee, which we gotta get back up and running. Again, it's kind of falling off, but the work didn't fall off behind it. As we applied for a grant for a possible federal funds for three electronic buses and all the work that we go into supporting electric vehicles. And there was support by Jeff Martin who leads that initiative for Two Rivers to pursue that grant. We will find out very soon whether we were recipients. That grant money, the buses are bought, paid for and all the work that goes into servicing those buses is paid for and it would follow us if we were to like, for example, we're going out to bid on busing here in the next couple months. Tara will talk about that and update you that with her report, the RFPs up. Those buses don't go to butlers, they would stay with the SU and go to the new contractor if we were to receive the grant. So just stay tuned. I mentioned it way back in the spring at one point and that we will find out soon whether or not we were recipients. Thank you. All right, on the now it's your turn. Thank you. Sorry, I can't be in person. We were wrapping up a first and second season today. Awesome, way more fun to be at. Go for it, go for it. You know, it's the best of both worlds to be able to do both these things in an evening. So it's hard to fit everything that's going in into two pages. So I'm just gonna give a few highlights and then always give a chance for any questions or comments. We will spend more time in November on the Track My Progress sort of benchmark assessment. We are using it sort of as a screener in the fall with all our students to see where their knowledge and skills are after four to eight weeks of instruction. But I worry that some of when we get focused on the results that some of the other pieces can get missed. And I know that last month there was question about how much time our students are spending on computers and assessment. And so my report there, we pulled what the average assessment time is and it's just about 24 minutes. So that's, and you do one assessment a day. Sometimes they are a couple of days apart. Sometimes they're a week apart, but that's about what they're averaging. If we see kids sort of finish it in under 10 minutes, we wonder if they've understood all the questions and haven't skipped them and if they're taking much, much longer than that. And then we also look at that and see if we need some more accommodations. But the vast majority of our students are finishing it. Really between sort of 20 and 26 minutes. And then the other piece that I think is really important is we've got some of our educators, we're talking to students about this assessment, especially students who had taken it for the first time. And I just wanted to read a couple of quotes from those students just so you get a little bit more of a flavor of what their experience is. So one of them, I liked the track my progress because it was fun. I like it because it wasn't very easy and it wasn't very hard. And I feel like that quote in particular really captures what a computer adaptive test is really trying to do, which is adapt to how students are doing. And when they get a couple of questions right, it makes the level of those questions harder. If they hit a couple of questions that are more challenging, then it makes it a little bit easier because it's really trying to, in a limited number of questions, really try to figure out exactly sort of where their knowledge and skills are. And so we had a number of students say, it was fun, it was easy and hard. And so it's really doing its job when it's done that. It was tiring, kind of fun. I read about so many things, right? Just also the exposure to some other content that they may not get. This one, I felt like a YouTuber in a film, it was like playing a video game, cool. And I liked the test because it was easier than Star 360. I spent like five days on Star 360. Some questions were harder than others. So again, just a sense of sort of what these students are experiencing as they go through it. When we come back together in November, both at your individual districts and at the SU, we'll have a chance to look at sort of what the results are, what we're learning about, where students are and how it's gonna impact our instruction moving forward. The other things I just wanted to mention, especially because we've got McKayla in the room, so due to her persistence in like the best possible way, we got invited into a national research study on a piece of curriculum that we were already using in some of our schools that really focuses on phonemic awareness, which we had identified last year through a lot of our work as being a real gap, particularly in our kindergarten through second grade classrooms and just ways to have for kids to really focus on those important foundational reading skills. So we've got two teachers who are part of that study, the benefits of it, of getting more access to their most recent materials, which we had the materials from the kind of the last version, which wasn't that out of date, but we've got the newest stuff and they're gonna be using that and we are looking forward to learning more about how we can, what the impact of this is and then if it's as good as we hope, then how we can spread it to more of our classrooms. And then the other maybe piece to mention, Jamie mentioned about the, we don't have unenvargoed SBAC results, but I'm sure many of you tuned into sort of news around the nation's report card or the NAPE testing, which was really showing that across the nation, the fourth and eighth grade students that are being tested, we're being tested on that last year are showing decreases and they definitely attributed to the impacts of COVID on schooling. At the state level, I think while they both went down, fourth grade was about even with the rest of the country and eighth grade results were a little bit above the rest of the country. So we'll again be able to dig into more of that in the schools that we're able to take that, but I think it just I share that. So we are all sort of staying attuned into both what's happening nationally and in the state around these state assessments, what we might expect when things become unenvargoed and how we might respond to it. And a lot of the actions we're taking are trying to again still make up for lost time and things that are happening continue to happen with absences and in the effects of the COVID. And so you'll constantly hear sort of how we're trying to address that in different ways. And I think the work that you'll also hear from Annette and Mikayla is really well timed and well positioned to help address that. And the last thing just because it came as a question last time as well around our professional development that we're offering on the SU-wide half day in services, which we have five across the year and our second one is coming up this Friday. Of all of the staff who are considered full-time employees and therefore work on Fridays, we have a number of folks that don't necessarily work a 1.0 schedule. We have 90% of those who have Arden Gate who are participating in the professional learning opportunities that we're offering. So we're really excited about that. I'm happy to take any questions or comments. Go ahead Bill. Anna, both you and Jamie mentioned the word embargoed. And so is this mean that the state has shared the test results for our SU and our district schools but you can't release the information or use somehow or does that mean that they are actually holding that information which is available at the state level? Because it would seem to me it's unfortunate. If you had it, you could be analyzing and thinking about it, figuring out where the gaps, what's the lessons learned and that sort of thing. So how do you define embargoed in this situation about the summative assessment results? So what is embargoed is the district and state level results. Individual families receive their results back in June. So there is information about students that's out there. What the state has embargoed and they said it's embargoed until they released the annual snapshot is that those district and school level results. So we have information that we could use and we can use. We also start assessing the students when they come in in September and have stuff that's also more updated. So there is individual, it's not sitting all at the state level but we don't aren't able to share that we don't have that district and school level data that we could share out. Thank you, Anna. All right, and then that. Hello, you all have my report as well. Jamie stole some of my thunder. So part of my report was talking about all of us going into schools and how exciting that is to actually be in schools and observe students learning and be able to talk to students about their learning. So we've been really busy doing that. McKayla and I have been really busy between going into buildings and participating in their staff meetings after school to do some professional development but also on to McKayla and I have been in buildings during the day kind of modeling what some of those non-negotiable team meetings look like. So like a targeted intensive team meeting, a grade level data team meeting, what those should look like and who should be attending those and kind of how to set agendas. And so we've been really busy doing those as well. Also, tonight McKayla and I will give you part one of a series that we're gonna do on kind of Act 173 and how it relates to MTSS which then we'll go into what does MTSS look like here at the White River Valley Supervisory Union. And then as the series goes on, we'll talk about even more in depth about what that looks like in our buildings. And then I did include the link again about because it is quite lengthy about the new rules and regulations changes that's happening at the Vermont AOE level agency of education level around special education. Some of it is small. It's just like a slight word change here or there or a slight definition change but then there are also some bigger pieces which I'll talk a little bit about tonight in our presentation. And then just the last piece is Onda, McKayla, Mr. Kanani and I met with our AOE coach as part of our monitoring series met with our coach for the first time today to kind of start talking about what our plan will be for the year and even beyond. And that plan will be aligned to our strategic plan that we're all drafting and looking at. And so I started to draft that up. I did submit what we needed for our round of selective monitoring. I haven't received any feedback on it yet but that's already been submitted. So hopefully we'll get the ALK check on that and we'll be all done with that part of our monitoring. And then just lastly, just sad news about my admin assistant who went out on medical leave at the beginning of September. So kind of been holding down the fort with a couple other ladies here in the office who have really stepped up and I appreciate them very, very much. Missy Burbine and Lori Ballew who have been trying to kind of fill the shoes. I've been doing some teaching with them about kind of what to do and how things are done. And also Tara and her team in the business office. So we've been really trying to hold down the fort at the administrative level as well. So we're kind of filling those shoes and having some help also. But I'm excited about our first round of board series tonight that you'll hear in a little bit. Any questions, comments? You mentioned the MTSS non-negotiables. Okay, that's like a term like. So I'm not sure anybody else is as clueless as I am, but what do you mean by non-negotiable? Yeah, non-negotiable, meaning those are the teams and those are the meanings that have to happen. There's no say in if they happen or not. They're non-negotiable, they have to happen. Yeah, I would say structure. So when you hear about structure and framework tonight, I would say there's some key components and principles to MTSS like meeting and data to analyze to improve universal instruction or meeting with your social-emotional team members and what that team looks like can be a little different building to building based on what we have for staffing. But yet some of those principles around teams of teachers meeting together to talk about data to inform their practice is mostly what it's around. It's also around making certain that we have distributive leadership teams in each building. So teams of teachers meeting with principals to decide what is their in-service plan gonna be for the year at the district level, meaning your building level, right? So we have five early release days as an SU that we provide professional development, but then you have teams of teachers meeting with your principals, talking about how are we gonna plan those other night early release days? And is it tied back to our overarching goals? So that gives you a few examples. Yeah, I love the example. But is this something that's embedded in the teacher contracts that we signed or is this a state mandate through the agency of education and the MTSS framework that everybody's, every school system has to follow? So the framework gives guiding principles and components. What we did as an SU admin team over the last two years is come together and say, what are the things we need in place to make this happen? So meeting all your SU principals, SU central office staff, and what we did is came on some agreed upon components that we should see across the districts. And the makeup of those teams and how they go about it can look different, but that we commit that these things are critical in order to have an MTSS. And then Anda, Makayla and I have been going into the buildings and starting to help them set those structures and who the team members are and how to set those agendas and what are the priority topics to be discussed at each particular meeting and things like that, so. Yeah, absolutely productive. Thank you. Yes. Sorry, you just used a term. I think I wrote it down. It was selective something. It was toward the end of what you were saying. Selective monitoring. That was in my report last month. We're in selective monitoring. That's right. Thank you. I just didn't remember it. I knew it. I thought I'd heard it before. I didn't remember. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Any other questions? Okay. Tara, business manager. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. So you have my report which outlines all the events that are happening in the business office during the month of November and a couple of other updates that didn't make my report. We're in the process of doing our RFP for our transportation contract and also for our fiscal auditors. Both of those contracts are up at the end of this year. So we'll get those out into the communities to see what we get back for responses to our RFPs. And then lastly, Sharon Elementary School recently qualified for the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Grant because there was funds available. So now the child nutrition team reduces the free and reduced percentage requirement to open that grant up to additional schools. So we're in the process of getting that application completed and submitted. And then the rest of my report comes later unless there's any questions. Any questions for Tara? Okay. That too. One, is any other school eligible for the Fresh Fruit grant other than Sharon? Rod Pester and Bethel have already been approved. They were in the original submissions. And I'm talking about food under your School Food Authority Responsibilities, bullet two, provision two, desk monitoring. If you could kind of fill us in about that code word. So what that is is, given that we are now having all students eat for free and the state of Vermont is subsidizing what normally would be paid for by families under paid lunches qualification or reduced qualification, we had to do what's called provision two, which is a different type of funding mechanism that allows for us to submit claims for that extra percentage. And part of that is this will be the last year that we actually collect free and reduced applications from families. So the child nutrition team is actually auditing our applications and auditing our recording of students in our meal time database, which is where we keep track of all of our students eligibility and then also our direct certification. So all of that is under audit because this will be our final year of doing those collections. Thank you. Anything else for Tara? Okay. Ray, Director of Technology and Communications. Kathy, thank you as I bring up my report. Tried to fit as much as I could, I'm on page. One thing I would like to add is we, within the last two weeks, got our final e-rate reimbursement for last year and our first for this year. So it tells you a bit about the variability in the timelines there. We've heard about Cognia, right? And you had an onboarding call with edgy climber yesterday and our SIS vendor about sorting through an issue relating to attendance and how we define elementary in the SU, which varies from building, could be K to four, could be pre-K to five or pre-K to six, and it just has presented a challenge in terms of the attendance data. But I believe that's all sorted out now. I believe I actually lobald the number of students who have finished their track, my progress because I wasn't, I didn't remember that we are not testing kindergartners in this window and Nanda's shaking her hand, yes. So I believe that number is actually much higher than 70%. Great. There's a GAO report for your perusal and Bill told me once before you liked the pictures, so I included another. This Friday at the half day PD, this is the group who is taking part in the teaching and instructional technology class. Are you teaching it? I am not. We have an instructor from South Brownington. And I will actually be at the admin assistance training on our new report card with the admin registrars. I would entertain any questions. Sorry, I just can't remember. Edu Climer is what? Sure. Even a few. So if you remember Otis, this is a data dashboard. We have assessments from a variety of sources. Edu Climer will be the place where administrators, eventually teachers, see all that data in one place. Got you. Okay. And is it everything or is it just attendance? No, no, no. It will be everything from track my progress to. Oh, okay. State assessments, attendance. Can we ever see one of those? Like even a sample? We can share this one with you when we get it up and running. The last one you wouldn't know on the seat. Yeah, no, no, that's fine. I just, but I'd like to, I just be curious. Yeah, no, absolutely. That could be part of the board development. Yeah, yeah, just a geeky thing, just to see what the principals are looking at when they look at a student or a little student. That'd be really cool. Thank you. Sure. Number two, the five policy, policy committee had a meeting tonight. And Sylvia was going to speak to you. We're at with that policy. So we talked a lot about what people from our different boards said. And there was some feeling that we, people did want a way for different groups to be able to express themselves. We weren't sure about the flagpole being the right place. So we wanted some more information about that. So at our next meeting, we're going to meet with legal counsel. And Jamie's going to ask if we can have it wrapped of what it would look like to have a policy that included something like banners or something besides a flagpole to express different groups and what they wanted to express and to see what that would look like as another option. So we're not making any further decisions right now. We're going to wait and see what counsel suggests and what they come up with for options. Sure, good. Counsel also draft a proposed policy on what a policy could look like if there was a policy that supported the flying of the Vermont and United States flags so that the policy committee could see that and how that would tie possibly to the banner piece. And the policy committee just had some direct questions about our legal counsel, Susan Mannion, who's an affiliate attorney with Deanna Atwood who had drafted this policy. They just had some specific questions, I think, around the legalities of it as well. So we're not ready. Yeah, clearly. Good. Thank you for asking questions and also for taking in feedback because I think both Megan last time and I know Arsad had some animated discussion about it. So I appreciate that you're working on it. Any other questions for the policy committee? Stay tuned for updates. All right, on to action items. So policy, we do have some policies to adopt tonight. These have been approved by all the local districts already. Yep, so all of the local districts have adopted these so it's now up to the full board. So we need to act to adopt policy B35 social media and I will do a roll call vote. So could I guess? I move that way the WRSV board adopt policy B35 about concerning social media. Do I have a second? Second. Is there any discussion before I call the vote? So all those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. We'll do roll call. Sorry. Just to have the count. Sylvia? Maggie? Aye. Is Shannon voting on that? Yep. Shannon? Aye. Andrew? Aye. Tammy? Tammy? Aye. Sue? Aye. Thank you everybody that's online. Do you get Sylvia? Mm-hmm. Yep, then you're good. Bill? Aye. Aye. Aye. And I'm an aye, so it's unanimous. Act to approve the policy C35, can I have a motion? I move that the WRSV Act to adopt or adopt policy C35 verification of student residency for tuition, payment, policy and corresponding affidavits. Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion before I call the vote? So all those in favor say aye. I have Sylvia? Maggie? Aye. Shannon? Aye. Andrew? Aye. Tammy? Aye. Sue? Aye. Rodney? Aye. Aye. Bill? Aye. And I'm in again. Kathy? Sue. So it is unanimous, the vote passes. Thank you guys. Thank you policy committee. Thank you all the communities for boards for approving it. So number nine, we're on to board development series. So the presentation was in the board packet. Thank you guys. Raise up. I don't know if I actually got put in the board packet. But we'll put it in there. Oh, it was linked. Oh, it was, okay, I apologize. Yep, yep, it was linked in there. So welcome to series number one of the integrated multi-tiered system of supports. Sometimes you'll see it say in other documents, systems of support. The S is in a different location. But we have one system that has many supports. So we, we as, you know, Wyver Valley Supervisory move the S so that it fits kind of what? Power to the north. Oh, it fits our structure and what we would like to see in our schools. That's actually correct. So just so everyone knows, we talked a little bit about this that the implementation team is made up of, you know, on to Adams, who's our chief academic officer, myself, a networks director of special services and Makayla Martin, who's the intensive programming system support coordinator. So we work very, very closely here at the supervisory union office, but also in our buildings, which you heard a little bit about already tonight. So just a little bit of history about Act 173 because it's actually been a long time coming. So it was originally, you know, talked about and was supposed to be kind of disseminated out in the state of Vermont in 2016. But what happened in 2016 was that the agency of education was directed to kind of work with some consulting firms to do some data collection of its own about kind of what currently is happening in the state of Vermont around service delivery, you know, for interventions at the targeted level and also at the special education level. So they were directed to kind of do some data digging and then kind of, based on what they found, come up with what they thought were best practices for the state of Vermont. Can I just ask, and you're gonna have to wait until later. Yeah, it's okay. Was this something came down from the Fed saying you have to do this or, and then the state said, why would they stop the process, I guess, and then go back to the drawing board in a way? Do we know that? So start and stop the process. It was supposed to be rolled out in 2016. Yeah, so well, I delayed it because folks were concerned about being able to implement it. Right. Like not having these structures we're talking about in place, as you learn, there's a lot of things we're talking about teachers meeting in data teams, distributed leadership, having early interventions and plans in place that provide intervention with fidelity prior to moving to a specialty valve. Like all those things needed to be in place in order to comply with the law. And really what they recognize is folks weren't ready yet. Yeah, so what happened was, so, and it took a while, I mean, it took a while for them to, I think actually do the data digging and actually come up with reports. There was two different consulting companies. Actually, one of them was UVM, the University of Vermont. And then another one was called a district management group. So they had those two different consulting companies that went and did the work. And so, yeah, so it was delayed, like a rollout was delayed. And then there was a revote and the reports came out and those can be found on the Vermont agency of Education website and it passed. So that's why it's called Act 173 of 2018 because they actually, that's the year that they passed it. And just as a side note, the interesting thing that I find as a director of special education is that everyone thinks that Act 173 of 2018 is a special ed initiative. It's not really. It's really talks about structures and systems that should be in place in schools universally as a whole. There just kind of came about it through the lens of special education. And in my opinion, I think it's because special education is kind of a law bearing, you know, federal, you know, enforced section in education. And so if we kind of take that lens then everyone's going to have to follow through with it or make some changes in their structures that possibly the agency of education had been asking for schools to do for some time but really wasn't getting the leverage that they needed. So this was a way to get some leverage. So also just kind of what the act kind of changed. They did some training for a couple of years, rolling it out. But then in 2023, there's this financial restructuring that I've been talking about. I talked about it a little bit last year that's happening. And then as of July of 2023, 2024, that school year, there's going to be a fully implemented new Vermont rules and regs for special education. And so some of you want to know like what is Act 173? And so really, it really just talks about, you know, providing students with equitable services, kind of the getting students what they need, when they need it without any sort of delay. That's what Act 173 is all about. It's supporting all students. Not waiting until students are, you know, kind of that way to fail model, but getting them what they need, when they need it right away. And so there's that special education, you know, financial shift. It was prior to this in the in years past, more of a reimbursement model. So it was really all about the number of students in special education, which came from our child count reports. And then they would reimburse us. And it was also a formula based on what was called the special education service plan. I mean, that was a really long plan that we had to report, you know, how many special educators we had, how many related service providers, how many students, how many hours of services students were getting. It was really, really detailed and really timely. But that's also what they would use. As a way to talk about special education finance. But now it's shifted to this census block grant funding, which actually incorporates our ADM, but also a statewide salary average. So what are educators in Vermont on average receiving as part of their salary and our child count report numbers. And they have a formula that they have. But then also the special education service plan changed to what they call the Act 173 special education plan. And it's much simpler. All they're really asking for is the number of professional staff that we have and how many are we missing? And then how many total do we have budgeted? So it's very, very simple because that's where they get that average. When they have the average of the total salary, they then use the number of professional staff that we have as part of that formula. So it's very, very simple. Yes. Salaries, you've got high salaries. Do you get more? Have you got low salaries? You get less? That's the state average. So they take the average of all the salaries in the state of Vermont. Okay, and that's the financial aid we get. Yeah. Thank you. And then because it's now block grant funding, we need to do maintenance of effort reporting similar to what Onda and Tara worked together to do regarding like our ESSER funds and other grant funding that we receive. I now have to work with Tara to do that as a way to kind of account for the funds. So we're gonna talk about our system of support through kind of the special services, special education thread. So starting July one of 2023, we're no longer gonna use what was called this kind of discrepancy model is what it was called. And what that was is we would give some students some assessments around kind of their cognitive ability. So their IQ, and then we would give them some assessments around their academic performance. So reading, writing, math, and then we would compare the two and their numbers. And if there was a 1.5 or larger standard deviation between a student's IQ and how they performed academically, then they would then qualify under the category of a specific learning disability. That's what the SLD is, specific learning disability in a basic skill area. So reading, writing, math. 1.5 doesn't sound like a whole lot. It's not much. It's not much. But we're moving away from that. Yeah, we're moving away from that to this is where we then weave in our multi-tiered system of supports. So as of July one, we're gonna be using what's called the multi-tiered system of support response to intervention. So what we need to do is as part of our data teams and in our target of intensive means teams cause we also wanna weave in the social emotional component is really look at students based on our universal assessments provide them the intervention that matches what the data is telling us. So if they're showing that they need intervention and say reading comprehension, understanding what they're reading, then that's the intervention that we should be providing for the students in a really researched based way that is also effective and done in a way that is consistent with the way the program is designed to happen. And then what we do is then we progress monitor over time is how is the student responding to that intervention? If they're making kind of that, that, you know when you look at data, if they're making that that upward line in their data, so they're making the adequate progress, then that means they're responding to the intervention. The things things are going great. And so we should just continue or maybe they don't need the intervention anymore and then they kind of rotate out. If they're not responding to the intervention, so you're kind of still seeing either a flat line or the line is kind of going in a downward motion. They're not responding to the intervention. So we need to either adjust the intervention to kind of, you know, then fit what's going on, do some deeper diagnostics to see even deeper kind of what else is happening there and then do some adjustments. Then try some more, maybe different intervention based on that the new data you collected. Again, check that progress monitoring, you know rate of progress. If they are not making the appropriate rate of progress, then we would pull together, you know a team and kind of talk about is there a specific learning disability happening here then that's deeper. So the why, why is the student not responding even though, you know, we've done some kind of larger, I call it more aerial view of their academic progress that we went a little bit deeper with the diagnostics. We dug a little bit deeper under the surface but we need to go even deeper and kind of find out why they're not responding. So at what point I guess in this process is the child, I don't, I would back in my day, special ed was take the child out of the classroom, give them special instruction and then put them back in the classroom after you've done the special instruction. Obviously MTS is about keeping kids in the classroom as long as possible and seeing if you can adjust the specifics of how they're being educated among the group. Is that correct? Really the intervention could be done any way that is most meaningful for the student. So it's not just one way. So it's not, so at any time, it's not sort of like, okay, you failed the assessment, you're out of the classroom. That's the old way. That's my way, you know, the way I grew up with. So you want to stand there. We want them always receiving as universal instruction. Got you. They may get a double dip. So they may get a reading. Get in the class and outside, yes, special. But not, they're not removed from that universal instruction. So it's not, because it used to be getting the kid back into the classroom, you know, that that was the goal. And on the regular schedule and that they're with everybody else. And now it's that they learn more either in the classroom or with double dips, as you say, is that correct? Okay, thank you. Just so the board is aware that MTSS RTI, which is the response to intervention, is not new in Vermont. We first learned about it in 2014 when the agency of education produced a field guide. That field guide was then revised in 2019. So those of us who have been in education for a little bit, we've really learned a lot about it and practiced and learned from our mistakes. So Jamie mentioned that there are components that we know work in schools that are effective that you need before you launch something like this in July. So one of the things that we've been trying to do is educate through the website and have certain documents housed there. So I wanted to make you aware of that that under our new website design under departments, there is a section for student support. And under there, there's a whole thing about MTSS. So the links at the top right, I linked in the page that I was gonna show the board. So this is just an overview. The idea is to help parents find information, especially as these changes come about. So on the left hand side is really, what is MTSS? How do we define it? And that talked a lot about it. It's a really a proactive approach to getting students support, all students. And we do this through high quality universal instruction. And then we have different levels of support. We like to call them levels and not tiers because we want our system to be fluid. And then on the right hand side, you'll see this is the roadmap vision about what we hope our multi-tier system of supports encompasses around how we support kids in White River Valley Supervising Union. This statement also includes our emphasis on pathway, which I think is really important as we look to kids in middle high school on different ways of meaning their needs. So that information is available on the website. And then we've created a parent guide at the bottom. I've got a couple of visuals to show you that talks about what it means to have universal instruction. That's all students. We want all students receiving universal instruction from their classroom teacher. So it's not in replace of. So we're not gonna be pulling kids out of their classroom to give them a different version of what they're learning and reading. Every student gets access to that high quality instruction from their classroom teacher. And then, so that's all kids. And then some students may need what Jamie just called a double dip. So we would go into our teams and identify through a data point what that double dip is really specific. It's not just reading. Are we talking about a foundational issue with students? Or are we talking about a comprehension issue? So we really do a lot of problem solving in those teams. And we include all professionals in those teams from the regular educator to the interventionist to the special educator. Principal's at that meeting too. I could be there. Did you have a question? Yeah. So I see that special education is all the way to the right. But I'm getting from what you're talking about and how you're going in, you actually start left. And you're part of all of it. Okay, that's very informative. Because you really do think of them as, it's this thing. It's the kids outside the classroom that that's what you're doing. And that's really great to know that you're about instructional education for everybody. That's great. So it's all some. And then few is on the, I mean, go across this. It gets fewer and fewer students. Because the goal is if we're doing high quality instruction at the universal level, 80% of our students will have their needs met. Universal level being in the classroom. In the classroom. With the classroom primary teacher. And then about 10% may need an extra support. And where our goal is to have very few students on the far right between one and 5%. Which is what you've always said because it's expensive. So I was getting them on. Yeah, and it means we're failing. Yeah. Yeah. So as we look at our budgets, we, a lot of investment is at the classroom level because that's where we're gonna get the most investment payoff. Is that that? Because I was watching some things that recently around the COVID catch up. Well, we're not gonna have enough interventionists. So we have to include everyone in this process of supporting all kids. The team effort. Mm-hmm. Oh, this is great. So that's on the website. So if you walk away today and say, oh, what'd she say? That's a good graphic. And we're also, we're pointing parents to this. Especially as the special education is going to change or found referral. I would put that graphic in a letter. And it goes home to parents. I just think that's a really useful visual that will help them understand this system in a way that I don't think I quite understood it until today. And I've been in this board now five, four years, 10 years, I don't know. Nevermind. Yeah. So here's another visual as well. So we're trying to do different types of visuals based upon understanding. And one of the things that we're really trying to emphasize within schools is this idea of being explicit and systemic around instruction, especially at the universal level. So we've been working with schools around, what does that, if we're going to have a systemic approach to reading, what does that look like in your school? Because it needs to be common. Because the language is really important and the approach is really important. So we've been working with schools around that. How are you using, sorry, how are you using the word explicit here? I don't know what that means. I mean, I know. You're really clear about what you want to teach. It's really based upon outcomes at grade levels. So are we clear about what we want teachers to be able to know, understand and be able to do with their students at the universal level, the targeted level and the intensive? So these three levels need to be communicating with each other. And when the language is common, we're seeing students who then accelerate because it's all the same. So when I go to my universal instruction and I'm hearing this word, then I also hear it maybe my targeted small group while I'm making the connection. I don't have to try to figure out what my small group is saying because my classroom teacher is saying something different. So working really hard in those core subject areas to really identify what those systemic approaches are and instruction, so that's where the PV comes in that we've been working so hard on. And then as you move across, it gets more intense. It could mean the target is smaller. It could be more time. It could be less students. It just really is really student dependent based upon their need. And the person delivering that instruction, it's based upon their expertise. So this act really opens up this idea of who is the most qualified to be giving the most intensive instruction. It may not be a special educator. It could be somebody else who's received more training. So it gives us that flexibility to be able to get students what they need at a faster rate than it was before. Reducing the need for more targeted intensive intervention as we move through the system because we know that if we don't catch it early, the gap will continue to widen and we'll need more and more. So that's what we're really focused on right now. And that flexibility and who can provide the intervention actually is part of that financial change also. It used to be that only special educators could work with students who were serviced via an individual education plan, an IEP. They might be able to help do some intervention with maybe one other student, but we were really locked into kind of what we used to call silos, right? Like this was special education. This was general education. And that is no longer. I always do hand motions. It's blended now. Yes, it's a blend. And it's really about who's the most highly qualified person to provide that research-based instruction. And to be honest, most special educators are generalists. They come having a lot of knowledge about a lot of areas. And so last year I started providing really kind of specialized PD for people asking people to kind of identify kind of a passion area, whether it be reading math or social-emotional and really kind of even with supports that pair educators, I asked them the same question. And so we're really hyper-focusing on kind of very specific skill areas so that more and more people are getting highly qualified or even getting the opportunity to attend really high-quality professional development even if they're a pair educator. Because like I said before, at this point all hands are on deck to support all students. If I can just add again, it's bringing back lots of memories for me. The great thing about keeping them in the classroom is that there is absolutely a stigma to being pulled out of the classroom and being put in a special group or whatever or individual and that you're not doing other things and you feel dumb, at least I certainly did at the time. And so I like the idea that everything you're trying to do is keeping you in that room with your peers working along with them. It's really good social-emotional. Yes, absolutely. So kind of doing more of a thread. So again, this is as of July 1st, 2023. So when a student, you know, a team, a family, family is part of the team. So parent, guardian, involvement in a team is crucial right from the beginning, way back, you know, kind of at that universal level after we give universal assessments. A family is just crucial as part of a team member. But when the team, a special education evaluation planning team comes together, they'll be looking at these kind of five key elements as part of their discussion. Because we need to rule these out before we can move forward with qualification for a specific learning disability. Now in the state of Vermont, instead of just comparing a couple of numbers together, now we are actually diving really deep and looking way back at the universal level to make sure students got what they needed when they needed it and not waiting. So the first question is, you know, a lack of adequate achievement in one of the basic skills after receiving high quality universal instruction. So, you know, did they get high quality universal instruction? So that's way back in the classroom. Did students get what they need to access their education? Yes or no, basically is an answer. Demonstrates a lack of progress when provided with scientific research-based interventions. So that's back to the targeted level when they, you know, have a targeted intervention plan and the team's kind of building a learner profile about what does the student need? What are the diagnostics showing us? How are they responding to the intervention by progress monitoring? So it's a lot of data review and looking at what data is showing you and telling you. So the next one, you know, not a result of exclusionary factors. So if you are suspecting that a student has an intellectual disability and that's kind of having real cognitive challenges, you ought to rule that out. Is a student having some serious emotional, you know, kind of moments, kind of that social-emotional piece? Is that blocking their access to their education? You need to rule out, does a student have a visual impairment or blindness? Is the student having difficulty in hearing? Is hearing part of, you know, why they're not being able to access and make progress in their education? Is there an orthopedic impairment? Cultural factors. So if, you know, a student has, you know, comes from a different culture than us or the family practices different cultures than we do, is that causing, you know, that lack of adequate progress, you know, that we're hoping for? And also just kind of other environmental or economic disadvantages. So, you know, is the student missing a lot of school because of things happening in life? You know, are they not able to complete assignments at home just because of things happening at home? We have to rule those out. And also we need to do some observations, which, you know, are really important. And then also here's that parental piece again. We need to make sure that parents have been notified of, you know, the process from the beginning and that they're active participants, you know, in the process and in the progress of their child. So it's really talking more about the student as a learner in what I call putting together like a learner profile and not just giving them two assessments or three assessments that can take all day and you're just comparing digits. You're really getting to know the student and the family, which I just think is wonderful. So the last slide is really about what's all the things that happen behind the scenes to get us ready because this is not, as Annette said, it's more than just special education. It is a lot that has to happen around universal. So we've talked a lot about the team structures that we have implemented in schools, both academic and social emotional. That is happening in all schools as of today and we're monitoring those when we meet with principals. We have a schedule set up a calendar of how we're gonna progress monitor students, how are we gonna check to know whether or not the intervention and the universal instruction is helping with appropriate rate of growth. Those will happen starting in November once we look at TMP. I don't know if everyone knows this, but we are revising proficiency-based graduation requirements at White River High School with a partnership with the Vermont Agency of Education. We're part of a research study with them. They're partnering with us because one of the key things that has to happen is we have to know what the ends are for kids and that starts at the high school and we'll be moving backwards from that, creating and revising clearly articulated curriculum with grade level outcomes in grades K through eight. K-8 focus, or K-5 focus this year will be math and reading. We're hopeful to get all content done in K-6-8 because of the high school work, but that is something that has to be really articulated for not only teachers and students, but also for families. So that will be going on the website as well. That will be a multi-year process around identifying your ends, but then also what does the curriculum look like at each grade level so that families know what's happening in classrooms and how that relates to the report card. All of that work is being done. And then really building staff expertise on early release days through coordinating professional development, but also at the staff meeting level, oftentimes we're asked to come out and present something. I was at Newton this afternoon, this afternoon at their staff meeting talking about a reading assessment that I'm gonna be helping them with. So it's really working with principals to develop this PD plan so that we're ready in a multi-year plan of how we're gonna use investments to be there. Questions, comments regarding series one? Thank you for your report. It was really informative. No, thank you. I really appreciate it, it was great. There's one request. Is it a way you could provide that hard copy either? I tried to print off your slides and got nowhere. It might be me, but if I think some of us might wanna be able to go back to that. Sure. It's an excellent presentation, so there's a lot there. Thank you so much. Anybody have any questions? All right, thank you very, very much. Thank you. All right, we're on to number 10, the special item. This is Anda. Yep. WRVSU Continuous Improvement Plan, Anda. Yes, hi. So we looked at this at our last meeting. We got some feedback from board members around helping to think about how to align it even more closely to the work that we have in our strategic plan. So we have added an additional goal that aligns to our strategic plans and the wording and the strategies and the measures should all be really familiar to you all from that work we've done over the last year. But there was a request that it be part of this plan which we submit to the State Agency of Education as part of our work, as part of our agreement for receiving federal funds and the title funds and the work that we're doing that they keep an eye on. So the first two goals remain the same and then the additional goal is the third one at the bottom of it. Thank you for expanding the academic achievement measures. I appreciate that very, very much because we're doing so much in that area and try to achieve those results we're all wishing for. The one comment I have for, I think I can speak for every board member that, because you don't need it, but I think we do, if you could just use a footnote like we've got page one, all caps, SWIS data. Ethan, do you want to tell us what that is? I don't have a clue. And then we have Y, R, B, S data. So whenever you have, if you just either put parentheses and spell it out or put one word in it or something. I think that would give us some sense, help our learning curve. It's not a big deal, but it's, but thank you. Okay, would you want those defined now or just in the future? I don't want to bog this down, but it's just a general help for board members. We can answer our wife or husbands or partners questions. I think it's a good question to try to answer. Well, if it's a public document too, if that's the goal of it, is that it's a public document that we hope people will read, then we want to make sure they don't get stopped by something they don't understand, an acronym. So yeah, a footnote or glossary. I think you're absolutely right, Bill. All right, so, Onda, are you looking for us to approve this tonight? Yeah. Oh, okay. So. Make a motion, go down here. Make a motion that the WRVSU approve the continuous improvement plan. Is this a particular draft that we need to just as presented? As presented. Seconded by Bill. Is there any discussion before I call the vote? All right. All right, so hearing no discussion, I will call the vote. All those in favor say aye. I will start with Sylvia. Shannon. Aye. Tammy. Tammy. Aye. Andrew. Aye. Maggie. Aye. Sue. Aye. Ethan. Aye. Rodney. Aye. Bill. Aye. Kathy is an aye, so the unanimous no-slee passes. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Onda. Thank you. 10.2 is draft one of the WRVSU 2324 budget. That would be Tara. I'll start and then Tara will jump in. That's what we discussed. Tara, you're good with that? So programmatically, within the SU budget, you'll see that in general on the fiscal finance, technology, universal instruction that we're really looking to stay status quo in there, other than we're still looking to continue to move our work forward in regards to curriculum development, proficiency-based learning, things of that nature. And so what you'll see is that that budget is up slightly, but it is up in a sense of there's no added FTE to that budget, okay? And so those are just anticipated costs. Health care, et cetera. Yeah. Work that we need to do around some contracted service to help support this work that we're doing. We're also trying this budget, some of the contracted service work that we've been able to receive in the past. We've been able to leverage ESR. We believe that we're gonna still need some of that work around PD and support around our system. So there's some funds that are in there for that as well. So you'll see that it's up 3.6%. And then, again, we are not requesting additional FTEs or anything in that part of the budget. So what we'll talk to you about is like we do, typically at the local district budget, is where there could be some changes in FTE. And what you'll see here is that we are looking to increase by 1.0 special educator for next year within the budget. And that is found on page 205. But you're gonna see a decrease in paraprofessional salary line. And so we are looking to decrease within our paraprofessionals. And I think that was like a one, is that what it was? But we are looking to increase. So by three paraprofessionals, we're looking, it's on page 205 under special ed teacher salaries. There's the SU budget and then there's the special ed. I moved on to the special ed budget. Ah, that's why. Okay, sorry. I didn't hear that part. No, that's all right. There wasn't any changes in FTE. We typically do, and I apologize that that didn't happen. You're used to usually seeing those, but that's why I wanted to point them out. And we'll make certain you have that next time. So it's page 205. Yeah, I know I see it. So you'll see that the teacher salaries are up, support staff salaries down. That is cause we're looking to add one more FTE for special education, specifically supporting students that may need some intensive supports at the secondary level in programming, thinking like students who are in that three to five percent who could have what we call real serious challenges with intellectual disability. And we talked about trying to partner with CVSU last year. If you remember to try to build some programming in that regard, we're right now budgeting for another FTE to help us do that within our own high school, which will serve students with those profiles across the ESU, just like our high school alternative programming serve students across the ESU right now. They enroll in our high school and we serve them within our alternative classroom. That's part of why you'll see special budget down is that we continue to see our contracted services decrease around needing to tuition students out of district. And then a minute I'll give you the sense of how many students we've been able to bring back within district by doing this work. The other thing that's still on the docket is is that Annette and I are gonna meet November 11th, I think it's the 11th, with our, my colleagues within Winooski Valley supervisory union, the collaborative. So from the Moyle North, so thank Johnson, down to us. There's a, up and down the 89 corner, there's, it's called Winooski Valley. In superintendents like Montpelier, Washington Central, when you think U32, Spalding and Berry, Central Vermont supervisory union, who we were trying to partner with last year, Randolph, we're looking as there are ways to regionally better support our kids in a more efficient way. This is still a demographic within our ESU that I believe and Annette believes we're struggling with. Meeting students needs where they're at if they need real intensive interventions and supports at that middle high school level, which is what we talked to you about last year. We were hopeful for that agreement to come through. It didn't. We're budging a special educator to start at this point, to start building that now in the event that this regional aspect doesn't come through. Okay. Okay. What you will see, and I mentioned this to some of you in local district meetings, is part of why we are able to get down to 35 support staff paraprofessionals is that as we look to implement earlier interventions and supports in intensive behavioral plans, that's happening before a student would qualify for special ed, right? So think about the presentation you just saw. We may need paraprofessionals now to implement behavioral plans or intensive supports before qualifying a special ed. So some of you in your local district, you have seen regular apparels go up. The reason for that is, is that sometimes we need regular apparels to help implement intensive plans, especially when you think about grades K through three. And right now we continue to see, if you said socially, emotionally, where are you seeing a lot of need? Definitely on our primary levels. And I would say that's a area where COVID has really hit. The pandemic has really hit our students, is that our students in those primary grades, just lack of exposure, lack of opportunity to have social time with peers, we're seeing that impact our kids. And so those are the interventions we would look to try to implement through our MTSS prior to them qualifying for special ed. So some of you, you will see an FTE where to run it has, we're suggesting three more additional apparels there in that regular budget. But that's the adjustment there. The overall bottom line of the special ed budget is down 1.65%. So when you look at your assessments across special ed in the rest of the fiscal services, technology, curriculum, my office, overall the two budgets we're presenting you tonight are down when you combine them. The one position that we did not put in this budget currently because we wanted to kind of get a feel of the board is we have been wrestling with this idea of a 504 case manager for the SU. And what a 504 case manager would do, I'm gonna let Annette talk to you about right now. That is an area where I want you to hear about it. I just kind of wanna get a feel of it and see if the board would support this idea of us to look to add that position within the SU budget. Right now, special educators are case managing 504 plans. And you may say, well, what's the reason for that? Part of the reason for that is that we were doing it differently in every building. And I was becoming increasingly concerned about our buildings being out of compliance around 504 case management in federal regulation. So I'll let Annette just briefly talk to you about the numbers and what we're seeing around 504 across the SU. Sure, thank you. So, yes, so Jamie's fears of being out of compliance is very, it was very true when we started to really dig deeper and try to figure, and some buildings weren't even sure what students were being serviced through a 504 plan. Some 504 plans that we received were almost two plus years out of date. So that means we were definitely way out of compliance. And so the special education department has been spending a tremendous amount of time really trying to clean it up, find students, contact parents to have kind of those conversations, trying to find student plans. And because we have a lot of students with student choice, we also have to be the LEA or the legal educational representative for those students as well. So trying to keep track of right now we have students in 17 different schools outside of our supervisory union. I counted them today because it was brought up at our monitoring meeting. So I was able to go and count them today. Between middle schools and high schools, we have students in 17 different schools outside of our supervisory union. And so we need to keep track of those as well. And the number of students being serviced or qualifying for a 504 plan is quite high. I think more than what we all had expected, definitely higher than what I had expected. We are over a hundred students, you know, qualifying. And just with the pandemic in general, students are receiving diagnoses more and more through their pediatricians or, you know, other related service providers like psychologists or therapists, which then we need to then discuss, you know, is that diagnoses impacting a life, ability in education is one of those, you know, for that student. And if it is, then that student then will qualify for a 504 plan, which includes some services and accommodations for them to be able to access their education based on their disability or their diagnosis. And so those numbers are rising, they're rising nationally. But, you know, just here in our supervisory union, those numbers are rising as well, Ethan. Two questions, does a 504 necessarily cost us more money? A 504 plan falls under your general education budget. It's the American Disabilities Act, it falls under that. So there isn't any specific like grant funding or other financial source with that. That is just, it is the school's responsibility to provide them access to their school in their education based on their diagnosis and their disability. It could definitely cost us more money. Yeah, one way to think of it is essentially we would be looking to provide targeted or intensive supports, but there's not a funding stream tied to it. But we can use our title funds to support academic interventionists who may serve that student just like they would serve any other student who doesn't qualify for intervention via 504. Second question is would this position, maybe it's too soon to ask this, but it sounds like we've got a process to get in compliance. Would we then need a full-time officer? Do you think you could handle it once we were in full compliance? No, because out of what I'm coming across is out of the 17 schools that our students are attending outside of our supervisory union, they all do things differently. And I can't tell them how to do it so that it matches our system. And so I'm trying to like teach people how it's done in different buildings. And I've been having a lot of pushback and I've been working really hard with some of our sending schools to kind of work it out, make deals. Like let's kind of come up with how are we working together to make sure students get what they need. You say we're responsible for these students. I mean does that mean, obviously we're paying their tuition, but do we have a financial burden as well for that student in that school that? We may, we may, again this is the service. Oh yeah, okay, okay. Yeah, depending if they need the equipment or whatever the service is. Okay, yeah that is interesting. I did not know that before. Or like a paraprofessional. Right. Would be an example. We would have to pay the district. It's interesting why, but there you go. Well there are students. Right. And we're still the LEA. Yeah, we're still the LEA, but so Ethan just an example, one school district that a lot of our schools attend that district says, oh you want to attend meetings? Great, we'll invite you, but they say we'll take care of everything. Right. But then you go to another school district and they don't want to be responsible for anything. They don't want to be responsible for holding and facilitating the meeting, paying for any of the equipment and materials. So I'm kind of working with like this spectrum of people's, their own kind of personal district schools responses. And I've been working with our legal, with Dina Atwood to kind of help me walk through it and how to navigate with some of the schools that really want to be hands off. So if it's one person kind of coordinating, it would just be a lot easier because that person will know the system and know each building and it would just bring some consistency. Cause right now it's kind of, it's overwhelming, overwhelming our system as we're trying to have our special educators be interventionists for all students and take on this on top of it. It's just, it's adding. And just so everyone knows our numbers are higher than expected. So the number of students that each special educator is responsible for is higher than expected just because we had a lot of movements, which is fantastic for the White River Valley Supervisory Union. But it just increased and really thinned out our system. So I think the question for the board really is, are you supportive of us looking to add that FT so you can at least see what that would do to the overall bottom line budget for next month? I would say yes. Yeah, I'd support it. I would say yes to look at it. I would just listening to what sounds like a really overwhelming situation. And I'm sure there's a lot to unpack there in terms of the different way approaches or the lack of what sounds like accountability from different schools. And I wonder is one case manager, like is that gonna do adequate? If you have a hundred people in school, all different school districts doing something different and more cases than you expected, is that just a piece of duct tape on a crack in the dike. And I'm just wondering if that's the appropriate thing or if we should be looking at two or I'm just being ridiculous because I don't, I'm naive about the process. No, thank you, Maggie. That's a good point. And I think what I can come back with when we, if the board wants to explore what that would look like, more, I can come back with more solid numbers and possibly what the case manager might do is really kind of coordinate the 17 schools that are outside of our supervisory union. And I can give you bigger, deeper numbers of what those look like just so then it brings you down a little bit more. This is Sylvia. So if you're looking at the person, the 504 coordinator as looking at the 17 schools outside of the district, who would do the ones for the schools within the district? If I take, again, I'll look at the numbers, but if I take those numbers off our current special educators plate, it might be more manageable. So our special educators would continue to be the case manager slash meeting facilitator for students that are within our supervisory union buildings. How would that work to make sure that all the schools within the supervisory union are managing it the same way? The coordinator could oversee that to make sure that it's done the same way. And that's what we're doing right now, Sylvia, is our special educators are managing it, but on top of that, some of them are managing students who are at the high school level, even though they're an elementary special educator because they serve that district. Right. I mean, I can tell you alone at the White River Valley High School, there are more students served via a 504 plan than there are students served via an individual education plan. So that alone is really eye-opening and those numbers are just increasing. All right. So I say, can I just get a quick thumbs up that we agree to let them take it back and come back with some more concrete numbers next month? Anybody opposed to that? That'd be a thumb down. That'd be a thumb down. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you. Kate Jarvis raised her hand. We're gonna have another public comment. Kate, we're gonna have another public comment coming up here very shortly. So can I, I'll catch you then. It's board goals. Board goals. We had a good retreat. It was getting warm. Thursday. I feel like I'm getting better. They made me shut off the AC on me. Yeah, I know. I was gonna say, it feels a little stifling in here. Yeah, I'll put the AC on. I don't want to AC, but no, I just like fresh air. And for all that could not make it to our board retreat, it was a very good board retreat. We had a lot of good conversations. We had a trivia game. I think Lune took away the winner with the candy at the end, but it was a good icebreaker on the great way for board members to take the opportunity to get to know each other. And we had some really good discussion and ideas come out of the meeting. And just to see me and some board members face to face for the first time, it just makes a big difference to know who you're really talking to. And there were several things we talked about, some of which are in our goals that we would like for initiatives that the board take on. Two things. So what happened is we sort of had a brainstorm session among the members who were there, board members who were there and came up with these seven sort of goals. And then I typed them up and then Andrew put together sort of, my brain is getting tired at the end of the day, sort of direct action, I'll call them, ABCDEF for several of these, so that we can really say, yes, we did that when we get to the end of our year. We present this to sort of your input. I think, yeah, we don't have sort of, specific goals for number seven. And number seven is one that brings up some really good conversation. And I think the key word I would like to point out to you is viable in that sentence. We're not saying that at any point, some hackles start to go up when we start to say, hey, what about, focusing on our high school, being the flagship high school. And it's like, no, no, no, people like their choice, it's not that. It's that we realize that a lot of students, even students, elementary and middle school students who are very close to our one high school, aren't even considering it as a viable option. And that we felt it was a good goal to bring it up to and to think about that as an SU, at an SU level, not just at the, okay, that's the high school's problem. No, it's part of our SU. It's a program we want to strengthen. And that we want it to be on, ideally, every family's list of a potential school as a viable option for them. They may go somewhere else, obviously, for many, many reasons. But, and I think that's the one area we probably don't have as a board. Obviously, as Andrew shared with us at the retreat, the high school board, and it's the White River, is it the White River High School? I never quite get it right, is that correct? White River Valley, WR, WRVHS, thank you. That they have goals that they're very aware of and a new principal, and that they're working hard toward bringing their program up. But, so I think that would be one specific area that we could think about where we have specific goals that we can attain as the board to support them, whether, and I really don't know what those would be. We couldn't come up with those at the time. So, maybe seven isn't something we keep on, maybe it is. I like it, at least something to think about. So, I don't know if we feel these are good as they are, we can move to accept them. If there are suggestions, we can certainly go back and Andrew and I, being a committee of two, can do a little more work on them. But I guess we'd like to know, if you've all had a chance to look at them, it's not a long read, what your preference is? And Andrew, yeah, do you have any comments to support this as well? Oh. Sorry. Oh, I see. I think there's something the board can do to help with that. Thanks for having the words at the time. Oh, yeah, I didn't notice that, yes, you're right. And the other one that I think we talked about at the retreat, creating the board mentoring program. Yeah. And so I think what we can have in our goals is what we'd like to, I don't want to put in what the board mentoring program would be, but we're going to start a process to create board mentoring programs what we'd like to get out of that. Clearly, collect the potential mentors, do we want to provide instructions for how to be a mentor or that kind of thing? So I think it's something that we could take back and speak to our individual boards about. And come back with some feedback, we can send the feedback. To either of us. And we can bring you back a revised draft. We can bring back a final draft. But this felt like a really good document to have for the board. Absolutely. That sets us on a path. It's a checklist. It's a nice way to, we can look at the end of the year when after we've evaluated Jamie, we can sort of say, hey, how do we do? Which is always Bill's big thing, accountability. John, I was gonna, I really liked this and you did it in one page. So that always fills me as somebody that in business school always appreciated being able to write a short memo rather than a term paper. That's got me through graduate school. But anyway, I think it would be helpful that on the back page we have a copy of our superintendent schools for this year because it's in more detail. And I think we can't lose focus with that detail because it's just a lot of huge things and they're like developing a capital plan. We don't talk about that specifically. We talk about it generally. So if we have in the back as a reference tool, we can have it available to each board member as we go through the year. That would be my suggestion. Is there any comments or questions on this document or are we good with taking it back to each of our boards? Giving feedback to Ethan or Andrew. And then we'll come back with hopefully a final copy that we can adopt in November. Thumbs up. Can I get a thumbs up? That's a solid plan of action for everyone. All right, thank you guys. Sure. I really appreciate the work you did on that. Hours, hours. After hearing about all your work, it makes it. It makes it some kind of small. So I'm going to do, I know some people keep on after our first public comment. So I didn't want to exclude anybody who popped on and had a public comment to the board tonight. So I'll just go through the people that we have on one more time and see if we have a public comment. So Kate Jarvis, I know you raised your hand. If you would like to. Hi. Hi. I was particularly interested from a school field trip and the soccer playoff game. Ah, no worries. I missed a public comment. I just got a couple of questions for clarification after listening to me. So I'm just curious, how many, do we know how many students are currently being switched and out for the 17 other schools? Do we have a count from our district as a whole? Interesting, SU as a whole. Yeah, so if I can jump in. Kate, as far as tuition out, that is, I can tell you how many students leave our SU and don't attend our high school, but as an SU all but one member district have school choice at some point, whether it's middle high school and or, like Granville Hancock has complete school choice. So that's, I guess if you could provide clarity as to our current school choice policy. So I would, and I can email you or you can email me to provide clarity, but I am curious as to our numbers of who is currently switching out the other schools number-wise and then what the policy is. If parents are to choose to send their kids to other schools, what is the policy? I speak to this real quick. So I think there is a little bit of confusion about what these tuition numbers are. These are for special education students that we can't serve in our own district. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, so, so we have, we have students. Oh yeah, yeah, sorry, I got confused. Yeah, no, no. Do you want to answer it then, Andrew, or no? No. So just real quick, and Kate, I'm more than happy to go into more detail around it. Within our SU, yeah, no, around supervisory, around the supervisory union, we have a school choice district in Stratford. They operate a K-A district and students in grades nine through 12 get to have school choice and they can attend any public school within Vermont, also bordering public schools in New Hampshire and then any independent school that is accredited by the agency of education and the district would pay up to the state average. This is the same for any of our school choice districts. Sharon is a pre-K-6 district, they tuition out students seven through 12. We have First Branch Unified District, they are a K-8 district, they tuition out students nine through 12. Rochester Stockbridge Unified District is a pre-K-6 district, they tuition out students seven through 12 and then we have Granville Hancock Unified District which serves students in pre-K through 12 and all of their students have school choice. And then we have the White River Unified District which serves students pre-K 12. Students within the White River Unified District in grades nine through 12 can participate in Winooski Valley School Choice which means that they can attend other public high schools through an application process that comes out of the guidance department every year and so the board can cap that number. We have never come close to having students request to the number that's capped. I believe it was 10 the last two years. Of all the schools that they're going to. That list goes out in the application packet. Okay, and where do we access that? That comes out through the guidance department. I believe it's right around every December, first of January. And that is done through Winooski Valley School Choice and is coordinated out of the Washington Central Supervisor Union. So there was a comment made that there are currently more students being served by a federal war plan and I didn't quite understand it, it was a little fast. Is that at the White River Valley real school or high school? At the high school. And if you could insert me to comment, could you repeat that? I don't know. Yeah, so it's that we currently right now and when we look at case management caseloads, we have more students receiving services via 504 plan versus an individual educational plan. No, no, I wouldn't, I would say no. I think it really looks at like if we can provide services for students even if they have a disability and it's not reaching that 1.5 standard deviation then that could be an example where a student could get services via 504 plan versus an IEP. Thank you for your questions. Patty McLoving, hopefully I said that correctly. Do you have any comments for the board? Okay, thank you. Simon Pod. All right, hearing none. Is there anybody else on? There's an unknown call around. If you have a comment, just let us know. Okay, thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you everybody. And thanks for public for showing up and hearing all the work we're doing. No resignation. We have a new hire. Tara, you wanna talk about the new hire? Oh yeah. We are happy to announce that Jane Prescott started with us on Monday. She lives in South Stratford and was a referral from one of our board members which we are grateful for. So her title with us is Payroll Accounting Clerk. So we've started her off in her first two days getting right into the weeds of our FY22 audit. So it's so far, she's having a great time and doing a great job. So we're really excited to have her join our team. You're amazing to people in the county. Thank you, Tara. I'm really glad to be more on right now. Yeah, well, no, for me. Not for that. Is there any other business for the board tonight? No. Future agenda items, things we need to add on. We have our action. We'll go look at the calls again. Yep. Hopefully there's something for the flag. And we'll be bringing around and talking about volunteers for the mentoring program to each of the boards. So hopefully we can have a group put together that. And we'll have a discussion about what it should look like to maybe with the board. Yep. So we'll talk more about the mentoring program. Draft two of your budget. Draft two of the budget. Draft two of the budget. Our next meeting date is Tuesday, November 22nd. And beyond that, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All right, so moved. Thank you, everybody. See you next month.