 Any adjustments to the agenda? No. Great. Any, we're not going to sign a time keeper tonight. Keep moving. Any public comments? Public. Public. Public. Public. Public. Public. Public. Public. Public. Public. Public. Public. Public. Public. Public. Public, public. Public. public. Public. Public. Public. Public. Public. Look who I will delay that we had the other day because of that role. That being that there were some of the staff members. Sauce烡, the. CAMILLE was playing. Okay, Peggy, can you break it a little bit? Okay, let me find a different spot and bar in here. Let me stay here. Is this working a little better? Can you hear me better here? Sounds better. Thank you. Yes, okay. Okay, so I'll repeat a concern to me regarding our two-hour delay that we had the other day because of bad roads. That being that there were some staff members who felt that they were being pressured or asked to come in at the usual time, even though the roads were bad. And I guess my feeling is that if the roads are too bad to run the buses on, then we shouldn't be asking staff members to come in at the usual time because the roads are just as dangerous for them as they are for the school buses. Did you? Yeah, I'm happy to comment on that, Peggy. So we certainly have some employees that we do need in on a regular time, like maintenance folks, to make certain that we are open. We try to get folks in as quickly and swiftly as possible so that we have correspondence with our buses. Undelayed starts. And then we also do meet our staff here to receive students because students can stop, start being dropped off by 9.30. So we ask people to come in as quickly as they can and be safe natured. And that's what's in the- Yeah, okay. We have a handbook. And so that's certainly what we would reiterate to staff. Well, good. That's what I hope would be reiterated. But anyway, that was a concern expressed to me. Thank you. And I'm happy to clarify that with folks. Shannon, I have something that I shared with Andrew and Jane. And I guess I could jump in with it now. I think it bears further consideration. I've had constituents reach out to me about the green and gold scholarship and the way that it's awarded. So that's the scholarship that gives you, and for some reason, my voice is really echoing and really distracting me. So I apologize. I'll turn my microphone way down. My speakers. So that's the scholarship that pays for four years of tuition for someone to attend UVM. Last year, our two highest GPA award-winning students, neither of them chose to attend UVM. And there are other schools that maybe establish an award at like a 3.76 and then ask students to write an essay and then the essay is blind-scored. You know, and that pool is only kids who would commit to UVM or some other process. I mean, that this scholarship was quite a bit, wouldn't be wasted essentially. So there's a request that we have sort of an exploration so that one of our kids is able to do that scholarship to go to school. I don't know if I have that as well as I do have that. I'm sorry, Lisa. Chris is pointing out that the feedback seems to be coming from the live room. Is it possible for you to mute the mic when board members are talking over here? Sure. Awesome. Thanks. I think that's a great point if one of those students isn't going to use it, we should be making sure it's going somewhere that it could be used. I guess a quick question about that scholarship. You said it's only for going to UVM? To my knowledge, it's a UVM award to each high school in the state. So there's one per... Yeah, so we're going to add this to the agenda anyway. So I think, I guess we should come up with ideas about what we think would be an appropriate way to award it and maybe find some examples from other schools and we can have a full discussion in January and hopefully make a decision. So that students have plenty of time to apply and whatever. Did you have something to say? Yeah, I was worried that Lisa was going to say that we didn't award it to the student with the highest pure GPA, which is what generally is expected by UVM. They do allow it the administration's discretion if they feel like there's an inflated GPA because of their choice of courses. It encouraged us to look at the rigor of a student's schedule during that GPA. So we do, in fact, on very rare occasions I'm not exactly that in but I'm always worried about catching clack back because we didn't go with the valedictorian which is pretty specifically what UVM's looking for. It's the top student academically in the school. So there's not discretion for it. They don't ask for an application process. They ask for the student with the highest GPA. And they say if there's something like transfer credits from a home school or maybe that gave somebody a really high GPA that we could make an exception to that based on circumstances, which we have on occasion done when we have a student who's taken a lot of AP classes for example, challenge themselves and somebody else maybe took an easier schedule and the GPAs are almost the same but somebody who pushed themselves in high school. Right, yeah. So Lisa, did you have examples of other schools that did a different way? Yeah, I mean, I can, if we're gonna move it to another agenda, which is fine, I'm happy to collect some and bring them. I think Jamie said that he could do that too. So maybe we should pull those together and jump in. I think, did you say January? I wasn't hearing what was being said in the room very well. Yes, January. Okay, that sounds great. We'll be ready. I'll be ready. All right, Andrew, I'm gonna hand it back to you. We're up to number five. Okay. All right, well then I'd ask for a motion to approve the minutes of Tuesday, November 16th. So moved. Seconded. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That's our approved. Is there any board comment at this time or did we just... I have some, I have a question I guess. So at what point do we start thinking about mandating that the people in the school, the adults in the school be vaccinated? It's FDA approved now for adults. So it could be mandated. We have to get past the emergency authorization, which is where it still is for our students. But I think that especially with the crazy spikes we have seen this year and the disruption, the constant disruption to our students' education, we need to be thinking about mandating vaccination for people who are coming into the building. So the agency of education is gonna actually do that for us Shannon. There's supposed to be a memo coming out. Now there's some legal battles happening right now around employers mandating vaccinations. So I know that the AOE attorneys are in on this. And so my plan was, as soon as we received the director from the agency of education to immediately implement that directive was going to be my take on that. And certainly as a board, you could take a stronger take on that if you chose to not wait, but you definitely have SU employees that work in your building as well as White River Unified District employees. So that really seems like it's something that the full board should take up if the full board doesn't wanna wait for that AOE directive. We are well over 95% vaccinated across the SU with our staff. Do we know as a district what the percentage of adults in the building are? We're over 95% SU-wide. I can certainly get your figure for White River Unified District. You're one of the higher districts. Any other board comment? Okay, we'll move on to the superintendent report. Good evening. I hope you're all well. I'm sure that the faculty and staff are very excited that tomorrow is gonna be the last day before break. I think we all need to recharge, myself included. So I'll put an email out, but I just let folks know I will be out of the office Thursday until next Tuesday. And I'm encouraging all of our administrators to try to get away and fill their tank. Well, what I expect to be a pretty pretty rocky next few months with COVID. Stay tuned. I don't know what's gonna come out around guidance around contact tracing, just so folks know. I do know the Agency of Education indicated that schools were not gonna be responsible for contact tracing over the holiday break. I don't know if that is a preview of what's yet to come. And what I mean by that is New Hampshire is no longer contact tracing within schools. They notify of positivity and they ask the positive student to leave. I will tell you that as an SU, we've done a thousand antigen tests over the last few weeks for close contacts. We're keeping up, but I will tell you that we won't be able to keep up if we can continue to see numbers increase. Other than the good news is some of our elementary students are starting to hit the vaccination threshold, which will relieve some of the pressure that we've seen. So I hope that what we'll see is that as vaccination increases, that even if we see greater positivity, I think we would be fooling ourselves if we don't think that we're not going to see additional spikes in positivity in the community based on what we're seeing for data. That due to the fact that we do have more folks vaccinated that we'll have less folks participating in tests to stay. And so that hopefully will make it a little bit more manageable. Our numbers around test to stay have been very small in regards to positivity. I know of only one positive result across the SU through antigen testing. So I think that that speaks to the fact that our mitigation efforts are working. So we have all these students that would have been quarantined, that are now in school, learning in person, and it worked. We had a positive student that we were able to catch and then isolate and have them leave. So the test to stay program is certainly working well. I'm just, again, it's just another strain on the system. That's all. We were able to bring in two medical assistants that we're covering via ESSR. They are stationed right at your two buildings. One at Bethel, one at Royalton. But they've also assisted us in other places across the SU when we've had significant positivity and needed some support around test to stay. I would say, though, that at this point now all the buildings have their legs under them for the most part. And so that they're able to implement test to stay at home at this point. And then the waiting. I talked about the waiting study that came out. And so the task force that did the waiting study presented really two different proposals. One that would change the weight of students via average daily membership, which with them would affect equalized pupils based on. And that proposal is focused on those students in middle school actually increasing the weight of middle school students, which is not the case right now. And it focuses on increasing the weight for those students that would qualify for free and reduced lunch. Based on your current free and reduced lunch and enrollment numbers, that proposal shows you increasing and equalized pupils. And then there's the second proposal that is looking more at like a grant-funded mechanism to support ed funding. So it would actually take away equalized pupils and students who qualify for free and reduced lunch or in your middle school or in a high school would be awarded a dollar figure from the ed fund that would then come to us. And even in that proposal, we would benefit. So we would benefit both ways in regards to our tax rates, which the thought process then is, is it frees up more resources for us to then to invest in our students at our schools. So I'll continue to follow this closely. Right now that it's come out of the task force, the legislature is definitely gonna do more research on it. I do expect more reports on this and more testimony. So stay tuned. But in general, for White River Unified District, we look like this would be a benefit to us. And their proposal does result in a five-year phasing if this is adopted by the legislature this coming school year. And then the only other thing is, and if you looked at your BSBA email today, they talked about it, it was brought up at the full board meeting, is that they do expect the legislature to take action. Once again, on providing the flexibility around having Australian ballot votes, if the school district approves that, and or to delay a vote if needed. So that won't, we won't get approval of that until January, but as we're talking about budget, it's something for us to be thinking about before we go morning and meeting. And then finally, the only other thing is based on all that information is, is that I've taken what I think is a solid assumption that you would be fine with us once again doing our own mail-er. We got positive feedback about that last year. I think you've done it now at least for a couple of years. And so I've talked to your town clerks and indicated that that was our plan unless I heard differently. And I'll take any questions folks have. What's the, do we have a sense of what's the percentage of the five to 12-year-old kids that have started taking the, getting the vaccine heard on the news that it was like 90% in that age group have gotten at least their first shot statewide. Chris, I haven't had the heart to ask my nurses to pull that data. I was gonna let them rest and they're the ones that have access to that. I don't, but I was gonna have them run those figures for me after break. Yeah, and I would just say too that our twins have been doing the test to say, it's last weekend, this week, and just say thanks to Miss Newman and Shane Oaks and everybody else that's involved with it. The kids, we drop them off, they go in. I don't hear any complaints or anything about it when they get home. So I think it's been smooth. So I think the people that are administering it, I know it's a lot of work, but I think they're doing a good job. Thank you. Thanks Chris, yeah, they're doing great. Oh yes, I forgot, I saw Andrew out there yeah, I was training kids in school. It's okay. Anything else for Jamie? All right, yeah, I do think the separate mailer makes sense. That's awesome, thanks. You're doing a good job with that rest, too. I appreciate it, give me more time. Quick question, Chris's comment reminded me that I meant to ask, is there something going on with the heating system at Bethel that we need to be aware of? No, we had an issue, like you've had issues for a few years, and we had to reset, and it's fine now. I mean, we need to deal with it, but yeah, no. Okay, principles. Good evening. We didn't plan who was gonna say what first, but. I would say for, we'll echo what Superintendent Kanari said, I think ready for a break, and I've been working hard on wrapping up this end of the new year. We continue to do what we've been doing in MCSS and meeting in our teams in a pre-K to 12 group, so that feels good, slow, but good progress. Just had a meeting this week, and just tried to actually plan for summer, too, which feels so far away at this very moment, but thinking ahead to PD opportunities this summer. We had our district universal MTSS meeting yesterday afternoon, and there was a lot of excitement shared by middle school staff about their work around restorative practices, which is mentioned in our report, but it was heartwarming for me to hear how invested they are in and how they really sense that that's gonna be a game changer at the middle school. Likewise, I think what we're doing here at the high school would lead them up has the potential to really change the community and the culture here. Just in the last couple of weeks, it feels a lot more safe and kind in the hallways, and I don't know to what extent it's connected to that or not, but this feels like we're moving in the right direction. If you were here, I would ask you to step outside for a minute and take a look at our green team wall, where all of our green verified students are named with a couple of special quotes about their contributions to our community, but that's been going really well. Pick up now. Our community outreach continues and continues. We, as an example, we did a recruitment night at the Sharon Elementary School, and it turned out very low turnout, but very positive. The two families that came are set up for visits when we get back, and we'll continue to reach out. We're also gonna go over to our set and do the same thing in January. We have also been doing some work with our Act 67 grant, and kids have been doing some after-school programming it and in-school pod projects. It's, things are going pretty well, all things considered. I would also wanna focus on the test to stay as a community piece. That the communication on that has been very good. I haven't done it. Probably helpful. But folks have been really helpful. Parents have to stay the first day and they're queued up in the parking lot, and everyone to a person has been supportive. The kids have been great, and the support step that we've put in place for folks entering the stuff into the computers, meeting people, and also actually doing the swabbing has been very, very positive. The last thing that isn't actually in our part, that I would highlight, and I think it was in Superintendent Kamari's report, is we've been working with Katie McLean on our communication, and we did finally launch our elementary specific middle schools had already had their specific Facebook page, but also the high school specific Facebook page. And we have a couple coordinators, Jamie Rainville and Kate Lucia, and then numerous people in the middle school who are helping put out all the good things that are already happening here, and it feels good, because I think we're doing a lot better job of celebrating what's already taking place here via the Facebook pages, so. There's also two, you okay? Yeah, I'm great. Two other things, our Yellowstone trip that will be in the summer has become so popular that we have, I think, 18 kids and three adults that are attending, and we're pretty excited about that, and they're making their way towards that. The other thing that's happened, and you'll see it very soon, is we have our digital virtual concerts for the elementary and middle school, and they're separate, of course, and we'll be sending those out. We hope to push out this week. I know the middle school's gonna be queued up tomorrow. I'm not sure if we'll be able to do this. Half of the elementary is currently done. We're almost there for the other half. Yeah. So that was part of the delay day that put a little bump in the road. So good things are happening. Any questions? We'll say the Facebook content has been really nice. I enjoyed seeing that. One thing on that COVID communication, I'm wondering in the new year if we're gonna keep every time that somebody's, there's positivity in the school, if we're gonna still have that same notice go out. And that might be for the scanning. Yeah, no, the plan would be that we'll still have a notice go out, it'll probably be a little more compacted notice, like just an email blurb and a phone call that says, check your email. I get sick of hearing my own voice. I get all the calls across the SU. I've been discussing that with Shane about how other schools are doing it and other SUs have shrunk their communication down to what exactly they need. So I do think you're gonna see a change in that after the year, but we'll still always, we'll always notify if we have positivity. Right, okay, yeah. I've just been finding, you know, when there's, if we do have a big wave and that's basically, you know, many times a week then that might make sense to do some sort of summary. Some SUs are doing a summary, yeah. And so I've thought about that too. I did a lot of commitments around when we first started this that I would always let folks know so I wanna stay true to that. So I just gotta figure out how do I roll it out to the community so they still feel like we're being transparent and supportive, right? Like that they have this information but also not have a place where like here we go again. Right, like here's another robocall or here's another one. Right, yeah. So, yes, I am working on that. Okay. Thank you though. It's good to have that question come up. Yeah, do you think maybe just like a dashboard or something? Yeah. Like a carrier or something like that. Good, anyway. Any other questions for the principals? All right, Tara. So you all have my report. It outlines the due dates that we had for the month of December for both the business office and the child nutrition team and we are gearing up for another round of grants in the child nutrition team. We're working on a local food grant and to the federal and the state of equipment grants are rolling out. So I'm working with the team to try and secure some additional grant funding. So that's really the only update since I've provided my report and then the budget and the audit are later in the meeting. Have you gotten the equalized pupil numbers from? We have first draft. And yours? It was not positive direction. No. First draft for a rug dropped from $597.98 to $573.53. Thank you. Okay. So we're working through that with the A's. Have you looked at our numbers? Well, there was a drop in Bethel. So Ray and I were anticipating a drop as far as that campus was concerned but we didn't think it would be that substantial. So we're working through trying to figure out which ones they're not reported next. So we're not alone. It's all over the state. Sure. If you wouldn't mind forwarding on all of these. Any other questions for Tara? We'll be talking to her lots in a little bit. Okay. So quickly before I kind of go into student council matters, I'm also part of the performing arts center committee and we just had interviews for two construction companies that will be working on this project and we have ended up hiring DW construction and we are now scheduled to have a budget meeting January 13th. So that's kind of where we are in that whole deal. And so then for student council, we have started a hot chocolate fundraiser. So we're selling hot chocolates every Friday and at like about a dollar. And so we've already started getting some funds from that. And then we started talking about more like topics within the school and everything. We discussed the lead them up and that assembling everything. And we actually, it was pretty mixed feelings about it. There were a lot of people that liked it and thought it was very nice how like everyone was involved. Everyone seemed like they were enjoying it and could understand why we were having it and all that kind of stuff. But then there were some people that thought it could be a little bit more student oriented or something like that because we do have that green committee. So there's that. And then we briefly discussed the dress code that we kind of feel like it should either be kind of like not in the handbook or enforced. And we feel like right now it is kind of in the middle there. So it ends up being like some teachers kind of have their own dress code and like other teachers like kind of just feel like it's not there and all that kind of stuff. So that's really all we discussed so far. Can you tell the board about today's concert and the spring musical? Oh yeah. So yeah, we just had, we just held auditions for our spring musical of Mamma Mia and the cast list came out today. So that should be starting pretty soon. I think it may, I think practices may start after winter vacation, so that'll be fun. And then we had a concert on the green today for Band and Chorus and we performed for the elementary students at the South Royalton campus. And so that went really well as well. So yeah. Awesome. Thanks, Chris. Welcome. Any questions for Grace? Are you getting proficiencies for the work you're doing on all of this? I think so. I hear you saying that you're gonna, you're part of hiring the DW group. Yeah. That's something I've never done. Yeah, no, it's actually kind of funny that the main guy or the project manager that's a part of that worked for my dad when he was in high school. So then he called my dad afterwards and was like, guess who just interviewed for a job. So yeah. Document it. All right. Task forces. I kind of gave the recruitment side from the middle school. So, you know, we're still meeting, we're gonna set, I don't know, I couldn't attend last night, so I'm not sure we set a date for our side, but we're ready to go. We did? Okay. I'm in an email to you. Awesome. I confirmed the lending today. I'm looking forward to it. So that's the middle school side and we'll keep doing that. We have an advertisement that will be coming out in the first of the year, much like what you saw for the middle school for the high school. Speaking to, we spent a bunch of task force time talking about that. We got teachers working with Kate McClain, our coordinator of communication to put together a similar ad like what you saw in the Herald at the middle school for the high school. And that will come right after the first of the year. I may record out about preschool. So I think what we came to was a recommendation to add a 1.0 teacher so we could increase to having the opportunity for two preschool classrooms on each campus and adding 2.0 para educators. So. 1.0. 1.0. Yeah. Sorry. That's right. Sorry. We'll add two, but we'll add one. Sorry. I got a shift in my brain. Thank you. So, and I think the only other thing that came out of it is what Renee and I talked about was once we make this recommendation kind of the task force is done, but I think the task force was sort of feeling like there's more phases to this. And so if the board would allow us to continue, we would like to continue with meeting eventually and making recommendations for future years to keep building this. Yeah, so your budget, when we do your proposal, that does your budget that you have tonight as presented does increase a 1.0 teacher for pre-K and a 1.0 para for pre-K. Just so folks know. And I would say to the board, I think that there's still definitely more work to do when it comes to pre-K around additional length of programming and how do we recruit for childcare? And so I would certainly encourage the board to continue that work. Like I think it's important work. I thought was there going to be, do we communicate with Magic Mountain about doing a partnership with them for? We did. The last meeting, the representative of Magic Mountain came and I think what my takeaway from that was maybe if board members would like to be with her board members, that might be a better communication, direct communication than communicating with her. And it sounds like she, while they support doing something together, is really strapped with not having extra people to do more right now. So I think the idea is up there and they're not opposed to it, but also don't want to strap themselves for being able to do what they're trying to do to help us. Shannon? Shannon, did you have something? You're muted, Shannon. There you go. Sorry. So going back, what is the new plan for the preschool? Are we adding, are we gonna be able to do full time for Korean four-year-olds? Are we adding any hours before and after school? Yeah, so I think what we talked about was all those things. And I think the baby stuff, the first baby stuff that we talked about, fighting off, was having enough capacity so we didn't have to wait list kids for year one. And that we do wanna get to a place of being we'll have early drop off and extending the day. But I think that's why we were asking for this team to be able to continue meeting so we could maybe like year two add another layer to this. Thanks, we thought year one, making sure that both campuses had the capacity to have two classrooms and could have extended daycare or extended care for three-year-olds, which equals what four-year-olds are getting would be step one. Any other questions? Negotiations committee. Shannon, do you wanna speak on that one? I can. So we have been meeting with as a group and we have our proposals on our side ready to go. We've had one meeting with the teachers where we went over grant rules and so we're still waiting back. But that actually went really well compared to some of the other grant rules meetings I've signed in on. So I think we'll move forward pretty quickly. The challenge is I think this time of the year there's basketball goes late and there's it's the holidays. So we were supposed to have a meeting tonight with the teachers and then that has been pushed on to January 6th. So with the support staff we were able to meet every week and just bang things out. And this looks like it might take a little bit longer. Yeah, it's been good. Yeah. And thank you, Shannon, for being part of the committee. We're on to eight one audit. So I provided you all your draft FY 21 audit and a memo that outlines some of the highlights throughout the audit. And if you have any specific questions I can attempt to answer them. Otherwise it went very well and it's very exciting to be December 21st and have draft audits and have an approved SU audit last night. So I'm very, very happy with the way this audit process went this year. Can you just hit the highlight for the board around the audited surplus? Absolutely. So if you refer to the memo and also to the audit, if you have it, page 18, the statement of revenues, expenditures and changes in fund balance. Your general fund balance for FY 21 was a surplus of $1,318,209. We had the deficit in FY 20 of $399,151. So it left a general fund balance as of June 30th of $919,058. So of that surplus, the 1.3 for FY 21, the majority of that was a result of you all receiving $864,000 of federal funding, which is what required you also to go through the single audit process because that's a mandatory requirement if you receive over $750,000 in federal funding. So that's why you had to have that. So by receiving those funds, we were able to supplant because ESSER doesn't have in the CRF funds don't have the same supplanting requirements and disallowed that we do in our titles and our school lines. So we were able to offset budgeted items with those federal funds. And the breakdown of the majority of where your savings were, you had about $863,000 in school instruction, $75,000 in the administration, 274,000 in building and grounds, 47,000 in athletic and field trip transportation, and then 36,000 in your debt services. And you can find that by department budget to actuals on pages 80 to 81 of the audit. And just so I'm clear for the board, does this, the budgeted, the audited surplus, that wipes out the food service debt too? Yes, this does. So on the fund balance page. Which is an important thing to know because that is something we needed to take care of. Yeah. So on page 16, which is the balance sheet, the non-spendable fund balance to 19,209, that is our district's prepaid for retirements. The restricted of $187,068, that's to bring the child nutrition program deficit to zero. And then that leaves the unassigned fund balance of $712,781, which is the surplus remaining that can be used to offset revenue in FY23, but also you can go to your board, your communities and ask them to put those funds in your reserve funds, which we would highly recommend that you do. Which we're gonna need to continue to talk about as we touch it. So the $187,000 to pay off the food service, do we do that basically including it as a food service transfer from the general fund to we include that in our budget for this current? Nope, it actually is, it will clear it right out at the end of June 30th. It's a journal entry we do in the system. So it just show up in like our financial report as instead of doing $53,000 transfer, we do 100. Yeah, it's 187. Spectacular. Yep. Because we have everything. Correct. Got it. Great. So the only thing in this draft, they had not had an opportunity to complete the Bethel Campus Student Activities Accounts. So I just actually got the revised draft that has the financials for that. So I will get that reviewed and get that sent out to all of you. So we'll take action. Yeah, I wouldn't take action on it tonight until you've all had an opportunity to review the Bethel Student Activity Accounts. So are we able to publicize this now? So we have an audit draft and... Yeah, I mean, we can definitely publicize it. We don't release the draft. I mean, if people want to see the draft, they can come up with the official bound copies once you accept it and we have the final. Right, no, it just means like we had... That number's... It's secure, yeah, it's a secure number. We had multiple front page about the deficit. It'd be nice to get something on about... To be great. Absolutely. Yep, yes, it's a confirm. And if the board would like, I'm happy to work with Cape on working with the Herald to get some coverage on it. Please do. So on that page 80 thing, I just had a couple of curiosity questions. The long-term principal and interest line didn't match the budget of mine. I'm just curious why that... You had a reduction in your bond payment? Oh, okay, that's good. And you'll see that in your FY23 budget, it's also adjusted. And that wasn't because the interest rate changed or something? You're getting closer, so principal starts to drop. But what I mean is like, isn't like the pay structure set at the beginning? No, when I look at your bonds, you have a tiered payment, so it's dropped. Right, okay. 25,000, it dropped this year. But like, you would be able to say when you take out your bond, this is what the payments are gonna be. If you refer back to your bond schedule, do you think? Right, so we just need to do that. Yep. That's good. Yep. And then what was the Board of Ed, like it was $60,000 for stipends and I just curious what that was. So the auditors group things together differently than we do in our budgets. So under the Board of Education, they put stipends, salaries, and benefits. They lump it from our financials. They pull different function codes and bump them together in their departmental description. If you want the specific details, you can refer back to page, I think it is. They should be at this point. No, it's just the way that they, the auditors lump them together. If you guys are paying yourselves to have two salaries, that's gonna be a lot of money. That'll be in a bucket full. You can email me about it. You can send me a different story. Trying to find their line-by-lines. It's later on in the report, the actual line-by-lines. Anybody else have any other questions about the audit? Can I make a comment? This memo one-pager is awesome. Thank you. And I mean, also like the really, the biggest news out of all of this is the notes on page 111, where there were no findings. That's auditors' jobs are to find findings. So we had none. Congratulations, that's so exciting. Well, I'll try this. Yes. Well, if nobody else has questions about the audit, let's move on to the budget. So I noticed when I was reviewing the materials that were sent to you that some of my comments didn't come over in the pivot table. So I just wanted to point those out quickly for you, which is one of the ones we just talked about on the first two lines of the budget there. The 1100, 101, and 102, there was a note there adding one pre-K teacher in Royalton and one pre-K para in Royalton. So that didn't come over in the printed version that got in your packet. So I apologize for that. So overall, this is the compilation of the two prior budgets that you have seen, broken down by your support staff and then your teachers. And then this adds in all the other function and object codes throughout your line-by-line expenditure budget. Some of the highlights on the additional coatings, that changed down on 320 contracted instructional services. You'll see there's an increase there of 14,000. That's just based on increasing for FY21 actuals under the general elementary. And then the next, you're saying increasing it from the FY20 actuals? Yeah, so when we were doing side-by-side comparisons on your FY21 actuals to what was budgeted for in FY22, if we saw substantial discrepancy between that, we increased in FY23. So it rolls it up there, but in our section, when we break down, general elementary contracted services was $14,000 short based on what was actually spent, so we increased it there. Right, but if you look at that where it's humped all together, it's $40,000 less than... Yeah, the overall budget. So it's because that lumps it all. So when we actually look at it line-by-line. So would it make sense to transfer some of the other codes that's not being used? It does. So in one campus, the budget was $2,000. That's what every campus had for contracted services. Other than your district-wide, or yes, district-wide, which was 625, all the others had $2,000. So general elementary ended up spending $16,000. So we increased the $2,000 to $16,000 for that line-by-line. And then the others maintained at 2,000. And then your campus-wide or district-wide is still at the 625. So if you wanna make adjustments there, you're welcome to do so, just need to let me know. And then the SU central office and special education budgets were approved last night by the full board. So you'll see on all the object code 593s that are specific to those assessments. I've made a note that they'll be adjusted once that's final. So your next draft will have your actual assessments in there. And now you can see when we were doing the prior drafts like in student support, there seems to be a substantial increase there. And that's because that's where we put the flexible pathways position. So I've made notes where we've made those specific changes so you knew where they were going. And then the next section is down in technology. I don't know what page that's gonna be for you, Parker. It starts at function code 2490. So you'll see that down at the bottom, the object code 650, 734 and 735. We've made some adjustments there. And that's based on the Agency of Education's Universal Charter of Accounts that we have to use moving forward. They are now considering technology, hardware and software as technology supplies. So you'll see we've reduced those and moved it up to the supply line. And then down towards the bottom, you'll see that function code 3,300, community service operations, teacher salary has been added to the budget. And that is for the X67 community coordinator, which is a requirement that we talked about in your last draft of the budget that we have to budget for that locally. So that's that $43,000 that's been added there. So overall, this budget as presented is a $351,623 increase, which equates to a percentage of 2.92%. So just to add, I mean, so as far as programming goes, this continues to support our expansion of pathways. It also supports half of the community schools coordinator position. As we receive that grant, the idea would be that that position does encompass both campuses. So we would budget for locally half time, but then look to fund it so it doesn't just go away. Once the $750,000 grant goes away. So I want you to know that that position is funded is 0.5 in there. It expands your pre-K by a 1.0 FBE and a 1.0 PERA. It ensures that we have a full-time pathways coordinator at this campus and at the middle school campus. So keeps a 0.5 SEL support person at the middle school campus. It keeps your MTSS, social emotional folks on each campus keeps a full-time coordinator of student supports actually grow or short staffed this year. So she's having to split her time via intensive programming coordinator and that position, because we can find an intensive programming coordinator when we hire the net at the SU level, but that's remains budgeted full-time. She will assume her full-time position again, doing that work. So in general, it's keeping the staff that you have, but also looking to enhance. And we had talked about the 3% being the kind of the benchmark for you guys on the expenditure side. So that is something that we continue to look at. I do expect as the principals tear on I sit down again, there could be some tweaks in regards to supplies, things of that nature, but know that we are keeping that 3% kind of at the focus point for us. And on the revenue side, which will be the next time you get the budget, we are gonna be down equalized pupils, which if it's the number that Tara had, that's gonna hurt our per pupil spending. What I will tell you though is we will have some revenue to put toward the budget. I would caution us from using a bunch of that one-time revenue, because one way for us to think about that is you almost start in a deficit the following year when you do that, because that revenue goes away. And so I think we gotta watch a few things. The yield, which is looking positive, certainly. Our equalized pupils, we are going to try to leverage Medicaid funds locally. And so we do expect that we're gonna be able to provide some Medicaid funds to offset cost of nursing for folks, which is, that's a revenue we haven't provided before for nursing at a level that we should be able to. We didn't budget any, just so the board knows, Andrew was there, but we didn't budget any Medicaid funds at the SU level for next year. All the Medicaid funds are gonna be dispersed out into the local districts. And so know that we'll have some added revenue there. And we'll certainly continue to leverage your title funds. You guys still receive, through Target and Ranking, a pretty solid chunk of title funding that we'll continue to use on the revenue side. So the CLA is the other factor, though, we don't know yet, which I'm worried about, as good as the yield looks. I'm worried about the CLA. And so that's a big piece of information we yet, we still don't have. So I think what we're looking for tonight is, is are these expenditures making sense? Are we investing in the areas you want? And knowing that if we can make the revenue side work and keep taxes at a reasonable rate, that this is something that you're feeling good about. Or if you're saying, listen, I'm hearing folks and they're saying that we're not in a good place financially right now as a community. And 3% seemed to right a month ago, but now it's not feeling as good. So I think that's the type of direction we're looking for from the board. This is Lisa. I think that the investments that you're looking at making make a lot of sense. I mean, thinking of our community and the need that our community has in the direction that we're interested in going, I think it's worth supporting this budget and continuing to move. And what I consider a physically responsible direction while at the same time meeting the needs of our students. So I appreciate this budget. And I do think the preschool increases will hopefully help what their equalized people numbers, which I wouldn't expect them to be completely revenue neutral or anything like that, but they should be offset some by the community of our students. I agree, I think this is a good start. I did have a couple of questions just looking at the numbers. The art salary was up a whole bunch. I was just curious why. Like, was there a change in, I think it's still cleaning up coding for where people ever coded. So there were- You had an art teacher that was shared with Eco and I think it's still trying to clean up the percentage of FT coded to the right area. Well, do you know what the plan is going to be for that going forward? Well, we still have- More to come. More to come. I don't know if we have a solidified plan yet. I mean, it's to, we certainly want to continue to increase Eco, but ensure that we don't have any decrease in programming with art. And so we're looking at what makes the most sense in regards to how to staff that. Having someone who could do art in Eco, we understand we may not find that. We certainly weren't able to find it for the remainder of this school year. Right, but we want to ensure that the programming doesn't change. If anything, we're actually hoping that we can increase potentially Eco. So, as far as this budget goes, it looks like art is then up, basically a half FT and we kept the Eco the same. Is that an accurate representation of what happened here? You shouldn't have shifted. I don't think you really were talking about any shifts. I don't believe, we can talk about it after and clean it up, but I believe that possibly our current art in Eco person wasn't coded. Was coded at all? Yes, if I remember right. So this budget represents the art teacher split 50-50 between elementary and secondary. And I believe that in the past, it got all coded toward Eco. And then, do you see what I'm saying? So we have a teacher who does art in Eco. Her whole salary was coded to Eco. And is Eco like one of the separate function codes? I don't understand. Or is that just in the elementary? It's in the elementary. Eco is part of the elementary or the secondary. So whatever shift would have come out of the right and that's part of why when you look at your elementary teacher salaries, they're not up much. Do you mean people around are doing good to be? All right, answers that question. That's a good question. It's something we're gonna need to know. And one of the things that we're doing now that we put in place this year within the business office is we're actually putting on contracts what their account code is. And when someone is reassigned within a building, the administration sends notification into the business office, letting us know there's been an assignment so that salaries can be adjusted appropriately throughout the budgeting periods. Okay, that's good. And the intervention line, I think you said something about it. Could you just go over what is going on with that? Same idea. So this is coded for remedial intervention to exactly the FTDs in the folks that you have providing remedial intervention where at other times those folks were coded as elementary instructors in general ed. And so what we've done is we've coded folks based on what we know now, now that could adjust, right? Like numbers could spike and we need to reassign someone who's doing intervention to teaching universally again, but where we were at, this is based on what we have right now, what we're predicting, those folks who will do intervention versus teaching universally. The FTDs in your building didn't change, it's just what they're doing is adjusted. Other than adding it to the city as long as possible. Do you think it would be possible maybe in the notes where the regular stuff say, 30,000 to this, 30,000 to that or whatever. So it's easier to see. Yep, where those adjustments happen. Yep. Guidance. So we have three FTDs for guidance and that's based on Jenny Lane's retired and we haven't replaced it, right? Yes, you haven't. We did replace Jenny. So what happened was Hannah, glass mixtures, he left us. And at that time, Nicole Lamoff was reassigned and we took the money from that reassignment to hire a middle school pathways person. That's what Owen's desire was. We then took another 0.5 position that we had and we're able to create the SEL position, which is what CASBAP is doing. And then we took and leveraged Medicaid funds that Claire Martin can draw down on and ESSER funds to bring in school-based clinicians. And so that we have a school-based clinician who can do counseling work individually with students on this campus and we have one at the Bethel campus. And then the idea is that as our school counselor Bethel gets her legs under her, I do think she will be able to expand some more. She has started to offer. And she surely has to, to the middle school. So the idea was that we would have two school counselors on this campus. High school is a different beast. It really needs its own school counselor, but we'd have a campus counselor over there doing K through A school counselor here. But actually, our ability to actually intervene through therapy has increased. We've not only added the two school-based clinicians, we also added an SAP counselor at the high school and an SAP counselor at the middle school that sees and works with groups of kids too. So the three that we have currently, so there's two on this campus and one in Bethel. And it's one more on the kind of college and that sort of thing. Yeah, that's the high school school counselor. And then we have one that's kind of general. Well, one's that's hyper-focused on elementary for the most part, and then you have one. And then I would say that at the high school level, what we're really trying to do is define it if a student needs like therapeutic or social-emotional intervention. That is where we would use the SAP or we would use a school-based clinician. Like if someone needs therapy, the idea would be let's get them with a master's level therapist who can get them in a schedule and see them on a weekly basis and not get interrupted. One of the worries I have in schools is in what I was seeing across RSU and certainly what I experienced as a principal was we would have school counselors, especially at the middle high school level, try to set up meetings with kids like to do therapy and they get interrupted. And so then the therapy gets interrupted. Oh, I'll see you tomorrow, I'm sorry, right? Like a note at lunch. And then what I think the unintended consequence is, is that we say to Owen, that wasn't important. And so what we're trying to really do is make certain we have devoted folks to do that type of work where they wouldn't get interrupted because of their schedule's sacred and that's the most important thing. But I do think, again, that's something we're gonna need to explain. I was gonna say, I think at some point we kind of asked for like a chart or whatever for all these positions and that would kind of be helpful for keeping track of. I think you guys should definitely hold us to that for next month, this is something we've talked about and we should do. So we will do that with the next budget presentation. I can answer your other question. Okay. So if you look at the Board of Education, 2311. This one, in the budget? Yeah. Okay. So if you look at the first lines, the admin salary of $1,800. So we're gonna FY 21 actuals. And then the FICA of 138. And then the workers' comp of 48,476. That gives you the $60,414 that's reported in your audit. Okay. And the workers' comp? We pay that under the Board and it's budgeted under each individual position. So you'll see under each function code that there's a workers' compensation because it's driven by their salaries. Okay. But like, why was it so much higher than budgeted at that time? Because your salaries were substantially underreported to your workers' compensation carrier in the past. And I've been working to get those adjusted each year to where they need to be. And that will add up in the field for us now. And hopefully we don't have substantial audits at the end of the fiscal years. Yeah. Good afternoon. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. And my last question was, the transfer to food services clearly been less than necessary every year. So now that that's moved to the SU, that becomes an assessment. So once we're able to establish our trend in revenue for the Child Nutrition Program, we'll be able to better establish what your assessment's going to be moving forward. So that will actually become part of your fiscal assessment to the central office. Okay. And presumably that'll be completely, like each district will have kind of been contributing differently depending on what. Yes. What their image will need for. So that's why when we centralized food service as of July 1st, that's why every district has to bring their food service whole at the close of 21. Because it now is an SU enterprise as of July 1 of 2022. So, so is that going to change for the next draft about it? Yes. Okay. I should, the requirement for the Child Nutrition Teams are to have their monthly claims in by the 15th of each month for the prior month. So that I can submit for the reimbursement. So right now they're just barely wrapped up there November. So I only have right now September and October until they have November done. And then I'll be able to see our trend for revenue based on utilization of the Child Nutrition Teams. So that's, so when I do the next round, I will have an idea of where the assessments need to be for the Child Nutrition Team. And do you have any sense for? We are serving a lot of meals, but no, I do not have any sense because I have not done anything as far as projecting revenue for Child Nutrition at this point. I do think we had a record for revenue in this particular district this year, which is pretty cool. And we're at the program that we're currently working under the seamless summer option. The reimbursement rate is higher than the regular Child Nutrition Program, just like it was when we were working last year underneath the summer food service program. So that's to use it a little bit when we go back to normal. How long is that gonna? Right now, it's just through this year. And then, depending on what happens, I can't make any projection for that. We should probably assume that it's going back to regular. And we don't get the rates, reimbursement rates from the state until. I don't know. We gotta watch the legislature. I think there is an appetite in my pillar for universal meals. For universal meals. And I suspect there could possibly be a, well, significantly large contingent who might want to use some of the surplus in the Ed Fund to help support that faith and that. So I think that is something we're gonna have to watch. Certainly, you know, as superintendents, we're very supportive of universal meals. We're just looking for some assistance and funding to make that happen. And so I don't know if that's something that the legislature, they definitely heard we need to provide some funding in order to make it happen. I think there's an appetite to make it happen. So, stay tuned. From a parent's perspective, it certainly is convenient. Yeah, and I think we have more kids eating friends like you. Like, right? Like, I eat, as you can see, I eat. More kids than superintendents. I eat in middle school. I eat at both of your campuses at least probably twice a week. One in each campus. And there's a lot of kids eatin'. Superintendents, we know. In Co. And they... 475 a meal. It's, the staff does a great job of food's awesome. I'm really happy with the quality of meals coming out of these two buildings. And the feast that they've had in each building, that it was really well done and having the student involvement and the classroom involvement, there was just so much excitement around the feast for each campus in the last two weeks. So that was really exciting. Well, those were all my questions for the budget. Do you guys have anything? All right, so I guess... So next draft, we'll come back with additional adjustments on the expenditure side and your revenue side. What is the yield number that you're using? We are gonna use the more conservative yield of the 12,937. It's still a good job. All right, okay. We'll move on to the Pathways Programming and Personalized Learning Alignment with Graduation and Credits. Something Rodney brought up, I think? Yeah, so Rodney, thanks for bringing this up. Rodney asked Andrew and I if this could go on the agenda. And so I talked a little bit about it in my report. I mean, what I would say is that I'm really excited about our incoming new Pathways Coordinator, which I'll have re-talk about in new hires. That's gonna be starting second semester. We will have a devoted high school Pathways Coordinator who's coming to us from Green Mountain School down in Chester and who has extensive experience teaching both in the secondary and post-secondary area. And so I will say that it is the first interview I've had as your superintendent that I spent an hour and 15 minutes with a candidate. And I did it because it was just such an engaging conversation. And so I would, I share all this because it was clear to me that he has the same belief system in vision for Pathways that I believe we do as a board and as a community and certainly what's set out in the legislature. And that is the concept that students can take learning experiences, sit down with a facilitator of learning, a Pathways Coordinator, and then link proficiencies within our curriculum toward the experience in product to demonstrate that they are proficient and then we can award credit. That is something that we've done in small segments prior to this year. I would say we're doing it more now even without a Pathways Coordinator. The plan is to do that in a proficient way of which is what is in statute once we have a Pathways Coordinator. And so I think the vision for Pathways is that it's all kids. We wanna promote that all students can engage in Pathways but that the Pathways Coordinator will be there to help develop the plan to actually demonstrate proficiency. And I would say right now, part of the issue we've had now, Tony's been great, our middle school Pathways Coordinator has assisted some of our high school students with developing their plan and demonstrating the product that then can be acknowledged as proficient for credit because we still do graduate here off of credits. Our proficiencies are aligned to high school courses and then we award credits. Now we will have someone here and students could sign up and it's actually like a class block where they could build their pathway and that could be, they're taking an early college course, right? It could be they're taking a BYU course that's self-paced. It could be that they've designed a plan and that they have work-based learning that they've done that they're able to demonstrate through a product around English credit and maybe even social studies credit. And the facilitator of learning, the Pathways Coordinator is licensed in English but what the vision would be is that they would then be able to have the time to work with other content area teachers so that the content area teacher is assessing the products and as the teacher of record that then awards the credit, right? And so that's not the student having to do that legwork. That's the Pathways Coordinator's job is to support the student with that. And the other pieces is ensuring that our schedule provides time for our teachers to have time in their teaching load to do that assessment piece. And so I would say that the concept students using things like extracurriculars, Rodney, to demonstrate proficiency that is absolutely what Pathways is. I would say the piece that we're still fleshing out is is ensuring that the student has that facilitator to say, it's not just the experience, it's how do you take the experience and demonstrate your learning and that we actually empower the student to say, well, I demonstrated this way, right? I'm gonna create this product and that our teachers then are engaging with the product to say, yeah, if you do X, absolutely that needs proficiency. We are, that is what I just described is where we wanna be. Please understand we're not there yet. But what I will say is, is that I've been very impressed with the more conversation and the more experience I'm seeing that I think students are able to do this at our high school. And I would say that one of the things about the candidate that Reed's team forwarded to me is that it's clear to me that there's a real vision and appetite to push that envelope to ensure that this is alive and well. And I would say that that's what he's already doing in his classroom. And one of the reasons why he applied for this position and why his superintendent was willing mid-year to release him is because it is his passion. And she recognized that, she was the principal that hired him actually. And she recognized that and that they didn't have the structures in place yet for that to actually happen and come to fruition. But that certainly, he can see that there's a real appeal and desire here for that to happen. The other big thing I think for us, Rodney, is setting the tone at the middle school for students to even understand what this means. Like having experience around the idea that I can design a product, an outcome that's either based on an extracurricular activity or a work-based learning activity or just something that I'm really interested in studying that's relevant to me. And I wanna dive and delve into that and I wanna really stretch myself in that activity and demonstrate proficiency across content areas. I really think we gotta do a good job at the middle school of providing students opportunities for that because I think when you're in 10th and 11th grade and schools look a certain way that what we're talking about right now is so foreign it doesn't even make sense. And so what I have been talking about with Owen and with Tony is how do we ensure we have a structure at the middle school that's allowing all kids to access. And I don't think Owen will be upset for me to say that that structure we're still working on. Absolutely. But that is the goal would be any student who wants to access a pathway would have a facilitator in learning and an opportunity to do so. And at the structure, meeting the schedule, would support it and not be a barrier to it. And so that's the work that we're at right now. I gotta say, a month ago, I wouldn't even have been this excited because we didn't have that devoted person. We have some people doing pathways and they're doing it through alternative programming and some more intensive type pathway where that's good and we need that but it's also about how do we create pathways that's universal for all. Not that it's a target or intensive intervention that all kids can access. And so having this devoted person I think is gonna allow more access to all. So Rodney, do know that absolutely it's our expectation that kids and students can demonstrate proficiency and achieve credit based on things like extracurricular activities. The missing pieces is that that has to then be connected to a pathway, project, a personalized learning plan so that they can then say, here's my product, look what I've done in order to achieve it. Not just, what we're now promoting is just if you do X, it equates to a credit. We want the student to go through being able to defend what they did and how that demonstrates proficiency. So that there is a reflection piece to it. Before this hire, was this kind of stuff going through Miss the Law? Or was there like a specific person that was? It was actually in your, it was in the course study, the guy that. Yeah, it's been in the program and states throughout, Mr. Oaks manages a couple of student plans. We have an outside consultant who works with a couple of students on a couple courses. Mr. Oddly's done one with a student a couple of summers ago for math. So, Mr. Polly did one for a piano student a couple of years back. It's kind of like where there's a student in an interest, in a need. We've kind of made stuff work. But again, not, you know, it wasn't like, we didn't have the structure in place to say universally, this is what pathways is and this is how we're gonna access. And I think, again, students who are gonna be coming from our middle school that go through that are gonna understand it even better versus peers that you have at the moment where I think some of the folks, we're gonna have to educate, right? And it's gonna take some students trying it out and seeing like, whoa, if I do work-based learning and pathways that I can demonstrate credit in proficiency in ways that I hadn't necessarily thought of. It's always a little bit like the VTVLC classes. They're there and the program is steady and every year a handful of students are like, oh yeah, I wanna take this interesting class. That's what I'm doing this year. But most students don't take advantage of it. And like, how do we recruit more students and push it out to engage more? What's nice with the VTVLC classes is that they're already aligned to the proficiencies with the state of Vermont. So we don't have to do any extra work with that to know that everything's being filled that way. Rodney? Yeah, it just, I guess you answered any questions that I had. It felt like, yeah, the pathways will start, the flexible pathways will start to work and we just needed a little bit more. And I think with this extra person helping we're getting there. And just, so yeah, you didn't answer my question about the flexible pathways. I think it is going along pretty good. Is this something we could track as far as like get a few examples of how it worked and the perfect, like this is the sort of thing that sounds great. But I'd be curious how it actually winds up being implemented and if we could track that. In January, I want to start having your celebrations of learning. And so I think that as we get going, it could absolutely be an opportunity for students to come in and actually speak to the process maybe as a celebration of learning. But maybe we could also put it, I don't know when would be appropriate, but you know, like as a state of, do another update of the flexible pathways. Absolutely. Absolutely. And maybe about like have a yearly update on that or something, what percentage of students they're taking of the energy. Might make sense for February, and we could bring in the new flexible pathways coordinator. He'd have some idea of where we're headed at that point. Not, we wouldn't have a lot of. He was just starting in January. He started January 21st. So he wouldn't have anything to really say about what we're doing in January, but in February, by then we should have had a couple of meetings. We could also do it in March. Yeah, March would be great too. Is that both? Yeah, I think it's important, and it might even be that it's, does have a place, because the teaching piece, this is not how we went to school. And it's not how you're going right now. But the opportunity is incredible. And what you can build for a college resume, like the thing you did with the EW, colleges are gonna wanna know that. They're gonna wanna know all your theater work. And if that can be collected, and somebody's helping you figure out how to package that too, and you're meeting proficiency on the way to graduation, on top of your other academics, it's gonna make you shine, right? Yeah, right now I'm working with Ms. Waterman. Right, so Ms. Waterman's doing some of that work. Yeah. So I'm really excited about this opportunity. I think we should be teaching about flexible pathways and personal learning, because we get it, we're educators, but not everybody in the larger community gets it either. Really validates all learning. Pretty exciting. So do you want us to prepare something for January? A short little couple showcase? Well, I think we've got celebration of learning. So if there's some middle schoolers who have done something. Well, we have a couple high schoolers. I think that that could be a celebration of learning that doesn't take away. I want a celebration of learning every month. Something to kick our board meetings off to say, look, this is like real, this is what's happening. But then on top of that, I do think in March, we could do, we get the budget put behind us that we could have a nice focused presentation on this. Okay. Yeah, I think it'd be great to do that for flexible pathways, but at some point I'd be very interested to do a similar sort of thing with like eco, like where are we? What can we improve? That sort of thing, like, are we getting the proficiencies that we're hoping to get out of our time that we're spending on eco and stuff like that? And doing on both campuses and stuff like that. So I think when we have these bigger initiatives that we're working on, like having assessment update, our focus time. I'm writing them down as future agenda items. Yeah, sounds good. Anybody have any other thoughts? All right. We'll move on to possible action items, 2021 audit. Since this is a draft, we don't have, we'll be expecting another draft. We don't have any action on this. No action tonight. Move it to your next meeting. All right, allotment for Winooski Valley School of Choice. Currently 10, right? So we currently have 15 allowed in, 10 out. And I think that was based on the percentages. You have, there's a minimum number for in versus out and they're not exactly the same. We don't ever hit so far. We haven't hit those thresholds. So less read feels different. I would just recommend we go to what we did last year based on what are the numbers? I think it's a 15 that we allowed in. Oh, actually doing it. We have two students who are out and one student coming in. We've had more in the past, but I think because of COVID, going into different communities has discouraged people from doing this as much as they have in the past, or at least around here. Well, I'd entertain a motion to continue our current Winooski Valley School of Choice alums. So moved. I'll second. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. That was a support and not an opposed answer. All right. We'll keep that for the same. That's best. Resignations new hires? We've got a new hire and we don't have a resignation, but as the board's aware in the community now, Principal McCracken has announced their desire or intent to not return next year. So I wanted to take the opportunity to just publicly thank Reed for everything that Reed has done for this district specifically coming here as you were unifying as a new district. And I think that the admin team in general, but certainly Reed and the board, I just got to praise you in regards to I really, when I walk in here, it feels like a wildcat. And I'm someone who was a royal that grew up being a royal and it's palpable. And I coached at Wickham High School for a one and 19 season that was successful. But so I've been in both buildings, but what I would say is that the work that you've done with the faculty and staff and students to have this feel like a truly unique new school, just thank you very much. And it's been a real pleasure working with you Reed. So thank you. It's been a great experience. But I think of it as graduating and exploring something new. So I appreciate having had the four years of opportunity to work with all of you. From the board, we thank you as well. Difficult time to come in and put in all our work. We appreciate all the things that you've done to help the school, it's great as well. Thank you very much. And so the other thing that I'll just highlight is that in the packet, I talked to you guys about a timeline for principal search. And so just know that the position will be posted tomorrow. And you'll be getting along with the community a letter that talks about the position being posted. And then a link. I've asked McKayla Martin who works at CVSU to help facilitate this process. She's also helping facilitate the first branch unified district process. I think having someone who's gonna devote their time and effort on this is important. And that isn't necessarily in our SU office. And so know that the search committee will be looking to have it be made up of teachers, staff, students, a board member. And so the process that we'll have is we will have forums for students to give feedback and the attributes and qualities that they're looking for in their next principal. We'll be doing the same with our teachers and staff. And then also having community forum as well. And so the process of that is to then have that information that will be shared with the search committee so that they have that information as a lens when they're ranking candidates to decide who to interview. So I will tell you that the timeline that you have is it's certainly a tight timeline. I will say this though to you as well. We had a tight timeline when we looked for onda and we decided that we didn't have the right candidates and we decided to extend. And we resulted in onda which has been, I believe a really terrific hire, onda Adams our chief academic officer. So that decision though was made by the committee. They looked through the candidates and decided that extending made more sense at that time. So that would be a committee decision based on the candidate. And then we will have finalists here on campus to visit. And they would then have an opportunity to interview again with the community, with students, with staff, myself. And then we would make a determination about bringing a finalist to the board. So I just wanted to walk through that. And if anyone has any questions, I certainly could take them. Does it make sense to, if we're gonna have more representative on the committee, does it make sense to figure out who we're gonna? That actually would be great because you're not gonna meet again. All right. All right there, does anybody wanna volunteer to be part of the principal search committee? I'll be particularly interested. I think Shannon has her hand raised. I think you just turn it on, Mike. I can, I'm just doing negotiations right now which is also a lot of meetings. But so if there's ever any conflict. I do think it's going to take about eight to 10 hours a time. That's the commitment level. I think that a committee member should expect by the time that we review candidates, go through interviews right around there. I mean, I'd be willing to help as long as we can work it around so it's not what I'm doing chores. Okay, and why don't we talk, we can email around and see who makes sense and get back to you. Just email me. Yep. Thank you, Andrews, ready? Okay. All right, and this might be a bit, maybe it would have been better to have an actual agenda item for it. But I'm just curious, when David left us last year and we kind of reorganized our principal structure, I'm just curious what people's thoughts are as to how that's going and how it's working out with the current structure that we have and whether we should do any sort of reconsideration at this time. Well, I haven't given that a ton of thought. Other than I would say, I think anytime you have a principal going across two campuses, it has bumps, although I think Reed's done a nice job of stepping in when Andrew's not here and the same with Owen when Andrew's not here. I think at this time, my plan is to hire a high school principal, although what I would say to you is that through the search process, if it seems like the Canada pool that we're having may not link to that, that I think as a board, and as an admin team, we may come to you and say, we need to look at this differently. But at this point, I was planning to look for a high school principal. The ad will be posted as a high school principal. Okay, well, yeah. But again, that is a caveat to say that, one of the things that the ad you'll see is talking about trying to foster a team of leaders, which I think these three have done well. And when I meet with them, they certainly advocate based on the level that they serve. But I believe as we talk now that when I talk to them, they can talk much more fluidly across grade levels. Like, I hear Reid talking about the elementary program. And I can hear, you know, Andrew talk about the high school program, or Owen talk about the elementary high school program. So, and if I'm speaking at a turn, any one of you can speak up. But I will just say as an outsider, when I sit in meetings now, it's so much clearer to me that they have that pre-K-12 perspective. I think that's largely due to the fact that we have this new committee that we had to put together that are representative pre-K-12. So, and the gift of meeting on a computer, right? Across two campuses, we're able to hear the voices of different kids who show up. I mean, and just so you know, I mean, there was different proposals when we originally came to you, right? Like, when we did this change, there was some other proposals we russled with. We did russle with a principle of both campuses in building principles that had more responsibilities to that building. That is something that we had discussed. So then you had a pre-K-12 focus, but you had people who were devoted to that building and were on that building. It was predictable that they were the building principle. That is something that we had discussed previously. It's not anything we've discussed in the last few months. Okay, well, I guess, you know, if you guys are, I think that this is still our best structure that we can have then let's keep going with it. But if you do have any thoughts about it, that will be the time since we'll be on the budget and everything, so. If you want to think about it, think about it. Yeah, and I do think, you know, part of it that may, we will think about it. I appreciate that. I think part of what, you know, could change our mind around it is seriously the candidate pool. You know, I will tell you that the skill set of a leader is none of us have all the skills, number one. We all have strengths and weaknesses, but certainly the high school principal work is very different than the elementary principal work. And then there's middle school principal, which actually I was just joking with Owen. It was not my favorite work by any means as an administrator. Because I felt like students regressed and I couldn't figure it out. Pre-K-12, why all of a sudden they regressed in middle school, other than that's how the brain works. But I appreciate that. I think that as we go through the process, it may align to a recommendation, possibly. I think getting feedback from faculty and students and staff may help that inform that too. I also, we're building the concept of a team and the license is Pre-K-12. And I think we need to be able to support each other. So like when I win the lottery, somebody could step in immediately. But I do think it's important that we know how to, know what the other programming's doing and support that person in that role. And I feel great about our team and our other teams that we have connected now. We have a lot of talent around us. Do you want to talk about our hire? I talked to some about him, but about, yeah, Ben Boynton. Yeah, I think we've talked a little bit about him. Yeah, I mean, you, yeah, you. I couldn't remember his name. Yeah, I don't know his name. Yeah, so Ben Boynton is going to be our new flexible pathways coordinator. Jamie talked a little bit about his background. Very experienced and has worked with high school staff a lot. So I think he's going to be able to step right in and pick up the ball and run with it. And I've got some exciting plans for how we start that work. All right, moving on to public comment. Do we have any public comment this time? You're in an executive session for contracts. And it'd be good, I think, to have it. Actually, if you're willing all the administrators in. So to entertain. And then I think our student rep can be here as well. It's just, we'll remember executive session. Is it an executive session? I actually have to leave. Oh, can I go? That's fine, okay. Yeah, okay. Okay, so to entertain a motion to enter executive session, inviting the administrators. Don't move. Pardon? No, we probably need some language about because to be so would put us in. Yep, put us at risk. Oh, nice to see you, Greg. Nice to see you. Thank you guys. I'll start putting that language on each agenda. So you guys have that. That used to be the new one. So is that good then?