 Rochester-Sacford Unified School District Board meeting to order. Excellent. Do we have any adjustments to the agenda? The only thing is, the warning, that won't be ready to take action on tonight. I think based on what you decide for logistics, like in person, we'll need a special meeting to adopt that you're warning. All right. We need to work out the logistics that we need to make the form and say the right thing. We won't be ready to take any action. Does it need a special meeting, or can we roll to basically April? Tara, I think is going to say we'll need it before that, because we'll want to get that mailer out by the end of the month. But it can be quick, quick meeting. Great. Any further adjustments to the agenda? No celebration of learning tonight, as folks are enjoying the last moments of vacation. Yes, please do. Well, and we still, I'm sorry, I'm going to get you to move the picture. I mean, with Donna Gellant and her presentation on direct instruction and what she and the team have been doing under your leadership lending has been just remarkable, and we've seen some of the results here in the scoring. And I just think we have a lot to celebrate. That's great. All right. If somebody could help me assign times. I got you. Wonderful. Do you just want to write this down? OK, we'll try. Am I going to be the talkkeeper, too? Do you want me just time for you? Is that easier? Would follow if you're helpful. I can do that. OK, great. Reports are going to take you about an hour tonight, because there's the EI presentation. OK, about an hour for the boarder first. Yeah. OK. Great. All right. Then we have the Tuesday, February 1st meeting minutes in front of us to be approved to entertain a motion. I move. And I also want to move, I'm sorry, but the roadmap of success, the goals. By 2025, 80% of the students will be met. Classroom, universal instruction, and not-needing intervention. That's bold. That's necessary. That's why we're here. Right. Yeah, that's great. I just want to commend you again for explaining that and emphasizing that and committing your administration to that goal. Thank you. That's why I move. You move to second. I guess I'll second. All right. All in favor of passing the minutes as presented? Signified by saying aye? Aye. Aye? Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. So moved. Hi, Ethan, you want to take over? Or pull the comment? He's got his hair cut or something, though. He's shaved out, man. You're muted, Ethan. We can't hear you. Hi. Hi. Hi. How are you? Good. I can't see anybody, but yes, I'm here. OK. In clean shit for a little while, anyway. You know what, Amy, why don't you keep going? I'm going to see if I can get my agenda up on here. Sorry, I'm not very prepared for this, so I can't. That's fine. OK, well, then we're at number five, public comment. It looks like we have some people online. I just, do we ask each person, or do we just? Yeah, you get to ask Janet. OK, I'll just ask each person if they have a comment at this time, the public. Janet Whitaker. And now you have to mute, Ethan, though. I'm good, thank you. OK, Jenny Austin. I'm good, thank you, Amy. OK, Eric Lafayette. Easy, easy, aye. OK, great. So those two public have it. The phone, I believe. Yeah, OK, yes. Great, so moving on to board comment. Well, I'll start, I guess. I was thinking about the school, the next step for our sixth graders, and I didn't know if we were going to be able to offer some type of school fair type thing. I know I went through it last year with finding a school for my daughter, and I want to express the doing it early as possible. And so we've reached out to all the sixth grade parents already, and there's some who have already made some decisions and some who have asked for some connections to be made. And then next Wednesday, I believe it is. Yes, next Wednesday at 6 o'clock, the principal from White River Valley Middle School, Olin Bradley, will be at Rochester to meet with some folks as well. But we reached out before break to see what parents needed, whether they wanted a fair or just needed help connecting. Wonderful, that's good. I was just, it was on my mind. And if we are trying to promote schools within our RSU too, it's a good opportunity to do so. OK, is there any further board comment? Ethan, Robert? No comment, thank you. No comment. Justine, and Pat. OK. No comment, thank you. Moving on to the board reports. Starts superintendent. So you have my report in hand. I'm looking forward to you to get the initial presentation tonight from EEI. As I mentioned earlier, I think our best course of action tonight is to decide what your meeting logistics are going to be in person versus Australian ballot. If you wanted to delay even further, you could. Those are all options you have by statute right now. So I think you should decide those this evening. If you decide to move to Australian ballot, there's a certain motion you make. Tara has that language for you. If you decide to stay in person, learning a normal meeting date, that's great too. And then I think we have a quick special meeting here in the next week to adopt the warnings. And have some discussion tonight too in regards to how you want to use your reserve funds during Tara's report. So I think that's the other last detail too for the mornings. And other than that, I'll take any questions, folks? This is Robert, if I have a question. If we go to an Australian ballot, what's the procedure for getting on the ballot? So you have to fill out a candidate consent form, Robert, but they waived the signature part. So it's just filling out a candidate consent form and turning that in. It would be 30 days prior to the vote. OK, and that would be turned into your town clerk. Town clerk. OK, any further questions for the superintendent regarding his report? How are we going to be discussing separately the question of when? Yes, discussion item 9-2 is the annual meeting logistics. So we will fully discuss all the differences in our options at that point. Yes. OK, principles report? Yes, so you have my report in front of you. It seems like February was a short month, which it is. It is, but it didn't feel it while we were in it. That's the way I'm going to put that. Can't think of any major adjustments to it other than you asked the question about middle school and where kids were looking. And we have made those connections with families. And we still have two more weeks of winter wellness left when we return. So a little spring skiing and snowboarding, which will be great. And how has that been going? It's been going well. I think it's got a few hiccups, but more so just because everybody's staffing, including ours, rotates on the day. And it's new, so you learn from experience. And you kind of forget. Like, it's amazing what a year does, your gap does. But the kids are enjoying it, so that's all worthwhile. And are some kids getting to a cross-country ski? We're doing all that on campus or on site. So last year through grant funds, we were able to acquire our own cross-country skis that people like clip into that are age-appropriate. So kids have been cross-country skiing and snowshoeing and ice skating. On site. Wonderful. And that's pretty much it. Can't think of anything. Unless folks have questions. Go ahead, yes. Thank you. Another amazing report. The three bullets are making your in-service training on February 11th. You're talking about awareness where students are feeling safe and continuing to pursue that and how you're going to do it and do it well. And that's just so important. And the teachers being engaged and active and positive is positive. You also talked about in your in-service session on February 11th to try to get more almost like real-time assessments on how kids are doing so that they can adjust their either style or content or approach to learning. And I just thought that was fantastic because that's a challenge. And grouping together with your team, you can share that and share ideas and pursue that. And then we're going to talk about the results of the SU performance and a later agenda item. And then the idea of the third bullet, which was four students are now moving out of special intervention. Yeah, that's exciting. That's something to be celebrating. And we've got to make sure that they can continue. But you're well aware of that. But to be able to say that four of our students, thanks to the efforts of the faculty of? Actually, four for literary and two from math. So six total for the two campuses. And it's paying off. That's very exciting. That's a lot of forward movement with our education. And I know one of our goals is to by 2025 is to by 50% move the kids in level one out of level one. And here's an example how we're doing that right now. Thank you. Wonderful. Does anybody else have any further questions for the principal regarding the principal's report? Okay, there being none, we'll move on to the business manager's report. Good evening, everyone. You have my initial report, which outlines all of the due dates coming up for the month of March. And yesterday we actually received a notification from the child nutrition team that they are releasing another grant opportunity for us, which is called the supply chain assistant fund. And that will give our supervisory union up to $19,738.80 of additional resources for our food due to the supply chain issue. So we'll be applying for that as well. And then otherwise, the majority of my report is going to be about the research I did after our discussion at the last meeting for your building reserve funds, which is the second memo dated February 15th. So based on what I found in your audits and in your warnings, the funds that are in the FY21 audit are actually stock bridge capital improvements. So we will change that name in the audit to make sure that it is appropriately identified. And then if there's any questions on that history. Does anybody have any questions regarding the history of the building reserve funds for Tara at this time? She did a great job of researching that. Thank you for laying it all out. You're welcome. Time to get to the bottom of it. Great. So in the audit, it will be appropriately named. And then for moving forward, do we want to discuss that now or later? Yep. I believe it needs to be under your report as I do not see an agenda item for it. Okay. So when we did the budget, we had $284,554 as the surplus in FY21. So of that, we use the $150,000 as revenue to give tax credit back to the voters, leaving $134,554 to be dispersed to reserve funds as requested to the voters. So we wanted to talk about how you wanted to do that. And I have an understanding that there is a desire to have the dandelion daycare proceeds that have been in the general fund surplus since the sale to be allocated to the Rochester Capital Projects Building Maintenance Fund. So if we did that, and it would leave a balance of $63,650, which I would recommend either dividing in between the two Rochester and Sockbridge funds or perhaps dividing it three ways and getting some money into the tuition reserve fund. So again, that's gonna be your decision as the board, but that's what you have available and how you want to move forward. Okay. I don't know if I need to bring any of the new members up to speed with what of the dandelion daycare possible. It would be helpful, thank you. Okay, so back when we started discussions on merging together as a district, one of the things that needed to happen was to sell a piece of property that was owned by Rochester. It was a building that's in the front of the elementary school, always known as the dandelion daycare. It used to be a childcare facility and the previous Rochester board had updated it and hoped to create a daycare at that time but because of a number of things that just didn't happen. The Rochester board under the guidance of previous leadership had a meeting and thought that we had set up the fund appropriately, like I said, per the guidance we had at the time, to set up a reserve fund to be able to put the proceeds from the sale of the dandelion daycare into the said fund. It was set up as a general education fund just so that there was no, just to keep it very open. And I do have meeting notes and everything from that time to bring everybody to a good understanding. What we ended up finding out was that it was ill advised, it was incorrectly done and we actually did not officially set up the dandelion daycare. All right, a reserve fund, we didn't. And so therefore the money could not go into a said fund because there was no fund. So it went into, I don't wanna say the word wrong, did it go into the general fund? So general funds are plus, it's state in your general fund. State in the general funds are plus. You can't, a board doesn't have the authority to set up a reserve fund. Only the voters can do so, that's why it has to go on your warning and has to be voted on by the residents. Right. And since we are in this position that we do have these funds, I would love to do what the Rochester Board had initially proposed to do and to put the funds from that sale into a reserve fund. In previous years, we just haven't been in a financial situation and so we've just kept it in there to make sure that we stay to flow. I agree with what Tara is saying, but I'd like to hear other people's comments on it. First a question in the comment. Question is, our budget that we approve and everything else, does it depend on utilizing these monies that's 134,554 to so-called balance our budget? Or is that, no, it relies on the 150. It relies on the 150. So 150,000 is the revenue that you use to reduce your taxable? But that still is money that we're putting back in. So in the future years, we're not gonna have that 150 to put back in. So what is our plan then? Well, the plan is we run another surplus, right? I mean, the goal would be that we're not running deficits, right? And if we budget right, we should be within about 2% every year. We don't budget to the penny. We shouldn't be. Right. Because we could have kids move in or have something happen around meeting the hires. So- But where does that revenue come from then? Came from your surplus. In the future. Well, right now we're projected at like a $300,000 surplus. So some of that is- Over time, you're gonna have to spend that. Over time, we have to do another 150 down. Amy is the answer. No, I understand that. But if we're putting money back in, we're putting money into the budget to- Offset taxes. Offset taxes. So we won't have that next year. So you're anticipating you will have that? Okay. You will have another surplus. So this past year, it was only $700 and something, right? Right. And remember, this current fiscal year's budget, we budgeted for staffing levels at people's experience level. And our staff was much more experienced than what we ended up with, which is what's helping us project towards 80 surplus. So just to pause the board, you've already adopted your budget, that one 50 is in it. So, I mean, we can talk about how we're gonna find that. We talked about that last month. You've been budgeting surplus revenue for the last several years. And so the answer is we have to dwindle that down. Otherwise, you're gonna see a significant tax increase all of a sudden. And that's not what we wanted. And so what the goal would be instead of budgeting 150 with surplus revenue for next year, we'd get that down to 100ing. If we have the hundred. We will have the hundred. I'm telling you, we are projected to have a surplus. So we will have the hundred. And we knew that when we built your budget. And we also were using ESSER funds to fund some things locally. You are gonna have a surplus. And so the plan would be to dwindle that down over time. So then you're not happening to use surplus money to offset revenue, but you've been doing that traditionally. So what you would have saw is instead of having a decrease in taxes and Rochester and a slight increase in stock bridge, that would have been multiplied by the one shift, the Athenian groups. Right. No, I understand that concept. Do you have, I'm gonna continue. Sorry, I jumped in on that. Okay, is there a, Ethan has a tanner. It's Ethan, all right? Ethan? There is, it's hard. It's noisy where I'm at. So I don't know if it's gonna work. I might have to type it in. Okay. I'll just say quickly, I support Tara's plan. We talked about this a fair bit, Tara is an Amy guy, and I just support, I think it's a wise use. I think it's really important symbolically as well to finally lay the rest where the Dan Lydic and money was, because it was some of the convention. And I think it also brings the two funds when we maybe someday down the road unify these two funds, it brings them together with somewhat a similar balance, which I think is not a bad thing. So I just feel that's a good move forward. Thank you. All right. Another board member have a comment or, okay, let's build them. Yeah, I think I mentioned it before. I think sound budgeting, we need to have investments in our capital structure. In this case, our buildings and our ground. And we invest in our teachers and everything else in administration. We need to be doing that. And we haven't been able to do it. Stockbridge, and I commend our predecessors several years ago, decided it was wise to start setting money aside for capital improvements. And thanks to Tara, you verified that that amount is $109,000. And I think those dollars are wisely set aside and they should be used for, down the road, future capital needs of the Stockbridge Central School. The same time, it sounds like your predecessors and Rochester do the same thing with the Dandelion Daycare and wanting to designate and put those monies set aside for capital. And I'm very supportive of that. And I think that really, really, really makes sense. That leaves a net if the numbers are correct around the tower of $68,650, which is not designated. So we've got, as Ethan said, we've got 109 with Stockbridge. We've got 70 with Rochester. And I think it makes sense to continue to set monies aside when we are fortunate enough to have that. And I'd like to suggest in future, budgeting that we budget for capital improvement. That that $63,650 be worn for a combined, unified capital account. And that could be tapped based on the needs of the two campuses and all the other resources that we have in mind so that we end up with two designated amounts and we've started building a combined unified. And our strength is being unified. And so we've got the best of both worlds. We've got building blocks on both sides and we're building something together. So my suggestion would be is that $63,650, whatever the amount is, that net amount be warned for setting up a reserve fund for the unified Rochester, Stockbridge Unified District. I like that idea. I do too, because I think as we get ready to do capital improvements, you could tap those two standalone districts for each building. The two standalone capital improvement funds for each building. We know that's not gonna even cover all of that, right? But that would put those to bed and then you've got this other one that's you're building forward. Yeah. And I do think it's symbolic of unification and trust. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Do we need to make a motion? Well, you don't need to make a motion, but you're actually gonna make the motion when you adopt the warning. But we need to know what you wanted to do to bring that warning to you. As the rest of the board members that are on line of good with that for the warning. I have a thumbs up from Justine. I'm good with it. Pat, Robert, is that something, or do you have further questions? Yes, sir. I'm on board with that. That would take care of reserves for capital improvements. How about a reserve for student tuition and such? I think that was talked about before. So I do agree, but the more I thought about it, I think we'll always pay for a child's schooling, but yet we might shy away from paying for new repairs on a building. And so I really think that we should put all this money into a building reserve fund. I think we'll always pay for a child's schooling, so. Ethan, do you have any comment or are you in agreeance with? Oh yeah, I support this. Okay. I support this, and I agree this moving forward using the extra for a combined is a good idea. Okay, great. Noted them. Good deal. Okay, Terry, do you have anything else in your business manager's report? Not at this time, I'll get this all written up in the warning. Okay, wonderful, thank you very much. All right, moving on to the energy committee. So it's my pleasure to bring Eric Lafayette to you from EEI, just a reminder, all this work that's being completed has been part of the free performance audit. And this is just the initial step one of them presenting to you their initial findings. They're gonna come in a couple months with a more detailed cost analysis of it. But they'll give you a sense on where they think they can find some efficiencies and just some concepts in regards to capital improvements. Great, thank you, Jamie. I appreciate that introduction. I'm Eric Lafayette with Energy Efficient Investments. I live in Burlington, Vermont. I'm based out of Vermont. Our company is based out of Merrimack, New Hampshire, which is just south of Manchester. If you don't mind switching to the next slide, I'll try to run through these pretty quick. But I just kinda wanna give you an overall understanding of what we're doing and where we're at on the process. So right now, we're just in the initial energy audit phase of the process. So we've gone through your buildings. We've done some initial audits. We've done lighting audits. We've brought engineers through. We've brought an architect through. And we're starting to build the report of what we're finding at your schools. And at this point, I'm just gonna try to give you just a general overall feeling of some of the initial things that we saw on some of the energy saving opportunities that we found. And then as we further develop our audit and we get more details specifically of what we think are the energy saving measures that districts should go after, we'll present it back to you guys with more detailed line items, specifically what the energy saving measures are. Next slide. We've had a lot of success in Vermont. Addison Northwest, which is Virginia's school district. We did a major upgrade there. Bennington schools, Mill River, and then quite a few schools in New Hampshire as well. We entered into the Vermont market probably five or six years ago. But we've been working at New Hampshire for 15 plus years and had success all throughout New Hampshire and now Vermont. And we're trying to build our Vermont portfolio. Next slide. So Addison Northwest, which I mentioned, that's for Gens. They went for a really comprehensive upgrade. They spent 7.6 million. They swapped out all their old oil fired boilers for the high efficient condensing boilers, LED lighting, eliminating the steam heating systems, adding a solar PV field and upgrading the roof. Next slide. Mill River school district is another one that we did the year after for Gens. They really looked for just budget neutral projects whereas for Gens wanted to address a lot of the capital concerns that they had with their school as well. Mill River was really just looking for budget neutral and there we did a dry chip biomass heat plant which is a wood chip boiler. Also LED lighting, we always had a great payback. And then DDC building automation which is your control system. That allows for web-based controls where you can sign in. Kind of similar to your Nest thermostat where you can log in anywhere that has internet access and see what's going on inside of your school from an HVAC standpoint. And then analytics, which for us is like kind of your, that's your long-term continuous energy monitoring. So that's a monthly report where we go back, we look through your DDC system and we try to find ways to optimize the controls based on the use of the school. Next slide. So why do we have success in Vermont? A lot of it's based on just the local teams and partners that we've built in the area. We work a lot with local engineers, engineering services of Vermont, EV Engineering. So we use mechanical, electrical, structural engineers that are all based out of Vermont. All the contractors, when we go out to bid, we have great relationships with a lot of the major mechanical, electrical, control contractors in Vermont and we've done a lot of work with them recently. So we really try to build a local team and we try to find people that match the project. So we're not going out to the biggest contractor if we're looking to swap out, just say a single unit ventilator. We try to match the contractor up with the right project so we can maximize the return for the school district. Next slide. So this just kind of just gives you an idea of how we actually fund our projects. So what we do is, we try to get the biggest line of where your schools are at now and understand what your current energy costs are and then we look for energy saving measures. So an energy saving measure might be swapping out the fluorescent lighting with LED lighting. If you swap that out, I'm just using generic numbers. In this scenario, you guys are spending $120,000 a year on energy costs. With the new LED lighting upgrade, your energy costs are gonna reduce down to $100,000 a year. So you use that $20,000 in savings towards a lease that will pay for the actual project that you're doing. Lighting often has a six to seven year payback. So if you're doing a 10 or 15 year lease, there's opportunities to bring other capital projects in with that lighting upgrade. Next slide. Some of the initial assessments is just like very nice schools. Like they're very well kept. They're very clean. They have big windows, lots of natural light and they've really maximized the life expectancy of the equipment in there. You can tell that it's over the years, it's been well cared for. Everything when I went in there was working. It's maintained. But the reality is it's just way past the end of its useful life for the most part. And there are a lot of opportunities for energy upgrades and just bringing the systems that you have right now up to code and up to energy standards. And then I see a lot of opportunities to just reduce the general CO2 emissions based on the fossil fuel burning that's going on in the school. Next slide. Okay, so this, one of the initial things that I noticed at Stockbridge and Rochester, lighting, so LED lighting upgrade right now, it's fluorescent lighting at both school. We just send, well, you guys were out on break last week. We did a lighting audit at both schools. So we hope to have information back on that soon. Controls, like I mentioned, that's the DDC control system, web-based control. Right now, everything is a localized control. So your guys ventilation systems are working off like a time clock that you would see not a whole lot different than like a residential house that may run like an outside light or something like that. And then you guys have basic thermostats that kind of control the heat. So there's huge opportunities to upgrade on the control end. And a lot of it's based on doing night setbacks and really optimizing the system so it's only in use so that you're providing the comfort to the students when it's actually in use. Ventilation upgrades, energy recovery is something that, so energy recovery is when you're actually taking, so in a building you're ventilating, you're bringing outside air into the building and you're also exhausting air to keep kind of a neutral balance, pressure balance in the building. So when energy recovery will actually take the heat off of the exhaust air and it will transfer to the outside air. So instead of in the middle of the winter trying to heat up negative 20 degree air to ambient room temperature, 70 degrees for ventilation, you're only heating up 35 or 40 degree air. So you're picking up a huge delta T. So that's something that we're gonna look at at both schools. Upgrading the insulation and just the ventilation through the school is something that we're gonna look at as well. And then on top of it, our report is gonna include some capital replacements that really don't have probably any energy savings opportunity in it. But just something that we can bring forward to you guys and bring to your attention and it might be something that you might be able to wrap into your project as well. Good. Boiler room, stock bridge, you guys in a newer Boudere's boiler, both utilizing fuel oil. Something that I've been talking about throughout the district is looking in something that we've had a lot of success on and actually has really good payback is a wood chip system. So wood pellet or dry chip or green chip, any three of them is something that we're gonna look closely at. Conversion to LP over the last five years, LP has been cheaper than oil. And it has been that it's the same way this year and I expect it to be that way moving forward as well. So if wood chips don't work out, maybe an LP might be a better fuel source than oil. The boiler on the left is from Rochester, which is, as seen, it's done a lot of good work and it's past its useful life. Whereas the boiler on the right is from stock bridge, which is currently utilizing oil. That is a boiler that could get converted to LP, which would reduce your CO2 emissions and actually probably save money as well just on the buyout with a fuel purchase. Pump upgrades, there's been some upgrades in pumping through the school, but something that we do is we look at adding variable frequency drives on all the pumps. And then, like I said, a district wide pellet system. And then one big focus point is trying to eliminate the steam at Rochester. They still have the older portion of the school that is heated through the steam system. They do have an addition off the end of the school that has a heat exchanger and converts to hot water. So I think the goal for that school would just try to eliminate the steam, go to a pure hydronic system, which gets you a lot more precise control of the heating. As well, there's just more people that work on hydronic systems. Steam is kind of going by the wayside and finding people that are willing to work on them is becoming less and less. Next slide. Controls, what you see on your left is an air compressor. It's part of a pneumatic control system at Rochester. This actually uses air to move actuators, which controls your heating and your ventilation at the school. This is something that became obsolete about 30 years ago and they went to electronic controls. So probably looking at doing a district wide control system with a company like Temperature Controls of Vermont, Control Technologies, Johnson Controls, somebody like that, where like I said, where you'd have that web-based access and that really allows you to optimize your energy use because it provides trending data so you're able to go back and check like, oh, what was our unit doing in the middle of the night last night? Was it running when it wasn't supposed to be? Without having this DDC and web-based controls, you're really just relying on people being there at all times knowing if your equipment is running or not. Next slide. Ventilation equipment, same thing, you guys have ventilation equipment. It was running when I was there. It is past its useful life. And like I said, there is no energy recovery. I would guess based on the equipment that I saw that there might be spaces that might be a little under ventilated. So that's something that we do have our engineers looking at. We are running reports right now of how much ventilation is needed in the space due to the occupancy. What are you currently serving and what does it take to get it up to code standards? So that will be part of our report. We're moving forward. Next slide. LED lighting thing. There's a mixture. You guys have some newer fixtures over at Rochester. Stockbridge has older fixtures. So usually when we look at LED lighting, there's two options. Do you replace just the bulb itself or do you replace the whole fixture? So that's something that will be part of our analysis and we'll give you guys both options. Obviously, if you just replace the bulb, it's a lot quicker payback period, but you're also losing a lot of the functionality that you would get if you went with a new LED fixture. Some of the cool features that you see now with the LED fixtures is auto daylight dimming. So you guys have some schools that have some really big windows at it. So being able to utilize and harvest the natural daylight, your lights will auto dim so it maintains a book candle at the actual desk that meets code standards. So there's really good energy savings in that opportunity as well. Next slide. And then just moving on to capital projects. There's stuff that, there's facade updates over at Dockbridge School, there's roofing at Rochester, kitchen upgrades at both schools, ADA compliance. So there's stuff that we're looking at that's outside of the actual energy savings opportunities that we really focus on as an energy service company. But we do like to bring these forward because a lot of times if we're going through and we're replacing the whole ventilation system and we're adding ductwork up above the drop ceilings, that might be the opportunity that we've replaced the old sagging ceiling tile in the space. So we're gonna bring all those things. Sometimes it makes sense to do some projects in conjunction with other projects, but our goal is really to lay it all out for you guys and a nice clear line item, explain it all. This is a code measure, this is an energy saving measure and this is really a capital improvement that's due to the life cycle of the issue that you guys come up with. And that's kind of our process of how we tackle each one of these schools. Next slide. So over the next three months, you know, going into summertime, we're gonna continue working on our energy audits and I hope in something that I'll talk about with Jamie here in the next couple of weeks, which is gonna be our second round of meetings with you guys, which is really gonna dive more into detail. So what did we specifically find? What are some of the initial energy saving measures that we found with some of the budgets and paybacks? And then at that point, you know, we really wanna sit down with you guys and understand what energy saving measures you wanna further investigate. And then that's really when we dive in and we start providing more detailed drawings, specifics on equipment, and then, you know, really dive deep and get hard, true numbers. So that's where we're at on the process and I would think in three, four months, we'll be meeting back with you guys again and hopefully have more information for you. Wonderful, thank you. That's all is wonderful. Ethan, go ahead. Yeah, Eric, thank you very much. Really detailed and I love the variability you're giving us. You're going to give us three plus. Yeah, it's gonna be very, I don't make decisions for people. All I try to do is lay out all the facts and information. If you guys wanna go forward with a wood chip, I'm happy to provide all the information of what the costs are. And we don't only look at the upfront costs, for us it's the lifecycle cost. How long is this equipment gonna last? What's the fuel source? And what can you expect the prices to be in the future? And that's really, you know, hopefully we try to give as much information as possible so you guys can make informed decisions that will be, you know, a big benefit to the district over the next 20 years. Two more things, are they? Just one is I hope that we can turn all of this into an educational opportunity for our students to learn about what's happening in their school and energy efficiency and, you know, really show them the boiler. Talk about what efficiency is and talk about lighting and talk about, you know, and so that this can, so this is an educational opportunity as well, which of course is always what we're looking for. The second question I have, or the second question I have is, I don't remember, I think Jamie mentioned before, but how do you get paid in this process? I just forgot. Yeah, so we, so all the work that we're doing right now is pretty much just upfront. And we get paid when you guys actually wanna move forward with a project. So we're ultimately the construction manager in the GC, so we only get paid if we bring projects to you guys that you guys ultimately vote on, approve and wanna move forward with. And at that price level. And at that price level. Exactly, yeah, so we're gonna provide you guys a bunch of different pricing. You know, our company, we're an energy service company, so we're financially audited, we have to follow federal guidelines, and we're more than happy to open up the book and show you guys all the numbers on where the pricing comes. And at the end of the day, we, you know, we do 80 million dollars a year in contracts and we end up with about a 2% profit across the board. So we're really an energy service company that's just out there to try to help reduce CO2 emissions and reduce costs and provide good buildings to the students. Okay, thank you so much for your presentation. Great. Excellent. Does anybody else have a question for Eric? Robert. Yes, just a couple of technical questions. The, when you replace or suggest replacing the controls, existing controls use pneumatic actuators. Do you replace the pneumatic actuators? Do you run a hybrid system? I would, I'm going to get rid of all the pneumatics in the school. I mean, ideally, I do, well, if you guys want to work with EI, I'm not going to move forward with any pneumatics. So that would probably be the... Okay, I have a couple other questions. One, does your scope of your project investigate solar on the roof, you know, along with the roof installation on the roof? Yes, it will. Yep. And finally, is there any, are you looking at any heat pump technology or is that not within the scope? We do utilize a lot of heat pump technology and where we usually utilize it is through the ventilation system. So what we've been doing a lot recently is when we upgrade the ventilation, we add like a dehumidification slash heat pump option to it, which would really provide your first stage of heating and actually provide cooling throughout the school. Well, we call it dehumidification, not exactly cooling. And then the heat pump would actually provide your first stage of heat. But in all of the schools that we do, we always have at least that secondary heat source, which is usually your perimeter base 40 or radiant ceiling panels, which would maintain them in this project as well. Okay, thank you. Yep. Any other questions for Eric? Okay, welcome to it. I have a quick question. Go ahead, Pat. I guess one of my questions is, are you, as well as looking at lighting and heating and ventilating, are you looking at actual building materials as well as far as windows? How old they are? Is there even efficient at this point? And are you assessing wall cavities as well and what the R values are? And if anything is not up to code, in that aspect? Yes, we will. So usually what we do, unfortunately, stuff like windows, replacing windows, don't have great paybacks. So really bumping them into a performance contract usually has its implications because windows are a very heavy capital expense. But we will provide budgets for window replacements based on what we see at other schools. And I'm more than happy to give an analysis or run payback periods of what the windows are. We typically find payback on window replacements that are roughly 40 years, just because they just haven't, there's just not a whole lot of payback in replacing windows. But, and we are, our company originally started out as an insulating company, an air sealing company. So we certainly will, one of the first things that we do at every school and one of your best paybacks is air sealing and upgrading the insulation, both in wall cavities and through the attic. So that will be something that's part of our report. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And then one other question was as far as, going with pellets or wood chips. I mean, I love the concept and everything, but is that, is the maintenance side and the time loading it, is that something that would already fall within, say the budget of having maintenance staff there? Or is that gonna, you know, increase cost and salary for somebody that has to maintain that? Yeah, very good question. I mean, that's something that we can certainly go over with your facilities crew as we move forward. I gotta tell you, like, I'll tell you right now, biomass plants work really good at high schools and bigger facilities, smaller facilities. At that point, you'd probably be moving over towards a pellet boiler, which is not nearly as much maintenance as say a wood chip boiler would be. But that being said, they are more maintenance. You know, you do have to go and clear the ash on, you know, a weekly basis. And we would, you know, I'm happy to share. One of the things that we actually had a lot of success with and I'm happy to do it with your facilities team as well is we can go check out some of the facilities where we've installed pellet boilers and where we've installed wood chip and where we've installed LP condensing. And I'd be happy to walk you guys and meet the facility directors at each one of the schools and you guys can get a feeling for what they have for maintenance on each one of the boilers. But that is true. I mean, wood chip and wood pellet are an additional maintenance task of a standard LP condensing boiler. Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate everything you put together so far. Yeah. You have a lot of work. Okay. Robert? I just want one question along those lines. When you've done all this work, will there be essentially an upgrade or even creation of an operations manual for all the heating, all the systems when you're done? Yeah, absolutely. So Robert, one of the big things with EDI is we try to create these long-term relationships. And one of the things I talked about was this analytics reporting, which I definitely, which I think is your most bang for your buck. So essentially we don't walk away from your school. What I try to do is I try to sell every school a five-year analytics report, which is a monthly breakdown of how your school is doing with its energy consumption and with its energy saving measures. And that's something that we go through with your facilities director on a monthly basis. So, and on top of it, we need to guarantee these energy savings for the duration of the lease if we decide to go that way. So yeah, we're totally vested in the long-term relationship and O&M manuals. And we pick good subcontractors that will pick up your phone if something breaks. So, owner's training and operations manuals, I should say owner's training is the best energy saving measure that you can have. I can tell you that right now. Having a good manager that knows how the control system works, it is worth every penny. So we do spend a lot of time with owner training. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much for your report. We definitely look forward to seeing you again. Thank you all. Have a good night. Appreciate it. All right. Moving on to the negotiations committee. Yeah, hi. I'm, we've been meeting with the teachers union representatives. We've had a number of sessions. They've been constructive. They've been respectful. They've involved careful listening on both sides of the needs, requirements, issues, and I believe that both sides are trying to understand and consider what's going on to the best interest, not only to both sides, but to the entire SU. They've also been very focused and we've gone through a number of proposals. And the good news is that a number of proposals we have, what they call a TA, which is a tentative agreement that's been signed by both representatives, both of the union and of the SU. We've got some considerable work to do to bring things together. I'm an optimistic person and I happen to think that we can get there and get an agreement that's in everybody's best interest. And I look forward to being part of that effort. Wonderful, it sounds really great. Positive. Bill's been great to have on the team, by the way. I can see, he's definitely had a positive influence. That's wonderful, great. Okay, any questions for the negotiation committee? Great, Superintendent Evaluation Committee? Is that Ethan? He just dropped off. Oh, that's, you wanted to, Bill. I can speak to that too. The committee met in mid-February, we had a very constructive meeting and just sharing information because some of us are newbies like myself and others have been around for a while. The good news I was saying, this is really the second time that the Supervisor Union be utilizing a model developed by the Vermont School Board Association in evaluating their superintendents. So it isn't like we're trying to scramble and create something out of full cost. We've got a very good model and I reviewed it and I think it's very good. And it's good in a number of ways. It's good because it's gonna be fair. It's good because it's going to help us focus on what's important. It's gonna help us look at things that are measurable and important to accomplish. So we're looking at the past, but we're also looking to the future. And we're a team, the boards together, the SU and the superintendent and his team. And so I'm heartened by the model that we're following that and give credit to the SU chair for going that way. Now, each individual district board has a important role here. Each one of us should have received an email from the White River Supervisory Union of a questionnaire. And that questionnaire is basically going through the criteria that's been established, which I think is sound about evaluating our superintendent. Our total take on this is only gonna be as strong as the participation and the due diligence of each one of us of looking at that questionnaire and filling out that questionnaire. And I think there is a timeframe that might be like March 10th or something. So if you don't, this doesn't ring a bell. You can check with Christie or myself, whatever it is. We'll make sure you get it. If it's something that, and everybody here is so busy that you set aside, I encourage you strongly to go back to that email and fill out that questionnaire. It should take about, I think, 15, 20 minutes of careful consideration. But I think each board members of all the SU is gonna make this evaluation process strong and valuable. So it's underway and with our United participation, I think it'll be very valuable going forward. Great. Great. White River Valley SU updates board chair. This is just kind of a standing agenda item that we've been putting on the local districts in case board members needed a quick SU wide update. Ethan, we haven't met yet this past month. We were supposed to meet tomorrow, but we weren't able to get secure at Quorum. So it's gonna be postponed until the 16th. And a big part of that is I have a lot of outgoing board members right now, because it's a night's vote. So there's a lot of units. There's several current SU members who are going off our boards. So once those boards reorg will have enough. I thought there was a chance that you're still gonna pull through, but some of our normal attendees are not available tomorrow. So that's gonna be postponed. And the only other update I'll say on that, and then Ethan can jump out if he wants, is I've been working with the VSBA to they lost their trainer, Susan, in the fall. And so we were scheduled to have board training January, February, March. And so I've emailed Sue Kozlowski about their new trainer starts March 16th. My hope is that the March 28th we will pick up with the January planned. And I've been trying to encourage everyone, all 31 board members to attend. If possible, but we will record it and send it out to the folks to view. Yeah, I think that's fantastic. And my reading of his bio of the new director of support where I don't know what his official title is going to be very, very, very strong. So I think to tap that is really wise. I appreciate your proactive involvement on this because I think we all can learn and share and we'll be stronger by it. Thank you. Any questions or comments? One thing, this is Ethan. One thing I want to just add in. One topic that the SU board has been talking about is going forward. We sort of been in a crisis mode when it was a lot of turmoil over the last three years as this SU, since this SU was created. And the idea of how do we shape this SU and the job of superintendent for a future, a more stable future for this SU? And what does that mean and what does that look like? And it's a very interesting conversation. I think there's also a lot of feeling that we are starting to pull together as an SU and look at ourselves as an SU. At least, that is my feeling, I could say that, but I think I'm hearing that from other people as well. We tried to have a retreat before and it just didn't pull together with the wrong weekend to do that, but I still think there's an option for that as we get into the spring. So there's some good thinking about how do we make this a stronger SU? How do we go forward and quite honestly make Jamie's job a job that he can do until he's done and then someone else who will walk in and not feel like, wow, this is an overwhelming job, this is something I can do. So that's some of the areas we've been discussing. Thank you. Okay, wonderful. We will move on then to discussion items, board goal setting and mission vision. Yeah, and I've got a couple of please again here on this. Just get out and where I am right now, made it untenable to get a meeting going. So I'll take the Miocopa and we will have something for you next time. We had a good meeting and we are moving forward and I feel confident I need to keep it going. Thank you. Okay, 9.2, annual meeting logistics and mailer. So I mean, I could kick you guys off. The first decision I think you really need to do is, it's Australian ballot versus in-person, right? And I think if you decided, and then if you decided to go in-person, whether then the next question is, do you go in-person on your normal date or do you delay? Do you feel better delaying a little bit? Those are the two things you can decide as a board in statute. What is our current date? You can move to Australian ballot and you can delay. Those are your two options. And what is our current date of? Tara, what's the, our sudden? May 3rd, right, Tara? Yeah, the first Tuesday. May 3rd. G HUD's the second Tuesday. May 3rd. I get you guys confused with G HUD sometimes. Okay. With that one. Okay. So we have two options to discuss. I think we had started talking about this last week in regards to if we wanted to do the voting by Australian ballot rather than the in-person meeting, which is what our bylaws or whatever they, whatever we normally do it. I guess I would be inclined to think voting by Australian ballot might get more people to vote because maybe they are more comfortable with being able to just go into their local town clerk or I'm not sure the logistics of the ballot but that might be easier. I think at the same time I do still need to have a presentation. You have to if you've got an Australian ballot. So we still would have a presentation and we could choose to do that either in-person. Or a hybrid. Or probably a hybrid is what we've been going with and that kind of makes sense. I guess I would be leaning towards the Australian ballot. I think we would get more voting than just voting at meeting. Discussion? Ethan. Again, I think live meetings are good. I just think seeing the board, seeing them in front of it and voting so much more. It is a tradition. I'm happy to go either way, but I just think it's the way our town being is going to go back in person. And I think it's really great for people to turn out and see us there. Yes, higher vote numbers. Yes, I think Australian ballot. My instinct is always going to be to push for live. And if that means another week or two, five. But I'll go with any way we go, but that's just my two-cell stick. Well, I do just want to comment that as you just mentioned about our town meeting being in-person, that is true. But the voting is actually Australian ballot the next day. So whereas we would still get everybody, as many people who wanted to come to a live meeting to get there and get the information, but it wouldn't restrict the voting to just the people who were able to attend the meeting. Question, is there, do we have flexibility on the date of town meeting? We talked about our regular schedule would be May 3rd. How far back can we move it later in May? There's certain things bump up. It'd be good to have it by the end of May because we have to wait 30 days for a petition. And then we can submit the results to the Agency of Education. So then you're looking at the end of June, right? And, you know, Tara can speak up, but I think we certainly would want to have a budget approved by the first of June if possible, so that that can get to the AOE and it doesn't affect any of our end fund payments. Right, because then you're starting to, the end of June you're going into the next school year that has potentially an unvoted budget. Just makes it a little funkier. But if we push it. I have a question. Yes, Pat. Did the meeting be in-person and virtual? Yes. In order to have meetings? Yes. Not to vote from the floor. You can't do both. No, the actual information meeting can be done with in-person, a hybrid like we're doing right now, in-person and on Zoom, but we cannot do a vote with people on Zoom and in-person. If we're going to do a vote, a floor vote, meaning that the people in the room are voting on the budget, they have to be in the room or the location that we are. Gotcha, so we could do the hybrid with the Australian ballot. Right, we could do a hybrid informational with an Australian ballot voting. I like that personally. This is Robert. I concur, I think there's going to be a lot of problem in having people, in a lot of people because of COVID to being there for just a in-person vote. So definitely Australian ballot. And then at that point, if you're, I think this hybrid works very well. I would, it's interesting because we're split on this thing. But it isn't like I'm your chain to one opinion, but not to bore you, but I've gone to at least a hundred town meetings in my lifetime and most of them in Massachusetts and a representative town meeting and an open town meeting and everything else like that. And they take a great deal of preparation and everything else, but I must say that in my experience, I'm amazed that the vast majority of the decisions that are made by the people there that will listen to the debate, that ask questions, that got answers. I think overall, and I had to prepare for all these things, the results were better than if they were just gonna vote on a ballot and who they heard from under what circumstance on that. And I'm a believer that town meetings, even though it's a smaller number, people that come, all ages, whatever the case, they care. And they're not shy about asking questions, tough questions about why and when and how come. But at the end of the day, we come together and there's a vote and the decisions made, I think have been very, very wise. It isn't like there's been one fact or another fact, and I don't think it fact that weighs one way or the other. So my tendency is that, and I'd be curious if we don't have to make a decision tonight. I don't know when we have to, but we're talking about May and if we can talk about latter part of May and it's sunny and it's warm. And I like to think that people my age feel better coming out at night when it's warm and it's light and everything else like that, that we could have the participation that we need. I'm also a believer that turnout isn't necessarily a measure of performance and that sounds weird. Why isn't it? Well, in my experience, turnout frequently is you've got a burning issue, you wanna be there. But if you don't have a burning issue, you read the school report, everything seems to be fine. You don't have to be there. And so to have a turnout that's less than the Australian ballot doesn't say that it's undemocratic, it says in my opinion, a lot of that is people say, okay, you've done your homework, you've figured things out, your proposal is reasonable, it's in the student's interest and the town's interest and the taxpayers' interest. So I'm not bothered by the fact that we don't have the same number of people voting there at all. So either way, I'm comfortable doing, but I must say I agree with Ethan on this one. It wouldn't be great to come together again as a community, a combined community, educational community to talk about, listen to, ask questions and debate the future of our schools. Boy, I'd love to be able to do that. I definitely hear you and understand what you're saying. And if we, I just don't want it to be inhibited for anybody to come because of people's fear of COVID or us being able to do something in a COVID safe way. You do say, later May, nice day, outside, people could feel more secure and be able to come out because there are a number of people who do want to be involved, but they really are unable to participate because of COVID. But you do bring a very good point of the community and of the, you come out if you have a burning issue, but on the other hand, you need everybody to come out, not just the people who are- No, but the nice thing about the burning issue is they have an opportunity to ask that burning question and then get information. Break that in there. That is not necessarily the rumor, what people are saying, and then you can weigh that and say it's still an issue with me, I'm voting no. But the nice thing is frequently, I've gone to town meetings, my opinion has changed from the beginning to the end of a debate because of what I heard. What's happened? And that's the power of our New England town meeting and tradition. And I think the hope is that that would happen at the informational meeting as well. It's just you have the informational meeting and then the general ballot. Okay, well, why don't we think about that for a second and then talk about our date and then we'll circle back to, oh, Robert. I just wanted to say that I agree with Ethan and Bill about the far superior, the superiority of in-person town meeting, but I just, the problem is, is we're trying to predict the future of what COVID is going to be and we really just don't know right now. And I know there are a lot of people who are just, would not go to a in-person meeting. It's just too soon. And I reluctantly would advise that we have Australian ballot. Justine? Yes, I think Robert touched on what I was gonna say that we are predicting the future in a way and I feel the same way. I think we should have Australian ballot in a hybrid for that reason because we just don't know, but he said it right before me. Okay. I just wanna put a perspective out there that you're gonna go hybrid or Australian, but we're all in-person for school, for a single day. And while I understand the concern, like it's a school vote when it'd be great to open our building back up to the community to come in and see people. And I just think that we're transitioning and I know it's hard and people don't wanna be out yet, but I really see those points. And I think it's interesting that we're still in a hybrid model, but we're all like, and nobody's saying they don't feel safe at school. People feel safe at school. I don't wanna misconstrue that, but I think if we're voting on a school vote and we're in-person, then we should all be in-person together. Justine? I realize that the folks that do go to school or are in school feel safe in school, but I do know a lot of people who still don't go out in public right now. Community members, not necessarily just parents, but there are community members who don't go to church still, don't go to the library still. I feel like the way I feel is that it's important to include that. So I think that being in-person is important, but I do know that there are people who are afraid. So I think, you know, the hybrid model will allow them to be included and it would be most fair. Okay, and we need to vote on this, Jess, and we also need to come up with a date. There's an action. Well, if you were to do Australian ballot, I think my suggestion would be you keep your normal date. You would delay if you're gonna do in-person. I don't see any reason to delay if you're gonna do Australian ballot. If you weren't deciding on Australian ballot, you could just do a move to delay and not set a date. That's within statute. But that would mean you making a decision no later than your next meeting and it would put it way at the end of May, if that's the case. So I mean, that's your other option too. If you wanted more time to make a decision, there is a motion just to delay or you make a motion which Tara can pop into the chat that moves you to Australian ballot and we would, my assumption would be if you move to Australian ballot, that you just keep your normal date and I'll see why you would delay it. Okay. Ethan? I think we should, I think we should vote. Okay. Tonight. Does anybody have a motion? I think they would like to make them up the last of my screen again. Is it the dongle? I think so, yeah. And this is my backup, the other one didn't work either. Do they still see us and hear us? Yes, yes, they still see us. We just lose that visual. Okay. Sorry, I've been losing visual here every once in a while. So Ethan, you have your hand raised. I just took it down. Okay, well, I entertain a motion. Well, I entertain a motion that we do an in-person meeting on what's the date, mid-May. Okay, Ethan has made a motion that we do an in-person, in-person meeting and vote. Is that what you're? And vote. And vote. All right, Ethan has made a motion for an in-person meeting and vote. There's specific warning to that motion, Tara. Can you pop that one in the chat as well? It's the delay. Isn't this to move them meeting later? Yes. Why don't you give the board both motions? Yes. And we'll vote on them one at a time. Yep, and... So the first comment that I put in is if you move to Australian ballot, and that's at 753, and the one at 754 is to move your meeting to a later date. You have to specify what the date is in the motion. So we, if we move to a later date, we can't specify that it is in-person. We're just saying we're moving to a later date. No, you could specify it's in-person as well. But you need that person. I think that's, I really think that's what we're voting on from the discussion I'm hearing. I think that's what we need to make a vote on. And if we're split, we're split, and that's fine. But I think that's really what the discussion's about. So I think that's what the issue we need to vote on. Okay, so... I still need that. Ethan, are you making a specific motion? I need a date. I don't have a calendar in front of me, so I need a date to push it out, maybe not much, a week, maybe two. But if you could give me a date. So the 17th? 17th would be fine. 17th, I'll make a motion that our meeting take place on the 17th in-person. Okay, you see, she has a specific, you have to read the chat to get the motion exactly correct. I cannot see it anymore, so I cannot help you. Percuit, I move, Percuit Act 77 of 2022 to move the date of the 2022 Arsut annual meeting, two, where is the rest of that? Oh, two, May 17th in-person. Do we have a second? Second. Discussion, okay. There being no discussion, all in favor of moving our meeting to May 17th and having an in-person meeting and vote. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Do we have two ayes, all opposed? Say nay. Nay. Nay. All right, for nay, that motion does not pass. I had just, I know anybody who wants to entertain making a different motion. I hereby move that the board approve the use of Australian balloting for the 2022 annual meeting pursuant to S172 of the 2022 legislative session. Do I have a second? Second. Discussion, there being no discussion, all those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? Say aye. Okay, the motion passes. Thank you, we will have our informational meeting. We gotta decide that too. That's gotta be a date. Well, yeah, cause we'll put it on your morning. So it has to be within 10 days of the vote. And so you could have it the night before if you preferred. It could be the prior week. Those are all options. I like prior week. Yeah, I initially was going to say the night before cause it's fresh in people's minds, but the fact that we are going to be videoing it and people would be able to access it after we've had the hybrid throughout the week if they were unable to attend at that time. So I agree, I think we should do. Tara, they're gonna want an actual location and have it be a hybrid and won't just be virtual. So they don't need that motion. Okay. Cause they'll want a location as well. We need to do something different or are we also? No, no, no, you're fine. I just need to know the date. Some boards have gone completely virtual with their information. I mean, if I may jump in, you make a good point there that in some ways it's sort of closer to being a real in-person meeting if it is the night before and then we vote the next day. I totally support that. Yeah, there's two thoughts. One is it's the night before, it's very fresh in your mind. It's almost as close to an in-person or the other as you do it through the previous week. And then if somebody is unable to attend, let's just say we do it on Wednesday, then Thursday they would be able to watch the video or Friday be able to watch the video of the meeting. Yeah, I like your idea. I like the night before. The night before. Justine, your thoughts too? All right, anybody else wanna weigh in on when we should have the hybrid annual meeting, informational meeting? I think night before is good. Okay. My last question is, because we'll warn the location and give the virtual link. Do you remember where you were in person your last floor vote? Here, Stockbridge. So I would suggest that you warn this informational meeting in Rochester so that you're going back and forth, even though it's an Australian ballot. Because it's last year, it was all virtual. Which is why that motion tariff put it in, but you're gonna warn a location this year. Okay, do you need to make- Sorry, clarification, have we decided that this is a hybrid informational meeting? Because we're not voting from the floor, so we can do a hybrid. You guys definitely do a hybrid. Great, and that's what we agree to do. Is that, we need to agree to that. Do we all agree that we would like to have a hybrid informational meeting that is an in-person option and a virtual option? I do agree with that. Yeah. I agree with that. I do too. Okay. So do we need a motion to have the- No, because we'll just, it'll be on your warning. It'll be on our warning. So it'll be informational meeting May 2nd, Australian ballot voting May 3rd. Okay, great. Hey, thank you all. Nice to have a vote where we don't agree too. Jamie, we need to take any action about commingling. Yeah, we should take action on that. Yep, since it's Australian ballot. Do you have that one? Yep, I'm gonna get it right now. So just so folks understand what this means, it means that your town clerks don't have to bring the votes together in order to count them. This means that each town clerk can count the votes and report it to your district clerk to report out, so that they're not having to move all the ballots. That's the preference of the town clerks is what we have found. Doug, what, it was never right for you about that. I'll make a motion. I move and pursue it to S223 that the ballots for the RRSUD 2022 annual meeting are not commingling due to a continued concern regarding COVID-19 pandemic. Second. All right, any discussion? All in favor? You can have five by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All in favor? Aye. All right, so moved. Thank you. Okay, moving on to, nope, still on annual meeting logistics, now mailer is the second part of that. I think we're good. Nope, okay, but I don't need to go. Wendy, what are you doing? I'm at with Kate McLean, she'll be reaching out to folks who need, who contribute different parts and we will have the draft done by the 16th of March and it'll go to the printer by the 25th. Okay. Now that we have these decisions made. Right, that was based on the maintenance. The only thing, I mean the big thing for you guys for course two is your letter. Yes, Ethan's letter. Oh, it's totally done. Awesome. And I know I said this last time but I definitely want kind of the forefront in that annual, then that mailer on the good celebrations that we are having, I mean that's what we're doing. We're doing some exciting things and I want people to know that, yeah. Thank you. Absolutely. Okay. We like pictures. Right, pictures and charts and graphs. Okay, 9.4, appointment of school district clerk possible action. So you have Jenny Austin has served as your clerk in the past, she did not meet the threshold of the write-in threshold last year but that means that as a board you can appoint a clerk and Jenny has graciously based on us begging, agreed to allow you to appoint her for the remainder of this year. That would be wonderful. And maybe she'll consider putting herself on the ballot for next year, I don't know. Wonderful. But she's at least graciously moined for an appointment this year, right Jenny? You haven't changed your mind? That's correct and there wasn't too much begging. Well, we're really appreciative Jenny. Absolutely. Wonderful. So do we need to appoint her through a motion? Yep, so yeah, you would move to appoint Jenny Austin as your school district clerk. I'll entertain a motion to appoint Jenny Austin as our school district clerk for the remainder of this year. Okay. Second. All in favor, yeah, discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Jenny, now you can sign the warnings and thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. You're welcome. Appreciate it. Okay. I don't know if you have my email, Karen, but I can send you my email address for stuff like that. Great. Thank you so much. Okay, 9.5, High School Building Use Request. Yes. Yes, Ethan, did I move on too fast? Go ahead. I'm gonna, this is probably out of order a little bit, but I just, it just came to me as we're talking about informational meetings. I think it's really important that the school board have some options presented at our informational meeting about what if the town does not accept the high school building? I think we need to at least have started our homework on this. Okay. So that's just to put out everyone's thinking and you can put that in your pipe and smoke it. We're definitely further discussion. Okay, High School Building Use Request. So I have a couple of updates. One, there was the testing request from last meeting and they've moved to using the town office and that seems to be working well. So no longer has the need for the high school building. So that was that update. I have two other requests. One is for Suzuki for the week of July 10th through the 15th and they are looking to utilize the music room and its practice spaces, the auditorium and the fax room as well as the bathrooms by the auditorium. What's the fax room? Home bedroom. Oh, I'm like, we're the fax machine in there. Like, what year are we? We do still have fax machines. Yeah, so the home bedroom. Yep. To be able to utilize those in addition to the elementary spaces. Okay. So that's the first request. And it's from what? Suzuki, the Green Mountains Suzuki Institute. Hopefully that one out there. Let you guys talk before we go on to the next one. Okay. Well, I think that Suzuki has traditionally been very respectful of our spaces and it's a really good thing to bring into our valleys to bring some talent in. And I think we should accept their request to use our space. Do we need a motion? Yeah, probably. I'm going to accept the use of the Suzuki Institute for the high school and elementary school building. Is that correct? For the periods dated? Second. Excellent. Any discussion? Yes. Dude, does the motion need to indicate what renumeration will you receive for that? We, per our previous contracts with them we received $15 per and enrolled student. So it's all based on their enrollment. Okay. Any further discussion? All right, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right, motion passes. And then the next request is to be able to use the auditorium on Saturday, June 25th. For a special event honoring Dorothy Robson, a celebratory retrospective of her musical compositions. And they're looking to use it. It looks like just have access to it to the day with something in the evening hours. And they are willing to donate a fee for use of the auditorium. Okay. And entertain a motion. Yeah, we need to include this. Well, I think we would just do like a normal rental fee in that particular situation, which is just five hours. $100, $200, or what is it? It's based on the number of hours. They're really just looking to hold the date so they can move forward. What have we charged in the past? I honestly don't know, because we've never had just the auditorium rented by anyone besides the town. We charged the players like $300, I believe, for those multiple dates. It was multiple dates and it was also used to the music room, too, though, wasn't it? I think so. Right. Yeah, so probably to be determined. $50 to $100 max, I would say. I think we would base on what custodial time they need. Yeah. That's what I do in other buildings. All right, I'd like that. Based on a fee based on custodial time needed for the event. We don't need to state the exact amount at this point that our administration can figure that out. That's how we base it on other building use requests. There's motion to allow the group presenting a celebration of George Rufson's music for June 25th for the day. Due with reiteration to be decided later. Second. Excellent. Any discussion? All right, all in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right, the ayes have it. Thank you. OK, that looks like we're taking care of everything in discussion items and action items. Do we have any new higher resonations? One resignation. We do have one resignation. Our custodian here in Stockbridge has resigned due to health reasons. And we have had a substitute in here this entire time. So it would be to accept the resignation of James Coswell. OK. Oh, we're moved to accept the resignation of Mr. Odie in the Stockbridge River. Second. Appreciation. With appreciation for their work. Sad to see them go. All right, we have a motion and a second. Any discussion? I do. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right, the ayes have it. OK, moving on to 12, public comment. And I do not believe I see any public. There's no other people on besides these eight. Is that correct? Correct. OK. Great, do we have any? Oh, sorry, didn't work. Do we have any future agenda items? Goal setting, mission again. Yep. Yep. We're definitely going to need options for high school. I think we need to bring the high school back in the discussion. Yeah, I think we can't let that just be a public. We need to start talking about it. Yep. OK. Yeah, I'd like to have it. Also, just a discussion of how we, what's our strategy to get the word out about the budget, about what we're trying to do. That's either take home or PR. That's the editor, all those sorts of things. But I think we need to be organized. I agree. That's a good one. OK, so we have three agenda items for a future meeting, which is going to be Tuesday, April 5th, 2022, at 6.30 PM at the Rochester campus and Google Meet. I want to lock you guys into a special meeting right now next week to adopt your warnings. Tara can run it with you. It won't take more than 10 minutes, probably. But it'd be good to set that now. Thursday night, possible? This coming Thursday or next Thursday? Whichever you want. Thursdays are good for me and Thursday. I'd be a bit of, Thursday is like Wednesday, Thursday? Tara, do you want a little more time to pull them together? I have to, Dad. OK, so you want to do them Thursday. Bill's going to be busy. But as long as you have a quorum, we'll be fine. Bill will still sign it. And it can be just a virtually warned meeting, by the way. We don't have to warn a location anymore by statute. Oh, OK. We can just warn virtuals. Until next January 23, that 2023, actually. So if you want to do this Thursday, what time works best for you guys? It's good for me, usually. 6.30 is great. All right, virtual meeting. We'll get it out tomorrow. For Thursday, 6.30. It's a date with Tara. The legs. OK. Great. I believe that, that does it? Anything else? Amy, Amy, thank you very much for taking over tonight. Yes, no problem. Thank you. I hope you're enjoying wherever you are. And we're jealous. Excellent. Oh, good. OK, well, entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. So moved. All right.