 public comment. I'm. I'm having a room for public comment. I will give my public comment precursor. But do we have anyone online who might be interested in public comment that is wanting to listen to that? Otherwise we skipped. Yes, we did. Um to anyone online wants to give public comment, please do. I'm having a room for public comment. I'm having a room for public comment. Is an opportunity for the public to provide comment to an either an agenda item or some other relevant topic. Um the board is in listen only mode, but public comment does prove very helpful to the board. We oftentimes do follow up and ensure that action is being taken to address any issues that are raised. And it also community wants and is is needing and definitely helps shape our agenda and our actions. So, um, if we're silent, it doesn't mean we're not listening or responsive. Um, so with that anyone online. I want to public comment, please use a raised hand function and if you don't know how to do that, just go ahead and take yourself off camera and and wave. Looks like no public comment. Um, consent agenda. Uh, do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? And we have a lot of great things in the consent agenda, uh, including the, um, the Yeah, did it make it in there? Oh, okay. Well, I was in blue. My eyes were not focusing on it. Okay. Um, a motion to approve the consent agenda. I have a second. Any discussion? I have a comment. Yeah, I just want to appreciate the negotiations work that was done and and appreciate that contract is signed and that's, you know, I think we I hope that the teachers in the group feel well compensated. I feel confident about the contract and I, uh, I hope that our teachers and staff do too. Great. Thanks for it. Now I feel very good about the contract as well. Um, and uh, you know, hopefully we uh, prepare the compensation front. Um, did something to address both the fact that, um, you know, teachers are very valuable members of our community and obviously our school system and that it's been a rough few years and that inflation is definitely, I think, hit everyone hard. So I appreciate that as well. And I want to express my gratitude to the facilities and energy committee for the next resolution. I think it came out in a really good place and I know there's a lot of good, good, hard work and good thought put into it. So thank you. Um, any other comments? To add to that, just a public thanks to Tim favorite from Mount Pealeer Energy Advisory Committee. Um, because he's just been invaluable and ever at our disposal for questions dumb and otherwise, and it's just um, just been an incredible resource and really generous for this time. So thank you, Tim. If you can hear us out there. Yeah. Oh great. Um, and second, I would just like to appreciate Beth Kellogg, who is RVS's departing principal um, who in my experience has done a wonderful job in pulling our community back into the school after the pandemic. Um, and in my experience has just been a very high integrity individual who welcomes the kids off the bus almost every single morning unless it's frigid and terrible, which excuse that. So I just really want to thank Beth and wish her the best of luck in her new endeavors in Portland going back home. So thank you, Beth. Great thanks. Eva. Um, I just like to add thanks for the net zero resolution as well. Um, you know it was over a year ago now when the Montpelier High School Earth Group came to us with a presentation over two years. Oh my gosh. Okay. But the Montpelier High School Earth Walk students um, sorry, I said Earth Walk Earth Group students came to us and did a presentation and asked for us to pass a net zero resolution and really I give a lot of credit to Kristen for making sure that that moved forward. So when she came on board and was part of the Facilities and Energy Committee, she really um, was the impetus for our committee moving that forward to the board. So thank you, Kristen, for all your work. And when the resolution was drafted, we had a lot of different readers. So Tim was a huge help. And then we also, um, you know, it took a village to, to write that resolution. So I appreciate and want to extend thanks to everybody who helped revise that. To be specific, Samantha Lash also from Vermont, um, planning was also incredibly helpful. Lots of thoughtful good, hard questions. Um, and also Andrew came to a lot of meetings and made a lot of space and time in his schedule um, to be there every step of the way. So thank you. Excellent. Um, any other comments, otherwise we can vote. All is in favor. Hi. And yeah, I just want to echo that we did. Sunday generally is usually pretty boring, but there are three major things in there that are the product of the significant amount of work and I think really great steps forward for a district. Um, Andrew um, track discussion regarding bids and I have some updates for us. Yes, so so we got our bids for the track product last Tuesday. Unfortunately, they were over budget and higher than what we were hoping for. We have in consultation with our engineers and our soil consultants as well as some conversations that the engineer had with the lowest bidder. We think we've got a way forward. Fundamentally, not this year though, the gap so that we were hoping for around about 1.7 million. It came in about 500,000 higher than that. Um, and the strategy we had for reducing costs, which we all have not our heads that yes, we can in the process of construction we would have been able to knock out a lot of that. We weren't going to be able to confidently know we were going to knock all of that out of there. So given the schedule and some of the processes that would have to take place with regards to soil testing and consultation with the cell waste and revisions to permits and all that, we just felt it was we, we recommend that we hold, rebid the project next winter and take in sort of these factors that we've discussed over the last week or two, last week or so of some options and some tweaks and some changes that we do. So yes, there's there's many factors I want to go back and sort them out a little bit more before I share those, you know, get to it. I want to make promises I can't hold up to. So that's where we are with the track project. You have any thoughts or explanation like is it inflation? Is it materials? It's a little bit of everything. There is, there was we were one of the last projects to be bid in the season. So that was, that was huge. We had some of the soils costs are higher than, much higher than we had seen in previous projects and higher than the engineers had expected. In general terms, like some things that cost us X amount when we did the UES playground, which was five years ago, but now those costs are four times that amount. And so, and there's been also some changes and I think there's new soil fees or disposal that's been added on that is relatively new. So there's a bunch of that stuff. And just yeah, inflation is huge inflation is huge. And being the last project that has a lot to do with it. Everybody is just I sit in the state the they have their bi-weekly construction meetings and then they have bi-weekly and just people are just struggling to just get bidders forget the cost and just getting bidders is a real struggle right now. And that should tell you the amount of work that the AOE now has a bi-weekly meeting with school districts around construction and construction alone. And it makes me a little nervous because I'm thinking are we on top of things or are we behind the eight ball? But I have a feeling that there's a lot of there's a lot of schools that still aren't even, you know, haven't even got their heads around this stuff yet. But they're doing a good job being very helpful. And so do you think waiting a year is what I think is one of those rare opportunities in construction that actually waiting is not going to hurt you inflation wise. Okay. Well, I think reduce costs could build anything then right now. So I actually think the crisis probably will come down and we'll be the first not the last part. So that should get a lot more interest. Give people a little more confidence that they can get things lined up and get the equipment and get the drainage tiles and all that stuff and know that they can get that run. No. Winter of 2023. Yes. Well fall late. That's it. It's an interesting question. That's another thing we have to talk with our contractors. So it used to be you put your time. You put things out a bit right after Christmas right after the new year. People were back hunting season was over the holidays were over. But you know, we I think we put this project out last fall. They were to come back. So we no idea what asphalt is going to cost six months from now. So they may have been a little bit of increase. So those are the kind of questions that we need to talk about. We need to talk to our car. We need to talk to our engineers and circle back to some contractors on get their sense of where we're going when the best time is and the least expensive bid was 500 K over over the hopeful target 1.7. Yeah. Was there a large delta between the most expensive bid or where they're all about $100,000 $130,000 so that their bits were pretty tight considering 2.2 2.3. So that's a good sign. I know there was a lot of community interest and passion for this project that the board heard. So I'm just curious like is there going to be redesign that has to go? Rethinking of the It will be a it will be a finer because we knew we were pushing this through in the winter it was going to be a quick design. So we're going to look at some other fundamentally the project is not going to change. It's going to be a good quality running track. Some of the things like lacrosse and safety netting well if we do without that we use the temporary ones that we've got so maybe there's a little money there. Some of the more refinement of where we put stormwater you know programmatically where we've got it is great but maybe less expensive option maybe programmatically where it sits isn't as great but it saves us lots of money so we haven't gotten that level yet and some refinement of just sort of soil quantities and things like that. So I know you were really proactive last round like you pulled kind of a stakeholder group together to get input on design as you kind of kicked off the project is that something will you like re-engage that group or how do you see I don't think it's really necessary because again we're going to keep the stuff that we would change would be nothing anyone would know this you know they wouldn't know that we changed from a schedule 50 pipe to a schedule 40 yeah you know we changed a sub based from one thing to another so I don't think that's really necessary I think a lot of the amenities that we have we would just continue to have as adults I'm not going to have the engineers keep the safety netting out of their drawings we just call it alternate one and get the savings that way see what the savings are that way no fundamental change you know we're not changing the size of the track or that it's going to be the same project and a lot of the changes are just going to stuff the engineering changes yep and refinements thank you just for our track athletes that might be listening or watch later or want to know when can students expect to be running on a new track now that we're pushing it again that doesn't schedule is another big piece of it we have this proposal as a two year project we're going to look to see can we make it a one year project we can make that that's a huge savings and even with the going forward this year it was going to be two years before the service was on anyway so that may not change that date may not change it may get pushed out a year but one of the options we're looking at is how do we condense the construction schedule for one summer we could put it on track with what we proposed with this project and so that would be like track season 2025 correct yep which is what again even if we were sitting here saying we're on budget we're breaking down that's probably that one it would be available anyway so it may be a push thanks Joe financially we can just continue to leave this money committed right this doesn't change that we don't have any sort of penalty for not using it in this fiscal year or something like that great thank you other questions no thanks for that it all makes sense and hopefully and at some point in the relatively near future we will have a plan laid out that we can understand but I just want to give people a little bit of time to think about it thanks thanks Andrew oh I have well we're on board discussion I have one more just a piece of I want to run by the board which I did not put in the general beginning we have a few exit interviews we want to do at the next meeting I think we discussed on how to do them there was a little debate whether this is something where me or a couple of people do the exit interview in the report back or whether we have it with the whole board I'm happy either way and I think the people doing the exit interviews which are American Zach who are exiting as board members and then Beth who is exiting as the RVS principal I think both would be happy to do them with the whole board about the executive session so I just wanted to get a sense of the board as to how you want to do those I'm happy either way I think I think American Zach want to do it a little earlier so if I have to start early and go into executive session but we could just change the warning to do that um and then Beth also wants to do it in person so I'm happy I actually think it might be more effective the whole board is there so they can hear and ask questions but but I just wanted to get a sense because Mia seemed to remember that we had talked about just having one or two members do it and I have to admit I don't recall I think as board but I'd also defer to the exiting I think all of them are happy to do all the work so I think it would be great if we could all hear the feedback it would help us work with the new people coming into excellent that's where I think so we're going to embed it into the meeting as an executive session yes I think we'll do American they want to start at like 545 so maybe if we could um we could maybe push them back to 6 if that works better for people or see if they can come in later I had just scheduled it for 545 thinking that we were going to do it outside of a meeting but it was more considered like tacking it on before one of the meetings or after one of the meetings I think you might want to start earlier thinking of the agendas that are coming up those would make for very long meetings we did it during the meeting are people okay starting at 545 or 6 and then we could do it virtually too just send out a note okay yeah we'll be warned on the agenda as much and then we can send out a reminder as well um yeah and Jim I emailed you about the policies going on the agenda yes okay so that will be next meeting also yes the first policy reads can you make sure I don't do this I will make sure you do sir with the exit it was the 31st was that correct yeah we've got three meetings this one okay perfect we will start early and do both of those we'll take more than 10 or 20 minutes but I think it would be great to get feedback from all of those folks alright so I think we're on to our learning focus yes so Mia actually recommended this for a training opportunity this webinar so if board members we're not going to project it if you're not on the zoom get yourself on the zoom so you can see it on your computer um and we will test out the audio as well so if we can get this to work it might be a little shaky at first um but this is a webinar that Mia attended um back in January I watched it the other day it's an excellent webinar uh the purpose is to to talk about um the board's role in closing the opportunity up so I think it's it will set the board up really nicely for your retreat come this summer um there's a couple spots that I have planned um just to stop and say hey thoughts on that the webinar is about an hour long so um I just want you to keep that in mind with conversation so if I cut it off then that's why just to keep the conversation going okay alright let's see if we can get the no it's not working and that is currently Trisha's title for the uh school director's association thank you so we have a lot of history together and a lot of good work together it's exciting to see Trisha's leadership and hysteria both of our school board's effect student outcomes and especially educational equity um also a longtime friend Ivan Lawrence and Dr. was a school board member for 20 years I think we might have to do this through my computer we don't save it what do you think um when you're sharing it you have to click share on it when you do that when I just click the share screen when you're sharing it you have to share on it where would I do that from um I think it's once you click share you may have to check off how long it will look good yeah I promise I'm not that technologically stupid but I think you have to stop sharing are you just going to stop here ah okay perfect thank you we're proud of us again it's a family we're very happy years ago I started after serving a number of years on local school boards in Northwest Montana and decided to uh pursue the dissertation on school boards we don't need that scene this is very layered I feel like there it is the dissertation and it's grown and grown and grown and so we're finding more and more things out than student achievement wonderful thank you for that so we're going to just dive right in today I'll tell you just briefly a little bit about our association the Washington school directors association whoops I went too far um has is based in Washington obviously we in you may hear Ivan and I occasionally call school board members school directors um they are called both of those titles in Washington state so um to prevent you from being confused if we use those terms interchangeably I wanted to let you know that um that's what we call them in Washington state as well we have um about we have 295 school districts in the state of Washington you can see them um on your screen they're um of various sizes scattered all across the state um you probably think of the picture down in the lower left hand side when you think of Washington um perhaps Seattle Mount Rainier um perhaps the mountains that you see um over on the bottom right hand side but we also have a good half of the state in the eastern side that is much more rural um more agricultural and drier and um as with many states the two sides of the state are significantly different and sometimes those um differences are wonderful differences and sometimes they are some cause for um for a bit of polarization and I suspect that may not be new to any of you who've been um school board members for any period of time so I'm going to start with this really uh inflammatory statement right here good school board governance is boring and I tell you that with 18 years of experience as a school board member myself and um almost 10 years of experience in working with school boards um I can tell you when I come home at the end of a board meeting and my husband asks how the meeting was and I say it was fine it was boring that's a good thing probably some of you can relate to that um because good school board governance creates the conditions for students and staff to be successful and it has positive impacts um you can see these board members here are working together looking at each other listening thoughtfully at least they look like they're listening thoughtfully those may not be their thoughts on the inside but we've seen a lot of this this year you have parents yelling at school boards you have school board members yelling at each other and what um Dr. Lawrence is going to share with you over the course of this webinar today is that ultimately that does more than just cause for a lot of chaos at the board and the parental and um the staff level for your school district it actually has an impact on your students if the adults are not focusing on the things that are important for them to focus on for a students in the district ultimately it's students in the district whose outcomes you'll be impacting so we'll share some a lot of data with you based on Dr. Lawrence's research over the last number of years that both Phil and I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with and think about and apply to our work this was an interesting uh a it's actually a survey a poll that was given and this was just published on the 31st so a couple of days ago by Education Week and I put a lot of the words here on the screen for you but what I want to really point out to you is that um the findings of the poll which included more than 1500 voters including about um 500 almost 600 parents um looked at what their priorities were as parents and two thirds of voters and parents said that the kinds of culture wars that are going on right now within public education distract schools from their core mission of educating students and instead most of those parents and voters would really like the districts to agree on all of the things that most of us are focusing on during our hopefully boring board meetings which is providing that safe and welcome environment for children ensuring that all students regardless of their background have the opportunity to succeed and really have a strong foundation um to be able to do um what is needed to be done for them to get their educations so again I thought this was really interesting a very recent research that was just published so I'm going to turn it over to uh to you now for a bit Ivan sure I'll see if I can keep my uh internet going here as we as we move along um um public school education and the influence of boards um it's usually the case that it's not difficult to know when something is going wrong uh whether it's your car that's malfunctioning or whether it's a it's a medical condition you've got a sense of something is going wrong but it's really hard to figure out exactly is going wrong uh and how to fix it and that's what we're attempting to do whenever you have the case where you have either high levels of conflict low levels of student achievement disagreement within the board we've got a sense that something is going wrong one of the fundamental mindsets that we're finding is necessary oftentimes um school districts have this Christmas tree shaped organizational structure uh with maybe the board or community at the top uh with the superintendent and then it flares out into the principals and the teachers and the various departments and we're thinking that that needs to be reconsidered and perhaps an organizational structure such as this where schools function in separate uh entities but they have overlapping formal roles and in this case in the next slide we're going to spend most of our time I think during the next few minutes talking about this particular piece of that organizational structure where board governance has a large responsibility with the community as well as a pretty large responsibility directly with the superintendent and much more indirectly with the various other organizational systems within the school so um one of the pieces that's going to be important for you to understand as Dr. Lorenzen starts talking about his research and what it's based on is that in Washington we measure board effectiveness through the Washington School Board standards and a lot of these will align with many of Vermont's governance standards I had the chance to take a look at those and I know many of them focus on the board adopting a vision and measurable goals adopting and reviewing operating protocols so a lot of these will be familiar to you I'll run through these briefly for you and then we'll talk about how they're being used so the first one is responsible school district governance second is communication of and commitment to high expectations for student learning creating conditions district wide for student and staff success holding the district accountable for student learning and engagement of the community in education now these are the five overarching principles each of these principles at the standard level has benchmarks underneath each of them and then underneath those benchmarks are what we call indicators and the indicators are actually in question form which makes them very helpful for boards to think about whether or not their own board is applying these principles in the manner that they want to be applying them we use those indicators within our self-assessment survey and this really is designed to measure a board's application of the standards you have an example here of standard one this would be benchmark A so the question really for the board multiple questions will fall under helping them figure out do we as a board provide responsible school district governance in these various ways so this is a result from a board that as you can see has taken the survey for more for at least six years at this point they took it in 2012 all the way through 2018 and this is the kind of report that they get back you can see the questions are answered in yes we always do that as a board most of the time we do that as a board down to no we never do that or I don't know I don't know whether we do that we focus on those things and they get this back in the form of a report and that provides them with some really great self-assessment information for them to have a conversation between the board and the superintendent as that leadership team to evaluate what are we doing well, how do we double down on that where are some areas where we didn't rate ourselves very highly and are those areas that are important to us and if they are what are some goals that we want to set around that so the research question that Dr. Lorenzen will dive into here is when we compare those board self-assessment results to state academic assessment outcomes recognizing that those have some of their own limitations is there a relationship between board actions and student success again those are measured by what boards say about their own performance and comparing them to academic assessment outcomes also within Washington state's board standards we have a number of individual school director standards because as we opened with people yelling at each other those certainly can be a board behavior but sometimes it's just one or two people yelling at each other and so the actions of individuals really matter too because boards are a collection of individuals either working together or not working together sometimes there's a lot of conflict sometimes there's healthy conflict where people work through conflict together so these actions of the individuals make up the school director standards these are newly updated as are the rest of Washington state's standards we've done a full update on those since they were developed back in 2008 and 2009 in fact under the leadership of Dr. Phil Gore but these actions are important too looking at individuals values and ethical behavior their leadership communication are they regularly engaging in professional development both as an individual and as a board accountability and then commitment to educational equity and so I think it was back in 2010 after conversations with WASDA and with Phil Gore in particular we decided to put this whole idea to the test and so we're in the study between 2011 and 2013 to determine whether the numerical scores on the board's self assessment really had any correlation or any relationship to student achievement scores in those districts and in fact we did find a whole variety of correlations so the quantitative verification of the idea that school boards do have a relationship with student achievement scores was firmly established statistically and that report was published in 2013 that original study was done in the state of Montana we repeated that study in the state of Washington and again in the state of Texas and found similar not identical but similar relationships in all three states so this appears to be a very robust connection that we've discovered about the same time Lee and Edens Dr. Lee is from Mississippi Dr. Edens was from Flagstaff, Arizona at the time did a similar study looking at low performing boards and low performing student achievement scores in those districts and in fact found these characteristics and Lee and Edens make the claim that by watching a board meeting and they did so virtually over hundreds of board meetings across the country if you see these characteristics at a board meeting they can predictably tell whether that district is high medium or low performing in their student achievement so again we found a relationship between the high end Lee and Edens found it at the low end it's not absolutely 100% low student achievement scores low board survey scores tend to come together that's not a guarantee of problems but like one author said it's like looking at the weather a forecast of rain is not a guarantee of rain but if you look out the window and there are great clouds gathering and it's windy there's a pretty good chance that something is coming and one of the things that we're trying to be able to identify is here are the predictive factors that something is coming and so we need to pay attention to these items on the board survey they do in fact describe board characteristics of high functioning districts one of the first areas that we examine were overall board scores and overall district student achievement scores and this is a general set of findings for overall student achievement and we find out that these particular items bubble to the top the highest achieving districts in terms of student achievement occurred in the boards with these characteristics the board worked effectively as a team there were non-negotiable goals for improving student achievement they provided the budget, the curriculum, the technology the facilities to support learning there was academic progress and they used those student achievement progress reports in their decision making and discussions and they communicated very well with the community so you can see all five standards were very important in high performing districts the next thing we looked at had to do with students living in poverty free and reduced lunch scores is often times used as a measure of a district's poverty level this is a results of a rather well known study out of the state of Wisconsin where almost all of the districts in the state of Wisconsin what are their student achievement scores and what is their level of poverty and you can see there's a very very clear negative correlation as poverty increases student achievement scores decrease and we were trying to figure out why that might be the case this one was a little bit more difficult to unpack next slide if you will Trisha and so what we try to do is to connect the poverty gap of that district with their board scores and those districts for example on the blue areas blue arrows were high functioning boards and districts but they also had a very large poverty gap those are not the things we want to promote we'd like to have where the red arrows are high functioning districts with almost no gap between the general student and the students in poverty so we're trying to figure out what do those red arrow districts have in common and lo and behold we found a number of different characteristics there as well and so next slide and so if you if you see these are the standards one two and five turned out to be the standards on top one of course is governance so you've got to get your own act together standard two are high expectations making sure that the board articulates the idea that all students can learn including those that are living in poverty and standard five communicating very well with the community about what this district's responsibilities and efforts are toward those students living in poverty so there was a little bit of more of a focus we then turned our attention to various ethnicities and the bottom line here we looked at those districts board scores and Native American student scores and those districts that did the best job with their Native American students the highest student spent a lot of time focusing on the community they brought the community they brought the Native community into the school district so that the students had the sense this was our school I belonged here there was a sense of connection between the community and the students and those Native American students did very very well again standard one governance the board has to get their own act together and then under conditions they have to keep the community very very well informed so in terms of breaking this down with ethnicity Native American was our first focus the second one was on black students and very interesting only one issue bubbled to the surface those districts that did the best job educating black students focused a lot of attention on high expectations of communicating high expectations to those black students of articulating of funding their stewardship and sharing with the community the rationale and plans for these high expectations for black students so the power of high expectations here was very very clear and the third was with our Hispanic and Latinx student achievement this one was much more diverse much much broader but again the board getting their own governance team together having high expectations for all students budget to support all those equity issues where the Hispanic students and Latinx students need extra attention again communicating with the community and this is an effort that the board does with the community this is an effort that they don't do for the community and finally of all of the factors that have an influence on student achievement of course the individual student is the biggest factor their own abilities and skills their home life whether they're neglect or abuse or hungry or that is the biggest issue the second biggest impact on student achievement is the teacher so it's really important that districts make every effort to hire the best teachers they can the school environment that's the purview of the principal the superintendent we know is also part of this this was done in 2003 did this research and so the question is what is the percent of impact of school boards and we don't really don't have an answer to that mathematically but let's take a what if boards are only 2% what if they only have a 2% role in student achievement in that district does that matter does it really make a difference well if we look around the rest of the world we can see a couple of examples of what a 2% difference is and in terms of genetics the chimpanzee and the human beings there's a 2% genetic difference so it can be huge in terms of professional golfers association this is results from 2021 the number one highest paid golfer in the PGA earned almost a million and a half dollars the lowest paid 115th rank made 14,000 dollars that's about a four and a half percent difference and at a 2% difference you cut that almost in a half the difference is between the first and the second and the third place money winner is that they were 2% different every time they went out on course but the number of strokes at the end of the year was almost meaningless from 68 to 71 so boards don't have to make major changes in the way they do business but if they're a little bit better every time they meet and every time they have a conversation the last thing I want to emphasize here is that regardless of how you got onto the board now that you're on the board this is your team now it doesn't matter who voted for you it doesn't matter who contributed to your campaign it doesn't matter anymore who your friends are or your political or business associates are as soon as you're elected to the board you've changed your team and this is your team now these are these are the people that matter to you these are the statistics that matter to you these need to be holding central conversations in your school board meetings in terms of decision making okay yes yes sort of sort of okay I think we just turn off the speaker let me just go hit the button yeah probably good now alright any thoughts so far that there was no prompt right there I just thought I'd give everybody a chance to respond to that piece I'm not sure I agree with monkey or golfing analogies but I do agree that everything else I thought was good little strange yeah yeah I thought that was little over I mean also the analogies bad in general because you know the board obviously doesn't affect but it affects the environment where teachers are hired or principals are hired superintendents are hired so all of those other things are the wash through effect and then also it was unclear from the data you know the kind of a correlation board and student achievement and board functioning boards and board student achievement how much is that just a reflection of the communities I mean communities that are probably more effluent more educated might be more likely to have both higher achieving students and a higher achieving board just given the demographics and was that I mean is that a reflection of obviously board function helps but how much is that a reflection of the communities where both of those entities exist I think you have to look at remember the slide with the red arrows and the blue arrows because that's they took out the red arrows where there was a low opportunity gap measured or low achievement get measured yet still high board functioning like all of those all those boards and writing themselves high so that's what they're trying to measure for yeah that's what I thought it wasn't clear how much the control work I mean and then a good takeaway is especially to is the importance of community engagement and reaching out to all aspects of the community I think have thoughts before we start again you know that's my deal so I'm on board with that the community piece well the public high expectations resonates you know publicly stating high academic achievement expectations I think is something that hopefully we'll in our retreats or whatever we'll be able to figure out a way to communicate that effectively to help students see the communities as integral with the school so you were talking about that with different ethnic groups yeah I'd be happy to start off and then even if you'd like to add on to that that would be great standard 3 which is creating conditions district wide for student and staff success tends to be the one that we notice working with boards is the hardest one for them to wrap their their heads around to wrap their work their work around so let me share with you what the benchmarks of success are in that area one of them is providing for the safety and security of all students and staff and in our 2023 updates which are about ready to be published we also included well-being within that so are you really keeping in mind the safety well-being and security of students and staff also employing and supporting quality diverse educators teachers administrators and also providing for their professional development so you might think as a board we don't have anything to do with staff professional development in fact you have a lot to do with it because you're approving budgets on an annual basis that either support that or don't support that the same as true of the benchmark around providing for learning essentials so are you as a board identifying and supporting budget wise and even in your strategic planning the materials that are needed for students and staff to be able to be successful curriculum technology high quality facilities all of those things are included also just ensuring management for the for the organization our does the board support solid management effective use of people in appropriate roles and then finally all of that is wrapped up as I said with adopting and monitoring that district budget the monitoring part is important too so you don't just adopt it and let it lie it's a little bit like your home budget you want to make sure that all along the way that you are continuing to fund the things that matter to you as a board and as a district as identified within your strategic plan I think Phil you also asked what are some examples working with your community today's phrase that correctly I'll take a look at the question that is correct yes that is correct yes some examples of things boards are doing with the community yeah again I can start here and I would invite Dr. Lorenzen to jump in the community needs to feel like they are part of the decision making particularly in those areas where it's most appropriate so I'll just give you one example and then I would let for Dr. Lorenzen to jump in here student voice and parent family voice is certainly an area that has grown in importance and focus over the last couple of years there are you know student and family advisory committees getting parents involved in understanding what schools really are doing and what they're for and including them in some of that decision making where that's appropriate are a few examples Ivan do you have something to add to that based on the studies you've done sure one of the things that is often overlooked or a little bit misunderstood I suppose the difference between the parents and the community in fact 70% of your voters are not parents of students currently in school so when you talk about community it's a much larger group than parents of students currently in school so intentionally making moves to bring the community into the school means contacting the parent groups it's the chamber of commerce it's service organizations it's all sort sorts of community organizations and individuals that are beyond the parent group that make up the community a couple of things Phil also mentioned non-negotiable items that has come up a couple of times and been identified in a couple of these studies for example if a district is interested in improving reading levels a non-negotiable non-negotiable non-negotiable item might from the board might be within the next year or two we will experience a 2% increase in reading scores in second grade and you monitor that every six months or so to see if there's progress if there's not you don't blame you're not harsh parent here if you will from the board but you say how do we get there so you involve the staff you involve the parents and we've got a target of improving reading scores it's non-negotiable we will get there maybe we need staff training maybe we need all kinds of facilities and extra help and tutors but our non-negotiable goal is to improve reading you don't want to set it up as a 10% raise of reading in a year and then fire every school teacher who doesn't make it that's irresponsible so it's got to be reasonable but the board keeps on it it's non-negotiable we're not going to let that go away whether it's two years or five years or ten years we will improve reading scores in this district in terms of standard three this is this is a tough one this is the infrastructure of the district budgets, curriculum facilities, technology safety all of those things that probably eats up most of your budget so rather than having the budget drive what you can afford you set priorities within those major items and then try and get a hold of the budget that will make those things a reality I'll add a little to that too in terms of the those non-negotiable goals again Dr. Lorenzen mentioned that you don't set those arbitrarily you don't set inappropriate goals this really wraps into part of your responsibility for evaluating your superintendent ensuring that the communication is clear between the board and the superintendent everyone agrees so setting those goals together with the superintendent and potentially the superintendent's cabinet and staff so that everyone knows where you're going which direction and what you're aiming for everything needs to be aligned if you have a lot of arrows going in different directions then there isn't alignment and no one knows what they're supposed to be aiming for all of those goals are aligned the boards, the superintendents staff, even the students they all know what they're aiming for they are reasonable expectations then the board has every right to consider those as non-negotiable goals and include those as they're having conversations with the superintendent by the way those goals become non-negotiable because the board has spent the last six months in the community and in fact oftentimes it's the community that says we want our kids to read better so the community helps the board set those goals which become non-negotiable and then it's the boards and superintendent's job to figure out how the district makes that thing a reality it's tough it takes a little bit of time again this is not something the board to the district or to the community it's something the board does with them and the right conversations with the community on one side the staff on the other and the superintendent when they all come together that becomes a non-negotiable goal that is in effect for the next two to three to four to five years so I think we've had these delicious bread items up on the screen for a while if you want to dive into that and we're almost to the end let's wrap up and then I see that there are a couple of additional great questions that we can answer so again kind of an analogy you take eggs and sugar and butter and flour and you put them together and there are endless possibilities so a few basic ingredients plus a good plan and you can end up with all kinds along the same line of thinking you take a chunk of wood and put together with a plan in the right hands you can make amazing and wonderful and creative things so again in the right hands next slide you take a few letters and a few numbers and you put them in the right hands and you have amazing letters and books and stories and information that the world benefits from in the right hands a few dots and on a bunch of lines you put them in the right hands you have absolutely amazing results that come out the other end and in terms of school boards we're finding out that those items that are identified in the board self-assessment survey next slide and governance expectations conditions accountability community in the right hands the board has the power to translate those things into amazing futures for the students that are under your care Ivan the slide that shows the symphony makes me think about where we started at the beginning which is what you do want to aspire to versus what you don't I would say we should all be aspiring toward sounding like a symphony and a little bit less like maybe a junior high band absolutely having attended a few of those myself very good go forward with that so we have a number of questions Carrie Phil do you want to curate those for us certainly Trisha I think these are some great questions and really getting at the crux of the things you're talking about what about when there's conflict or disagreement within the board but it's subtle it's not like the pictures you showed with people screaming or pulling their hair out and similarly I think with the community where the only time boards hear from them is when there's a complaint about something or something to do with the budget what advice do you have for boards in those situations it's a good question I think all of us know exactly what this is referring to there's some tension that's underlying but it's not so obvious that you're yelling at each other you know like board relationships are like any relationship they are relationships between individuals and relationships between groups of people and so there are a number of ways that you can approach conflicts or tension between people one of them is simply to identify it notice what it is perhaps even ask the question if you feel like you are in a relationship with another board member or a couple of board members where you can say I'd really like to talk with you more about this issue I'd like to understand your perspective on it could you give me some of my thoughts could we spend some time talking about this and this can be done one on one one school board member to another if you'd like over coffee or over lunch or just over the phone or certainly within a work session I'm not completely sure how Vermont's Open Public Meetings Act aligns with the same that we have in Washington but Washington's is quite strict to do this when you have a quorum unless you are doing so under the Open Public Meetings Act the other question I think you always want to ask yourself is is it big enough to bring it to the surface so I as a board member certainly have a different perspective on many things than some of my other fellow board members however I need to ask myself how much does that matter if we are working towards the same goals for our students we are interacting in a civil way with each other and moving the work along does it matter if all of our views don't align perfectly probably not if we need to dive in and ask about them and talk about differences we can do that you can do so in a way that allows people to have different opinions and doesn't force them to adopt your own but you can appreciate the differences and determine whether or not they are important Ivan what would you add there oh boy this is a great big topic I'm not sure how much time we've got left here Phil about 15 minutes pardon me we don't have time for the kinds of questions coming in should we move on to the next one I think so because this one connects back to a lot of the research and a lot of not just Ivan's but other people's research on how school boards can affect student outcomes a lot of it makes the comparison with state assessment scores because that's data that's readily available so what does a board do if their administrators downplay test scores or say things like this is just a snapshot it really doesn't correlate with graduation rates how might a thoughtful board member respond to that type of situation well underneath that question they're right this is a snapshot and certainly a very good argument can be made that student achievement scores do not capture the full student in their experiences in education Trisha mentioned that well-being was an issue that is starting to be talked about out there this is more the social emotional in taking care of the whole student I think we can foresee in the not too distant future that student achievement data will soon include this social emotional and well-being a much more robust and full definition of what it means to be a student I'm having technical difficulties here at the same time that's all we have to work with this whole transition from just stories into here's what I think is going on into the data and the statistics which demonstrate that there is a connection between boardsmanship and student achievement this is very vital we've got to turn that back into now how does a board change what they're doing in order to impact student achievement and student achievement is not irrelevant it might not be the complete picture but it is not irrelevant it is not something to be discounted it is dangerous hazardous to say well that's because of the poverty level or the ethnicity or there's no evidence anywhere to say that students in poverty are less capable or students of various ethnicities are less capable those arguments are not valid arguments in terms of a district's ability to control the things they can control and help the students in the classroom with their achievement scores I'll simply add to that that this is one of those non-negotiable goals a board can set that is that okay we do understand as a board that this is a snapshot academic assessment is important it isn't to everything so as a superintendent what are the types of data the additional types of data that you'd like to bring to us to help us evaluate how students are doing student survey data community data, parent data input from staff there are so many different types of pieces of data that you can have a fuller picture of how your students are doing there are student well-being surveys out there so student achievement is not the full picture there are ways to gather information so I'm going to ask a complicated question it's got multiple parts and then we'll get to a couple easy questions what about a board that appears to be high functioning nobody's yelling at anyone people are civil but the board spends more time on facility costs than they ever do talking about students and student outcomes and the author of the question acknowledges to close rural schools that doesn't seem to be focused on outcomes but their concerns are that their board has no measurable goals in spite of efforts by at least one member and the board doesn't engage with the community how how might an individual board member help turn that culture around that's a tough question how many board members do most Vermont school boards have somewhere between 5 and 23 I think oh boy if you're one out of 23 I'd just say good luck it is a real challenge and I certainly would be happy to entertain wisdom from either of the two of you about this as one board member you do there are limits to what you can do if you are a board that is not working with a strategic plan neither your superintendent and their staff or you are working with a strategic plan that is a huge miss and as a board member I would say to you push hard for that I would ask where are our goals headed what are they and where have we identified them for ourselves for the superintendent for the staff for the community so that strategic plan is really going to be your guiding star also again looking at Vermont's governance standards there's a lot more in those standards than just looking at facilities and I understand facilities can be sometimes they're the most interesting and they're the easiest to deal with and they're also very visible to the individual board member the other thing that you could do is try to one by one quietly engage some of your fellow board members in working towards coming up with a strategic plan and as you gather folks with like minds that can be helpful the plan it isn't one of the major board standards to have a strategic plan but the reference the district plan or the board plan is all the way through those 69 or 70 items on the board survey so it is an integral part to a board who's governing and firing on all cylinders it really is essential that a board not only has a plan but brings it up at every board meeting and makes it the guiding principle of how this district operates I would add too that a board member in a situation like this that they don't have any stated or measurable goals I would encourage them to ask every single month come back to a similar question word it a little differently from time to time what are our goals what are our goals I think Trisha mentioned sort of having the one-on-one conversations and that's important privately as well as publicly just kind of the steady drip breaks any rock so people are asking some easier questions where do we find examples of non-negotiable goals do you have a resource or something we could follow up at the webinar with here's some examples of non-negotiable goals yeah good example it's a great question I can't point to specific questions that we have other than those that are in the board standards so again those indicators will all and I think Phil you either have already dropped that into the link to the chat or I can drop it in so that they have access to the Washington School Board standards yeah we'll send that out in an email tomorrow it seems to me too that that no district makes progress on any particular area unless there's some intentional effort to improve there it doesn't just happen by accident so look at a district who has passed a mill levy who has built a new facility who has experienced major growth in some particular and look back at their board meetings for the last two years and you're going to find that non-negotiable goal sitting there every meeting what are we doing on this project how is this thing progressing it doesn't happen by accident but it takes a board member or two to introduce this into the conversation and just be dogged at keeping at it and pretty soon you'll bring the board and the community along and then you've got a movement that cannot be denied the term non-negotiable was really a buzzword 15 years ago and I know it's sort of tripped some people up but board members ask how do you make a goal non-negotiable like what is there criteria that makes that thing non-negotiable or is it just more emphatic about this goal I think it's the emphatic about the goal and it's always stated in a positive direction who could argue with improving reading scores right who could argue with improving the access to technology who can argue so if your goal is constructed well enough it basically isn't an argument against it and they need to retain some flexibility even your right field that is a buzzword however things happen pandemics all kinds of things happen that make the goals that you've set for your team unreachable in some cases or you've fallen short and so again depending on your situation in most cases you probably will have had an educational team that really did its best to try to meet those goals but perhaps for a variety of reasons didn't meet them in any given year so that is an opportunity for you to have the conversation about why were we unable to reach these goals this year were the goals the right ones did we set an appropriate growth level for this what are some things that we did to try to reach this goal and do we need to think about some different approaches for the coming year or years so are you aware of examples of community surveys or even just sort of a specific community engagement protocol that would help formulate goals that have been informed by the community yes we've used a number of them in the state of Washington I know that the youth truth survey is one that is a national survey a very reputable survey company that despite its name youth truth they do far more than just gather data from students although that was their original mission was to try to understand what the experiences of students are that is an incredibly valuable perspective that if you as a board member are not getting if you are not regularly hearing from students in a variety of ways what their experiences are you are not serving your primary customers so I really encourage that the center for educational effectiveness I know also does a variety of those many many school districts when they go through a strategic planning process will have listening they have a facilitator lead community members parents students, staff often in separate groupings through a series of questions to try to gather that data those are just a few examples I think Illinois School Board Association has a great they've done half day and full day workshops at NSVA on engaging the community so they have some great information available on how to do that thank you Ivan and Trisha were indebted to both I'm not a fan of the term non-negotiable especially when you have to be flexible with your non-negotiable goals I agree with the point of the whole non-negotiable goal setting and tracking and I like that to me it just goes back to accountability but yeah just the name kind of threw me off the other thing that I was sort of not fully on board with was it sounded like the non-negotiable goals were set pretty low whereas I'm a fan of more aspirational goals whether or not they're achievable and we can measure that through smaller increments but I still like to set goals higher have everyone run on form in a little while you know we're not going to do that but I have that as the end goal as opposed to a lower bar that's just easy to to attain I agree at least the word non-negotiable but I think they were getting at where like these are things we're really committed to and they're kind of like unwavering commitments but I think there's a sweet spot between being aspirational being so aspirational that everyone's kind of we're never going to get there and then setting like the hurdles this high so that way you can pat yourself on the back and feel good about kind of meaningless achievements but I agree with the idea of being aspirational but aspirational where if everything goes well you can do it and you know it's realistic enough that you keep trying and it makes you better I'll remind that if we're doing I never had heard smarty goals but smarty goals the A is achievable so I think it's I would lean more towards something that we feel I think there's a delicate balance there of like a little bit of aspiration but something that's realistic to actually achieve like maybe a five-minute mile which is still pretty fast you don't have my knees man are my insin okay any other things people are thinking about thinking about the community engagement piece and whether or not we end up with a community engagement committee or how we approach that and you know I think we did a lot of work with Esser we did the work with Nathan and we were kind of doing things in spurts and there was some sense that there was a little bit of weariness in the community I'm hoping that we can come up with something that's consistent something that we can roll out every year maybe it's two tools every year or something that people can expect to see that we can increase our engagement with those tools as a goal year to year or something like that I don't know and I'm interested in the workshops and surveys and the things that they were mentioning at the end I think that we haven't come up with a consistent approach to that work and it's important and hard so I'm interested in that part and then you can get longitudinal information you can sort of see how it changes over time and adjust yeah I also am really interested in the community piece and I think maybe we could look at identifying community leaders and encourage them to help us figure out how to gather information or the best way to present things so that we have a better be done what the thinking is out there I think the surveys are great tools especially for folks who really want to maintain anonymity and sharing perspectives with the board and I also feel like having that true face time so I think for my experience it's been showing up at places time and time again and remind like we are here the name at the end of the front porch forum post that's me I'm accessible to you I'm here as a point person to then connect back to the board and how we weave that into those types of outreach like surveys but how we get in front of people and very clearly make ourselves available yeah I don't know historically what the two school districts did before we merged but it feels like since we've merged we've been making good but slow progress towards this stuff and like I felt like they were picking on us a little bit at a couple of times not really but where they are talking about school boards that don't have a strategic plan or goals and it's like this is something a drum that's been beating within this school board for a while and so it's great that we're like getting really close to that point and so I feel good with the progress we've made and then I also am reminded I think we did really good community engagement around SR and I think we set in motion some things that can be replicated down the road with listening sessions and stuff like that and even having our student board members American Zach and they were talking about having a committee of students to support them and it made me think about maybe having community members on each of our committees but I'm definitely in favor of the community engagement committee too I feel like that piece is so important and it doesn't squarely fall into anybody's responsibilities I wonder I mean we've spoken in the past about a communications committee I wonder if that could be like a dual it could be communications and engagement yeah that's how I'm going to wrap the two up together I guess we're going to our first two committee members yeah Brett has a few committees that he's on one or two one or like seven Scott he's clapping you virtual high-fiving us well this has a good good part for the retreat some thoughts about how we can do indicators and and yeah and then ideas like community engagement is one of our goals and a committee maybe as an indicator but it's a tool that we can use to strategy to reach out alright excellent well thank you for that that was very helpful so policy monitoring is our last agenda item and we have a motion to approve the two policy by reports for C1 educational records and D4 title one coverability can you tell us again what title one is I'm embarrassed that I can't it's part of the federal funding so it's in our CF or consolidated federal federal grant programs title one is allocated based on poverty rates and it's dedicated to supporting students who are not reaching proficiency okay thank you I move that we accept the two policy monitoring reports policy C1 and D4 over second second any discussion or is it there any opposed and motion to adjourn well before motion to adjourn I just want to remind people there's time to give thought to the retreat and which of the three things you want to be on and then we'll you're going to put out a little google form I already did did you not get it yet? I may have gotten it I may just have skipped over it there are seven responses okay so fill out that form and that before July and motion to adjourn second second all in favor thanks everyone