 Are there any divisions to the agenda, public comments and correspondence, any executive committee comments? I'm going to be honest, I don't really know if I know what that is. I've used it sometimes, I can't think of instances, but there have been times. For instance, I guess if I was diligent about this way, I might mention that at East Montpelier Board meeting last night, we had student presentations. They went really well. I think that's where it would be just not necessarily pertinent to the agenda, but just some information. That might be a nice thing to do. Just share it with the locals. Use it as could that. Sure. Would you like to do that now, or should we do that next time? I think that sounds good. All right, sounds good. I will say that I think the committee had been able to see it. Of course it's not over. Excellent. We can have a little light. Good. Good. Kind of a motion to approve the executive committee minutes of March 22nd. Discussion? So I had some comments, Lisa, on 2.1. I'm not sure if I have this right or not, but I think when we were having this discussion about nominating folks, we were basically trying to not come up with a slate of nominations that we were going to recommend the WCSU board as opposed to electing a new chair and vice chair and clerk of the executive committee in that moment. So it's not a big deal, but I just wanted to change the wording to be in the second line, took motions for a slate of nominations to recommend to the WCSU board for the meeting on March 28th. Meeting on what? March 28th. March 28th. Okay. And then I just struck up a new chairperson because it's a slate of nominations. Yeah. And then in the next sentence, I took out of the executive committee. Okay. Just the very next sentence. And then I think it kind of makes sense after that. Any other comments or discussion? All those in favor of approving the minutes of March 28th, you can say aye. Aye. Aye. Those discussions. Discussion and board goals. So just briefly to recap, we have three goal topics essentially for the 2018 to 2019 school year that were prioritized by the WCSU board on March 28th. I think everybody here was there. The executive committee is essentially tasked with fleshing these out for consideration for adoption by the WCSU board on June 6th. So today the objective is to review these three topics and maybe reach an agreement on how to move forward. Ideally, and this is kind of my thinking, but I'm open to suggestions by anybody, but ideally we did have some draft language to share out with the district boards so that they could review at their district meetings in May. And then we would finalize on May 30th our meeting tentatively scheduled at this point for recommendation to the WCSU board on June 6th. So just a couple of general comments. Subject to the concurrence of the boards in the SU, it seems to me to make sense for the WCSU board and the district boards to adopt at least these three goals in common for sort of harmony and coordination across the school system. So if there's no objection to that, I'll kind of proceed with that intent, but I understand people may want to sort of comment on that at some point. And then for the sake of expediency, I took a stab at drafting what was in the packet basically just based on the notes from minutes and from the AGS report and kind of what I was hearing at the meeting. That's page four and five. And discussion, suggestions, thoughts, comments, yeah. In terms of goals just adopted by the local boards, I think local boards are developing their own goals, so it's not exclusive. I think we should make that clear. That's right, yeah. If this has come up in meetings, I've said like obviously there may be a couple or more school-specific goals that different boards might have, so I think that makes sense. I agree. I do think having more than five goals gets unwieldy, so there may be some issue there. Relative feedback relative to your... Really what anyone wants to suggest, I put this out there just for the sake of trying to, yeah, cure me. But I had in goal one, the only thing I had, it may just be me, but the term operating model, so reform operating model or adopted new one, I understand policy governance, and that's a, I guess it's a model. I just don't know, collectively we would come up with a better way, better language to use, I know it's nitpicking, but... No, no, no. You know why I did not choose the word governance? There, I had governance first, but I just feel like people's antenna go up about Act 46 and consolidation and they start to sort of think like, I'm actually talking about what I'm trying to do here. So, I mean, governance kind of makes sense, actually, but as long as it's clearly understood to be in the sense of how we operate as a governing model. Excuse me, so I'm not thinking governance, I was thinking more how we currently operate. I don't know what our model is. Like how we run on meetings. I don't know. That's right. But so I'm just saying, reaffirm how we currently operate or do we want to look at a new way of operating? So it's not saying governance, it's just how we operate. Because to me, policy governance is a way of, as an operational, is how we operate? The system. The system. The system. But there's no system for what we do. So I don't know if you just say operating system instead of model. Yeah. I don't want to try to be two words, Smithy, but to me when I saw model it created confusion for me. Who creates that uniformity using this model? And I would probably say there isn't really uniformity about how each board runs their meetings other than I think Robert's rules. I would say actually there's pretty uniform. Yeah. Yeah. I would go with what Dorothy said. There isn't a name for it. But I'd say that probably 80% of how the meetings run, people run it with different styles. Let me give you that. And I think that's what you might be thinking of, Chris. I think the style, but the format of the meeting, the way the meeting flows, the agenda structures, the reports, I mean I think that's something that's really unified. I think it's possible to go and say it's a different philosophy, meaning how to run an organization. Yeah, not necessarily a meeting. No, not necessarily a meeting. It's a, yeah. Yeah, and there are others actually too. I mean there's one called appreciative inquiry. There's a couple other names of which escaped me, but I never remember and I don't go to look it up because wow, United Way, which they have a very, they get a lot of compliments about their and positive research on their government's model. Yeah, and I think, so there's a lot of people who are doing it. I guess my sort of feeling was, and I guess I'm asking the group, my feeling is that we don't spend a lot of time kind of examining or thinking about the way that we operate as boards. So I sort of saw this goal as an opportunity simply to do that and to kind of evaluate how we have been operating, which is the first extra activity that I put here and then to evaluate other ways of doing it and then figure out, you know, if there's one way to prefer, basically. I think the way you just said it there could be the way to write it, to examine how we currently operate and explore other ways of operating to look for a best approach or something. I would like to, I appreciate that. I think that that is sort of the spirit of this, but I would like to have some kind of decision point or like time limited thing that we're working towards. Yeah, I think the June 19, I think the timelines for it's just, and I apologize because I tried never to wordsmith, but to me, model create a confusion. I just didn't understand what model was. I didn't think we had a model, even though we might be similar. I wouldn't say we have a model, we have a way of doing things, culture, maybe philosophy or a system. I don't know if we have a system. So examine how we currently do things. So I have, by June 19, 2019, examine how we operate, evaluate other board operating practices and then I guess some way of saying like, you know, decide among them. I can try to reword that. Or determine steps forward or something like that. Is this something that the school board association can help with? They do. They have a new person now, so that actually gives me some hope. The previous I would have said no. I would look for outside people to come in and do that work. Just because, I think you have to... Well, it's not the advocates. It's the knowledge of how it actually plays on the ground and to know how that works. I mean, that was when Laura Soros did that work. And before she started working again, started working for Beehive, she was a good trainer because she did the work and was living it day to day in her board work and then could talk very authentically about it. And I think that that's very powerful for anyone to hear from a peer or a colleague that says, this is what we're doing, good, bad, or different. Well, I think there is some expertise with policy governance, but it might be helpful especially with other systems if you want to learn about those. And the other thing I was going to say is that I would be in favor of either the committee or some other existing committee to take this on as opposed to forming a new committee. Okay. That was my thought as well. Mostly because of tiredness. Well, I also think there should be a way to get community input into, you know, because that's an impact on how we operate and pass out communities so at least have some type of, you know, a couple of community members on to existing committees for the purpose of dealing with this and addressing this. Can you expand on that? What would community members bring to the table? Well, kind of like what Bill was just saying about how, you know, you have a recipient, community members are a recipient of how we operate and they could offer some things to say how we think we may be operating for them and how they would like to see things differently. You know, it would probably be a particular community member who opposed to forming committees on a fairly regular basis or someone who's a community activist. I think they'd probably have the greater experience in terms of addressing things like that. Right. But, you know, we can kind of, you know, somewhat in a vacuum until we have community members come in. Right. I kind of like the idea of like, and I know there are some people in Worcester, for example, who have experienced serving on boards and maybe would have some, like, you know, direct experiential insight into that. I'd be a little less sort of, you know, confident that someone would just attend the meetings, you know, even if regularly. Do you think what I want to say? Two o'clock. Yeah. Would be... Then I'm wondering if she's going to want to focus on that community engagement goal and if that's where we get sort of people's input on maybe this and go to... See, I'm sitting in a certain separate thought because how a board governance itself can even enhance or discourage community engagement. Well, Doc can weigh in from the training we went to the other weekend. But one of the takeaways I had from Nair's community, this is my takeaway. Community engagement's got to be separate from board meetings. Board meetings are not the place to have community engagement because it's just not the place... You want community members to come and hear what's going on and have an opportunity to say, but I don't think that's a format for community engagement. Actually, so I'm going to type in here. As you guys all know, this is my work in my dissertation and I was telling you this the other night, Chris, and a lot of it's come from the public access maps. You've got to meet Matt Lickinger. I can never say his last name, Lickinger or something. But right in his work and Nicole's work who was training with him and they've written some books on this is that having public engagement at a board meeting is not the place to have it because the power structures aren't correct and having the type of authentic engagement you want to have. You actually need to have it outside the power structures. It doesn't mean that people that are part of that can't be part of it, but they should not be running it and that you empower others to hope you do that and you'll get more authentic by it and better information. What does that look like in practice? It was never... Usually if you look at work that some of our colleagues have done around the state right now, I'm just going to go to Essex, they've had the board empowered and there's one or two board members on the committee, but there's a lot of other stakeholders that are part of the committee that are doing their public engagement work and they're gathering information they come back and give reports about it, but they have students on it, they have other community members on it and they run everything that's very thick in engagement, which as you hear from Susan all the time, she uses the word community circles, something that we did two times in the forums, those were versions of community circles. Two, one, where you do something thin, what we're doing, whether you have a booth at a community event or you do an electronic survey and you're trying to gather information and so it's not a... but it's really important that they're really structured well and they're facilitated well and they aren't just a come and talk, it's a way of gathering the information and that's really from the work that I've been able to research is that it is so important that you do it right or you don't do it at all because if you do it poorly, it'll do more harm than doing none at all and the research is pretty clear on that. Well I think some of my dots back the upside of the head you've disagreed, but I don't get things right, but many examples they use was groundswell, so it was community level up it wasn't school board down and I have a feeling in fact I'm playing around with multi-year budget as a topic or school safety as a topic but for the engagement and community involvement to operate well and to operate effectively it can be better that it operate outside of open meeting law so if the school board is running it empowered it, formed it is requiring reports back it must be run by open meeting law and that part of my takeaway is open meeting law makes complicates community engagement and if you can operate outside of open meeting law so community members feel perhaps more comfortable it's less, there's still structure but there's less legal structure to it and people can kind of come or not come it can be a little organic on what they're interested in their involvement I don't know enough I just have some impressions but I had an overall impression of if you want community engagement figure out a way other than school boards to do it and for all the school board people there I didn't hear anyone the thing I liked was the Essex with the students they had student trained facilitators that ran community engagement stuff and it was separate from school board stuff and the community was interested in certain things about the school and they would make a group and these students facilitated them and they reported to the school board but there was no formal requirement that they report to the school board where the school board didn't say we want to know about this specific topic I think we have a lot of work to do because every town is so spread apart to be able to facilitate some kind of gatherings and so forth I mean Worcester is the best situation situated one and you have those one of the things when I went to one of those public engagement meetings up in Lindenville and there talked about places where the public randomly got together I mean it was always like Worcester Wednesday afternoons or Wednesday noon they have a lunch everybody comes to talk about what they want to talk about it could be schools it probably isn't always schools but if there's somehow we can get a group of people I was just thinking by town but I don't think it's necessary to be by town I think you need to find some topics that people are really interested in and it doesn't have to be just Worcester people or Middlesex people or whatever it can be whoever wants to come and really dig into this topic and I think the difficulty is finding a topic where you have you know a good number of people wanting to find out I say problems loosely and then look for solutions or resolutions or whatever you want to but I don't know how you find those topics so I mean Harvard's done that too with their youth circles they've done a really good job with that five or six towns they serve in Washington West and they do it's very much what you say Dorothy it's topic specific not town and they move around but the kids run it and it's very powerful and if you know anything about planning which used to be YATS and we've worked with that at U32 the kids are trained through that to conduct these community and it's very powerful and I would love to see the kids run it and the kids organize it because they have a stronger interest right now while they're there and they can bring some of the adults into the 21st century it would be better whose connection translates that community engagement into board policy or board action so the board can either take it or reject it the information they get from their community engagement and the board can say is this something we want to work on from the information they get from the community engagement it's information and one of the things that in the literature is that it actually gives the board a good place to be we can listen to this we're getting information about it it doesn't mean we have to act on it or we could act on it but it takes away that that authority of because the board should feel there's a two-way street there of having the board do it in an open meeting feeling the pressure okay we've got some people here telling us we need to do this and do we really need to do it or is it oh we don't agree with them we can see why from our point of view and then say no to it and people like well why do we do all this work with your board isn't that still true though I mean because you have a community coming out to engage in the process that they are hoping is I would say hoping is going to result in an action because both of them usually get together with that you know to address an issue without the hope of a solution I think to the issue so I don't think you have to get away I would put you to the people the research I'm reading to ask that question I can't answer that question for you I guess when I so I took this off no that's not right well I think the topic I don't know who selects the topic number one I assume it happens somehow well for Essex they had a very poignant one because they were emerging with Westford and the two issues and they said we want to find a common vision of what we want for school but there are some topics that are going to go on and on and there won't be a concrete resolution that can be taken to the board my thought is some of these problems we know go on in a sense forever we're always having to address them and through time it would have a variety of people generations and so forth but you also have a variety of potential actions that's right as they come along and you can in the same group doesn't have to stick with one topic if you get another topic they might kind of oh well maybe we want to talk about this topic and then different people will join it I mean I can see it as quite an organic kind of thing but getting it going is the hardest part you don't think there is a the right management council does this wins a lecture series which is almost sounds like we talk about in each county you know done by county and they put out a brochure every year and they exist them all and it's you know they haven't usually in libraries the things like that but it's a topic that people come and lecture on so they're almost something they're almost just a community they seem like the groups that had a good engagement established had like a regular location a regular day a regular time it wasn't a warned meeting there was no set agenda although people might talk around town and go hey you know let's talk about fixing the plot holes this week and a whole bunch of people I get and they come and they talk about it and then you know if it to the select board or the town whatever it's a way of getting input from the community but it empowers the community to decide what it is they're interested in and then from my perspective as a school board member it's more likely instead of coming with a a concern or a complaint and voicing it and what are you going to do and you're like it becomes more that we've talked about this here's some possibilities we're really interested in exploring this and that's what comes to the board so it's a concrete request you know would you there's an interest in the community you know on adding Italian teaching Italian in elementary school we'd like the school board to look at the feasibility of this here's what we've gathered you know we would like to explore this when you think about it it's a concrete thing we need to add this to agenda to talk about so I just want to I think we're kind of when you think about it it doesn't have to be limited to the school it can be encompassed the towns and the town problems and they are similar in many ways our select board chair was there because she wants to get community engagement going in the town so maybe it's a mistake to be narrow minded pushing it just towards the school I'm not saying we sure include everybody but just make that a thought over the side so I think we're kind of engaging in the conversation that I would imagine would occur in trying to come to grips with goal 3 which is what we want to do with community engagement what does that mean and how does it look you know I guess there's just to respond to your suggestion in particular the I know like in Worcester for example like we grappling with how we're going to structure community engagement around the issues that we face as a small school and some of the things that are probably maybe coming down the line through State Board of Education and the Agency of Education and what it means for Worcester and some kind of leery of burning people's interest and community engagement capital and sort of a nuts and bolts in the weeds conversation about how the boards might operate when we have this sort of more global sort of issue to tackle in Worcester in a sense so that's one why do you think we burn interest just because you know that I think that people who might sort of we might draw into a conversation about where governance might be also the people most likely to lead or participate in or speak or get other people involved in a community engagement process which we have much more burning sort of topic and priority in Worcester perhaps but I also want to say that I feel like the on this sort of because we haven't really been doing a lot of this self-evaluation of late or sort of really taking a hard look at this I feel like it's almost we're at a blank slate point you know with this goal and I also feel like with community engagement as this conversation kind of indicates we're also at a sort of blank slate moment where we're starting to ask questions about what do we want to do here and how do we do it so I wonder and I also would just point out that goal three community engagement you know I I purposefully made that a very brief timeline like I'm hoping that we can come up with a purpose and a strategy for board double community engagement by November which is many months before we would be finished with the board governance process so we could build in or sort of talk about how we might engage the community and talking about whatever we're coming up with on the board governance topic so I think we should focus on getting some community engagement going in some way and as that begins to move forward you can ease part of that into the governance operations discussion focusing on that first it's kind of narrow and people don't get the idea of I mean they probably don't really care about at this point they don't even know the difference between policy governance and any other kind of governance all they know is we versus them so if I had the choice my focus would be actually getting community engagement running smoothly and up and people excited about it and then some of these other things will just kind of naturally go along with it I think focusing on the governance may be something we want but I'm not so sure it's what the communities want yeah so just to try to maybe tie up goal one here so we can move on I have some different wording but it sounds like there's some consensus that is appropriate for the executive committee to take this on but I want to make sure everyone is or another board or it be a chair a committee of the board chairs I think would be the other sort of logical can I just say something as you say all this if you take a look at I'm going to switch you to another piece of paper so you see it inside here is the calendar and we haven't finished it and there are still three committees to be scheduled it's on page 10 and we have a bunch of different things going on this year we're going to have two negotiated contracts coming back so as your superintendent I have a hard time recommending you make any more committees not because of my time just because of all the different things your board members remember last year it's going to happen again this coming year is board chair on this calendar? no it's not I was actually going to suggest that we might invite board chairs that don't currently participate in the executive committee to attend our next meeting so that we can kind of have but not on a regular basis I guess it's sort of a come to agreement about the draft just so that we are exactly so we're all on the same page so that everyone has a chance to weigh in on the wording and the timeline but given that we don't have a calendar of board chairs meeting I would recommend the executive committee but with inviting board chairs to participate on that aspect though we can certainly have a standing invitation before them so that may I guess it depends on who comes on the full board yes because once you have six of you and you'll have another four and then one of a ten because if we give you a board chair then we would have a quorum but I don't think that's a problem I'm just just we can make it clear to everyone what it's about and why we're doing it and a lot of people show up and they think that they want to come and there's no I would support executive because then we could start we can conceive if we start work tonight I'm not suggesting that but if we want to look at multiple models that are next to executive committee maybe we could assign a person either a specific model or to find a model so we each bring in a skeleton of a thing to consider I just think we're already configured it's extra work for us but we're configured to kind of hit the ground and then keep going okay so I want to skip to go three I guess since we've already started talking about community engagement so again just to reiterate what I just said I think we're at the point of we don't even know what we want to do with community engagement exactly so it's really a very sort of space but I didn't want to actually draw out to figure out what we want to do so the goal is really just about figuring out what our goals are because you put it that way they're all that way to some extent so defining a purpose and strategy for board level community engagement by November and that's actually really quick I think if strategy includes seeking out training opportunities just from your guys recap of this one training you went to it's clear to me there's more we don't know the training I had when I went up to Lindenville was quite it was arranged differently and I got more out of it the Lindenville one that was a really good the same people did it but whatever their agenda was slightly different and maybe the groups that we were sitting in were smaller and what we were asked to do as a group and the other thing they did at that one we happened to be late because the weather was bad but apparently they made people could not sit together who worked together so they had these small groups of four that were very different and then you were given a task and it really gets people thinking more and talking more and I liked that part of it and maybe I don't know how much it costs to have or we can contact Susan to find because I think she was at that one she knows a lot about it well they're a clot it's a really small group I was meeting with the Friday before that meeting the day before I was with Bruce Ballier I'm sure I'm trying to work with him for my work and he already knew everything that was going on in Vermont it is a really small community because there aren't a lot of people in the nation that do this work it is under probably 50 people so you just have to have people go and do it the way they did force people not to sit together which is really I'm talking about with our teachers and our administrators not the public in the public it's nice to there are ways to do it give everybody a different color sticker when they come in and then get distributed unevenly or whatever but there are ways to do it they can teach you how to do it in a diplomatic way I really liked that one was better for me how we approach it differently too I like the goal in the short timeline because I don't think there's consensus on what community engagement is so for instance what we went to was I feel like was community engagement training for some people it's community participation in board meetings which is different than community engagement that's how community members participate in board meetings and then there's getting specific feedback and information from the community that boards want and those are different things so if we define the perfect the purpose and the strategy and get better clarity around what is it we mean by that is what we mean how do we get information that we want from the community because that's not community engagement that's getting information from the community but if community wants to give us their opinion if we want community engagement for me it's there's some different paths depending on what it is that we want to get done so I think we don't have to decide here but if we've got that November timeline for the purpose and the strategy that I think lets us rate off the bat or fairly early next year reach clarity on what we mean and what it is we're trying to accomplish and then we can proceed from there on training I don't mean to be that critical but you got the November one I was just reading that carefully board learning community engagement really the boards are there as part of the populace they're not organizing it really maybe just engagement is too narrow of what the goal the goal is well I'm just saying people have different understandings of what that meant so maybe we should agree or use more words important concept of engagement not being just the community coming together as it was described before at Essex and then filtering information but also community participation because there would be times when the board wants to do surveys and things like that and if that's a community engagement it shouldn't be something that's falling outside of our goal because that would be one of our goals I think in terms of creating a interaction with the community for informational purposes as would be engagement and meeting again I'm not looking for a solution to that I'm just suggesting to me that's a good timeline and a good goal to have the boards talk about what do they mean around that term so then by November we've got a more we don't have this engagement and we're not sure what direction we want to go we've got some clarity of this is what we mean and this is what we want how we want to move forward so if we like what the training does does more of it than I am but if we like that concept then it's maybe how do we get some training so that we can start to do that who we outreach to those kind of things how many of our students have already engaged some of our kids there's a couple things with restorative practices that we have at E32 we have many of our students so they're training how to run circles community circles is a form of a circle that happens in restorative practice so they can operate some of that some of them have been trained a little bit more with the work they've done our kids I'm not worried about our kids my question was after you said that is how could we arrange for some of those kids to do community engagement things with the supervisor you're in board we definitely could and here's what is going to be most powerful for the kids and we saw it the other night at E32 when it's a topic that they're passionate about and they're there to lead it unless they're really passionate about running circles they do a good job of running the circles but they do it when it's something that's motivating them so last year when the seniors saw that the sophomores were having some real troubles the seniors said hey and it was right as they were about to graduate we're really concerned about the climate and they took all the sophomores into community circles and ran them with it because they were really concerned that we do that and they ran with it and it was their idea so this is one of my it's a long story to say to you Dorothy they do a great job when they're motivated and it's their idea they still could do a good job with it but I think I want them to start thinking about the topics they want to talk about let's just not say come and do it let them kind of I don't know people who interact with them or so forth can figure out what they would be passionate about and he gave us a good example of it Jody at U32 our assistant principal she's the leader of all this work yeah and I think this is exactly the conversation that has to be had and that's what I was trying to get out with this goal is that you know I feel like we you know again it's first principle type stuff like what do we really mean when we're talking about community union what are the different types what are the other areas we want to do more of you know these kinds of things that's really that level of conversation that we're at so I just wanted to set a goal and commit have the board commit to that and be accountable to figure something out by November and then we'll figure out what next steps are from there I'd say to the early there's discussion on requesting them all boards adopt it this would be a viable reason for that that all boards as an example if they thought that this goal there's then an expectation at the local or the individual board means that there are discussions around this prior to full board stuff so people already come either with questions or suggestions or they've kind of gee you know we talked about at East Montpelier and you know this is the you know so that it's a richer conversation when everyone comes together and it's not so much starting at ground zero and that raises an important question I put who's doing this I put all of the WCSU boards because I thought every board wants to have this conversation if they aren't having it already but now that we're talking I'm realizing that while that's probably true and those conversations do need to happen at a report it maybe isn't the best way to make sure that it's coordinated or organized or that it's all a co-hearing into something that then is a product in November that we can work with so like I say I don't know if folks have suggestions on well don't we have a carousel meeting in November you know we have one in October I think it's hard for the individual boards to have a meaningful conversation about community engagement without having had some training or been to what Steve and I went to how we could do it I know that Susan's available to hire or maybe there's others I would like to have some idea of got some minimal training to the boards before they start trying to make decisions about this so I have a suggestion about that too I think it's a great good good so the next item on our agenda after we get done talking about goals is to talk about the possibility of a WCSE board retreat and one of the topics that I'd like to suggest is that we might invite in Matt or Nicole who are the trainers for both the women and the one that you both attended I know Nicole I worked with her for years and something of a friend so we might be able to get her or Matt to come and do part of that retreat but I agree with you it would be great to have everyone at least have a common frame of reference for having a conversation and they could do some of the things that they did with us when we were in London that I kind of liked I think they tried to do the same thing here but you know Matt I mean Steve and Floor and Shawnee all sat at the same same table they kind of knew each other we did kind of break up into one self selected groups but I liked the way they did in London I think it was more but then I guess the question is who are we going to who do we want to spearhead it or to make sure that it's moving forward it's compiling whatever is happening into and I guess what the question to you is were you envisioning other things to take how long would be the retreat and were you envisioning other things to occur to them because it may be that we don't want to get like a shock to an effect I have other suggestions for the retreat but I really just bought them for discussion not as well there could be multiple retreats there could be there could be a multi hour training how long I can't remember the one not been in London though encompassed lunch as well I would say it was 5-6 hours maybe easily my thought about it was to try to schedule a full day sometime in August if that's not crazy but we'll get there we'll get into that conversation I think at the level we're at now it's okay to leave it at all points because it's just it's a common training at the discussion level and I would say once we get past if it's November timeline space is the same once we get past that point of a little more specificity then it would move from all boards to a more a point person a particular group to then have a target to accomplish and right now it's not so much we're just trying to define things and reach it have a common language and a common vision so it's more like we want everyone to participate I think eventually it is probably going to come down to either appointing a couple of people or it's going to come back to this committee because we have representatives from every board here so it's kind of just a place where we have a natural coming are there any other comments on Goal 3? let's do Goal 2 here as time marches on this is the goal I actually had kind of the most challenges with for a couple of reasons one is that I was honestly a little uncomfortable after the WCSU board meeting with these three goals that got selected because at first blush I didn't feel like any of them were student or learning focused so I felt uncomfortable having two really sort of board focused goals and one community focused goals and no student or learning focused goals as I thought about it more I thought board monitoring is about how we want to monitor the school system for effectiveness and accountability and all these things so to the extent that we can make this goal about the way in which we want to do that particularly with regard to student learning or student outcomes I think may address that point we may also want to think about or suggest back to the SU board that we kind of reframe the title of this goal or something to kind of get more at that point but then the second thing I sort of ran into was that board monitoring is not just about monitoring the system and the administration it's also about monitoring ourselves accountable to the goals that we set into the work that we're both required and want to do and then I ran into this sort of how I make this about board monitoring and operational monitoring and student learning monitoring and so that's kind of where I ended up but just to give you some insight into what I was thinking about when I was wrestling with it This was the one I had the least the least problem with because it was a standing committee that's already functioning and working so I didn't really spend a lot of time thinking about it it's more a question of what we need by board monitoring and then also I guess my larger point is that I think I could see board governance and community engagement and student learning as a kind of tripod almost of goals that we would have so that again that's why I sort of gave me pause I guess So a couple things the committee is going to meet tomorrow and we're happy to take any direction we're going to one of our agenda and the main one I think well two there's two one of them is how can we support this goal and what we want to do next and I guess not to speak for the committee but I would I would like to see us adopt a calendar for this coming year and build on what we did this last year this last year we monitored basically two areas you know learning outcomes and financials we might be able to add something to that or enhance what we've done in some way and I'd like to do that just to be able to get onto the calendar of the SU board the other thing that we're going to do and this goes right to your point about learning we want to go deeper into that learning outcome report that we got we feel like that was a good start but we didn't really wrestle with it for example we were told we were not in compliance we actually need to deal with that and so we're going to be thinking about how can we bring ourselves and all the boards back to that material to really understand it and try to understand the implications of it and just work with that information so we've actually given ourselves a little homework and assignment and if that's successful we think we might have more for the boards to go back to that I could see going back to that report over the course of the year we talked about maybe doing breaking that into two sections over the year so just so that it's more present and worth it's not just a one because it's really at the heart of what we're doing here and it's all about learning yeah I mean I don't know let me sort of take a left turn a second and do you think the school quality committee would have something to say about what a goal in this area ought to look like I mean you've been talking about this already for months I probably should have talked to you about it before I'm realizing now you know how to best monitor the effectiveness of our school system is the start of it and then what do we do you know setting up action right so what do we do with the information that we gather I think is the sort of next level of it I think we have to figure it out because we've saved the effectiveness of the school system and some parts of it that we did this year by getting monitoring on certain aspects so you know I imagine monitoring for each part is different in terms of what we would want and how often we should be looking at it and things like that so I think setting up maybe a framework for a pre-empted system into parts and what we think of monitoring for each aspect of the system is all needs and then it should too we have a fairly detailed you know implementation plan and student learning outcomes and so that's already for students yes that's right I mean on the operations side we're a little bit, other than the financial work that the quality committee has already done we're looking at a little bit less less kind of organized along the lines that you're talking about perhaps in terms of and then also you know monitoring the board's work that's all accountable I mean you know we can there's enough dates in here but we can make a calendar to accompany these goals we intend to do that so that as we have our carousel meetings we're checking in with these goals at appropriate times and getting specific reports and taking decisions and so on anyway maybe perhaps beside the point slightly but well that's why when I opened up saying this was one of the less concerned we've got a structure already operating in place so I mean I wouldn't be inclined to think our goal is to support and utilize that committee so if there's directions we want explored we communicate those to the committee I mean I don't think we have a lot of work other than to acknowledge that there's a group that's there and commit to allocating time for them to share the information they've got with us and then decide how we want to incorporate it for me it's less about having to set something up and it's more about supporting something that's already in place so are you saying that the charge of the school quality committee already has like functions in essence like a goal? that's what I would say we don't need to so when we talk board governance you know who should do it I think all that's in place there's a committee that's representative that wants involvement that's put in multiple years of work that is already running with this and not to subvert or I mean subverts of Edward not to create a parallel path or something we've got a group that's functioning operational and enthusiastic our goal should be to support and facilitate their work and agree or make arrangements to schedule them to regularly report okay so let me ask a couple questions about that it makes a certain amount of sense but I want to ask I don't know what the charge of the school quality committee is on the top of my head there's not an adoption point let me say that what does it do, why don't you tell us what you actually do we think we're exploring and in fact building a monitoring system we're all student outcomes well we started with outcomes and now we're proceeding beyond that all the things that are important to how our school system functions so financials seem like a logical next step but there are other things that we can monitor as well of course we don't want to go too far because the model we've been using was somebody else's policy, governance policies so we kind of have to settle about what does the overall structure look like but we are building a way to use evidence to evaluate is the school on the right track are we doing the right things are the things we need to adjust so how do we turn that into a goal though because I mean exploring that's all great but what's the target what's the thing we want to measure ourselves against when we, in the spring when we're looking back that's what I'm trying to remedy we don't really need to baseline when we think things are functioning now and if you're trying to say what we think it should be functioning at this level and the goal would be to function at this level and develop a sense how to get there I guess that's actually what I'm asking because the school planning committee has already been wrestling with those questions yeah I mean probably I think we just want to enhance what we've already done this last year and that's either going to be doing more monitoring more policies or more areas of our system or we're going to go deeper and or deeper like learning outcomes we think we've got a good baseline and we're just going to continue to do more and we'll see do people find that valuable you know I don't know how valuable people found the financial monitoring there wasn't actually a lot of engagement with it but we also recognize there was a lot of information it was the first time and with some iterations people get more comfortable with that and give us feedback so it's been a U32 committee up until March it's a WCSU committee has the work probably been focused on U32 facility to date or are you sort of looking at things globally I mean the learning outcomes were originally right and we quickly realized that it wasn't just our school and we had to do three goals this morning let me make a suggestion or ask a question of the group as a way to proceed because just looking at the time and this meeting and what we can reasonably accomplish so on goals one and three I have people's comments and I can sort of try to tweak the language a little bit to reflect what we said are people comfortable if I try to do that and then get something out to the district and make meetings to discuss and to provide feedback if they want to do that for goal number two maybe Kari you and I can follow up and talk about this a little more and try to figure out sort of what I'll make sure we talk about tomorrow with that committee I would love to come but I will be in Calis well it's before Calis is it 4353 here here so you asked the committee what they think their capacities for taking them in some yeah well it actually builds capacity it really comes to me and this is where Matthew was going about board and I'm going to go back to my experience of policy governance all minor reports are written by the superintendent the superintendent does the internal system or delegates that but the about what boards are doing and how boards are operating or if you look at the limitations piece the limitation policies under policy governance those are usually done by board members in my experience Kari and Matthew with policy governance my experience from school boards in serving them is that board members really did the monitoring of the board's governance policies and did the monitoring of the superintendent's limitations policies to say is the superintendent staying in compliance with where there's limitations and that was there was evidence that the superintendent would provide towards that report but it was written by board members board members to the law sorry I forgot Stephen as well has been part of a policy governance board so those pieces the board members get into a lot of report generation and the superintendent was in for the operational whether it be that in our case the student learning outcomes or ends at home we use policy governance and operations with inside the system so like a financial policy and I'm okay with you too I think we have to we'll try to grapple with that question yeah as well okay is there anything else on the the goals we'll move on can I just ask generally Bill is this helpful to have the executive committee kind of focusing the boards focus the board's work having all of the boards trying to work toward their own set of goals and that's been going around to different it's boards and we started we started to do our role in board goals we need to hold off a little bit and see what the executive committee comes up with and we agreed to do that is that helpful to you channel some of this as opposed to the scattershot approach it's much more helpful for it to be channeled it is it's and to get calendars out and to say when are things we're doing things that is much easier to support I don't feel like we're chasing down it feels too much that we're reacting from the whether it's a principal or myself to anyone that I tasked with doing work to now it's more proactive because we can plan it out and we can look at it and say oh well we could do all that but look at the and I did this once to Cary we're doing the fiscal stuff because I was in a crunch mode and I said I bet X, Y, or Z and Cary said Bill you've known about this for six months we can say though he was nicer than that basically it was the right thing to say to me like you've known about it you should have planned and so we got it done but it's also being forthright if we know that out a year in advance because I go back to my policy governance days of serving boards and policy governance we hadn't mapped out so as I was the curriculum director I had two or three policies that the superintendent delegated to me and then he polished up he or she polished up and went to the board but it was not 80% of my work you know it was that report I knew when that was coming I could calendar, I could move my schedule make sure that was taken care of and so to be able to do that and to keep to be it actually made in my experience the meetings flowed better because you knew what you were going to do you knew in a grand scheme a year out what you were going to be doing in the meetings you didn't have react to this okay thank you let's move on to 2.2 the WCSE retreat so I guess I've already mentioned that the sort of idea here I wanted to throw out to the group was you know obviously we have to go to the SU board with us too but whether we wanted to recommend that we try to have the WCSE retreat again my thought was that August is a good time at the start of the year it'd be hard to pull off any earlier than that that's for sure I had a couple of thoughts on things we might do we already talked about having the two community engagement trainers could come in and do a piece I'd love to actually find if it's, I don't know if it's possible to do this in August but to get some students to come in and do presentations or talk about topics they're passionate about or things that you're working on or are confident or excited about for the coming year or whatever it might be I don't even know but just a way of having the board get some more time than 10 minutes before a meeting to kind of connect with what students are doing and what's happening at the school and then another thought was I worked with a many many times with what kind of focuses on many different aspects of communication and relationship building and trust and different communication practices that build a strong foundation for results essentially for any organization and she consults with nonprofits and for-profit companies all over the world she, you know, charges exorbitant prices really insane but is willing, you know I've talked to her and she's willing to do something with the school system, you know, pro bono potentially so she'd be another fantastic person we might be able to bring in to kind of again give every board member a common frame of reference for what we talk about internal dynamics kind of norms and things like that? Yeah it is but it's also just kind of thinking about organizations and how they work and trying to provide an opportunity for people to see it from a different angle and sort of think about really like how we interact with each other and how we are making sure that our relationships are solid and these kinds of things actually has a direct impact on, you know, what results we're achieving as an institution and it's been and I used her here in the U.S. and when I was in China you brought her over there specifically to work with the team and she's been on all of them so those are just some ideas I guess I wanted to ask the group if the idea of a retreat seems like one we should pursue if August seems like a good time frame to do that and then any other ideas people might have for what we could do at one? No Chris, go ahead So I have an interest and I know others have expressed an interest to me in having a full supervisory union board retreat so from my perspective it's more less at the moment on what it's going to accomplish and more about when could it happen and then my second thought was mostly around East Montpeliers experience but typically hear me out because it would make a long day but typically our retreats are like about two to three hours so the possibility of killing two birds with one stone where we do an SU retreat and I'm making up time but an SU retreat goes from eight until two or three and includes lunch and then an adequate amount of time two to three hours set aside that maybe even includes dinner where the local boards could also have their retreat wouldn't necessitate them doing it but for the boards that if you're already essentially waste, not waste you're Alice you're already you're already dedicating you're already dedicating a day to do something you know, do the board the individual board retreat might make it even more attractive to some of the boards I can't or sell a board retreat essentially at the board's yeah but then for the boards they're like yeah that really works for us we can do both in the same day and for the ambitious ones I have a bill at your your retreat I see what you're saying not insurmountable but regardless I think I support a full board retreat but I think sooner sooner just because one of the goals is community engagement and we want to have a response by June 19 the training after that wouldn't be June 19? I think do we have something November? November is in November I was going to say to get a trainer right now would be pretty yeah I think by June it would be hard I mean the next six, seven weeks are the busiest time of the year and I also thought trying to pull together people over the summer would be really I mean August it's going to be hard it's going to be hard it's going to be hard do you have any thoughts about dates spilling from from a school calendar perspective? August is the second worst month of the year May is the worst May until actually it's six weeks this year it's May to graduation it's just really tough in the schools and in August we have to once we hit the first August 1st the whole leadership team we literally had that wall covered with dates from now until the start of school and it's like we have something going every day so September but then when we try to do September then it's got to be a Saturday could I back up? if it's a training and we're bringing someone in does it necessitate administrators being there? it's a training for school board members where you're not you're not facilitating it you're not conducting it do you do administrators have to be here? I think it would be good for the administrators to receive the training frankly right now it's just I'll have to go back to those dates I just know in August there literally isn't a day from July 30th to until Labor Day every day is booked is it a Saturday just off the drive because Saturday in terms of folks getting off from work it's probably it's asking a lot though for the administrators I could do it maybe depending on Saturday I wouldn't want to ask my administrative colleagues because I know a lot of them are working Saturdays and Sundays just to get everything prepped they're working long weeks in August I guess I would suggest that you and I try to figure something out and I just have to look at the different days but I agree that getting the date out soon is important because people we're going to have people not there because of vacations anyway it's just a fact you're not going to have any administrators in July? do you think you're in front of us? there's an agreement there's an agreement that was here before I came no no work happens in July and I had it for a couple of years I broke it and we found out just by through experience I never am sure if you mean by yourself no it wasn't that he became but it was like ok I've been through running I've also built for stripping a lot of things would folks be comfortable I've put out some suggestions about what we could do that day to be above other things they want to suggest I'm happy to contact these people because I do know them I figure out what their availability is and what costs might be involved depending on that kind of thing no I know that to a point I think we're going to be giving you a financial a little bit I would like to see it around community engagement that's been on our that's been on our to-do list a couple of years I'd be glad to be so fortunate if we can't get Nicole I think I really appreciate Susan Clark's skills and I've seen her in motion by having someone from outside the community community supporting this so I think I'd be glad to contact Bruce and some other people that have done the work they all do the work together and I'd want Susan to be there as a facilitator having someone outside of that I want to be sure that we can provide some background for people if they would choose to do it some screening or video short video I've got plenty of those resources I just sent Chris because he was asking while we were staying here I just sent you my flip review because you want to know the resources like go contact him if you'd like to I'm most enjoyable to read but there are plenty of other resources I just want to make sure it gets out there to each person and say that they're better off looking at something or reading something there's a great one for Matt from his work you get up and let him go I don't know if you've seen that pamphlet it's like a 12 page so we'll try to figure out a date we may be able to send out an email to him nobody has said anything about the end of June it's like July I think it's too soon to try to organize because it's already almost May so to get trainers and to try to schedule honey and a lot of people will have their genifications already scheduled I don't think people are going to change their August vacation schedule for us you're probably right that's probably what you're thinking so Matthew maybe you and I we can figure out a couple techie ways to see what people are up to did you say how long did you set up we're kind of tentatively landing in August but we got a lot of things to figure out before we can land there I guess that's what I would say so we'll try to see what we can go off to my camp for the day she might be a draw time to make something right yeah and we probably could use the clubhouse for the larger camp we just got his own dock it's big yeah the location is awesome as long as there's buckets of margaritas we all set up okay we're good we're working okay so non-bargaining contracts so this is a little bit of an update I'm sorry I remember you stating this a while ago last year when we talked about non-bargaining and it really came from consensus of the group that was sitting here and maybe Stephen you recall this last year when I talked about non-bargaining you'll see there's nothing on action I didn't want to be doing action tonight you talked about we had the executive committee talk to me about finding a way to look for a salary scale or look at and do some research on salaries for non-bargaining folks because we're not just talking about administrators there's probably about 50 people across the SU that are non-bargaining class this came out you expressed some concerns that we were out of the market yeah so I have held doing something on that but then looking over the finances in the past month we're doing pretty well and so I'd like to go out I'd like to put out an RFP that this board would approve next month for services for an outside firm to come in and do an analysis of our non-bargaining contracts there's some good things about this it'll look at our market rates I can tell you right now our head of custodians is below what the state wages are and we lose people to the state I can tell you some places where we do okay so I want you to know there's some risk and there's some good reward of knowing where we stand in competition but there's also some risk of being below what is it's not really risk it's you might get some bad news it's not like that would it be good and this would include everyone including myself my is a super intense position we give them all the Vermont salary information have them look at outside competition outside size of organizations and saying what is the comparable salaries that are out there and where should we be and where should the relative market and one of the things that when I think about the principals and well the whole leadership team they talk about there are conversations that each other makes and in my altruistic thinking when I'm in that I think of everyone doing the same amount of work but the compensation is very wide and so you know I take someone like Matthew Young at Doty who we filled in with some summer work for the SU work that needs to be done so he basically is working year round and then I look at Stephen Dellinger-Pate there's a pre-wide spread and those are the two extremes the salaries what are the amount of work to do the salaries so is it because Matt gets to fill in more no it's because of Matt's I've got a small school and so he does everything from behavior support to being principal where Stephen has half the SU in that building the student population has five other one, two, three, four five other administrative assistants that support him in running that organization it's not that it's necessarily more or less work it's more responsibility I would give that because there's more people there so what they'll do I mean a good outside firm will do a look at all that and try to scale it in a certain way I think that's an appropriate force and for me I think that will actually help with everything around here I think that's going to be a six month project it's not going to affect this year's setting non-borderly contracts but I think it's something that needs to be done because principals do VPA, VSA they all collect the data we all see what it's all public record anyway so we all know what everyone makes of Vermont it's not classified information we have to analyze the school size and they'll give a point system and they'll say what's this task for yeah that's all so you're thinking that you would bring us we go out to an RFP in the next week have a two week out it's actually a request for information on IP because it's information on the services they would provide and then I'd bring you a proposal for a firm we've looked at three or four firms that've done this for public entities and bring that back to us and then as I said it won't affect this year's non-bargaining but to bring that to really set it I like this idea because the way you posed this last year there was risk so when you use the phrase it would help with things around here what do you mean by that because there's some animosity about what different people make I think we need to standardize it when is it going to standardize it? even if it is internally which it may not be every once in a while you have to check to see how far you've drifted away from the market and I can't say that I mean it's in logic yes but that's logic by really the superintendent and the willingness of the school board and it's not by market conditions there's no market conditions I mean there is market conditions when I look at when I look at when I have a new principal coming in we did this for Berlin this year I talked to the board about it I said you got someone that's coming in it's got a 11 years experience you're below what the average is for a side school with plus or minus 50 kids you're going to lose this really good candidate if you don't get up to at least the average and you guys did but I think we shouldn't be getting what we should say these are the appropriate salary levels it should be at so if nothing else we'll have collected all this material to refer to well I think it's every year I mean it's you have to keep up with it right and the way we set salaries here is it's just it's not a systematic way of doing it it's the increase is somewhat uniform is my I pretty much do because I don't want to I don't want to have I don't think they should because I think they're all working well and they should have it pretty well uniform but the place that they start at each school just what we went through last year I'm not really sure about that Chris it's usually tied to what the other contract is the bargain yeah the rate of increase of the administrators across the state of Vermont is not the same as what teachers are this isn't over I am higher especially superintendents well I think it's good to have well I'm a data junkie but information is good isn't there any merit based factor in all of this what do you mean if you decide to go there I will tell you that from my perception in the state of Vermont because there isn't that I know of doesn't mean it isn't happening but I don't know of any you will probably lose some administrators I don't believe I don't believe in merit based I can talk about that a length some other time but there's a whole philosophy behind it I don't want to get into it there's an argument around salary, title, and responsibility should all move simultaneously so there's can I just go back to where you were talking about the superintendent of high school at least this is a message I got in some sense because he has other people, curriculum people principal he has assistant principal and somebody looking at behavior and somebody else doing something else in one sense he carries a lot less responsibility I think you said that more I said more in a sense he carried less because he had these other people that were supporting him no it's more I just want to make sure so just to think that he would hire salary I want to ask an outside firm to do this work how much responsibility does it work because I've done that myself in the way I recommended starting salary levels but I think it's better to have someone come in that will look at classifications of jobs and grades responsibilities and number of people that report to you do you need a motion to issue the RFP? no I don't do that I just wanted to inform all of you of that and that we started last night at East Montpelier and we're doing it all the way to the last meeting will be Romney on the 10th where we're doing all the non-bargaining approval well actually it will be Berlin because it's the way the calendar falls but we're trying to do that real quick to get the non-bargaining contracts approved except for Washington Central will be the 30th of May because of for this executive so we're going to do that at the next meeting alright is there anything else on that? I would like to talk to you about one of the employees who came to the meeting and executive session I'll do it in my administrative okay hiring process for special education staff actually it's probably more aptly titled hiring process but this didn't come up I think as you all know that there was some special education hires that fell kind of in the interval between meetings and it's an issue that comes up apparently quite a bit and not just with special education staff but with various positions where obviously it's a very competitive job market and we can't act quickly in terms of making offers to good candidates we stand the risk of losing them so I wanted to bring that back to the executive committee and sort of ask you know what is our desired practice here I think there's different options we could empower the leadership team to you know basically make offers to these positions and then ratify them after the fact we could have as a standing policy that those offers should go out with notification to the boards at the time there may be other things that we could do I'd rather avoid this sort of being a reactive problem like every year it just seems like we probably could come up with something that is just a good rule of thumb guideline for the administration to use so our board meeting was timely last night because that's when we met and I knew this was on our agenda so we discussed it and had an explanation between Jen and Alicia about what the system is currently and we liked the current system okay the current system being and when it comes up so the current but there's a for special education there's a multi-tier selection process where there's a larger group that vets a large group of applicants it narrows it down to I don't know you know we've got I mean I got four because they were only four well anyway however many openings there are this larger group selects the pool of these are the best special educators available for the openings that we've got and then there are local so for instance I won't get it exactly right because we've hired one or two one then there's a local I'll call it a district higher committee and it's our principal I think Kelly was on it there's a teacher there's a community member so there's a local group that looks at the candidate or candidates for our school and then last night Alicia brought a recommendation that that group made to us so I mean I would say that's the normal process that out of the round thing is more so let me say that we went ahead before there was a recommendation brought to East Montpelier that's why I'd ask Matthew who had asked all of you because right now in special education you and hired I haven't given contract checks I haven't got through tonight I basically told the candidates you've got a job okay because I needed to have that because they had multiple options on the table so SLPs I just want you to know the types of positions we're talking about it's not just special educators SLPs, it's special educators it's now math it's not physics teacher physics I mean there are just some hard places to get people world languages and U32 is giving us pretty broad authority from the U32 board so for the U32 board positions I said we've got this pretty certain we're going forward we bring your name to the board but it's even starting to creep into elementary educators the hiring pool is getting very shallow out there people are going to other industry that are not coming into teaching and we're talking to my colleagues superintendents they're like if you try to get a principal right now you can't you just can't they're not out there didn't even lose a librarian we lost three library candidates to the one we got for Rami Doty because we couldn't be fast enough and it wasn't because we couldn't necessarily be fast enough they were competing jobs and what's the best offer out there it's that quick of a hiring turnaround we got a classroom teacher that we wanted because of the accelerated process because I was really accelerated one of our board members one of our board members is on another district the person we hired was also their top candidate and it's because the offer was able to come quicker from East Montpellier that we got the candidate I would just put it this way and I guess I speak as a kind of director of an organization but hiring is an administrative function it's one that's delegated more often than not in my experience two administrators and I guess there's a practical consideration as I thought about this that occurs to me that I don't want any impediment to stand in the way any impediment that's not completely necessary to stand in the way of the possible people for the school system so yeah I guess I'm asking if there is a guideline or a policy or a practice we can put in place that would facilitate us moving forward with these things with the least amount of red tape possible I guess from a board perspective question I'm asking I think there can be but red tape is not the right word because I think when you have a small school teachers are a significant part of the community and I think there should be a field for the teacher and efficiency shouldn't trump that unless it's absolutely necessary in my view because I think you have a teacher that comes in that just may not fit and that has an impact on the future than it should but it does because you're dealing with a small community so you're interviewing teachers what? yes we do and so that would be my concern is that when you give up a lot or take up efficiency and I'm going to give it up when it's necessary but not when it's not because this will be the thing that we need to do maybe another thing that we should do is somehow if we can write into a contract then someone is not coming back let us know as soon as possible because then the earlier out the better the opportunities and that's true it is but we have to look to negotiations at this point yeah I couldn't that's something worth talking about Ramney is the other one just for a point of information the only thing I interject is we're very so it depends on what you mean by administrator hiring we're very very comfortable if we know our principal some of the school staff and community members are on a committee that's making the decision we're okay with that and I think that kind of reflects where we're at now so if it's going to be something less involved then I think there would have to be more discussion I think this is an issue we can come back to when we have more time also I'm not sure if it's going to be a challenge in the next or will it be actually are other hires coming up or most of the hiring that's coming up right now that isn't that fast track will be Ramney and I of course I just learned today we think we might have a special educator for Ramney but I'll be interviewing next week to know and we'll see what that works for the timeline because I haven't talked to that person I guess one question I would ask just trying to play out the conversation is in my experience hiring is a kind of it's always a fallible process it doesn't matter what you do like you always will get into a situation potentially where you hire someone who just isn't a good fit or doesn't work out for whatever reason for reasons that you can't always divine during the recruiting and interviewing process and so I guess I'm not sure if we've got the hiring committee you've got the educational professionals evaluating trying to make these decisions I would just be curious to know at some point like what extra safeguard or what sort of extra assurance does the board's involvement at that level kind of add to the process or if there ever has I'd be interested to know if you know and again I'm talking at a hypothetical level I guess but I'm sort of interested to know if you know there had been hires made that the board was involved with that didn't turn out also one where the board was involved with and it involved our kindergarten teacher there was a two candidates and it was at a time when our policy was that the board would have two candidates and you treat them with recommendation but in that instance we did not and it ended up I think working it up well and it's been it's been it's been how long has the male kindergarten teacher been with us 8 years 10 years no he's only been with us for 4 years no yes you don't know I don't think it's 4 years we didn't bring 2 I tell you Chris I'm talking about Ben he's not a kindergarten teacher he was hired as a kindergarten teacher okay and that was an issue so how long ago was that that was before it was here and it's worked out really well so okay I guess my in the other things on contract is a 1 year 2 year probation period and then basically comes a tenure you can only dismiss for cause I think at that point right no that's not true you can just not rehire someone you can't not rehire you have to go through a process but you can go through the process process being focus assistance okay but that's a cause based issue let's not argue this right here okay I'm just saying maybe you've cautioned me to say this to you you're in your trial mode no no but the point is it becomes a tenure track issue unlike the private sector you can hire a fire at will pretty much it comes at highers I know Kari works with a union they sort of have a negotiated in terms of the contract right but because a union involves it's more difficult we don't we don't have to protect it you have to go through the process it's going to be scrutinized so my point is that it's not a private you know private employer relationship there are far fewer protections from outside at will state from my point of view I don't see why you would put extra authority on with the board because the boards are citizens they don't necessarily have any experience in hiring and supervising professional teachers and other staff I mean I think it's nice when we hire the principal, Bill made sure to involve us but ultimately he was bringing his recommendation and I knew the best candidate was he did that because it was a good way to get by it but we don't first thing about evaluating teachers candidates for teachers it's just not our expertise but we hired a superintendent that's what we hired that's what we hired him for yes but did you have a search consultant we did but we picked out a number of candidates and interviewed them and then picked so it's just I'm just glad we have now to do five teacher interviews at Berlin this year I feel a lot of turnover this year from retirements I just don't see what our board would add at some point I need to give that trust to your superintendent, your principal well I guess what's the sense of the word obviously we don't have consensus so what then shall we do generally the chair I don't know if anybody wants to suggest a way of resolving it we can table it and come back to it another time but if there's an emergency I mean not everything's an emergency but when there is I think that should be the second one in terms of hiring yeah I mean emergency is maybe the wrong word but we can predict that we will be recruiting for in the various positions that we've been talking about so I'll go right back to it we're going to be in a special education for middle sex this board is one that does not middle sex would like to be you know try to facilitate them I may not be able to and you know you've been good about it Chris the board's not stepping up I mean I'm going to be in a place hopefully by with a candidate that looks good do you have other offers or are you applying for the positions I expect to hear a yes and I'm going to need to go to the same place we were here in April I'm bringing you another candidate tonight because I interviewed them on Monday for a special ed position you know so that's and I'm going to get there with an SLP probably too we just haven't gone through the SLP process because we haven't we've had two or three applicants we want to go past Brownmore we're not going to hire to fill a position with some of these special educators and SLPs we're not doing interviews as an executive committee could there be a difference between local board hires and executive committee hires for process to speed that up for you or is that I think Matthew was bringing it up for a discussion of where we're at with the special education ones and that's why I'm trying to go through the different types of positions you know when we get past May it's going to be any type of position in the SU I mean basically it came up Bill said I've got these candidates I need to make offers the executive committee is not going to meet again until today and I came back and said what did Stephen used to do I literally said the convention is kind of vented so that's kind of what we did but then literally like a few days later there was another one and I'm just thinking what are we doing here on an ad hoc basis every time we're trying to figure out if we can get word out to the executive committee and make a provisional offer but the contract doesn't get issued until I don't know what the right thing to do is it just seems it's not really an efficiency issue so much as it's like if we're losing the best candidates because of delays or hiccups in the system I guess I would call it then that seems to be an easily remedied issue the other question would be do we use them because of that or because there's a better offer month-wise it's a possibility for sure yeah I don't know I guess speed is certainly only one variable but it is it is a significant variable it can be most people I've talked to we can usually we're doing okay money-wise right now so in the interest of time I'm going to suggest that we table this we put it on the agenda for next time we'll see if we can sort of maybe gather some more I have some thoughts about like you know figure out if there's a other practices or standards in the state that we can sort of you know look at or reflect on but it's just something I'd like to revisit and try to find some way of closure even if it's settling on what we do now you know some form of closure about it so okay so action items should I make a motion for board orders I would entertain a motion to approve the order so if it's already on the motion for two board orders the first for March 2018 approved the board order in the amount of 674 421 dollars and 56 cents and the second approving the board order of 25 April 2018 in the amount of 131 thousand 494 dollars and 64 cents thank you discussion I guess I wanted to ask Bill and I didn't ask about this in advance but is it inconvenient to have the board orders maybe included in the packet what that comes out before the meeting and I know that's been discussed by the reports yeah this happens at Berlin I'm just trying to think I have some questions about the board orders but I don't want to like spring them on you in the meeting I'd rather sort of like get them to you in more in advance none of these are particularly urgent I don't think it just occurs to me usually for those having people who are researching from a meeting and then send them back in the next week okay alright so I won't who have any questions about the orders just because I had time to look at them I got here early so I was just curious about first student contract and then we have tech buses and lake buses and a spec chair bus and an orange bus and all these other things that seem to be outside the contract they're within the contract but they're paying different payments and there's just a couple of people I was curious who they are like Benjamin Merrill and Sally Holland so Sally Hall is our HR coordinator so she's probably gained some mileage lots of it yeah and all these things Ben Merrill's our outside public consultant who's done all our reports and all our SLO work and now designing some other reports for us he has a graphic designer that works for him in Mandarin Valley I can't remember her name he's out of Randolph he's worked with about five or six school systems we've moved over to band to help us do all this work and he's doing a fabulous job being the lead marketer for BTC and the Vermont State College just before that and the last one I had was just about paying Green Mountain Behavior for BDAIS I was curious like sort of what they're providing to support that Green Mountain Behavior does a lot of our work they do our work with our students you'll see them in some of the local contracts as well for BCBA which is our behavior support analyst and some of our behavior interventionist as well as helping us with our implementation making sure we're doing it with fidelity with BDAIS mm-hmm okay, thanks any other questions or discussion let me send her the last name isn't she the one with the response to your last name yeah that's right I would approve the March 2018 and April 2018 in full with orders by proposed extensions thank you approve new hires so I bring you a fourth candidate there were three that Matthew had sent to you but the three candidates that are in your packet is Ashley Gilstead who will be taking a point in the position at EMES Natalie Whitefield who is taking a full-time position at Berlin and then the next two people Jessica Johnson who's in your packet will be our alternative program coordinator and the special educator for that is the one I just handed out which is Brian Flynn it says see attached resume I'll tell you Brian has worked for about 20 years at Mississippi Valley Union High School in an alternative program setting I was highly recommended I met with Brian my day after and all these folks as Stephen talked about the process of that process of vetting committees at the building and the full vote of Ashley leadership team this year for the first time decided to do an initial round of interviews together they liked that idea as we debriefed it here they said it was great because it was a whole way of all of us looking in and saying where do people fit the best and let's go have a lot of interviews and there were some people that came out of that process that didn't go forward and that's Jenna and Brian for the new for the new alternative program that's right now that's high school Brian it's 7 through 9 7 through 9 it'll be 7 and we're looking at that as we talked about it this past year where we'll probably start to get some knowledge so this is the program Kelly Busheen that I was wanting to bring the students so Ashley feels that Ashley is on 18 what? it says 19 I'm assuming August 18 I don't know if that makes a difference I'll vote with assuming 18 right? yeah it's all for FY19 it might have been written on there wrong you wanted to start that we wanted to start yeah we wanted to start yeah any other questions? nope is everyone comfortable with moving these as a slate? I'll move that we hire the recommended folks that have been voting to us in the various positions as special ed educators program and NWCSU they're all at WCSU is there a second? second any further discussion? all those in favor of approving these hires say aye closed extensions okay superintendent report so first I want to apologize for not getting you a written report for just going a little too fast the first thing I want to point out to you is that on page 10 as I pointed out to you before there is a calendar here we tried to do what there is on page 9 is a remainder of the school year and page 10 is next school year this is using our template that we used before for this past year for carousel meetings so September, October, February and June with also two supervisor union board meetings one in March for reorganization and one in December for budget adoption so that's just kind of kept our pattern and then we're starting to try to put other committees policy school quality and school start time school start time doesn't have a regular meeting yet policy and school quality do we'll need to add negotiations on here and I'm forgetting one other committee that needs to be added negotiations should only be a couple meetings anyway right? yeah remember healthcare is coming back up thanks I'm on negotiating I'm sorry I'm missing the last one we're trying to get all that set for all of you and get that out because as we learned last year not having a calendar was worse than having a calendar and having things move I really appreciate it and the work that it takes to get it together it's helpful to see it so if you think this is a pretty good place I actually asked Kristen not to send out any appointments yet I know people like to have calendar appointments and invite invitations since we're all going to be running off of devices these days and some source to keep our calendar so if this is okay with you realizing there might be some movement we'll start getting invitations modulated out electronically to folks sounds good you just wait on the school quality one thing I think is probably not going to be different I told her just a popular right now she asked me about that you can talk about it tomorrow so there'll be some of those things that we don't know already that won't happen just a couple items in note we have started the hiring process earlier this year one of the things as you know has been my goal over years to get contracts out earlier and earlier because there's a 30-day window in the negotiated agreement so the sooner that we can get out of contracts as Kristen was alluding to the sooner we can get into a hiring process and I can tell you that it's a good ribbing between super intense about who gets out there first because we know we're all racing each other because that's where the hiring is going now these days it's really a competition among each other so we need to start thinking about other ways of building our bench we did a nice job with special educators last year we were at three pair educators that we supported in education who had either a license in another area and we helped them get an endorsement in special education and become special education teachers this past year so we need to start thinking about more of that even though we do collaborate with we have two teachers candidates that will come to U32 next week that are in-house interns through either the TAP program which is at Champlain College which brings people from a second career into education or one of our partner universities that we have interns there here so that's working for us it's just we need more of that do the student teachers do that though? that's not taking interns student teachers suit same thing the other thing that's we're in a place right now is we're really already starting to program for next year as I told you earlier the leadership team is doing is as early as we ever have of thinking about our new induction program we've had an induction program but expanding it for new teachers we're finding we could use a week or more than a week we have a week right now almost for every teacher before they come in of training they need to go through we're just not finding candidates it's not a lack of the candidates trained from the pre-service point of view they're just not to where we need them to be able to enter day one into the teaching profession so we need to do a lot of training we're actually talking about setting up a training for the first year or two of outside work that the new candidates have to do the work that we're really doing is we're getting a lot of good recognition now out there by districts in Vermont and outside of Vermont about the work that's happening in this district around student learning outcomes and professional proficiencies but we're having to train folks because they don't have that training they don't come with it so we're having to do right now for an example how much teacher that comes in if they don't have the right training they need to have responsive classroom which is a week's worth of training they need three to four days of induction they need a math lab school and we probably need to add a literacy lab school a math and literacy lab school a week each and just need to have this and then when we think about someone that is at a high school level I'm probably saying this early but we got the second year of the grant on project based learning last year we had all our 7th grade teachers trained that way we'll have all our 9th and 10th grade teachers developing curriculum in a project based approach that's a one week training right there two days of restorative practices which we require high school teachers in three days and yesterday we were able to go up to five days of our own induction of other things just to know how to run your grade book how to use a computer system around here how do you just operate so it's worth finding a lot of work and the last piece I'll give you is that we learned Thursday before break or Wednesday before break that the five elementary schools qualified as rural education schools which they've never qualified for on the federal level it's called REAP, Rural Education forget what the egg is but it's program where usually there were only a few school systems in the state of Vermont so we didn't have the actual money award but during vacation Jen, Lori and I took some time away from vacation and got the application in by Thursday so we're going to go fast and furious we'll hear by July 1st the amounts but it looks like it's going to be around $80,000 to $90,000 each or total and is it dedicated to a certain purpose actually we didn't even have to write a purpose in there but we came to consensus pretty fast around this table we're supporting this it's your job embedded professional development so we might be bringing a third job code as I told you we need to give you an update to full time positions it's parts and pieces and using some consultants with job embedded training and that's what we've been talking about how did you come to qualify this year I got a letter from the U.S. Department of Education to tell me that we qualified that's literally what happened seriously they issued it to us they came in my email somewhere somewhere that middle of the week I've been staying on top of my email everyone knows how I do my email then it was like I saw U.S. Department of Education I get something from them like two or three times a week so I didn't pay a lot of attention to it and I clicked on it and I was like oh my word I go and look up on the table and I'm like total all up yeah I think we put aside some vacation days right now and not do vacation and we do some work thanks so a couple of us are going to so that's my quick one I do want to get written up so all the boards have it and I'll get it written up I can put that aside everyone comfortable moving on to the director's report are there any questions or reactions it starts on page 11 most like about assessments yeah and they decided to do this because there have been questions and some of the local board meetings about assessments so at least their books still were perfect yeah I even right I think yours one of them it was one of them but it was not the only one so is there a timeline about the building of the green sentence we're continuing to examine donor assessment practices in these other SLOs so we can effectively monitor student products is there a timeline or just yes there is a whole timeline that starts from the beginning of school to I'm not sure what you're asking about the timeline but in terms of the sense that you're still in the process of developing some assessment practices we have a lot of assessment the thing that we're getting to break this out a little bit further but I'll try not to go too far astray is when you think about curriculum you've got your curriculum and then you build your assessments and then you build your instruction we're pretty solid on the curriculum path these SLOs the standards that you see up there each of those have performance indicators built from pre-K to graduation so the targets are pretty well built from almost everything up there that's amazing that we've got I've never seen it done that fast for that many the teachers deserve a lot of credit it's really solid now we have to build assessments that measure those at a deep level and how kids are performing this is where we get back to the monitoring of the proficiency based report card so if we don't have some common assessments they don't all have to be common we have to have some to say what's our calibration just as Steven was saying in the board of observation I need to be able to say if we're all 5th grade teachers let's have some assessments that are common so we know that we're in calibration with each other so that right now is the work to be done there are some, when you see star 360 or Faunas and Penel or DRA2 we're able to get some off the shelf pieces that do that there are a lot of places where we don't have off the shelf and we've got to bring teachers together to build those assessments it's a lot of work it's really building what you used what you made a thought of when you were in school as a program and you had the textbook we're basically building all that because there aren't ones up there so how do we go to page 13 by the way, board is on vacation I'm sorry we're going late I'll work on my time management skills we've been doing some update on salaries and benefits and we're starting to close down here in the supervisory and you'll see that we've had a little bit more income of $3,500 here in April and we've had some places where we've had some transfer and personnel or personnel out from savings and that gives us a $19,000 but currently we're looking to be about $25,000 as you can see down there at this current year and that's the money I'm proposing we tap for the analysis of having an outside consultant come in and do the analysis of non bargaining contracts so that leaves us at $223 which is 2.6% but to me that's a good place for us to be we do a lot of overhead flow through money and go for a special education so the money is going to come from the locals so having that small percentage is comfortable for me where in other places you've all heard me say different things for your locals so I'm sorry for my deafness here but let me reflect that back to you to make sure I'm understanding so you're projecting a $223,508 reserve at this point and that's not counting $25,000 that you're saying there's $25,000 in there right now it says sub total current year operation we're $25,000 better than what the budget said we should be right now I mean that that's going to be the total price tag for doing the analysis and non-bargaining but that's where I'm going to propose we get the money from because your savings coming out of this year I was conservative I think you all know me well enough I'm pretty conservative I wasn't going to go do an analysis without knowing that we had some work from the budget and that's what I'm going to recommend to you next month is that I'm not going to go over that figure because we don't know exactly but some of our preliminary it's over $10,000 to do a type of work and it can be up to $20,000 I feel like we have it let's use it and get something good out of it I don't remember thinking about this but it does make sense that if we use 4% as the target for the fund balance for the schools there would be something less for the SU infrastructure for the schools we don't get it we know we're going to get the money there's so much money flowing through the budget we have a million tons of infrastructure maybe that's something we should be doing I don't know what I really thought about I think about it as a member okay before we move into the executive session just regarding the next the schedule for the next board meeting the next executive committee I should say or note that I'm without going into detail scheduled to have a medical procedure on May 24th several days before the executive committee meeting I expect to be fully recovered by the 30th but there's a possibility that I wouldn't be so I'll just coordinate with Kari on the off chance that I can't be here that day just to give you all a heads up about that would you want to go to my phone? it's possible it would affect my voice actually I wouldn't be able to participate by phone either we'll save some a good video more worse code alright can I just say something I'm sorry I forgot I think you all received e-mails I sent it out to WCSU all but Ann Carr is retiring a week and a half she's retiring on the 4th and is asked for very little ceremony she was just kind of wanting to end and we're trying to respect her she's done 20 plus years of dedicated service what's the date? a week from this Friday I believe it's the 4th that could be all probably 7 what name? no what name would you like to move? I'll move that we go into the executive session for a personal issue second you want me to check?