 video so we can get these done next. When did we, this is Stacy, when did we reorganize our board? Because I've been taking minutes. Oh, maybe not until after these, huh? Right, it was after these. Okay. Right. You're going to transcribe these minutes? Yeah, I'll look for them, Stacy, if I need your help. Do you know, Kathy, there's an app that will allow you to transcribe automatically and it's fairly accurate from Google, from Google video recordings so we might be able to make easy work of it. Okay, cool. I'll connect with you and we'll get it done. Cool. Does that work? Okay. Monday, December 28th, that was a regular meeting. We do have those minutes. Can I get a motion to approve? So moved, Carl. Any discussion? Oh, do I have a second? Second. I'll second. All right. Any discussion? Hearing none, so moved. We're on to reports. Jamie, superintendents report, you're up. Can I ask someone that has a microphone open to close it? There's a lot of background feedback, please. Stacy, she got caught there. All right, so good evening. My report was in your packet. I do have something that I want to add. The holidays are coming up. There was a lot of debate whether or not the agency of education may or may not step in to help schools deal with the holidays and quarantine. After Friday's press conference with Secretary French, it's clear that that's not going to happen. Julie, you were chuckling, I see. I had information saying that they were going to step in, so I hadn't said much and was waiting, and now it appears that that might not be the case. So I did have a backup plan that I had been working on, and so I had run it by the executive board of the WRBEA because it will include doing some additional in-service that we've lost throughout the year because we're front-loaded. So the proposal that I have for you guys to give me a sense on whether or not you want me to move forward with it would be that the last student day in December would be the 18th. We will do nothing around Thanksgiving travel. It's just a short holiday. Once you come back in quarantine, you're looking at multiple weeks remote. So I'm looking to stay away from the Thanksgiving holiday, and we would focus on the holiday vacation in December. So the 21st and 22nd are currently student days. We will look to make that in-service time. I am in need of additional time around our MTSS planning work, around our universal social-emotional system, and also in regards to doing some calibration vertically in the area of mathematics. So those would be the areas that we would look to focus our work on, would be social-emotional mathematics. There will be some reading, professional development occurring then too. So we would look to have it differentiated, and it'd be kind of a menu of TD that would occur over those two days that schools and staffs would select from based on their current need. So we would differentiate for each building. Like one group may prioritize math, where another one may need to prioritize reading right now. See what I'm saying? A school may really be struggling socially-emotionally in their universal social-emotional system. And so I would look to work with principals to plan that, and principals will work with teachers about what makes the most sense at the building level. Okay, so it'd be a collaborative effort to offer those across the SU, and then based on building level need, then teachers would choose which one they're going to engage in. That would be December 21st and 22nd. We then go on vacation, and then we would return for five days of remote learning the week of January 4th. So what does that give us? Well, that gives us a three-week window to allow people to travel and students to travel and quarantine, and then I'll be back at the same time. My worry is if we don't take this type of approach, we're going to have half our students in, half our students out, and we don't have the staff to teach simultaneously, virtual and in person, at the elementary level. I don't have the staff to say you're going to teach in person second grade literacy while eight of your kids may be virtual. You see what I'm saying? And so if we're going to have folks traveling at IDEM, getting a lot of feedback from families in certain districts, more than others, that travel is going to occur and that they're concerned. My thought is if we can get information out ahead of it, that families would be flexible. And when folks have emailed me recently, I said, if you could plan accordingly, could you adjust your trip from potentially the Thanksgiving break to December? And folks seem pretty open to that. I decided not to do a full blanket survey and here's the reason why. I felt like based on the survey results, folks often I find with surveys feel like if you don't meet what they desire, then you didn't listen. And so I didn't feel like it made sense to survey if we knew this was the direction that might make the most sense for us as an SU and specifically the most sense, because I think it limits how much students are actually remote. We're talking about it's really five days. Now the good news is about me swapping those instructional days. We're one of the few SUs that are still operating on a 175 calendar. The legislature did allow us to go down to 170. So I have those five days for us and so we could do these two in-service days and still be at 173 is my point without adding any additional days or anything like that. So I just wanted to get your guys's feedback and hear your thoughts. This is not a done deal yet and but I certainly wouldn't make this type of decision without your guys is like, yeah, this makes sense. So I wanted to pitch that tonight during my superintendent report and see what folks thoughts were. This is Don. Jamie, have we had any more family interest about remote learning based upon travel and vacation times? Well, the survey went out, Don, about virtual learning, both going from virtual to in-person and in-person to virtual. Due to the fact that our numbers right now are at a place where I would have to add additional staffer to grow significantly, I said to go virtual at this point in time, you needed to have an underlying medical reason or someone in the family did because we just don't have the staffing to do that. And so therefore we're trying to limit the number of students going into the VLA. Since it's done, if we don't provide something like this, folks are going to be upset if we can't permit them in. So this was a way to try to not have, you know, that type of thing occur across the NCAA. Okay. Okay. And Megan had, she put something, so December 21 and 22 would be in-service days, not remote, Megan, is what I'm proposing, partly because we've lost all of our in-service time across the SU for any type of coordinated effort because we front-loaded it all. So I am interested in if we could get some in-service time to do it. If the board felt like, no, we really want that to be remote teaching, I can get behind that too. I just wanted to let you know there is work to do. And I think there's support from your faculty to engage in that work, not feeling like that they're opposed to that. Okay. Anybody else? This is Stacy. I just had a quick question about the calendar and the quarantine requirements. I mean, it looks like that's exactly two weeks time, which is the quarantine recommendation. So if someone actually travels on Christmas and comes home the day after Christmas, we're looking at, you know, eight days of quarantine. Is there flexibility on the receiving end so that if people... Well, most of our students at this point who have traveled, the Department of Health has been working with us in regards to seven days on that negative test day. So I was working off that calendar. Okay, cool. I wasn't certain which... Okay, cool. Thank you. All right. And my hope would be based on doing the in-service, like Meg asked, that people might decide to travel a little more upfront. Like you could leave as early as the 19th. I want to make a... This is Lisa. I personally had the experience of traveling and then having to quarantine for seven days and then to test. And the testing is not a one-day turnaround. It can take three to five days. So you're really looking at a 12-day... 12 days at least for any student, unless they can find a place where they can get a 24-hour response or a test that turns around that quickly. But that was not my experience. Yeah. So this is... What I'm proposing is students wouldn't be back to in-person until 16 days after the day after Christmas. And we could certainly go farther, but I just worry about too long of a break. That's all. I think that makes sense. I would just be concerned about jumping the gun and then bringing everybody back and having an outbreak. But I think if it's 16 days past the day after Christmas and you communicate that really clearly to the community that that will be the expectation that I think will be okay. And of course the caveat is, as you've heard me say, this is a moving target. This is October 26th. I mean, I'm chuckling, but I don't... We could be here three weeks from now. And this is a whole moot point. I have no idea. We have to have a plan for now. And I have to have backup plans. And I mean, the other thing I wanted you to know is that you probably saw my correspondence today with the teachers. We are fully moving forward with the idea that if we have to go remote, we can just do it. That students need to be in Google classrooms. The other thing we have done at the elementary level is we are putting together blizzard bags. And you may say, well, what is that? It's extra practice for students to engage in that we could count it as a student day based off of a check-in and of a morning meeting the next day. Like if we went remote, let's say tomorrow and sharing, the idea would be students would have their blizzard bags to use and that we would do a check-in with students by the end of the day that day. But then we would be the following day fully remote, virtually. So it gives us time and the event students are missing hardware or things of that nature to get them out the following day while students have a blizzard bag. But no longer than 48 hours from that decision, we're fully virtual. This is like, is the blizzard bag a physical item that needs to be put into the hands of students or like a theory on paper? No, it'll be literally a bag full of materials. And it's for snow days, you're saying right now or you're thinking of this in a COVID response way? Oh, I think that it could be for a snow day. But I also think it could be if we have to go COVID. And I think we're going to need to give families, especially when I'm thinking about younger elementary age students, you're really depending on families to help you navigate that. So the idea would be that we could say to a family, you have your COVID bag to use today, it would not be more than two days that we would use for a family. The idea is that gives you time to get your device and start engaging with your class again. So it wouldn't go longer than two days. But the idea is that we provided that material so that we can still count it as a student day, but that students would have work to do. And it's because it's like not going to be, I mean, it's obviously not going to be like the Bridges page from the day that you're missing. It's something that they get like in whatever like in a few weeks and then they have it for the whole winter. I know like Newton, they've been planning together about a holistic like two day mini unit that you could do that encompasses all different content areas. And Tracy could speak more to that at your upcoming board meeting. But I know that that's what she's talking about. So I think each school is doing it a little differently. But yeah, the idea is that it would still be engaging. It would be relevant. Again, it's not for more than two days. But it would allow us to continue students engaging while we're making certain they're all hooked up. Because those of you that were in the VLA, you know, as far as we've come in technology, they're still glitches. I'd like there to be a backup if folks get frustrated with the glitches. But students have already engaged in Google Classroom. Like we're using Google Classroom in person right now. So there shouldn't be a huge learning curve here if we have to go remote and knock on wood. I hope we don't go remote until this. And then we have a five week window of practice again after the winter break, you know, that it forces us. Okay. What else you got, Jamie? Not hearing anyone really upset with this proposal. Are you cool with me starting to let families know to plan? I'm not going to tell them that they should be planning on travel during the holiday break. I'll give them the details now, but I'll be as clear with them as I have all year that these are subject to change based on what happens. I'm good with it, Jamie. Okay. I like the proactive approach. Thank you. Yeah, I've all along since we started the proactive and getting everybody ready for it is a great approach. Okay. I'm with you. Thanks, Sarah. All right. Otherwise, I got my hat and I covered Mr. Livingston and I had to take some time away for a family reason. And so Don, McMahon and I have been covering a tumbridge for a couple of days. I've only done one on a few more. The nice thing is with virtual meetings now, we can continue to hold our meetings across the SU while we're actually in the building. So it was good to just remember what being a principal is like. And so that was a pleasure. And we started our MTSS training on Thursday. I got to say we have a great admin team. The engagement on Thursday afternoon was terrific. We really have some great leaders here. And so I'm really excited about how we're going about our MTSS work. We're focusing on training our leaders first, because I think in order for us to, for you to implement a real systematic approach, the principal has to fully understand it. Otherwise, it's hard to navigate and communicate it or know what we're holding folks accountable to. So the whole first part of this training is with the principals and the SU staff. And then we're going to trick it down throughout the spring. And so I got to say it was a very engaging training on Thursday. And the principals are just a terrific crew. The, you know, the VLA, we finally get up to full staffing and that today, which felt good. And we were able to do that by maneuvering some folks around that were in-person instructors. It's how we ended up having to do it. And one person took it in the grade math that was currently teaching in the VLA at the middle school level. I offered, we were short about a .5 FD in VLA. And we offered it to three different candidates and every candidate turned it down. So finally, we just looked farther and harder outside the box of how the best so I feel good that our staffing finally where it needs to be. I got to put a shout out to the VLA teachers and the Lindy Stetson. They are working incredibly hard. Virtual teaching is tough. It's a lot of work if you haven't done it. And so I got to say I've been joining some morning meetings in the VLA. And that's been a real treat. You know, I've been in most of your schools on a bi-weekly basis. And it was really good to get into some VLA classes over the last couple of weeks. So I enjoyed a literacy block and some morning meeting with second graders today. This is Don. Jamie, how can we increase our bank of teachers for that need? Well, you know, Don, I even, recently when I posted the job, I thought we get some major hits because I remind them it was virtual. And we put it on school spring. I didn't post it for Vermont. I was like, this is a virtual teaching position. You might draw some interest from folks outside of the state because you can do this from wherever. And we interviewed a few candidates from outside the state, but they just weren't at a level where, you know, we felt like that they would add to the organization. And so that is something that has been a challenge, Don. You know, I got to say knock on wood though, we've had great luck getting enough substitutes at the most part across the SU. And I know we were short a couple of pairs and I interviewed a little high quality candidate today that Don sent my way. So that we'll be bringing on board hopefully here in the next couple of weeks. So I mean, I feel like the in-person candidate pool hasn't been too bad, but we certainly have been struggling with the VLA. Is there any way to access retired teachers perhaps? Well, that was, we've tried that. And I think once they realized the intensity of teaching online, they decided it wasn't for them, you know, and part of me said, I understand. So that's the thing. We had three candidates that I thought were going to fill this. And we of course had them shadow and had them start to engage and what does that look like? And it's tough. And, you know, I think they said, you know, retirement sounds pretty good. I share that. Yeah, okay. All right. Anything else, Jamie? No, I just want you again, the flexibility of our teaching staff and our support staff is amazing. They are great. And in regards to just being flexible in the face of this and just taking on new challenges and things. So I'm just really appreciative. Nice. The only other thing I'll add too quickly is that I do want folks to know that there's coordination, so happy in regards to assessment of how we best are going to support that work with Mary Ellen's absence. And so I've been meeting with Charlie and Amy Toth and we're just giving up those responsibilities in regards to what makes sense, whether it's Charlie's basket, Amy's basket or my basket. And so I'll have a more detailed report with you in November where all those things landed as far as responsibilities and roles. But just reminding you that we have no intention of replacing Mary Ellen this year and that we're going to approach it that way. Okay. All right. Thank you, Jamie. Business Manager Tara, are you with us? Good evening, everybody. So I emailed my report earlier to you today, so you probably haven't had much time to read it. So just to give you the high points, I provided you with the November report due dates. I had a conference this morning with the AOE regarding our FY 20 stat books and have some corrections and revisions that I need to do to those. School Food Authority, the Agency of Education released an equipment grant last week that I am working with our food service staff to get the requisitions together so that we can apply for that, so part of the CARES money. The summer meals grant that we were awarded that reimbursement is due on the 15th. So I'm working to get all of the documentation together for that. And we did another push for free and reduced applications, so I got a stack of them that have come in that I need to review and we can get our systems updated for the reports that are due early in November. And I still haven't heard anything from the AOE on our CRF funding application, so we're still in limbo as far as that is concerned. I'll jump in though. I just want you to know we've been very conservative in a lot of regards on how much money we spend for the grant and we do have an award total that we're aware of and we try not to go much over that. We know we're going to get additional from that, but just I don't want people hearing that and getting nervous. This is a second pot of money, so we're working through multiple pots. How long will that pot of money be available? This one, the one that we submitted the application that I haven't heard anything, that one is through the end of December. The ESSER funds, they are available through the end of 2021. So we have to use the CRF funds first. So that's the application that's submitted and we're waiting for the AOE to review and accept. And then what we don't get from the CRF funds, we then do our ESSER application, which is the money that we are already allocated a certain pot of amount for. Then we do that submission, but we have to use the CRF funds first because they go away. Thank you. And my understanding is, Tara, no one really has a sense yet. Any other questions of Tara, guys? All right. Thanks, Tara. You're welcome. Ray, are you on with us? I am here. What do you got for us? Assessment data and state reporting. Here I am with my partner department and there's lots of things going on right now in terms of assessment windows have closed and now the data is going to flow into Otis, which is the data warehouse. So principles and interventionists can see and plan for targeted interventions. Jamie, help me out there. Yeah, universal and targeted. Yeah, good job, Ray. Right. To formulate a plan for, I'll cop another thing that Jamie says, gap filling. Anyways, the data has been sent to the vendor to be able to, so that principles and interventions at the moment can view data from different systems in one place, basically. And specifically two of these assessments happen on paper. So somebody has to collate those, then they get mixed across the SU by grade level and then they go to the vendor. So there's a couple of steps that have to happen. And then in three weeks, the ADM and tuition reports are due. So they're called 06 and 05. And they're actually ready to go. And so now the time will be spent making sure that the reporting is accurate. The errors have been cleared and we're making sure that what we're reporting is what we mean to report. Nice. Specifically, accuracy of residency and national school lunch eligibility. Any questions? Hi, Ray. Is there, as part of a board that just has K6 kids, one of the things we've always wanted to understand is how well our kids succeed in their middle and upper school years? Is there any way or plans to... So obviously, we'd be able to see the longitudinal data on any kid from the Rochester Stock Region that goes to a WRVSU school. Is there any plans or efforts that are going to be made to capture that data from kids that go to other public schools in Vermont or kids that go anywhere outside of our SU so that we can look at how successful our kids are in the second half of their public school careers or their secondary careers? Sure. Otis has his assessments that we run internally, Carl. So that's not something that was envisioned to provide visibility on students, tuition students. So I don't really have a good answer for you there. And Carl, just from our F-Bud board, it's something that we've asked, we've talked to Jamie about as well, that we want to start being able to track how our high school kids are doing and whatnot. So it's something that we have an interest in as well. So I think, Jamie, we've been talking about that. Don as well. Okay. Now my plan is I'm going to try to come with you to you guys here in the next few months with some data points that we would look to track that sound manageable and make sense, both quantitative and qualitative, like we did with the SU data report calendar. And then I'll go out and look to work with your principals and the SUs that we send students with, because we're going to need their participation to then start collecting that data. Nice. Thank you. Anything else of Ray before we move on, guys? Yeah. I just had, we had a meeting with the LA teacher and we were asking about an assessment that our kid had done. And they said that the assessments are housed with the school that they are home, you know, home wins. So they weren't able, the teacher wasn't able to see the assessments from like, they had to go through that school. But anyway, it seemed like something was going to happen where the VLA teachers would be able to see the assessments. But I just want to make sure that that did happen since, you know, I guess they're separate housing structures for the data or something. So make sure the VLA students can see the home, the assessments for whatever kids they have in them. Right. I believe that Lindy herself can do that. I'm not sure about individual teachers to be perfectly honest. Okay. It sounds like something we got to work out. I didn't realize that that glitch was there, Andrew. So thank you. Okay. Anything else, guys? All right. Don. Yes. Good evening. I submitted my report and you folks have a copy of it. Three areas that I touched based on is the service plan for FY 22. The mandatory schedule documentation scheduled for this week. And we'll do two weeks study October and February. And just an update on direct instruction and reading where we're going. Does anybody have any specific questions on those? Any of those three or as you can see, the service plan, what we figured was there a 2.7% decrease in preschool portion and an increase of 2.6% in the K-12 portion. And the first study of this and really kind of analyze and it looks like tuitions for out of district placements have increased that K-12 portion. With the two week mandatory documentation, I sent you a link to what I sent out to the field which outlines specifically what I'm looking for as it is prescribed through the special ed documentation that the AOE wants. And so we're really going to take the time, the following week to analyze the time studies to see really what people are doing and how we can probably move some people around if necessary to cover, to make sure that we're doing it correctly and that we are utilizing special ed dollars effectively. Questions of Don? Hey, Don, this is Stacy. I just wanted to point out that the last link in your document appears to be a bad link that goes to one of your email messages. So I can't see what that is. All right. I'll look at that. If I can send it back out, I will. Hope it was a friendly email. Carl? Hi, Don. Can you? So you're saying that a lot of our increases are due to out-of-district placements. These, well, were these kids? Just clarify, out-of-district placements, not the number of students we are outsourcing to out-of-state, out-of-district placement. It's the rise in the tuition costs at those placements. Okay. And is there, is there any way that we could return these kids to our alternative program or something like that to reintegrate them? Because it sucks to have to write those checks. I hear you. So that was an initiative that Superintendent Kanani wants us to look at and really analyze students who are in these placements. And for instance, I'll be at a placement, a school tomorrow, analyzing and observing a student, you know, which has a significant tuition cost, who is making some good gains. Now, one of the biggest hurdles we have is when kids make great gains at these alternative schools, it's really hard to convince the parent it's time to move on, you know, and bring them back. So there is a lot of apprehension on the parent's part, but I think with a little persuasion and a real slow transition, we can do it. Good to hear you're on top of it. Thank you. And Carl, when we get into the budget, we'll talk a little bit of how we're trying to budget to address some of that. Anybody else for Don? All right. Mary Ellen. Yes, I'd like to thank everybody for over the past five years. I'm in my fifth year working with you and I appreciate your dedication and all those meetings that you and thank you. So please keep in touch. And I'm going to miss everyone here in the SU. This from last month to this month, been working a lot on collecting the data. I do have a data report at the end of my report. If you have any questions on that, I'll entertain that. Also, I'm working these last couple of days here on the middle level inventory where we are taking a snapshot of our middle level in both math and in reading. Amy Toth and I are doing that. And it's really interesting. We're going into classrooms, we're doing observations, we're doing teacher interviews one on one and we're doing surveys and we're going to compile a report and we will send that back to you in a future meeting. Terry Institute, they have been working with our run schools in the middle level for the three years. And our contract is coming to an end with them. So we are working to look at expanding that contract with our middle level across the SU with other areas. And working on the equity policy, the collaboration we have received money for a grant for professional development on racism for our faculty. So we're really excited about getting that moving forward. But those are some of the things I've been working with. Any questions for me? I don't have any questions, but I really want to say thank you for all of your hard work in the five years you've given us. And I wish you luck on your new endeavor. Here, here. All right. Anything else, anyone? Okay. Discussion items. Draft 21-22, WRVSU budget. I'll let Tara walk you through the numbers if you have any questions. Remember, this is our first draft. And so much like you've seen the local district, this is just giving you a direction we're headed in. But I want to highlight what this supports. So what this budget draft supports is number one, the concept of we still have some folks in the tech department that repair and maintain technology across the SU. There is one person that does that in Newton that's part of their teaching position that's different. But separate aside from that, we would look to move tech. What's their title, Ray? Tech Support Specialist. Tech Support Specialist into the SU. So you might say why? Well, one, it supports the idea of supervision by Ray. He supervises some of them now and not others. And at times that's sticky. Two, it would make this cleaner in the sense of that many of them are their contracts are in the SU and then they're built back directly to the district. And then when we go maneuvering folks around the city, the idea would be just like Special Educator, we have a place for a need, we could triage that versus not being able to right now. The other thing that this supports though is an additional Tech Support Specialist Ray. Ray is working incredibly hard, but that is an area within the SU that I think we're under staff by a 1.0 FE. So this does increase one more Tech Specialist to assist and ensure that Ray can maneuver us into where we need to be constructionally. And I'd like to not have him here 80 hours a week personally. And I think we're going to burn him out otherwise. And so I'm working with him on that. But I do think that we're under staff by one. So I wanted you to know why is technology up so much? That's why. So it's your current staffing move to the SU. It's an additional 1.0 FE there. The otherwise you can see the curriculum improvement and instruction line is down. That's based on the improved structuring you already made earlier this year of us going down 5.0 FTEs. And of course we added the one Associate Business Manager position. So we are down four and those are out of curriculum improvement of instruction. There was two staff positions that are removed from fiscal services. And of course we're down the grant administrator as well. And so as far as the supervisory union budget part at this point we're projecting to be down 1.5%. That's that's conservative in the sense of you know my hope would be that we can get that down even more. That would be the goal. But that's what I felt comfortable reporting to you tonight. And in special ed and if you have I don't want to go into who exactly all these FTEs are right now because we haven't spoken to folks yet. So I don't want to talk about positions at this time until we have accommodations with the folks about what we're doing. But we are looking to be down about four staff in the area special ed at the moment. And this is at an initial look in regards to caseloads and the service plan. My plan is to sit down with Don and analyze time studies and project out how we're able to best meet student needs through our MTSS and whether or not there's additional efficiency there. What I will tell you though is this 1.3% increase does support Carl the idea of an alternative intensive alternative programming at the high school. Both for students who struggle socially emotionally and for students who have more global cognitive delays that might need additional support. So you look at where current year out of district placements are. A majority of them are grades 9 through 12. And those are not just students at rudder course. Those are students also that are in your local districts that then are being tuition to other alternative placements at their high school level. Where the hope would be as we start to sit down we can say the least restrictive environment is the program that we provide here in WRVSU. It doesn't need to be another alternative somewhere else like the Hartford school district. We have some students right now and in Randolph we have students in a program there right now. And so the idea would be that no actually we have a program right here. And so the idea is that we're going to look to utilize some of the staffing in our K-2 program. We've analyzed the students in our K-2 we've met with our restorative programming staff. The consensus is that we can support students K-2 in their home schools by pushing our folks out into the home schools to better support those students. And it may be a temporary intensive behavior plan where a pair is supporting a student one-on-one for you know four to six months while the student is dysregulated. But right now when we can't do a cost analysis on what we're spending in the K-2 based on how many students are actually accessing it over the last few years it made way more sense to use those resources. And there's also a lot of research about sense of belonging and things of that nature for students. When you move a five and a six seven-year-old student out of their home school and put them in a different placement of you know how they see oneself and self-worth. I think as students start to go into fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade they start to say you know this traditional model of learning is not working for me. I need additional supports. And I think they have more of a student voice of people where when you're five, six, and seven you go there because adults told you to go there. So those are some of the tweaks that we're analyzing and looking to do. And so this budget does support the staffing for that type of invention. So there's a suspect we're going to see some savings with those added district placements. Your contracted services are not all in this right now. That line is not in here yet. This is salary and benefits personnel and supply lines and those function codes. This is just a first look at that and we'll come back again in November with a more detailed look. And then of course December you'll get it the whole shebang. But I just want you guys to ask questions. You're going to ask Tara, you can ask Don, you can ask me and then give us some direction whether we're headed in the right direction or not. Mike Gray. Yeah, Jamie, I like the trend of it going down. That's always a good thing. I just had one question. I'm not going to pretend I'm a real good budget guy or anything, but the second line in the special ed budget goes up a lot like $600,000. I just maybe I missed it. I just didn't hear what you said about that. Sharon, correct it if I'm wrong, but we better classified folks. Though some folks were in some function codes there, but we're cleaning it up that they actually fit more in the source staff area. And so if you look at that top line down, some of where that went down, we moved it down into the other area where it's better. Okay, so it might not necessarily be an increase, it's just kind of a reorganization. Yeah, correct. And when we do the actual detail, you'll see where we moved people around. This was just grouping people together at this point in time. Okay. And part of that is I said I want to be able to talk to folks before you. I don't like folks finding out that we're talking about positions until we can talk to them. Okay. Any other questions guys on the budget? Okay. All right. We're on to 7.2 announced versus allowable tuition. Tara, this is completely yours. Do you have a question, Carl? I'm sorry, I did. And this may not be a question that you're willing to answer in public, but I'm curious, knowing that we have an open support staff contract, I'm curious there's been some, I think someone's got their mic on and is echoing me, but I'm wondering if it has some sort of adjustment in it for potential contract settlements? I think what I'm comfortable saying is that we budgeted appropriately for insurance and contracts. All right, Tara, you're up. So the announced versus allowable tuition, those of you who have been sending kids out are very familiar with this concept for many years now. And you've seen some substantial bills in the past come in well after the close of your fiscal year due to the agency of education's ongoing delay and actually setting the allowable tuition rates. So we as a supervisory union have to decide once the state does that, are we as a supervisory union going to either bill back or refund if our allowable tuition is 3% higher or lower than our announced? There's a long formula to calculate it, but that sums it up quickly. And if we do it, we have to do it for all. So we can't say yes, we're going to do it to anybody outside of our SU, I would have to do it inside our SU as well. So an example, Granville Hancock sending to Rochester Stockbridge. If there's a 3% difference, we would either need to bill Granville Hancock the additional or we need to refund depending on how it all turns out. I thought that was state law to refund. My understanding is that we as a supervisory union make that determination. I was withdrawn. I thought we could decide to remit or to bill back if it was in those 3% caps. But if it was over or under those 3% caps, we had to do it. I certainly understand that we're not allowed to cherry pick and say we're going to bill those guys in Ripton, but not bill our friends in Granville and Hancock. But I was under the impression that A, like Don said, that A, if it was plus or minus, if it was more than 3% in either direction, you had to bill it back or collect it. And you only had discretion if it was in between and then you couldn't pick and choose districts. So can I ask her, is there a reason why we would not do it? A reason you would not do it would be to potentially increase deficits that may already be trending. It would be a reason not to if our allowance, if our allowable is much higher than what our announced was. And I'm happy to get confirmation from the AOE as to the explanation of the statute that I received for you all. Okay. I'm not sure I 100% understand why we wouldn't bill. So you're saying if you're saying if the tuition is set, let's say 12,000 and then they bill us 13,000, the questions would we bill them the additional 1,000? Yes. Based on the formula that's within the statute, the 3% that we're talking about, you're only allowed to bill back if it's above or below the three. So if it's above the 3% additional or above a 3% reduction, then you can bill for that discrepancy between the two numbers. But if it comes in not really 1%, then no, we wouldn't do it. It's above the 3%. Okay. So Stacy, if you don't mind, I can use your district last year as an example. I mean, this gives me severe PTSD, but go ahead. So they got a bill last year from a receiving district from them that was well over $48,000. They got it last year and it was for FY 18 because the AOE was so far behind in setting the allowable tuition rates. So in FY 20, they weren't budgeting an additional $48,000 in premium or $48,000 in tuition. So why wouldn't they impact their budgets? It just makes it difficult for us to budget accurately given kind of how far in a rears we're talking. But maybe it's something that used to happen on the routine. All right. Okay. Any other questions? Do you need a decision for something on this? I think we can move it to November and I'll get you some additional information. Okay. If you guys are comfortable with that. Is everybody good with that? I would also just add, sorry, there's some bad echo coming from somewhere. So it's you, Tara. You got to turn on your volume. Just that what's really the root of the problem is that the AOE misses their deadline by months and months and months and then the receiving districts will end up adding penalties because we're late in paying. So I would only add that if we decide to move forward with this, we should press the AOE. I don't know if we need to go before a legislature or what we would need to do to make sure that we're not penalized for the AOE's delay in reporting this out. All right. Sounds good. Anything else on this topic? Okay. We look forward to hearing from you in November, Tara. WRVSU residency verification. That goes back to the discussion that we were having at the last meeting that I would like to get a common practice documented in either a policy or a procedure that White River Valley Supervisory Union and its member districts will not pay tuition to a receiving school until residency has been in fact verified. I mean, it's our practice in a sense now, but there have been instances that there have been tuition paid by signing of the administrators in the building prior to me really focusing and catching it that we didn't have residency verification on. So now we have internally a much more accurate process that we follow here when it comes to tuition invoices to make sure that doesn't happen. But I believe it would be best of us to have something documented that if it's ever asked, we actually have a common practice policy. We have reached out to some other business managers to ask them if it's a policy for their district or if it is a procedure just to get some clarification as to which way we should go. Okay. Carl? It was certainly a policy in Stockbridge before we merged with Rochester. I believe it carried over because they didn't have any kind of policy around that because before merging with us, they were a K-12. After we had to do residency hearings, we had that exact policy and that was what we were advised by Dina as the attorney who represented us in that. We had a policy that said we will not pay any tuition until we've established a residency. I think that's also part of it is that we need to establish because I mean unless there's something that I can't find on the books here now, we also need to say like this is what we require for residency. If we don't get residency, then this is the next step. For an example, like Carl just mentioned, a residency hearing. I can see here and tell you today that last year there are several students we didn't pay tuition on because I still don't have residency verification today and now I'm getting tuition bills for this year and I still have no residency verification. The families aren't responding so the bill remains unpaid. I just wanted to add as with my previous point, we should need to make sure that we're not being penalized for any kind of delay in making those payments. Would have not paid interest or anything of that nature at this point Stacy. Thank you. That's a relief. I mean part of it too is you know maybe working in coordination with the other superintendents or heads of school that we send to to let them know that their response would help assist us with some of this. At the end of the day they want their bills paid and they can certainly be helpful by ensuring that those vouchers come through from us saying yes indeed residency was verified. From the receiving district side I mean we wouldn't not educate somebody who doesn't have a residency so like how does that work on the receiving side like if we don't have residency verification what's the procedure you know. Well you know my past practice as someone who received a lot of students from sending schools was that my registrar Andrew worked to ensure that they verified residency because then we wanted to provide a bill right otherwise they didn't have a right to access my school. So if they couldn't provide residency in orange then I'm saying are you homeless or do you actually live in Barrie like you know where are you living and so that those are that's the reason why we have to work in conjunction with each other. So is the idea here to come up with a policy Jamie under the policy committee and then a procedure? That's my thought process yep okay so since you're all in this you know this is like one of those ones I felt the need to discuss it at a larger board meeting before we just went to the policy committee even just because you're most all you're sending schools other than Rudd right who has it a different way and so I just this is really this is one of those things that will significantly impact everyone so I thought it was worth discussion. Okay so we'll look forward to it at the policy committee to bring it forward to the full board. All right anything else on that topic guys okay. Um super intended evaluation tool slash committee um have people had an opportunity to talk to members of their board to see who would be interested in serving on such a committee. So I have some some names I can write down to the start the ball rolling. Um Lisa oh okay go ahead Ethan um our Rochester Stock Bridge is me and Carl. Ethan and Carl okay. I haven't asked members of my board yet so I'm sorry about that. However if there are members we have four tonight if anybody wants to jump on board now would be a good opportunity. Yes it would be I'd like to get this committee formed tonight and it's not like we can't you know ask anybody if they come in late to the game but um anybody from your board anybody on here that wants to join from South Wales and Bethel board? I'll join. Who said I'll join? Thank you Bob. Bob Gray. Bob Gray okay I didn't hear her. Thanks Bob. Um Dawn Shaw. I haven't had a chance to talk to the Sharon board but I'm sure there'll be somebody that would would participate. Okay so I'll get a name from you I'll hit you up to see if I can get a name for you fairly quickly. Sarah Root. Yes Aaron Daughter D-O-T-T-E-R Aaron is A-A-R-O-N. Okay and who am I missing? Uh Stacey. You're looking at her. All right Stacey um I'm gonna I'm gonna send you the name of an alternate as well. Okay um I think I have on my board I have Sue and Michael Gray on here are you do you guys have I'm gonna be on the committee as I'm getting it going um Sue and Michael do either you have interest? Um I can do it Kathy if none of the others do because most of them have small children at home. Okay so and Mike's been putting so much in on the restructuring committee I could do it with you. Okay so I'll put you down. Thanks. Yeah I'll second that. I love your support Mike. Way to do the teamwork F-Bode way to do the teamwork. Okay so in the meantime Ray is sharing I I went to um the VSBA to find out about um their assistance in um creating a tool for an evaluation um they sent us a document I've I shared it with the board chairs um it looks like they go into quite depth to the point where we we end up with it with an evaluation at the end and I think it might they do do a an immediate meeting so I was thinking the committee could meet with them to to see if we want to go forward and use them after we have a conversation um there's a fee of a thousand dollars to work with the VSBA but I think the guidance they could provide us um that that's a really good deal actually and I just wanted to get support to use that on the committee so Kathy I think that uh the the help they gave us in the hiring committee was outstanding and well worth the time and the the money so I would support you um or I would support us using them again in this endeavor all right. Carl? Carl? Um well let's see like there we go now I've got everything turned on um I would want us to to to remind us you know I I feel like we did have a great experience with the with win win in the hiring committee but the guy that we had that we that was doing a previous value superintendent evaluation that basically showed up and showed the webpage from the New York State Department's educations tool and then wasn't interested in collecting feedback from around the the superintendent's performance from the other administrations was just kind of interested in in in walking it through us I don't remember how much that cost us but I felt that that was not and that seems like if you read the document that I sent you Carl it seems like it's a much different process because I made that comment to Sue when I had a conversation with her and this is different um so I I felt the same way I felt like um I felt like we weren't all in and I felt like he wasn't bringing to the table what we needed so I think if we approached this the way we did the superintendent search with them we would be very successful I'll read that document thank you all right Kathy question what's the timeline for this is this ongoing throughout the year do we would we meet with the this consultant yeah consultant once twice what would they take over for us and we would no longer be a committee I think that's why we have that initial meeting Ethan so we can so we can figure that out figure that out okay okay yeah good thank you kind of like we did the superintendent I think that went a lot faster than what I had anticipated and I think we'll find out what their process is for this all right anyone else okay so I will set up a I'll work with Jamie and Ray to set up a link to do our first initial meeting I'll find out when they're available at the vsba to do the first initial meeting and we'll start out that way and go from there I just recommended the board act to approve the committee there's gonna be a committee on the board and approve uh the chair to spend the the money requested okay do I have a motion someone I would make a motion that we work with the vermont school boards association on superintendent evaluation and appoint the chair of our full board um Kathy Galuzzo as chair of this committee all right all right any discussion this is this is done I would recommend that there would be a sunset on that committee so it doesn't turn into a a an ongoing thing because people change roles change and you've mentioned Kathy in it so would have to do something different okay and I think we can plan on sunsetting the committee one after we meet with the vsba to figure out what the timeline is that would have to be in the motion would you like to amend the motion yeah I can amend the motion um so we'd want the committee probably to sunset prior to reorganization next spring sounds good thank you Don all right so do I have a second yep all those in favor say aye aye are there any opposed all right so we have a committee I'll get that email out to everyone um policies um Jamie are we these didn't get worn we're not are we uh proving them tonight uh listen you better put that right in the evaluation right there so uh we missed the yep noted um we missed the newspaper window I apologize and so they weren't worn in the paper so therefore we can't formally adopt them tonight um they have been to all the local district boards there hasn't been any um you know no one seems to have to be opposed to these so I'm going to add we got a fourth one that will get one that the policy committee looked at tonight and that's points um and that those will come for you properly worn in the paper for adoption in November at the SU level um I think I'll you know based on the fact that there hasn't been anyone pushing back certainly I'll use those as you know guidance as we move forward with budgeting because one of them is the budget of course so I'm going to continue to use it outside our work okay all right so rookie mistake um so then under action items the policies above we will approve at our next full board meeting um Tara in November is going to bring back the announced versus allowable tuition and we have formed our superintendent evaluation tool committee um and then I think I don't have the second page of my agenda I gotta look what's next james executive executive session on personnel and I don't need anyone if the board would just invite me and that'd be great can we wait until the recording is started before we go back oh right okay so I'll make them can I have a motion to go back to executive session for negotiations okay I have a second second at Ethan all right so we were back in can you stop the recording Ray do I have a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn all right guys thank you I don't know thank you I might not talk to you all before thanksgiving so happy thanksgiving same to you all right good night all