 early. So welcome to our well not first meeting of the year but first meeting of 2023. A happy new year to everybody. It's nice to be in person. I hope everybody had a good time with family and friends and had power or mostly power. And so it's nice to see everybody. Welcome to the people that are online. David, Mrs. Gennaylor and Eric. And oh Maggie, welcome. Okay. So I'm wondering if we have any public comments. Michael or Mrs. Gennaylor, can you hear me? Are you here for any public comment or? I'm not sure if you can hear me. Okay. Well here that there's no public comment. I'm going to continue with our board learning. I want to welcome Phil. Thank you for being with us again, Phil. You've had a nice, you didn't have power for a while, so it's good stuff for you. But you can join us right at the table wherever you want to. And we're going to start with the board learning. And the floor is yours. So thank you, Floor. It's good to be here this evening. The theme that I see in the three chapters that we wanted to discuss tonight really is all about board self-assessment. Interestingly though, as this is, the content is more specifically about the kinds of things a board would want to assess themselves on. And so I don't know how many of you have had a chance to read the chapter or chapters. There were three here in the middle of the book, five, six, and seven. And I want to point out a few highlights from those chapters that really kind of stand out to me. At the very beginning in chapter five, I think page 68, just draw your attention to there's increased attention. The text says it continues to be focused on school board accountability and the school board's impact on student performance. At the time this book was put together, that was still a relatively new idea. Actually quite new in educational leadership, even the principals or superintendents make a difference when it comes to student achievement. Now, it's important to be mindful of the fact that the people who are closest to the children, typically the teachers and their educators, they're most responsible for a specific child's learning. And so as we think about that, what's the school board's role in a child's learning? It's about the system. It's about a culture and a climate that supports student learning and closing gaps. And this is, there's more emerging research on that idea of how boards can contribute to closing gaps. But a couple of other things I would just call to your attention here, page 69. School boards serve, I like this quote, at the selected as the selected leadership are accountable to their stakeholders for their school's performance. So thinking about that nexus of where public meets public education. And again, the board's role in the system performance, one is clearly of accountability. How does the board appropriately hold the system accountable for improved student achievement? Code throughout these chapters is this concept of balance, right, of not micromanaging and not being disengaged. And individual board members as well as the board as a whole, finding that spot to where we can be thoughtful and informed in providing oversight to the system. The reference different assessment tools throughout these chapters, I don't think that's too important. In my work in board self assessment of the last 20 years, what seems to be most important is that the board assesses themselves. It doesn't like, you know, the tools kind of like superintendent evaluation. If you ever do a Google search for superintendent evaluation, you'll see millions of hits that come up, something to do and literally thousands of different instruments that could be used. It doesn't matter. It's about that reflection of the board to say, how are we doing as a board? How are we, what are we contributing to advancing the goals we've set for the system? And what might we be doing that are detracting or taking away from the system? One of the things that I would just underscore on page 71, this idea, what is balanced governance behavior? So not just the theory of, you know, being thoughtfully engaged, but what are the behaviors of balanced governance? And two of the things that are brought out on page 71 are this focus on shared leadership. It's been very important to me when I speak on school governance in conferences at other states, I like to emphasize this key point of shared leadership. Most of us think of leadership as something we do. But serving on a school board shared leadership, it's something we do together, right? And I've had experiences mountain climbing where, you know, one person was more knowledgeable, more proficient, more capable by credentials. But it was somebody else, maybe less experienced that said, I think we're supposed to be going that way. Like, I mean, you know, some fairly important things. And so how we navigate that, whether we've been on the board 10 years or more, or whether we've been on the board, 10 weeks or less, you know, how we navigate that sense of shared leadership, I think is a critical component of balance. It's not just one person, but it's the whole team together. It was on page 72 that quote I was thinking of at the very bottom of the page, I just want to read that, based on their understanding that those closest to the students are the most knowledgeable and responsible for student achievement. The board and administration implemented significant organizational and academic changes. And then there are eight things here that are called out. It's not intended to be an exhaustive list at all. But it really gets to that part of if you think about, okay, what can a school board do? What can a school board do that can contribute to improve student performance? And again, eight things are called out there. But then in the next paragraph, they wrote, provide the resources, clarity, and training needed to make the change successful. So three categories, resources, clarity and training. Tonight, the word clarity is what's been resonating with me. And I want to talk about that a little bit more as we go along sort of the board's responsibility for establishing clarity. Again, within these three chapters, there's almost an unfolding of different types of governance standards, different ways to approach here's what a board should do. There's the list of essential behaviors, essential characteristics of a board, those kinds of things. But I want to suggest to you that one of the most important things we can do as a board is provide clarity, clarity for the administration, clarity for the system. At the end of this chapter, how a board and individual members transcend personal and systemic, counterproductive and self serving governance behaviors. That's the challenges for all of us. As one speaker I've heard will frequently say ego is not your ego. And it's something you know, administrators have to learn this in their career, board members individually and collectively, we have to learn that that it's not about our ego. It's not about us looking good. It's not about somebody looking bad. It's not about an individual winning. It's about the work of the board advance. And it's not always intuitive, right to to get to that place that it's not about me. It's it's about this this team and this board moving forward. And in a school system, it's not just about the board moving forward, but it's about all of the schools, all of the students, all of the staff moving forward. The chapter six got into these, and a lot of this was developed in the state of Oregon at one point, but technical elements and what they call adaptive elements. I would draw your attention to page 79 just to get a sense of that. What they described as elements of success. These are again, another list of school board standards. These technical elements, vision directed planning, getting that clarity, community engagement, effective leadership, accountability, using data for continuous improvement. That's been a theme and in board research over the last 20 years. How does the board appropriately use data? And maybe not the term we heard from any years data driven, but maybe data informed, like, you know, so it's we're making informed decisions supported by data, not necessarily driven by someone's interpretation of the data. So those technical elements of board work, five of them, and then there are these five adaptive elements. We might say hard skills, soft skills, cultural responsiveness. That's huge. We're all learning and growing and improving in that area climate. What's the climate of the school system? And here they emphasize that it's the board that sets the expectations for student performance for improved achievement for closing gaps. They really talk a lot in the three chapters collectively about the board learning, leading a learning organization, right? And modeling learning. But again, that goes to board self assessment, where the board is modeling the type of reflection. How are we doing as a team that you would hope that every teacher and frankly, every student in your system is is also experiencing that reflective practice. Thinking in terms of system. I don't I don't know about individuals in the room. I know for me that was a stretch as a board member to kind of transcend in my thinking from my day job and very tactical. Here's how we do things. Here's how we put things together. Here's how we make things happen to this bigger, broader sense of systems, right? School systems, school districts have multiple systems. You have systems for personnel for hiring for evaluating you have systems for transportation for food service systems for curriculum and cycles of things being done. Lots and lots of systems. And at the board level, when we're most effective, we're thinking in terms of all these systems, how are they affected? Not. We read a piece of research in USA today. And we decide here's the new thing that the school district should do. And so we bring that to the board meeting to try to persuade our friends and and that's that's not very effective boardsmanship. I've been there down that it didn't serve me well. And I've seen a lot of others try to do that. And you know, it's like the next chapter gets into this concept of stability. And what can the board do to really reinforce, build, maintain stability in the system? We know that most effective improvement happens as a steady course of action over time. It's not the knee jerk stuff. It's it's that steady course. So how does the board position itself to think with a trusty mindset? Right? How does this affect the system? And what could we say or do that might just be a little nudge, a little question, an open ended question that helps guide and sort of inspire improvement or performance. A couple other things just quickly out of this, as we go along, each of those areas are unpacked in chapter six. And if you had interest in that, you know, whether it's the cultural responsiveness and continuous improvement, one thing that stood out to me on page 84, because this was this book published in 2015, a compilation of research that builds up to that year. So before this present era of challenges and conflicts and pandemic and politics and all of the things that we've experienced over the last four or five years, there's guidance in here for how the board might implement an equity lens. And this is an area where you might give some thought and attention to it at the bottom of page 84, just a way to use an equity lens tool to evaluate how are we doing as a board? How are we thinking about our policies? Are we looking at our policies? How are we thinking about our budget? Are we considering equity as we formulate and opt to budget at all of the work of the board? And I think, you know, there's key questions there. Again, in board self assessment sort of format, if the board were to ask themselves and reflect on there would be an opportunity for improvement. And just looking at things through an equity lens. Couple of quotes, I just really want to call your attention to they call these expert comments on page 87. And they're worth reading aloud. What separates a learning community from an ordinary school is its collective commitment to guiding principles that articulate what the people in the school believe and what they seek to create. Furthermore, these guiding principles are not just articulated by those in positions of leadership, even more important, they are embedded in the hearts and minds of people throughout the school. So as you think about, you know, cultivating a learning community in the Washington's central supervisory union, how can the board inspire, model, lead, suggest, nudge, you know, what are those opportunities for the board to really lead a learning organization? And then obviously commending you for your time and commitment the last few months of just thinking together about board work on on a deeper level. How are we doing? What are we doing? How do we do this? How might we improve lots and lots of tips and techniques? The other thing I would call out is just this very next quote about creating clarity. In the draft governance standards for the state of Vermont, which you're just going through rulemaking right now with the Agency of Education, the the primary focus at the beginning of the standards is on the board setting governance priorities, being clear what the organization is supposed to accomplish, and giving some some guidance to, you know, parameters of working well within this is what's important to us as a team. I like the way they framed this here, create organizational clarity. Organizational clarity is not merely about choosing the right words to describe an organization's mission strategy or values. It's about agreeing on the fundamental concepts that drive it. An organization that has achieved clarity has a sense of unity around everything it does. It aligns resources, especially the human ones around common concepts, values, definitions, goals and strategies. So these two things I would really lift out of the three chapters as being probably most important. The board thinking in terms of we are leading a learning organization. How do we do that? What does it mean if we're going to have if our school district, if our community is going to be a learning organization? What's the board's role in that? And secondly, or maybe in companion with that is the board just having really deep clarity your your why an agreed and shared sense of this is why this is important to us. And to the extent possible that at the dais, as it were at the board table, your conversations are about that why your conversations are about values because the petty stuff, it comes and goes. And there'll be something petty this month and something else petty next month. And there'll be a community person complaining about this and a staff person wanting that. And that's just the nature of the business. It's human nature, right? So there'll be all kinds of things that are really important in the moment, they get a lot of emotions, they get a lot of attention. Maybe wake us up at night. But as you back out of that, what are we really trying to do here? As a board? What what do you what do you really want to accomplish? And the more you can get to that shared conversation about what what your why is, the more clearly you can govern and sort of shape and nudge and grow in the direction you want to go. So they ask these questions a couple different ways throughout the text. The board self assessing how is our board affected high levels of student achievement? What what is our board doing that affects student achievement? And then second, how does our board work together to make school board decisions? So in the vein of self assessment, any thoughts on either one of those two things that you would be willing to share? How is your board affecting improved levels of student achievement? And how does your board work together to make school board decisions? If we were meeting for the first time at capital grounds or gravel browsers or bohemian bakery, just in case you ever want to get together. How might you respond to those questions? I left it open just like, what is your board doing to affect improved student achievement? And how is your board making decisions? What's what's that process good, bad, different? Well, clarity really struck me as you were saying and reading it. Because I think that's what we're talking about is we're talking about becoming clearer and what we're defining and what we're saying. So when we're looking at how we make we set parameters around the budgeting so that there was clarity around that expectation, then as we're seeing the reality of it, I think we're working for clarity. As you're saying, what is it that we want to do that will affect outcomes that will provide those opportunities to affect outcomes because we're not the ones doing that work. So I think clarity to me really is connected to the start of our work that we've identified that we need to be doing that. And I think that we have worked hard to be sure that we're we can agree to disagree. And that we can, you know, and that we while some of us may have a different way of how we're bringing our agenda, so to speak, to the work, we're able to see it from the other sides. And either we do change how we approach it or how we think, but we know it's part of the journey. Great job of responding to both questions. Nice. Nice question that people can someone else new to the board or on the board a while either one just kind of your perspective, how's the board doing in sort of maintaining a focus and on educational equity and improving achievement? Or how's the board doing making decisions? I think a very good job making decisions. I think that we have a hard one solidarity since this district started. I think everybody understands that everyone else is working in good faith. And one of the one of the important aspects of leadership, right, is that when you make decisions, not everyone is going to agree with you, but people follow an effective leader, regardless, if they feel heard and if they feel the process has been, you know, in good faith. And I think we're there in terms of how we were there. And I think it's extremely valuable and we should protect and cherish that in terms of how we affect student learning. We've been clear of the last couple of years, like where we want to focus that on, you know, I think I think we've provided I hope we've provided that clarity to the administration about what our goal is. Great. And not in terms of numbers, right, or data, but where we want the trend to go. The focus. Yeah. Well, I think as being in the board for for longer, I think we still have ways to improve. I think we might grade that strives to have, you know, we have a pretty effective quality committee that really strives to be data informed and work with that that the board has engaged in learning the past two years, how to best work together and understand, you know, organizational, not organization, but the being I think the leadership team has a good learning organization and the board was not there at the beginning, but I feel like we have made big strides to us also being informed and knowing what best practices are, how we can best support our administrators to make sure that they can't we're removing obstacles ready to creating more obstacles for them to, you know, so, you know, part of that part of that clarity. And and we, you know, we still have ways to go in, for example, I can think that we are working now and through our Justice Coalition and understanding better what equity means, right? Like we've been talking, we adopted the statement, we've been talking about using an equity lens, we use it for hiring practices, which I think affects how we better serve our students. And I think we all understand that we need to learn together. And the last thing I would say is that I think that we all know that not a single member of us, even the chair or vice chair, whatever has can do it alone, right? Like what we the power of the board comes from all of us working together and being able to disagree but set a tone that inspires is that creates the culture that they think our administrators want to see that we can simplify it. I you know, I could if I if I really think about all of our principles on our leaders, I think that we can do a better job as we learn and simplifying what we are asking, like being more clear, you know, because there's limited amount of time, limited amount of resources. And, you know, is that equity versus is that work in progress that that I think we have the right mixture of diversity of thought to, you know, that we can aspire to. So I, you know, I feel like really hopeful, especially let me let me take just a small risk. And not I'm not putting you on the spot. I'd be good if someone else answers this but so what would improvement look like for the board? Like if the board was improving in its effectiveness of making decisions or, you know, maintaining commitment to decisions the board makes, or if the board was governing in a way that supports improved achievement and closing gaps like, what, what might that look like? What would be what might the board be doing differently, just in the spirit of continuous improvement? I think there'd be change in redundancy of conversations. I mean, you know, an example of the steering committee, I was asked a question about steps in the process of the superintendent evaluation when it's clearly laid out in the timeline, but I didn't really pay attention to it. So I would say that the effectiveness of that is it's all there. And, and once we're used to kind of that well oiled machine, so to speak, running, then the redundancy is not as present. We don't keep repeating the conversations because we're all aware and active in it. Wow, that would make administrators lives easier too, right? It's a frequent big one. We're talking about hallmarks of high performing boards. And I think as you were speaking earlier, it really hit me, Diane, that on a hallmark of a high performing board, everybody knows this is what's important to that board, like the community, you know, students, staff, even people in other districts, other community, that board is totally focused on acts, you know, what they're like, they're such a consistency to the things that the board is paying most attention to and pushing forward that it begins to be known. Anyone else a little stab at what what would improvement look like in open public session here? I think that we sort of start going along with the clarity thing. There's a transparency piece that I think we can be better at as a board. Because I think there's still some degree of mystery as to specifically most recently with the budget process with the community. And even as a board member, I felt a little in the dark about some stuff. So I think just being really clear as we move towards, you know, year round budgeting, just being super clear with what the process is, what the discussions are, and what's on the table so that we can get input from the community along way, rather than, you know, when emotions are running hot because X, Y, or Z is potentially on the chopping block. That's good. Thank you. Ursula? Yeah. So I think it's something that we have talked about in the past, but like working on our community engagement and how it can be something more than just us giving information to the community, but how to effectively get information back from the community and have them join us in conversations, which is to having them be involved in the transparency. But I think it's a thing that we've talked about a lot is working on that community engagement piece. And I know my time is like right at one small nugget I would leave you with just and I'll give you a chance. And you're you know, in superintendent evaluation time, again, when I think of a hallmark of a high performing board, part of that conversation is, Mr. Superintendent, what can we do as a board to decrease or maybe one of the most effective ways I've seen that worded in an executive session was the board chair saying, are we doing anything as a board that's hindering you from doing your job? Right? Just really inviting that candor after her evaluation is all done, right? There's some things you, you know, it'd be good for us to know. Right. That was a really good point. First, I made a really good point to try to weave it in the way I'm thinking about what would it might look like to be more effective would would would be more clarity. So we've done some good things. You know, we have a mission we have to find the student learning outcomes that we think are essential. We created a budget parameter where we've been working on how are we actually going monitor and know maybe we need to do more we need to get more clarity on what that looks like and also what our priorities are within that it was easy to say we want people to be able to read and write and so on. But when it gets difficult like the budget conversation that we had last time, we would we would benefit from being really clear with ourselves about which of those parameters we set are the actually the most important to us. And then to bring it back to us life. If we had clarity with our community about those things, it would be even more effective, I suspect. It's great. Yes, please. As a newer board member, reflecting on what other folks have already said, I think that we have a fair amount of turnover. So the solidity of the board is not guaranteed, right? Yeah, great. And because of that and different timing of terms and these unanticipated vacancies. So it just highlights the need for the mentorship that the board members who have been here longer offer us and continuing to make that a priority so that we can avoid the redundancy that was discussed and maximize our potential efficiency and clarity because as Mikaela I'm just mentioning, there are situations where we may not be as informed because we don't have that institutional memory. And we rely on folks who are more experienced because the school board is so different than how any other board I've ever been on functions. Yes. Yes. And it's a really like a specialized skill to be a school board member. And it's nuanced and it's a lot, you know, it's a lot. There's a great page here, 95 in chapter seven that really focuses in on stabilizing characteristics for individual school board members, right? And sort of owning that. But there are 10 different things here to look at and sort of self assess how am I doing in this area, this area? Because to your point, you know, turnovers a constant with a 15 member board, there's always turnover every year, I would assume. And sometimes multiple times, you know, it's partly the nature of it. But it doesn't have to continue that way. And the authors point out in this chapter, chapter seven, not all turnovers bad, which is not all bad. But what can the board do to keep things as stable as possible? Knowing people are getting on and off the leadership bus? How do they keep it stable enough for the administration? And when you when you have success in some of the areas that have been identified here, how do you make sure that becomes part of policy and practice and onboarding for new board members? So thanks for any other comments? I felt badly that nobody was signed in for public comment. I thought, well, maybe I should have signed in and or not. So as before we get started, because the next one is student report, the students send their regrets, they couldn't be here. They apologize. There was not allowed to report anyways. And they just couldn't be here. So they send their regrets. And we also, Joshua couldn't join us today. He's sick. So with that, sprint and report call report. Do you want to get some highlights? Similar short, but I just wanted to highlight where I did make a comment about this in the in the report. It doesn't feel like we left hiring season and haven't left it in a while, but we are headed into what would normally be our hiring season. So there is a little bit of an overview for you about the key points in our hiring processes for this is mostly for professional staff, although there's information about support staff. So it just felt like a nice time to highlight what that looks like in all of our schools. Those are the pieces that are consistent. Obviously, there's some variability based on a certain position and things like that, but happy to answer questions. We did not. There are not. Yes, we might have to share. Sorry about that. Are there any questions for Megan that everybody had a chance to read? Because that was just a great table and that would be a great way to help inform our community to when questions come up that there's a system. I'm curious how much response we have to some of these more national advertising systems for applicants. So that's a great question. We and we have not been doing this long enough to have a good answer for it. So we did. We have started tracking when we hire people how they found us, but that's only a very recent thing. Qualitatively, we get more through school spring than probably anything else, but we will have better information about that. Any other questions? Do you think that it would be helpful as you were saying in terms of educating all of us around this procedure to also the collective bargaining agreement language in here at all so that we understand how it tells just because I know there was a question about it previously and seeing where it fits in here would be helpful. Are you talking the entire collective bargaining agreement or just the hiring process that have to connect to these steps? Like that's a lot, but like what does it mean to consider? And yes, I think that would be really helpful. You know, one of the things that is this was generated for the purposes of giving you this information now. It also needs to be translated into an actual procedure document that that could be just produced. If someone has questions, those are things that we're working on in a lot of different areas. That would that's a great suggestion to add to that level of an update. Yeah, and even given that so much on it that I just wonder about another line, another column that just has the exact language from the CBA. Yeah, that so that, you know, if you don't have time to crosswalk it, you know, just putting it. Yeah, that's a great suggestion. Okay. I've got a question. This process, how much of this is you? How much of this is a legacy? Well, this was developed by have a going around to each of the principles hearing what they do. It's very consistent with what I am experiencing, but yeah, it is. This is the this is the current reality. What I would say is it it has the essential components that I would want to see in a hiring process. But as we identify what our procedures are and where they vary and where they shouldn't vary, these are the conversations that we are having. Is that good? Yeah. And I guess I would add to that that when we were doing the diversify and the educator workforce, we submitted some documents to Carla to make sure that we were posting so we're not getting a lot of responses on, but it's not a reason to not post them, right? Because that one of the goals that we would have aspirations is to diversify our workforce. Part of the and, you know, we can continue to add to to to that. Absolutely. And I think if we're keeping data, we should also keep data on longevity of people who we do hire and where they're coming from or our exit interviews ever done. Are they usually done? We were talking about that recently, not not by request. Certainly it's not a like an assumed procedure that we would do with everyone. But they're certainly granted when they're asked, which is not necessarily the best or only way to do it. But, you know, kind of exit survey, we actually talked about should we have an exit survey so that we're covering the people who wouldn't think to ask for an exit interview. Earlier this year, there was some ambiguity expressed from a hiring committee in one of our schools. And I'm wondering if that has is like explicitly resolved so that everyone's on the same page and we're not facing that as a board facing those concerns as a board again. Well, what I would say as part of this summary was to give the board a broader picture of this is what the hiring process looks like. That's one part of that. Whether or not it is fully resolved, I think we may not know until we start the season. But this has allowed us to say what are we doing? What are the pieces that need to be a part of the process? And if they aren't, what are we going to do to fix that heading into that season? So I would I would say that that's part of why we're having these conversations. And now we have a document to refer to because we've talked that this is the second time that the board is reviewing what we do. And this is a way to have a document that we can look back at and that the public can look at. Clarity. Clarity. Phil, did you hear that? Taking notes. I mean, you know, committee will be made up of blah, blah, blah as the position requires. I mean, I think some of the complaints last time as to made up the committee. Is there more specifics behind this? Or is this you can't be right like all the time. Here's what we've learned, especially with, you know, I was only half joking when I said the hiring season hasn't ended. Part of the reality of the way we are hiring right now is it has to happen faster and you have to pull together who you have. So what's there are. I mean, I if you look at that list, teachers support staff, sometimes teachers in other buildings, community representative, those are consistent across all of the district. And I think that's really important could be special area, right? Like the and others as dictated by the position to me, what I found from talking to all of the principals is that's in addition to if that is helpful. So it's in of others as the decision correct that ones listed are required. Yes. Yes. Which is a good, good feedback because if it doesn't read that way, then then that's it might just be me. Yeah. No. And it's a work in progress. I mean that that is the reality is that we these are things that we need to get better at writing down so that we have and follow. But it was also encouraging that it was largely consistent across all of our schools. So that that's good. And McKaylin to that point and I do mean McKaylin clarity around because how it reads to each one of us. It is important to have that feedback because even another example from the steering committee is I had asked the question about the detail in the packet that the board would be receiving. And so I had been told that the presentation would was still in progress but that there would be you know, a budget information in the in the packet. So I thought my question was answered. But but the reality was know what what was in the packet was kind of the generic information that we had and then the specific was still being worked out. And so I thought I had asked the right question and gotten an answer that I thought helped me but you answered it exactly as it needed to be answered. But so it's kind of finding that where is that sweet spot of asking of us having that collective understanding and having that clarity around what's the information we need to make decisions. And we and we added the video that staff was getting to make sure that you know, the board so Megan send that to everybody to make sure the board had all of the information that was out there. Well, and I have a thought that connects those two things. You know, one of them is a lot that that's also why we have a budget reflection period after the budget ends so that we can say you know, here's what would be more helpful and then relating that to anything whether it's hiring procedures or any other kind of procedures they're also meant to be iterative and reviewed. Our first job is figuring out what we have what we don't have what we need to create. Then then it's a like then it's a cycle of this this could use some clarity here. This could use the collective bargaining language. You know, things like that. Two quick questions. Yeah. One is the posting. So I know that during the school year our staff are already in their roles. So moving people around during school year would be very disruptive. But for the upcoming school year, what is the I guess what does it look like for posting in terms of allowing current staff to move and transition into open positions before postings are being put out there or being consistent. You know, and I know a part of this I can look at the the contract. But if there is somebody who wants to move into a role, do they get that role automatically? Or is it still posted and they still to be a part of that interview process? Yeah, that's a great question. The contractual answer to the question is we have to it has to be posted seven days, seven days. Okay. Certain amount of time before we can make any hiring movements. Okay. So we wouldn't be in you can post internal and external at the same time. And that's okay. But you can't make a hiring move until it's been posted. And that's designed to a lot. And it's posted a contract. And that's a lot of it's posted across the district so that internal people know what's available. It's it is an application process are and I say that there's different ways contracts handle that ours. Some contracts are very specific to say if an internal person applies, you can say yes, you can say no, or you can put them through the process. Ours isn't even that specific, but it does ask that we have the process. Okay. Which that goes back to that clarity. It would be helpful to have that language as part of it. Thank you. And then my second question, and this is just a curiosity one, with the makeup of the interview committees, I'm curious as to why for the ESP there isn't a parent or and or community member because I worked as a para and we work very closely with students and so I would think that having parental input on some of those positions would be beneficial. So I'm just curious as to why that isn't part of the process. The logistic, well, I would say it can be and sometimes it is it's not required because of the frequency with which you are hiring support staff and frankly we wish we could hire more people and some positions I mean ESP covers maintenance and custodial food service. I guess I'm thinking more parents like special ed paraeducators and without putting the only principal in the room on the spot. I mean I'm curious what that pioneering process has to happen so much faster and more often I'm curious what your thought is on that. The hiring process for ESP right now is extremely difficult for these people within a day you'll put in your applications and fill a lot of no-shows putting parents through that is right now it's just not a good process. It's hard enough for us to just get them to the door to interview right now and so we try to put a kid and we try I would say that here at U32 we try to make sure that we have students who would be impacted by the people hiring a special educator we try to find a student who has an knowledge about special needs and all of that so we really do try to make sure that we get a student who would be impacted at all possible Thank you Thanks Steven Sorry I have a follow-up question if it's if we're talking about a one-on-one pair of women there also be a privacy concern if you're interviewing and had a team of teachers and parents involved I think it would depend you'd certainly have to be careful about what questions you asked and not being too specific it could probably be done and I would completely agree with Steven it's so hard to turn the process around fast enough but yeah you definitely have to pay attention to that Let's say we had our finance committee meeting last night the only thing really to report because Jody is able to come talk to all of us I think all of you were here last time we continued to work in our budget we're also in the midst of negotiations to our next board meeting is on the 9th where we hope to be able to look at the second draft so far we are going to have our February 27th it's going to be our informational meeting and we're in the process of deciding if it's going to be online or in person trying to see how we not conflict with 18 other towns to have informational meetings so right now is scheduled at 6pm at the following auditorium because it's right next door I'll give you more information as it gets closer I wish I could give you a number on the budget but we got we we're not sure yet it's looking good the biggest part for us right now is going to be negotiations and what night is that information? that night is February 27th which is our break school break yeah it's just like it was the 30th just how I'm not this is for you know people to come and if they have any questions before the before the vote we would be sending hopefully everybody received that postcard I hope from the career center then so there was a postcard send all of the states are there except for the actual time of the 27 we missed that but other than that you should have information of when the next meeting is we'll have more news about the budget and then we'll send out a cleaner so that you have an idea what it is we just got the CLA recently you know it's a little different than what we do here and our budget we have already given a number for our for Suzanne to work with and that's the number that we're working with right now make sure to send there's been there's a lot of great things happening like life things happening and I share with you guys the drawing the blood I know that sounds like it's a huge thing our medical section of the career center is just doing phenomenal they've been written all over the place and it's just we're really proud and we already have more applicants for the career center that we can possibly possibly take so it's great now moving on reviewing for discussion reviewing school for vacancies so one thing Jonas did ask the question about the whether or not so like I have a not like I do she's running tonight and so I had asked Rosie LeClaire about whether or not it had to be each individual town or not and she said it's the same for each of you however you will insert the town you are representing you need 30 signatures and they can come from voters of any of the five towns because we've been in all five towns right it is confusing on the petition though because if you read it says we certify that we are presently voters in the town represented in the district and so and because I have to list Berlin above I can see any of the five towns within the district so and it does she said that she needs everything including the consent my consent to be delivered before 5 p.m. on Monday January 30th it's what she said oh that's late yeah how can you get the ballots mailed up and everything if that's not till the 30th I know that's later than it's been oh but it's a much later maybe that's why so isn't it the earliest town meeting because it's not March oh okay don't judge me on my petition for that I'm first then it's first then it's on the 8th yeah as you show either me as birthday or my anniversary I don't know but it's Tuesday I have March 1st so the first town meeting is Tuesday okay so the dollar and a river day right it's terrible terrible it is it's just about every other ski area in the state it is yeah big ski racing day if we ever get snow concentrate clarity clarity diane is running callas daniel I'm really Eric online still oh we lost him we lost him I don't remind him he tried it a couple times so he might have been having he's driving to send lessons and I thought Joshua knows he couldn't be without a mission and mackaylin you know that you're are you dying look at those eyes you're not sparring no no you don't have to respond I just wanted to know okay one of these we can sign while you're here sure we can sign it we don't have to turn it then yeah feel free car send it around I just have some last negotiations with the family not that's a quibble with rosie or anything but the signature requirement is 30 or 1% of your town's voters does that mean you can get across the district is the or the biggest town is probably 30 and so that's why that's why it's never as last so if you just go with 30 or say 30 or say go with like 32 just to make sure one person yeah yeah we got 10 yeah yeah because like we're like we're like in the past years I would go with that I'm not going to actually it might have been much yeah rosie is really good I'm not going to but if you I'm not trying to put anybody in this spot but it's somebody it's either needs help or has questions and needs help to collect the signatures or is not sure it would be great for us to know so that we can plan accordingly because you know it's not like people are like lining up so it's about do we typically have a conversation about people who are choosing not to continue we don't and we don't it's not like yeah so it's great just to be you know just to I'm not trying to put anybody in this spot so you know then do whatever you need to do best for your family it's but it's right well that's very hard man when I ran last year I thought I was running for the remainder of the term which would have put me in Josh's position of rerunning this year but Jill left and so they just me over to the three year term and then our right in was that remainder run and so it would have been one of those things like you can put stuff out on front porch forum reminding people to run and what they need to do and it wouldn't hurt us as a board for people to know that they could run against us yeah I think we need to do a better job with this I think we should be having these conversations October right I was getting the word out personally that's good and we'll put it in our calendar I think Callis posted approximately 20 openings vacancies the more you know for volunteer positions and for paid positions and the response I know I find and I've made an attempt for all of the like unexpected anticipated unanticipated openings that people's responses thank you for serving like thank you for being there no, not interested so there's not a lot of contested there's been one and we had this conversation in the community forum back in the library I think you spoke a lot Natasha about like civic engagement and you know how are we we've got our student representatives but how are we reaching out so that kids who are coming up in the system are appreciating the importance of civic engagement there used to be visits to town offices et cetera in fourth grade as part of their their governance training and stuff but you know we have to start young we're going to have people want to do these things just like volunteer fire road crew all this stuff we had also talked about increasing the compensation to try to attract different a broader range of the community here and instead of doing it all at once we had talked about increasing it a little bit each year I don't think we've done that this year we haven't done that this year I now you're doing that right yeah now it would be that yeah I actually had cross-ed as we voted that last year but I did just considering the particular stations that we were having but I also don't want to be that the place where we feel like we had so I was I had processed just because we already voted on it so we didn't need to change it but it's a good point if we want to change it now is the time to to do it can I make a motion? I have to lay down he has to make a motion so we can have a discussion I move to increase the compensation for directors from one thousand fifty to one thousand one hundred and for the chair from two thousand one hundred to two thousand two hundred a second what were the amounts again sorry just adding fifty to each the director and the chair which fifty to the directors and a hundred to the chair so to eleven hundred and twenty two hundred thank you this is what we talked about last year just building in fifty dollar increase and I guess the only question is an amount no thank you and to me I wonder if it's if I still have young children I mean I think it's more so about how do we have potential help with babysitting costs and things like that and you know getting the stipend this stipend isn't going to make that difference so it's almost like also if it's you know equal isn't you know everybody doesn't mean being the same and so for if we want family parents on our board do we also have a pocket of money that those who need help with childcare costs and elder care yeah and elder care in order to be that there's also that pocket of money too because what's the barrier for people coming would that need to be in here do you think so while I mentioned that my heavy duty concern is that even a $50 increase if I'm cutting positions in order to balance our budget doesn't feel right to me and so and it's it's a miniscule amount and I get that I just it doesn't feel right to me yeah I agree with Diane on both accounts I mentioned a few meetings ago like having a movie night for kids or something you know maybe something even in-house where people board members could bring their children as an option that would probably be more cost effective than giving everyone babysitting money but I think having a childcare and elder care help would be great and yeah if we're if the budget's so tight and $50 isn't going to afford because it's such a small amount it doesn't then I would solicit a friend the amendment to increase that amount I think we have a motion on the floor but I think we could vote it down I I want to say I felt like we could scratch this conversation not this conversation to scratch the raise for the board this year on that pocket but we could do something different that is more allocating some money for the board through the budget through the budget to have a stipend right or have like where you're either a stipend for being able to pay a kid to babysit or have reimbursement reimbursement or reimbursement or do it local yeah opening the door to providing some offer yeah and instead of putting this to a vote really I think the $175 we're talking about I agree but I think a little bit better I don't know do you speak well the only thing I was going to add which is I hope a short term reality but it is an absolute reality right now we don't have the people to come in and like I think most of us we've talked about this for our forums it would be great to offer childcare and it isn't necessarily a financial thing but we can barely get ourselves to the school day so because of that I do wonder if having the ability to reimburse not that it's any easier for a family to find a babysitter but being able to reimburse those costs right now maybe a more realistic solution to that problem than than us being able to offer it I don't think we should stop talking about offering it because I think it's a great idea and that maybe a pool of money for reimbursement for child and elder care would need to be approved by voters or is that something we could create in the budget I was thinking about that myself and it I mean it we actually have this on the finance committee agenda to talk about what are in our online items and because I think no I think in the same way we reimburse when someone goes to a conference maybe before go the stipend increase and a few thousand together for reimbursement and maybe we spend it maybe we don't yeah maybe exactly maybe we spend it maybe we don't but it's also a value issue or what we value right then how we we're building the culture for and I think we could think a little outside of the box too I mean we're sitting in a high school and we talked about getting more students involved in the board operations so maybe we could recruit a group of students who would on a volunteer basis but they could put on their call address you know help out one child okay or they like hours that they can put towards community service girl scouts because I mean I've got like in Northfield there's a like a babysitting course and there's a list of names of students who are CPR and you know first aid certified and that's what the parents use for babysitting as they go to that list of names and we use them for town hall meeting so we could get parents of young kids to show up at town hall meeting we had students come and do child care so I think that's but it was usually that it was usually Ella or you know it's usually kids that you know they were stuffed because their parents were there so if any of teenagers it's also as we travel to the different elementary school perhaps we tap into the PTNA and then also the career center is there a program at the career center we scrap that program three years ago Stephen yeah we would like to bring it back three years ago yeah five or six it's more than nine nine yeah if we're not going to be in person teaching well we we don't need to solve that because I want to keep you guys then I know that's something but I think it's headed in the right direction and we will provide main priority at our finance committee on is that make sense for the embarrassment pull yeah on the reimbursement people before we vote I'm a little disappointed in this last year last year we had you know I proposed last year yes significant increase yes truly and we decided we would ratchet it up slowly And it's labor and labor deserves to be paid and we don't have any mechanics or loggers or machinists right on the board because it takes time and time is money and if we want to attract different people we need to offer them incentives and I think one of those incentives is money to make it worth people's time. Disappointed that we're not going to do that. Can I ask a question because this goes to the voters correctly. Yes increase goes to the voters. It goes to the voters everywhere right? If they say no to the proposed 1,100 and 2,200, does it revert to what we were getting before or we get nothing? Oh no, it reverts to what we had before. But like every year don't they have to like if we didn't make a change it would go in as this what happens when they say no. Did they say no when we do it for free? Yeah I think that's right. Should we bring it before them again? The whole new ballot, the special election? For this? Yeah that would be really expensive. I was just curious how that works. Here's this increase that we want, what do you guys think? But it's not the increase that they be voting on, it's the entirety of the reimbursement or the stipend. Okay. Well it means that if there was an increase there would need to be a fair amount of communication about why it is to highlight that it's for that reason. Because some will read it as, what do you mean we're paying board members? That's where I had concerns right, is we're like we need to have these cuts because budget stuff. But we would like to increase, I'm not saying no. I'm just saying I don't like that. I worried that people were going to read it as, here they are telling us we have to make cuts at the school at the student level. And they're asking for more money for themselves. And we all know what it amounts to total right, where we all can do that math. But they're not going to. And so I think there needs to be, like Megan said, we need to be very clear. If we're going to put that increase in we have to be 100% clear why we're doing it and the importance and how it affects our students. Right, we're doing all this training on student outcomes and having a diverse board and being able to support people on the board. And I will, I think you're right Jonas, we talked about this and I think the one thing that we need to take into consideration is the context is different this year for our reality and support. And then, but we are, we're taking care of it in some ways in a different, so it's not like I totally understand it and then maybe next year that maybe, you know, which probably is not going to be until 2025. But maybe next year we would be able, instead of saying we do 50, we would do 100. Go ahead. So I vote every year and honestly, I have like no recollection. I'm sure I voted yes to this and have absolutely no recollection of what it was or what the statement was. So if a different number was on the ballot, I'm probably still going to check yes and not be like, oh, that's not what it was last year. I'm not, I'm not saying that there aren't people who are, but like, I, I'm just wondering if, if we are thinking about it more than. Overthinking. Yeah. Okay. Especially if it's not like this, this is what it was last year and this is what's going to be this year, but it's just an amount. You know. Everybody's right. Yeah. I guess we can take a risk as a board and, you know. But can we change the line because that might be the key to changing the language so that it doesn't completely obliterate the amount to increase the annual compensation by $50. So if that gets voted down, then, you know, or to increase the following. Are we legally allowed to do that if they have to put the amount for our siphon in every year? Okay. I mean, but we'll find out how we can change that. Yeah. And it should be all like for us because it should be because now we heard from the clerk and the treasurer. Let's call the question. Yeah. Okay. Let's call the question. The question has been called. All those in favor of the motion as moved by Jonas and second by Kari. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any. Aye. All right. Any opposed? No. So the motion carries. We'll increase the compensation. I will figure out the best way to award it. And then the other issue I saw here was the public hearing, which is the annual meeting. Yeah. Is that right? Did we talk today about changing the time of that? Yes. Can I just say one thing about the compensation part? To me, we need to be capturing there's talked about all these issues that pop up at this time of year and that we really need to begin those conversations right away. And so to me, this becomes one of those conversations. We begin right away is troubleshooting or problem solving around board barriers to serving on the board. And if we're going to say that we're going to inch up that we really set that in stone, we're all aware of it. We're all talking about it throughout. It becomes to me one of those parts of the journey again. And I've shared my concern about how it was paid out this year. So I think that needs to be also addressed. Yeah. We're going to look at it at our finance committee meeting. And we thought that this conversation could help, not this conversation, but the line item of the board. I think it would be good for us as a board to know what our line item is. How much do we put in for professional development? I think it's more for me how a decision was made without any input for a change was made. And it's not that I lost any kind of groceries or anything over it. It was not clear why. I think one of the reasons we put it on the finance committee agenda is because I don't know the answer to that question. Suzanne does. Allowing us to pose the question to find out what the rationale was might help us understand or might not. That's coming up. That's the last one in December. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why it's not in the agenda. But we can talk more about it because I see other confused. You only got half. But there was no explanation. And that's what I thought was to re-reduce this. Yeah. Can we talk about that at the end of the meeting as future agenda items? Exactly. Okay. So let's just finish looking at the warning. Okay. So good catch. Carrie there is. There is a 530. Yes. 530. Yeah. I mean here. Here. Nice. The annual meeting. Is there a meeting on the 6th? That's everybody's name was spelled right. And everybody is. So when are we signing this? Yeah. Not until we have a budget. Right. Yeah. And Berlin's time has to be decided, right? Yeah. So the one that's listed the 7 to 7 is sort of like a placeholder because they haven't decided fully yet. Yeah. Berlin never sets 7. It's always up to set 8. And we've been working with them over the years. So hopefully it would be the same. But Stephen is going to talk to this down third. Yeah. I'm just kidding. Stephen isn't living in Berlin anymore. I can't get his signature. How are you looking, baby? Traitor. It ran me out of Berlin. Oh, I didn't know that. We pinched four percent. The C in Leclerc is not publicized. Okay. It matters. It doesn't fit. It should be. It should be. That's what I'm asking. I set up to sign and mine was wrong. A couple of questions. Why are Maggie and Rosie in quotes and Lindy is in parentheses? And why is my name the only one that's offset to the left of the underscores? It doesn't matter at all. Wow, Jonas. Yeah. So we'll work up the consistency of those. Jonas, I think when I was running for J.P. and East Montpelier one year, they didn't put the Lindy. They put Melinda. No one would know that was except my mother and she's not alive. And that's when I was in trouble. But what you're saying is they're referenced differently. Yeah. Summer and Baldy. Summer and... Yeah. Yeah. Let's be consistent. Maggie, are you okay with that? Or we can just take Maggie and just leave your... What would you prefer? If I don't need a legal, it's Margaret. So that's part of the problem. People don't know how to pronounce it. Margaret. My red. Yeah. French. Apparently. Okay. My red. Okay. So what would you like? My name is Maggie, but that's not my legal name. That might be my interest. That's why we put it in. Right. So that people know who you are. Yeah. Does that have to... Well, I wonder if it connects, though, to how you're able to consent. It says here that you can use a nickname if you've done it for at least three years compared to the election. So in terms of getting your name listed on the ballot. Meaning you've used the nickname for three years? Yeah. Gotcha. And someone's tracking that, right? Yeah. They're going to interview all your friends and family. So... Well, they should do it, though. I thought you were writing on the board. So I think the easiest way for this is just please send an email to Megan and myself. How would you like to be? Yeah. How would you like your name to be? And we will make sure that the name is correct. Okay. So we don't need to prove the warning today because it was just for sharing an annual format, annual report format. So Megan, I'm going to let you speak to this, but I was assuming that we were going to do a report similar to what we did last year. I actually was assuming that as well. So it was that combination of not being too fancy and not being newspaper. It was like a letter from each principal. And a letter from each principal, a letter from us. And just literally like last year. And were we specific in... Same color, but not fancy. Right. And were we specific in the impacts of the budget on each community? Yeah. Because I think that was loud and clear requested. That, you know, it is a combined budget. What does that look like? I thought they had a table with... I thought so. There was a table. I don't have my big bag. I just found it on my pile. I opened it. I saw the principal things, but I didn't look at it closely. Yeah. But we did show what it was, the tax impact for each town. No, the tax impact. The staffing. The staffing impact. What does this look like in each school? How are there changes occurring in each school based on this budget? Because that's... Community members asked very specifically, what does this mean for my community school? So I think we're going to be very clear on... Right, like if it's a reduction, but not like we're cutting the program entirely. We need to say that and say that it will serve the students that are currently attending that school. Yeah, I mean, the word was fine, but we need to be clear because that's one of the changes that occurs when it's a consolidated budget and a consolidated board. And so we just need to be sure that we're as clear as we can be. And, yeah, stating exactly what you're saying personally is fine. But it's better to be upfront about that so people can ask the questions. I think one of the things that... A question that was raised in December that the problem with highlighting the reductions is it doesn't talk about what's left. And there is one way to remedy that is to explain each one and say, this is not an elimination of music. This is a reduction based on enrollment. That is easy. But it also occurs that there... What an annual report doesn't typically do is list all the other staffing that happens or that exists in the system. So it's just an interesting question to highlight that one part. The other thought that I was having was to what extent do we wrap this conversation into the board communication of the budget conversation that we'll have after we know where we land? Because right now we don't know where we're landing. The facts and figures, I pulled it up. It is on the website. I think the facts and figures are important to have. And one of the slides that you shared in our last one that I wanted us to keep putting up there were enrollment numbers. And I think that table is so important because it's real. When you see a hundred students less, fewer in a school or whatever, that, yes, it might not be nicely even so that it's, you know, we need one last grade five teacher or something. But it does show that the resources have to be looked at differently. And then if there's a point two reduction in something, the children are getting just as much PE music art whatever. But there aren't as many children. And I think that table was an important one. And I think when I'm looking at some of these faculty and staff numbers, if it was more of a table that said in 2021, in 2022, in 2023, these numbers, how they're spread out is up to the administrators and the school for what works for your numbers. But I just think those kind of tables when people are concerned, any business, if you have a reduction in how much business, you aren't open as often or you don't have as much staff. And that's the same in a school. So I think that's important. I agree that just to tie these together, that I think of the annual report as our, it's like our key marketing thing, should be very positive for the most part. So what we've done in the past worked really well. And when we talk about reductions or the hard parts of the budget, that should be in our budget conversation. But I agree that this is such an important trend. This is a long-term enrollment trend that it should be highlighted in the annual report because that is something that the community just needs to understand. But in Berlin, our annual report did list all the, I mean, back to that age-old conversation about whether or not all the salaries are there. But, you know, this section that was about Berlin had a, you know, the Berlin School had lots of details about current programming and that. So when I think we had our individual towns, we did do a lot of minutia. And so it's just, it's finding that balance so that our voters are informed. So whatever that communication is, it just, it needs to be present so that if somebody asks, for what does this look like? We can say right here. So a question. I think last, when we did it last year, we did it per school. We felt like the facts and figures was a way to be able to showcase the school without listing the staff. And then on the website, we had the list of the staff. You know, you could look at the stuff and stuff. In order to also not present a report that had, you know, 50 pages that people are not going to look at. So I think what I'm hearing is maybe this time, let's leave the facts and figures because I think that's important for school because that's a way to really highlight what's going on in each school. But then have an extra table that will just show our trends from, like, that we just looked in the budget for them, but not as an umbrella. But separate, for those not taking out our facts and figures from each school. Right? I think the facts and figures of each school. It's important. But then a table that shows it as a district. Those student numbers. Yeah, just the enrollment. That was really, I think that was an eye-opening table. That was more powerful than the time series chart. I think so. Going from 1500 to 1450. Seeing that in five years we're projecting that the combined population of Dodie and Romney will be less than Romney is now. Yeah. Is that chocker? Yeah. And we've had a lot of real estate turnover, but not necessarily to young families with young children. Okay. That's helpful. I can have that. Yeah, because we had that last table. But yeah, we'll figure out a best way to answer and to run it by you. Who does the design? Ben Merrill. He contracts with someone for the design part, but he's the lead. Good. Yeah. And we'll have kids pictures and stuff. Yeah. And the numbers. And the numbers. And the local spending. Yeah. Okay. Just made myself enough for that. So, Superintendent of Evaluation, timeline. Yeah. So let's make this quick. Page 10, four things I want to say about this. One is under February it says superintendent updates steering committee on the survey. We're going to remember last year we talked about our system of evaluation will be informed by climate surveys alternating between student family and staff. We're going to hold off for a year, postpone one more year and start that next year. Just time limitations. And then in January says board feedback survey. Just so you know, that's also going to be distributed like last year to the leadership team that same survey and to Megan for self evaluation. So we'll have all that will be part of the data that you receive. We had in this time table, we've given a full month to complete that survey. When we looked at it again today, we decided we need to shorten that. So we're going to make it three weeks. And the due date for the survey will be the third. You'll get plenty of reminders about that. More than enough time, which reminds me of the last point is that we set a goal together and we established this 100% of the board members will respond to the circle. So just keep that. We'll be talking. I want to make a quick comment and thank Jen for helping us put this in place. No, really, that was huge. Having that collaborative interaction between the board and the superintendent last year helped us set the precedent that I think is going to work. Thank you, Jen. And the transition. Yeah. Okay. So any questions? Very good. Okay. I've proved school choice numbers on page 11. So could I have a motion? I thought we had done this at our previous meeting, but we didn't do a formal motion. So could I have a motion? We do this every year. I'll move to approve the agreement to join the Winooski Valley and statewide choice for public high school collaborative. We agree on 10 students. Because we need that. And send no more than 40. Thank you. So join us second. Are these numbers different than last year? No, they're the same numbers. Where do these numbers come from? They all get together, but I'll let you explain. Yeah, Winooski gets together. We have the advantage of Michelle. Oh, there's Michelle. That is actually the person who coordinates this for the Winooski Valley region. And she will know more than I do about the history of the numbers. So the numbers are outlined in the law. And so you can accept 5% or 10, whichever is less, right? And it's only based on, for the high school enrollment grades, nine through 12, and it's only based on our residents. It doesn't include tuition, tuition students. And then you can let out 10% of your, your population or 40, whichever is less. So we always accept 10 and we always let out 40. There hasn't been a change based on the enrollment. It's been the same numbers for nine years now. So it's been the same. That's that we go to these same numbers back when it was just our board and it works fine. So this is, this doesn't affect us in any way. We don't approach either number. In terms of actual ways to have, always have a max. We don't always approach the 40 numbers who want to go out. But we always build 10 slots. But we can't, by law, we can't accept more than that. Done. Well, there's no money to exchange. This is not a question at all. It doesn't affect our, our bottom line. So we just stick with what everybody else does. They're just concluded in our student numbers, equally weighted students, right? I don't know if they're included. I would hesitate to say exactly how it's calculated, but I think it's our students who go out are the ones that actually are the ones that want to go out. Correct. Yeah. That's my residents. Okay. We have a motion on the table. All those in favor of approving school choice numbers, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. Okay. We're getting there. Policy committee, Chris also can be with us today. He sent his regrets. We received an updated policy packet in the mail and there were a couple. I'm going to let Megan sit on the policy, on the policy committee. So I'm going to let her speak to some of the policies. But we just have one. Let me see where they see my notes. So it's confusing for those of you that are using the printed packet because we didn't update the website yet. So in December, the only policy we acted on was the one we had to, which was the non-discriminatory mascots. And so we just took the memo from December and put it in the packet and then realized at steering committee today that it's kind of confusing. So if you checked your email, the revised memo that eliminated the non-discriminatory mascots took off conflict of interest and then just renumbered. So the substance of what you have if you are operating off of the old one is still okay, but I'll walk you through it. Essentially, there's three policies that you are looking at. One is they're all first readings. Homeless students, it's a new required policy. The second draft is the model policy. I'll just run through all of them. Natasha, feel free to weigh in if I miss something. The second is a first reading of a revision in the weapons and firearms policy. That was a requested review. We did that because there's a clarification needed about what automatically requires a board hearing versus where there's discretion. And then building use. We don't have a district-wide building use policy. We have had procedures in individual buildings. They vary. So this is a first draft that kind of merged what existed before. And that is what you are giving input to today is those three. Yes. So on the homeless students who are homeless policy, the third paragraph, the district will ensure that homeless students are not stigmatized and so on. Insurance seems very strong to me. Did you think about a different word? This is a model policy. So it was vetted by the lawyers. It seems like it's beyond our control. It's interesting. It's written, that language is written in the Niquiti-Vento Act, which is the federal law that prompts it. Sure, if I bring the burden on us. I don't think they're meaning discriminated against or stigmatized by other students, although it would be great if we could control that. I think that it's that we need to make an effort to ensure that they're not being right. And their resources are their status. Any other questions on that one? There's ambiguity about the duration. So we've been administrative responsibilities in the school of origin. If it is in the student's best interest in order to maintain educational stability, for what duration? So the law requires that they are able to stay A for as long as they continue to be homeless. So if they're homeless, that is, and there is no time limit on homelessness. If they achieve permanent housing, they can stay through the end of the school year. Which is what's typical as well for a student who was in housing moving to different housing? Yes. That's a question. No, no, no. I think our district is typically like if you live within the district, right, and you're going to move to a different school. A different house. Right, a different house. If you're moving to a different house in a different town, depending on the timeline, they've allowed your students to stay in the school that they started in. But there's that continuity for the year. For the year, yes. Yes, yes. So there's a distinction. Just curious. One, you have the option, if it's moving, you have the option as a board to decide. McKinney-Vento, it's not an option. Those students have a right to it. And we should have a recommendation from the team working with the students. So it's three quarters of the way into the school year or something. It's not October. I just want to say from personal experience that, at least in another district, the superintendent can immediately tell you to go to the other district that you moved into. Because I did have that happen when I moved a few years ago. You're saying when you move as a... If you choose to move. If you choose to move. Yes, that's different. Because Vermont's title 16 is where you reside. So the law is that. And then exceptions happen after that. And parents can bring it to the board. Correct. The superintendent can tell you you can come to the board. But they're guaranteed whatever school they started in for the homeless students. Correct. For all the students that started in that year, even if they get housing. As long as it's in the district. They have it at its set. Parents actually have a choice. They can keep them. I mean the law was meant for school stability, so most do. But they also have the right role where they are living while they're homeless. The student isn't forced to move. Or say it's that they're given the opportunity. Yes. The opportunity. Correct. Including providing transportation for whichever they choose. Yeah. It's very sweet. So we don't need to just see by. No action. So see by. Any questions or inputs? Yeah. We talked. We did talk about this before. Yeah. Just the Cliff Notes version is if it's a firearm, it's an automatic hearing. That's the law. We wanted discretion in the case of knives, frankly, because there are situations sometimes where discretion would be beneficial. So the language here. And we've seen some of those. Where kids go, boy scouts, girl scouts, camping on the weekends. And. We're still alive. Yeah. Yep. We this policy includes a. Other item other objects used in an aggressive manner. Do we have a policy in like the students conduct or anything that covers that already? Well, our students are. Conduct policy defines weapon up the same. So if you use your pencil as a weapon, it can be considered a weapon. And again, this is the first reading. So if you didn't, I know that a lot of people were with the end of the year and stuff. You didn't have a chance. You can give input. We had a lot of conversations about this. Yeah. On the policy. I think it probably took a couple meetings, full meetings about the changes to the language. I have a question, I guess. When school administrators are reviewing the situation, how many people are involved in this decision on whether or not it's a dangerous weapon or if the situation is threatening? Well, the responsibility lies with the principal. I think it's going to depend on the, I mean, Steven has a team. I'm a superintendent. He's testing the weapons. I mean, I would say in practice, even in the buildings where there's only one superintendent, there's a school counselor that's generally involved or a behavior systems person, sometimes a special educator. There's generally a group of people. I become part of it. It's more than just the leadership team when it is here at U32. Is it specified in our procedures who sits on that group? No, it's just the decision maker. But that, functionally, that's who's involved. How many is it roughly? Like, or on average? Are we talking four? I mean, two. I would say it would depend upon the students. So if the student were under a plan and it would probably include more people, right? If the student was not on a plan, that would probably be three or four at the most. It kind of depends on the situation. So at U32, we'll bring in the teacher advisor. Sometimes depending on what it is, we would have other teachers involved. So I wish I could give you an exact number of others. It's never one person. I can assure you of that, because none of us feel like we can just make that unilaterally. I would say in my experience last year, it would be three in elementary, typically. If you had the principal, somebody else, generally a behavior support person or a school counselor, and then always a superintendent is involved in a conversation too. So at the elementary schools, it's probably typically the same three people, right? I mean, a lot. Yeah, often, yeah. I mean, to school counselor and or behavior principal and then bring the superintendent into the loop. I know that one of the things that did come up at Policy Committee was the question of informing the board versus requiring the board hearing. I don't know that we landed language around that, and I don't know if that's what you're... It's where I'm going, I guess. When it comes to the board, there are a minimum of eight people that have to hear it and listen to what the administration's bringing us for information, and we get to ask questions. And so it's... the more people that are seeing it, the less bias, right? The less people that have it, the more likely bias can show up and you can say that a student, especially marginalized students, were acting in an aggressive manner when maybe they were acting in the same manner than another student was, and yet for this student we saw it as aggressive and this student we did not. And I have concerns because if the board is seeing them and there's this history of what's coming through, you can sort of be looking at all of your cases and go, do we see an issue of bias happening? Are we stopping bias from happening? And so if we aren't seeing a bunch of the situations, then we don't know. I have one thought that I have related to that because that is an absolutely critical question that we have as well. But a couple things. One, this was designed to avoid for the sake of the student and the family, quite frankly. And I'm using trauma and I hope that's not too strong a word, but the trauma of having to come to a board. That is the purpose of not requiring that. The conversation about disproportionality and what are our patterns, that is data that we collect and look at. And so from a, and we've even talked about this in ed quality, what are the other things that the board can look at to be able to keep track of that? And a lot of data related to equity is the disaggregation of regular data. I wonder if one of the ways you get at that concern is the board seeing, maybe not student level reports, but this is the demographics of the students that find themselves in front of the board or who have made different discipline referrals or things like that. Or the number of suspensions because we don't, unless it's something that is of this level or is an appeal to the board, we don't even know how many suspensions are occurring. Right. And I think we had this conversation on the quality of information. That would be data that we can see sort of separate from the policy and can inform the policy later on, but it's part of student outcomes and the experience and the culture. Yeah. Do we have information data? It'll be antidotal on trauma. The families have experienced coming to the board during the hearing. Meaning, have we gotten feedback from families about, I mean, informally I can tell you yes. That's what I said. It's probably a shorter tenure, but I, you know, families reporting that this is really stressful for my child to have to come in front of the board. Oh, of course. I mean, it's inherently stressful. Correct. Does it, does it add trauma to the experience? I would say that that's probably more mixed, right? So, I mean, I think for some kids, it's obviously inherently stressful to be in a board hearing, but I don't know that it's additional trauma for some of those families. It's just continuing the, what's happened for them. Okay. One thing, one thing I'll say is that in the four years I've been doing this, I have seen a repeat offense of that policy. And I, you know, I think there was, we saw one, I think brandishing is a strong word, but there was a knife displayed, right, in a threatening manner. I don't know. I think it's a serious stuff and, you know, it probably is not the end of the world and it's not going to endanger students in the school, but I'm concerned about the signal that it is less important that kids remember to take their knives out of their backpacks in their pockets before coming to schools. Less of a big deal. That's all. I have another question. If we were to adopt this policy as written, which is different than our past policy, is it going to require a procedure update and when would we require you? Like, when would the administration have to redo the procedure and disseminate that to the students and families? Because we have a handbook that is out and so would an update be heading out, right, if we approved this at the next meeting? Yeah, we would need to update. Because this is addressing, it's basically taking what was a shall and making it a may, right? It would be a minor update, but yes, the discipline procedures which are in our handbooks would have to be updated. Thank you for that phrasing because I guess I was having trouble with the language of the policy and its discretion by omission, right? We're saying in this policy language, still, if it's a firearm or destructive device, there will be a hearing. There's not really reference to what the process will be if it's just a dangerous item, i.e., a knife or a weapon in that category. Right, and you're right, and it's by reference because it's that the principal will implement the discipline procedures and that's where the may versus shall comes in. Yup, and the last question, this would be run by our lawyer after, have you run this by our lawyer yet? Because sometimes, or do you think, it's minimal enough to not have to run it? This has not been formally looked at by an attorney. Yeah, because before we approve it, especially for, because we don't want to be our own lawyers, so before we approve it, it should just go to whoever we've been using for that and then bring it back for us for approval. Especially for this one, I would be very worried. I would like somebody to look into the switchblade issue. I'm pretty sure switchblades of any length are not allowed in general. They're considered dangerous. They are considered dangerous weapons. All forms of knives are considered dangerous weapons. The law requires expulsion hearing only for firearms. That's the distinction. And destruction. Yeah, right, the bombs. Correct. Yes, thank you. But we can bring that, we can bring the whole conversation and we'll go back to the policy committee, including all of that. Good. Last one, building use. Policy. Any feedback? It's a bay one. Can I go back one? Sorry. Under policy implementation, this is still the firearms and weapons one. So right about where it says Part B, it says policy implementation and it's like the superintendent shall annually provide the secretary of education, blah, blah, blah. At the end it goes the type of firearms involved. Is it just firearms because of the law? We're not saying firearms and weapons. They don't really care about anything else. We are not required by, except for we report discipline data to the state, but other than that, we are not required to provide them data about expelling for a knife. We are required if it was a firearm. And that's illegal. And that's a law. Yeah. Sorry. Nope. Okay, so moving into the use of school facilities policy, any questions or input? Yes. Section six. At the end it goes the principle may only waive the fees subject to rules established by the board. The board shall receive the rules, review the rules and fees structure annually. Who's going to develop those and when? Yep. So we talked about this because that is actually where we're particularly inconsistent. There's a lot of really good reasons why there are fees associated particularly at U32 around, you know, fields. And so we have a rate sheet for U32. We're in the process of collecting the rate sheets for the other buildings. There needs to be consistency we think, or at least the policy committee. U32 is a rate sheet. Yes. And the elementary schools are a rate sheet. That is the current thinking. So what we're in the process of is collecting the rate sheets for the elementary schools, seeing how different they are and merging them. And so then there would be rules that would talk about waiving fees for specific groups. Right. In that statement. Yep. And the rate sheet by design, the policy committee did not want to include the rate sheet in the policy because we need to update those more often than we update the policy. Will the board see those and those rules? Because it says that the rules are going to be developed by the board. And I think that if we're going to vote on a policy committee that says we're going to follow these rules, the board should get to see the rules that we're saying we're going to follow. By rules you mean the schedule fees? Yeah. Like the principle may only waive the fees subject to rules established by the board. And then it says you will review the rules and maybe structure it annually. So is that on the policy committee to do and then bring to us every year? Or is that the larger board? Well, eventually once the policy is adopted for me to bring that to you annually, if the input you're giving to the policy committee is I'm not ready to approve the policy until I see that, then that is information for the policy committee. I'm saying that if you're going to have a policy that says it's due to these rules, we're going to follow these rules. It'd be nice to know what they are. And then on number nine, duration of use, it limits it to two months. And then the principle under certain circumstances can extend it another two. I was curious what the thought process was on that. And this is for like groups that use it on a regular basis. Like I know Romney has had basketball groups that come in and play every Wednesday. I will say with my other hat on, the girls go out to use it every other week. And so now you're asking groups to reapply every two months to four months. And I was curious. That's like two to three times in the year. It's paperwork where these organizations don't really have a... They have volunteers, right? They have volunteers too. And now we're asking our administration to process that paperwork. Well, I would remember, too, that this was modeled after... after the 32s policy, which means they do that. And it works. It doesn't mean... Again, first reading. So all this goes back for consideration. But I did want you to know that that's where it... This was drafted by looking at the current U32 procedures and past policy. And then looking at the elementary schools who had been in the past policies the last. In other words, it's been done that way. Doesn't mean it's particularly easy to administer. But yeah, we have had... I can just think about the Green Mountain Orchestra and it's more than two months. That every Saturday... So we could... It's a good point that we could... There are so many... We've spent whole board meetings on this topic in the past. So a lot of this would work out during that, but it may not be pertinent now. I mean, it's up for review. Jim just whispered my ear, pre-COVID. Yeah, yeah, sure. So it's worth looking at all of this again. Yeah, so we could adjust this. And I just had a comment overall on the purpose. I think we're kind of... This also establishes that they use by other groups or entities whose mission is more general than just serving the school district, whether for a profit or not profit may be permitted under circumstances. I'm wondering if there's a better way to say that whatever organization is using our school reflects the values of our... No. I just... I think you might get into that. So I think that's where you'd want to talk to your attorney about what's the proper language on that. And I was just going to point out, number 12 got cut off. It looked like we're going to miss a page. Oh, you're right. I think there's one more thing. I think in line nine... In line nine, line five shall not be four. I already got it. Yeah. Oh, you think that would be good, huh? Not golfing. If you give me a first slide, I'll also say there's this may extend clause in nine. If there is a may expand for, like another two months is what I read, right? Upon showing a special circumstances, the principal or designee may extend the period up to an additional two months. Yeah. It's still like every two months. And then you do it for the second half. But somewhere in there you have to ask for that other two months. Thank you. You can't go ahead and schedule your Wednesdays at six for the year or something, or the third Wednesday. Yeah. We can definitely look at this. And I suspect that functionally it's a... Hey, by the way, we want to keep using this. Okay. And that doesn't mean it doesn't mean the language couldn't be adjusted to make it clearer and it looks like that. The priority one was the one I was concerned with a little bit. I had to read that a few times, yeah. Well, so the priority is like first, second, third, fourth, fifth, not category one, two, three, four, five. And if we have to use a school as a voting area, because the town doesn't have anywhere else to vote, and they're fifth in line, we have a problem there. And that was actually brought up by the Worcester Town Clerk. That's the policy committee. And I... So it's, yeah, they've sent communication to us as a policy committee, so... I was also thinking... Thank you for reiterating that. On the emergency shelter situation. Yeah. Only because the power had just been out for so long. Yeah. One of the things that we did, and this is good feedback for the policy committee, but right under priorities of use, it references easements. And then the purpose of... That was somewhere else in the original one, and it's put up there to basically say, the easement trumps this. So something like voting is something that... Right, like that. That is a use that we would have to prioritize. This is good conversation, in addition to the other feedback we got for the policy committee. On the emergency shelter would also... I was curious about what you're writing. I would change. Voting that, maybe. Yeah, I guess I was questioning what easement was. Do we have a legal easement? Two of our buildings have easements. Just two? But I don't know if we have legal easements with the town that we will allow them to vote. All five of our elementary schools. I'm curious about the easements. It shall be used for an emergency shelter when half the town has flooded. It's callous and middle sex that have easements. And they both like slightly different things. They both allow for voting. And the middle sex one also is like parking lot use and some other things. And rather than recreate the easements in this policy, which actually that wasn't a draft, but it made it very clunky. We just basically said, there are easements. They have to. Yeah. They're there. And you have to be aware. Yeah. But if only two of them match that, then does another sentence need to be in here about, because you said the easements supersede the... But easement failure doesn't have an easement. But if they do have an easement, does the emergency shelter and the voting? The emergency thing seems to be always separately addressed. Just like... We can have a line, right? Emergency shelter trumps everything and voting trumps everything but emergency shelter. Yeah, but I think that it goes beyond our policy to just remember that the emergency shelter... We can have all the policy we want. They have an agreement. They have an agreement. The emergency shelter comes first. Okay. So just to be clear, the other thing, and this might be just trauma for me, the principal or the signature manage and determine availability of the facilities on an ongoing basis. I like that a lot. And I don't know if there's... Because context matters, right? And COVID was hard. So having... There were a lot of requirements that were not your typical requirements. So I don't know if it's strong enough the principal or the signature. Maybe it could be the nurse. I don't know. It's right under scope. Oh, okay. It's right under the line. Yeah. Well, it's just like me, which could be the nurse, right? And yeah, yes, it could be. Like in this situation of COVID, the principal could be like, you know what, I'm going to let my COVID coordinator control access to the school. Okay. I don't know. I'm not trying to give you more work either, but I just wanted to give you... Well, it's something super important. I don't know because in case of like we... There's an emergency where there is anything. Or there's something coordinated that it would sort of come back to you, right? There's also some... It's not right. Or for maintaining confidentiality. Yeah. For maintaining confidentiality under that some areas. Either to maintain or to maintain. Yeah. Or to maintain. Or to maintain. Yeah, sometimes I feel like you could have a... I serve the community. I serve the community. I serve the community. I serve the community. I think organized could have a certain amount of pressure on... I just want to be able to... Well, one way to address that would be... I would want that line to stay like that because the principal does know that the first line. Yes. But later, a user, you know, where it talks about a user may appeal the principal's decision to the superintendent. That's... Right now that line is just under the easement. Easement, yeah. That could be repeated. So that there's a... I mean, if that... Yes. If the attention is that eventually there's... Yeah. Are you wanting an ability for people to appeal the principal's decision? All the time? No. Oh, okay. I'm wanting the superintendent to have a more of a say too. So that if needed, the superintendent could have also a say. You know, like when we were in the pandemic, for example, there was disagreement of when buildings could be used, right? But we had a pretty... You know, we were on their staff. We couldn't... You know, I'm trying to preserve confidentiality here too, but it's just... So there were... You know, that it would be good for the superintendent to be able to... So I was... But I'm okay with that sentence that we repeated. Again, just to make sure... I'm not looking for people to be able to appeal as much as the superintendent and to also have a say, because the superintendent has the context of the five schools, not just the one school, and we affect each other. It's a good question. I think we're... Well, I think where I'm landing, or my current thought, and we can talk about it, is that we want this to give us adequate control in kind of the normal state of being, because if we tipped over into a situation where we had to restrict, we may be in a... One of the temporary policies that gives the superintendent... That's how COVID was addressed. Only because I also don't think we want to... We don't want Megan getting every email for her. No, no, no. I'd like to use... No, no, no, no, no. I can't... I don't know what I meant. I throw baiting content. No, I don't know. They don't even know. I want to allow 75 preschoolers to fling paint at each other, and they said no. And we'll send you the custodian bill. Okay, that one was first reading, too, and it's eight o'clock, so I'm going to get you guys out of here late. Okay, I'm just excited that we are... that we had the time to spend this much time in policy, which we usually don't, and this is where we can do our best work, too. So, thank you, everybody. So, moving into... Approving the minute... Right? Yep. Yeah, we're set. I moved to approve the minutes of December 15th and December 21st with special thanks to the poor, poor scribe we had to take down. All that. Oh, my God. God bless her. Second. I'm going to second. I had a question slash amendment, maybe. On the meeting for December 15th, Nate Lovex and Brittany Perry were there and they're not listed under others. And maybe they need to be. I don't know. Who? Say that again. Nate Lovex and Brittany Perry were in attendance at the meeting. It under... Okay. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Go ahead, Kai. So, yeah, I wanted to echo it. These minutes are remarkably good. That's unbelievable. It's an impossible task and you did a really good job. It's an impossible task. I don't know how you do it. So, but that's... I had two things I thought should be clarified. They were both comments by Suzanne there. I think she's here, but... So, on page 29, in the middle of that really long paragraph, there's a section that starts with Daniel thanked everyone. And then he asked Suzanne about the excess spending threshold. You with me at all? Mm-hmm. And then, in the next sentence, she noted that we're in place we would be below it. Oh. I think that should probably be we would be below it under the level service budget draft, just to clarify what that is referring to. Yeah. Say that again. Sorry. So just we would be below it under the level service budget draft. Was it draft two or was it I mean, was it draft one or was it draft two? I think it was draft two. This is draft two. This is draft two. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Also, the threshold is in place. It's just not being penalized. Correct. Correct. Yeah. It's been hold for five years, basically. So I say... Are they recalculating it every year? Even though... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They just aren't using it. Right. They're not penalizing us as of... So the other one was at the bottom of page 30. Almost at the end. It says, Suzanne explained that much of the tax impact depends on information. They come from the state legislature. I think more precisely that would be the tax rate set by the state legislature or the dollar yield tax rate, I think is probably... And yeah. And we could just say it's set from the state. Okay. Yeah. Just by the state. Yeah, just by the state. Yeah. Just by the state. Yeah, the legislative. Yeah, the legislative. Yeah. Yeah. Just by the... So was there a change about the, sorry, Daniel said something in the money. Sure. I was just saying that were the threshold subject to penalty... We would be below it and that's with draft two. Yeah, okay. Any other amendments? All those in favor of approving the minutes as amended, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, the minutes have passed. Okay, future agenda items, essentially there's a link to the calendar just because I and Carrie made a good comment today about adding which chapters we're reading and we'll keep improving. We got a couple of notes today about things to add to the calendar. Hopefully everybody's using it. Do you guys want to look at what's up or maybe you have it up already? Yeah, I mean we we did add next week's budget work session to the calendar. That'll be the only agenda item and then January 18th is the budget forum. So the 11th is virtual in person location to central office and the 18th we're at East Montpelier. So that's just a reminder in terms of location. But the East Montpelier because of the topic will be a virtual option. So being first I'm glad that we would have the ability to get people. Well because it's the budget forum it's the approved so often our second meeting is right right is more live stream than it is yeah yeah. So you've already just said that is the 11th a forum and is the 18th actually a forum? The 18th was listed as a forum in our original work plan and the 11th is just warned as a regular meeting. In my work plan I wrote work budget work session but it's warned as a meeting. It's not warned with the word forum in it. The 11th is already warned. Well the forum implies we're listening. We're inviting people to invite people. Yeah, so I think we might want to ask what that and do the 11th which is what we were hoping to hear from community. It doesn't matter, we hear so much as on the talk about it. On the talk about it. Yeah, so the 11th would be our community forum and the steering committee talk today and we're making sure that we have similar to what we did the last time. We would have the presentation and then we'll have the community input. How does it help all? I don't know. Do we have someone in charge of like front porch forum and whatnot? So front porch forum we only get four postings a month even though we pay. So that we do rely on board members to post in their communities and then it gets where it typically goes is the Facebook page, my newsletter and most of the building newsletters put it out there as well. So I'm happy to write an invite. Kerry usually has done for us an update. I'm happy to write an invite and send that to the steering committee to post like we've been doing. We talk about that in the reflection because I wanted to talk about our communication. Yeah, anything else in the board calendar that you know I just want to make sure everybody has the link and everybody's able to look at it. So next week is going to be a forum and that'll be changed in the like the actual digital calendar. Yes, it's completely virtual. It is completely virtual like we did the other one. My issue is just when I go to my calendar and I look at this, it says community forum. So I'm looking at the schools. Yeah, yeah, so that's going to be changed. I'm just thinking about other people who are accessing. Yeah, I understand. I'm thinking about this is another way someone looks for this information. They're looking at a calendar. It's only on your calendar because you're invited as a board member. So the posting that gets public will have the right title. But your question also reminds me to make sure Melissa updates the calendar for your purposes. But I think that's a place we get in trouble sometimes is that like the link's not correct or the time has changed. And that made for me that's sometimes the place I go. I don't always go to one location to log in or to look for information. I expect it to be consistent across website, across an email communication, across a calendar. So that's why I was asking. Yeah. So the six, that was originally done on the days when we would have an ed quality meeting beforehand. We nudged the time back. We don't have ed quality on the 18th. So that could be six. I can update that in the board calendar. Yeah, I think it should be six. And the community forum, we had it at 6.15. We did. Yeah, we changed it. Sometimes we changed it to 11 because we had ed quality before. On the 11th, there's a policy. Yeah, we posted that figure right here. Yes. I'm assuming that's why we're starting at 6.15. On the 11th. So on the 11th at 6.15. Yeah, but then we said that policy would just might lose a few minutes because you guys, you should go over, but we felt like 6.15 was like. Not when I run it. Excellent. You're all done. But Chris is me in charge here. Done on time. Okay, so a future agenda item. So can I just, if we're going to have the 11th at 6.15, the February 1st at 6.15, why don't we make the 18th at 6.15? Are you just for consistency? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 6.15, yeah. Because I kind of. And you need the 15 minutes. Well, we're, if, yeah, yeah, yeah. My problem is usually getting to the ed quality on time, because I have a meeting every Wednesday till 4 in the Essex. So getting there at 5 is not possible. So. I just like the consistency of the 6.15 works. So, Kari, I think that let's do as part of our goals and calendar the communication. So I wanted to get a message out after this meeting. But it's basically about the next steps in the budgeting process. So we're inviting everybody to form next week on the 11th at 6.15, right? And it's going to be online. Yes. And then, and then from that meeting we'll be taking, we'll be providing direction to the staff to get the final version of the proposed budget that we expect to adopt on January 18th at East Montpelier Elementary. Yeah. And if we put like wordage in there that says we really invite the public. Yes. To the forum. Yeah, to the forum. And the last thing, of course, is that after that, once we adopt it, then we'll be bringing it, the proposal to the community. Yeah, and then we, yeah. And I reminded that we will be approving it on the 18th. Yes, yeah. Yeah. And then the other message was about elections and it didn't stick out a lot of the power, but it's, if you're interested, contact us, one of us. And petitions and consent of candidate forms are available from Rosie. I got that from her email to us and both are due on the, on January 30th. And if they need to, they can grab them usually from the town clerk. Okay. Where are you taking them? Oh, you're telling her, yeah. Yeah. Can we make sure that it speaks to the presence of a stipend? So. Sure. Because we had that conversation and I think having that information in advance could inform somebody's consideration. Just like we're considering reimbursement for a failure. Well, no, no, just that there is. Is there a stipend in case? Yeah, like, I didn't know, like. I didn't know it was a stipend. It's, I definitely didn't, you know, have been either. Was unaware that that even existed. I was running. Yeah. And I voted for it, but, you know, child care, $20 an hour on average now, like that, that could go a fair way. I know. But that's what it is. I got $0.00 an hour. That's very sweet. We're gonna dollar it. Yeah. Was there something we were talking about earlier in today's agenda that you had said on the floor we need to, we'll put that on the future agenda item. Was there something? The finance star. Yeah. That's about, how the pay, the stipend. The payment of the, because we were talking about that, about the line. There were three, there were, there were three things. Okay. Yeah. But there were all under, there were all under finance. Under finance. I don't want to, yeah. I don't want to confuse. There's a little conversation right now and I just want to make more members aware that so by, so we would be soliciting more board members running against the board members. Is that okay? Yeah. No, yeah. That's what I'm asking. I just, I just, I just want to inform, you know, yeah. I'm not sure. I just want to make sure that I went well. We're doing that. We're not for making somebody feel like they don't want to run. So I just want to make sure that people understood that that thing. We're going to make sure. All right. Okay. Yes. Yeah. So with that now we can, is that good? Yeah. Okay. So moving into board reflection just because the topic of what we did today as a, as a, as a board, if we could use that either share with us something that brought you joy while you were with in the, with, with your family or something that brought you joy while you've been on the board or something that would make your being on the board more happier. You know, like I want to use the positive sort of in the ways that we were talking about clarity and stuff like that. So if there's anything that you want to, you know, or something that would be more, that would be helpful or something that you're thankful for, you know, sort of in that spirit, I thought that we could go around and reflect on that. If that makes sense. Also it's 820. I was hoping that we would be done at eight. So we also don't have to do it. So I'll start. Yeah. I'm sorry. Phil's gone. But I'm grateful for the work we've done with him and specifically that when we were in the cafeteria having the discussion about, you know, board membership as a service and the importance of that and the importance of instilling that in our children and the next generation has really changed how I talk to my kids about my role as a board member and hopefully convincing them it's a net positive for the family and hoping, you know, that they see the value of it. I was when Phil was talking about the elements that I think he said the hard skills versus the soft skills or however you put it, but the adaptive elements. I feel like that is something that that's the cultural responsiveness and climate and things. I feel like that's something that we as a board strive to do, which is exciting to me that we're not stuck in that other way of thinking, but that we do want to look at things creatively and outside the box. And I really appreciate that about this board. You know, we can always improve in that area, but compared to many of the boards that I set in on, we are doing amazing work. And I mean that very positively. I will say, and it's something I think Jonas talked about, like that we talked about it earlier tonight, that we can have differences and difference of opinions and still have a civil conversation and share viewpoints with each other. And I think people listen to each other and I really find that refreshing, I guess, and very positive. And it happened tonight. I think even when we talked about our stipend, right, there were so many viewpoints and so many conflicting, even probably within each of us, right? And we still had a very positive conversation about it. I also appreciated that we had time to talk about the policy, right? Like we had more time to dive into that and I appreciated that. I think this board should be very, very grateful for the skills and dedication of its chair and vice chair and superintendent. Yeah, Kari, you bring in so much. You have a planning mentality that's rare, right? I've worked with a lot of planners. It's spectacular. Something I can also dig for, is I'm glad my kids were sick as heck during the vacations in this Anywhere Tim school. Look, it had to be sick. I don't think it was glad they were sick. Well, they're not gonna be sick. I mean, never been. Yeah. Elias, go left. No, yeah. I'm going to get to the point of echoing other people's sentiments that, in particular, I appreciate having an opportunity to have some dialogue before decision making rather than just rubber stamping things that are happening in committee. And I feel like the time period that I have been here, I'm seeing that occurring with more frequency. And I appreciate that because I think we're a working board both in committees and when we meet as a full group. I really appreciate the opportunity for education that's afforded us with both working with Phil and our opportunity to work with our scholar and residents at the Calis Forum, just those opportunities as an educator, seeing it, experiencing it both as an educator and then as a board member, it's really enriching and I'm very appreciative for that. Yeah, I'm appreciative, I guess, of the, I think it's the size of the board. I think tonight I came to the table exhausted and putting all my brain cells toward listening. And I just really appreciated how many people come engaged and ready to speak. And yeah, I know we've talked a little bit about shrinking the board size because it's difficult to field serious candidates. Maybe that's the right call, but I would hesitate if the effect was to have a smaller room and fewer people because I think a conversation of this group, of a group of this size is what we want. I think also just reflecting on what Phil was talking about and the whole emphasis on clarity, there were a couple passages that made me think about our strategic plan coming down the pike and just feeling as if it's a daunting task, I feel daunted, I guess, by the self-awareness that we have to bring to that process. And I think the consolidation of this district and then COVID and transitions from superintendents, a lot of those things have sort of compounded that difficulty which would be difficult for any board. But I think just naming that as a challenge, I think is worth doing so that we go in with our eyes open that sort of self-awareness about what we are as a district and what we are as a board needs to be really worked on. I want to say that I've been on a few different boards past decades. So I'm on another board that's super high functioning, but I feel like given that challenge, the complexity of this, what we do here, I give us really high marks. I feel that a real kinship with everybody here because of how we deal with things effectively. And I think that there's a number of things that contribute to that. Part of it's like our central remote culture where it's expected that you're going to listen and work together, a town meeting kind of mentality. I give floor a lot of credit. I credit having to meet on Zoom has actually made us better because you just have to listen when you're on Zoom. You have no choice. But ultimately, I think it's people doing the right thing and working together. And not to make it not negative, but one thing I wanted to say, the word of caution is that another factor probably is that we are more alike than different. Our socioeconomic situation here, we're not a cross-section. And so to Maggie's point earlier, which has to think about how we perpetuate this when it's not us here. Yeah, I have great appreciation for the opportunity to have these dialogues and to have the chance to get to know people that I don't see in my day-to-day activities. And just really great appreciation, Megan, for what you bring to the conversations, to the leadership. Not that I was ever frantic when things were happening, but you are consistent in how you respond. You are responsive. And so that has really calmed things. So I know that we can get answers. I know that we can have things explained. And whether or not we agree with it is, it doesn't matter. We know there will be an answer. And so that is just great appreciation. And Flora, you keep us going, and I appreciate that. I think what you were just saying made me think of trust. And that's kind of an echo of what Diane was just saying, is I trust the information we're getting is accurate. And yet if we question or ask for more details, we get it. The few times I've had to email with things that have come up from either somebody in the community asking me a question, or I get a response. And I think that's really important. And so I feel like as a board, we can say what we want, and we're civil. And that's important as well. Eric? Yeah, I'm going to kind of second what Ursula said earlier about being in this group that can have civil conversations when we don't always agree and having a great leadership board. And I will say, I'm also extremely thankful for these hybrid meetings, for cases like tonight where transportation kind of fell through, and my daughter has to be in Norwich. So that's still being able to be a part of it, and to be part of the process. I think it's really important. And I think help, to me, it's more helpful than a lot of other things that were discussed tonight that might bring people into the board. So yeah, so I'm very thankful for that. Thank you. That's great. I just want to say, I see each of you, and each of you brings something different, and especially I'm always very emotional. But it's true, I feel a connection with each of you, and I could actually say a word of each of you that I know how to, like I know I can count on you on doing things, or I don't know. The diversity of thought is so important, and the friendship. And Megan made it so easy in some ways. We had the transition with Jen, and then it just is just such a globe. It just fits perfectly, not to use Cinderella slippers or anything like that. But it's just perfect. And I don't, you know, we're in a valuation, and it's perfect, it's a big word. It's, you know, we're learning to dance together, all of us, with you and the collaboration with the leadership team, having such a strong leadership team, it just, it feels good. I think we talked about this when we were actually interviewing, like what would it feel like? And I said, it just feels normal. You know, it feels like, you know, everyday work. And so I'm grateful for all of you. I don't have a lot to add content-wise, except actually just to share my gratitude, because I agree with what everyone has shared. This is a very high-functioning board who also wants to continue the work, and I appreciate everyone's patience with me. You know, I am new to the system, and I am a new superintendent, and I am grateful for everyone's patience while I go find the answer to things, especially things I don't know. But yeah, and I also would echo the, it does feel very natural, I think, our conversations, even if we're not agreeing on things, they don't feel threatening, they don't feel, and in this day and age, that is not, that is not always the case. So, I'm very grateful. Okay. Adjourned. Adjourned. I have a public comment. Oh, sure. It's not Adjourned, is that okay? Sure. Yeah. Just in reflecting with what went on over the holidays, the Worcester community member brought to my attention that they thought that Jody was the only school without a generator. I don't know if that's true, but I know they don't have a generator. I don't know if they're the only school in the district for that one, and, you know, they only lost power for 24 hours, but just, I don't know, flagging it to someone's attention, facilities, whatever, that probably makes sense to have a generator in every school with climate change and everything. It's one of the things that we've learned, first of all, we all will have an after-action review in general. We've talked about this, and I know I've said this before. I think it's an email to kudos to our facilities teams. Chris spent his entire holiday going from building to building and keeping them all running and all of that. The part we were missing in Rumney is now back. We now have a generator that actually works. And, yes, and we also uncovered other things like which of our buildings is a shelter and therefore someone else stays for the generator, and we have, right, all those things. So, yes. Right, exactly. Yeah, so we will have all of that. Everything from how do we interact with our select boards and how do we help our, yeah. So, and it was listed in our future projects. It's just we haven't gotten there. That was a public comment that I wasn't supposed to respond to. Oh, that's true. But it's a good point. Yeah. Okay, a motion to adjourn. Moved. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Jonas, do you have a quick question? Yeah.