 So, it's going to be in order at 4.05, and thank you everyone for coming. We just really wanted to, the board wanted to get together with all of the staff members as we come. And just basically have a dialogue to see how things are going and who expressed any concerns that you may have, and just really an open session. And just any issues that you have in a positive sense. Okay, and if there's any concern about speaking in a public way this way, in a public forum that it's being recorded, it's an open meeting, please let us know. So, do we want to provide more context to the discussion, so we don't have to press? Boom. Why we're- Do you want to do that Brian? I'm just going to sit here. I can start with how this can chime in. I thought this, sort of a step from the last meeting, but to take it further back, the boards collectively across the Supervisory Union for the last nine months or so have been working around some sort of core shared goals across the Supervisory Union. Some different elements, one around governance, one around school educational performance, and one around community engagement. And there's been talk about creating sort of measurable goals within the student achievement side of things. And as we've sort of looked to create some sort of broad goals across the Supervisory Union, there was this retreat that we had this summer, which was really the first time that the board is, all the boards have come together to do things, something that was a little bit more in depth than business means. And it was a presentation from a general, I'm sure you guys are all familiar with from communication since then, Nate Levinson. And it was an opportunity for us to learn about some different approaches that are being done here in Vermont and across the country in terms of, in particular, addressing students that are struggling, but really how can that be applied to the larger educational context in the community. And then we had a follow-up meeting and sort of had a conversation around the table. Not all the board members were able to make the actual retreat, but they also watched much of it, the recording, and had an opportunity to just talk about what the takeaways were. And I have to say for, as a board member, you spend a lot of time talking about really boring stuff. And it doesn't really often feel mission driven. And so having an opportunity to at least to engage in conversation and hear about the different things that is already being done that we knew and we learned more about across the supervisory union that were in some ways reflecting what some of what was being discussed at that retreat. And another thing as well was exciting. And I think as a board here, we started to talk about what are our priorities. And I know that there's been talk about guarantee that's been surfaced. That was one of the takeaways from the retreat was this idea of guarantee and some of the different boards were floating this idea around. Because what are we going to, what sort of promises are we going to make the kids in our communities? And I know I've probably given a pretty long with explanation, but I'm hoping it provides context and so, and then we'd be quite honest with you. That's sort of where we left it for a while because of other business and I don't want to call them priorities, but just other things sort of took over from there. And we sort of circled back to it with a certain extent last board meeting. And there was several of you that actually were here to share concerns. And I think I'm hoping that perhaps what was talked about some of the information that was provided there maybe helped to relieve some concerns about decisions or directions that were being taken. But I think for us as a board, we are very much still in dialogue mode on this issue. But then across the supervisory union, we are looking at sort of issues around performance, particularly around reading and literacy and math. That we're trying to wrestle with what do we do about that? And I think that all along the way sort of a part of that conversation has been leading to this conversation that we're having right now is that how do we, how does the leadership and the bodies within the building figure out how we address these issues and how we prioritize the work that we're doing? And what are our priorities to even begin with? And that's something that's actually been come pretty clear in the last couple of months. I think across the five towns and six schools is what really are even our priorities within each of our schools and are they the same? And so that's, is that helpful? And I have a couple of specific questions maybe that can sort of open up the conversation. One of them is how are we doing? We've had a discussion about SVAX scores about local assessments and about grades and I'm curious whether you think that those accurately reflect are those good measurements? Are they not? What can we learn from that? And what are we not looking at that we also could be? I also would love to hear specific thoughts that you have on the idea of a student guarantee and particular emphasis on math and literacy. I would like to know anything that you'd like to see in particular. That's very open-ended, but I'd like to hear that. And then last, how can we best communicate with you because I think that that is a real desire that this board has is to not just make decisions in a vacuum, but to really have a sense, you know, certainly through Amy, but then also a good communication with you. So those are those are some questions I have. So let's take the first first. How are we doing? Yeah, you know, I almost think it might be easier to kind of warm up first and do something that's a little more tangible than a large open ended. How are we doing? Maybe we save that for more like the end. I was thinking in preparing for this, although I thought it was really solely focused on the student guarantee. So I'm a little caught off guard. But I am thinking about the fact that, you know, the state has imposed this merger and the idea that we will be one as you and I think about this school and as we are going to these SU meetings and talking about core shared goals, what does the Romney staff feel are the things that are so essential to Romney that you've already done work and you've already put investment of time, maybe some money and training that you really value that you would want us to bring back when we're talking about shared goals. So I think something like that maybe will help and then we move along from there. Does that make sense? Can I add to that slightly? Yeah, it works. So definitely what Brian was saying that the WCSU board is really trying to prioritize and while so we have our list of goals within the WCSU, both tangible things and then sort of soft skills. And there's there's a list of them that I have brought and we can share. And we have to kind of at some point prioritize and it's really we're hoping as a union that we can sort of get the perspectives of each school before the merger when that might become more difficult. And while, of course, we would all like to provide all things for all students, it's probably to be not, you know, something is going to have to give potentially something is going to have to give. And so we have to decide from a funding perspective, you know, what things do we really help to support? And so for me, that's a really big question is trying to get a feel for what are the most important things that what are our goals here? Like, what do we want to fund? And so we sent out or I sent out that original survey and it was very open and it was actually really helpful to see where everybody was coming from. And then there was a second survey that a few community members filled out that was really just ranking these priorities and those results were very interesting. I will just say that math was not second or first. So it was depending on how you look at the which we can talk about if you want. But so it was it was just really, I guess we're trying for me. I really want to know if we're happy to go back to the WCSU and say, what what are we wanting to really like? What are we really not willing to let go of that for me is a big question. When I think about Romney, when I came to Romney, we had such a reputation in the school and you have such a reputation of being this unbelievably supportive community school where everyone was really invested in making sure that every child was successful and that word success was not test driven. That word success was joyful, passionate children who had multiple opportunities to learn in multiple ways. So it was the arts were a phenomenal here in the integration of the arts music, being outside, using our outside space as a classroom, not being a very standardized school, which was very, you know, and our students performed well. Our students were performing very well when I came here. And I think that's exactly what I still want for all our kids right now. And I'm I'm fearful that we are becoming a test driven school. And if we are focusing on only those measures, and you just said some things have to be some things have to go. We might improve the test scores of our children to become stronger readers and math students at the cost of hating school and seeing learning as not an enjoyable venture for them and not wanting to even be here. And that is just the opposite of what we want of what I want. So I have a real concern when I hear we need to cut program, you know, some things are going to be cut. We need to be standardized with the other schools. The word guarantee just irritates me to no end for so many reasons. And yet I have goals that my students are going to be performing at grade level. I mean, what they're supposed to be doing, that is our goal. And I think we we have to have high goals and expectations and work together to find ways to get all our students there creatively, not just one path, but all those multiple paths that we know kids need to take. And and and not like I said, again, not just be so driven by just one measure. So you had asked about the measures here. And as back as just one, you know, third graders is the first time they've ever taken it and those scores are just a baseline, right? So we have to be really careful about looking at those. Everything is on the computer. There's a lot of reading that they're not used to a lot of writing on the computer. They still don't have key boarding skills, right? It's just crazy what they still don't know where the Q key is. And they have to be typing all this and it's it's a lot of pressure. So but it is a measure and we do look at it and we do value and and and then take what we see from it and inform instruction. The star three sixty, which is another one that we have in this building, is not a perfect measure. My third graders were just I walked around the room with a clipboard just to see what kinds of questions they were asking. And one of the questions was forty nine thousand three hundred eighty seven divided by thirty six for a third grader. What is another name for eleven thirds? You know, that's like fifth and sixth grade math. And I thought, what's what's going on here? Right? What is and we don't have a way of looking at what questions are asking. We have no way of knowing what the students are getting. All we get is just a report at the end. So it is a measure. I do understand that. And when children do perform poorly, it does seem to be indicative of what their class work is. And yet, I don't want us to invest everything on just those two scores. And I also want to chime in. Yeah, I'll add to that. I think that I, you know, one thing I think Diane is trying to really stress is that, you know, we do want to have high expectations for the students. We we understand and the leadership, not just in the school, but in the Supervisory Union has been really trying to get the message across that, you know, that we want to have high expectations and by having high expectations for all students, you know, it helps all students, not just the ones that are having the most difficulty, but it helps all students move ahead. But at the same time, there's two things I wanted to say, you know, when the first survey came out, I wrote a fairly long response to the to the first question, specifically speaking to some of the things in debt in Levinson because I felt like there were a lot of really good things there. But I felt based on my experience as a teacher, I think there's more to the picture. It's not like there's things that are, you know, they need to be contradicted. But but I think there's more to the picture. And I feel like there's more to the picture where we look at test results because, you know, students are more than just machines for producing good test scores. And we could get those test scores up there. I think we will get those test scores up there. But I'd hate to have a price of that being that at the end of a school career, the students feel like, well, I've finally finished that. Now I can just go out with my life. I'd rather have school be the kind of experience that really helps them so that when they're done with school, they realize that they're at the beginning of a learning journey. You know, and I think the only way that that can happen is for them to love learning, for them to love the experience that they have being part of a community where not just the their classmates and not just the teachers and the building leadership, but the the community as a whole, which is what I experienced when I first started working at Rummy, the school, the community as a whole really is in love with the whole process. And so that that loved, I think, just as much as high expectations and incentives and systems to bring out that love of learning and to turn it into a lifelong, I guess, habit of how you, you know, you know, habit of thinking and just being a human being. I, you know, I just I just really feel that I'd like to see teachers not being so pressed to manage the systems of data gathering and data analysis that they don't have time to love their jobs because if the teachers can't love their jobs as much as they used to, then it's going to be so much harder for them to create an atmosphere in the classroom so that the kids are going to love being part of it. I'd really like to see us look at these systems and the non-systemic things that I think are important to me and to many teachers here as not part of the zero sum game where you have to have one or the other. I'd really like us to value both and not forget about one for the sake and the other, even though, you know, there's a lot of emphasis on systems so that we can get verifiable data and so we make sure that we're really providing equality of outcomes for students, you know, at one level. I'd really like us to not have that eclipse, you know, the whole of a dimension just because, you know, we're standing on one side of the elephant and we can feel these things and we've got touch senses so that I can feel the tail of the elephant. I can tell you everything about the tail of the elephant. I can tell you everything about the trunk of the elephant. I don't want us to feel so wrapped up in that that we forget about all the other things and don't even really know it's an elephant. So, that's... Can I make one comment about the two surveys? I also wrote a long response to the first survey. When I saw the second survey, I instantly got a stress headache and then I closed it and there's no way I would ever fill out that survey, ranking seven curricular areas against each other. It's a Sophie's choice. That is not why we're here. And I understand unique guidance on, well, if something has to go, I'm not surprised that math didn't come out first or second if people were thinking about their children, but there's no way I would ever rank the seven curricular areas and put one of my colleagues' areas at the bottom. It's just not what this place is about. Where was that second survey? It was just sent to us last. I saw it in the front porch. Front porch farm. Second on a little sex resident, we didn't get it. Yeah, I didn't feel... I mean, yeah, I didn't want to send it to the... Anyway, it went out on front porch forum and on Facebook. So I didn't want to cause any trouble by trying to submit it. I mean, we had full board support, but it just seemed like probably shouldn't send it to the administrative assistant. Is there a sense of things being lost now? And if there is, if there is, what is it? And if you know why, why? And that's a, you know, because I hear a lot about the passion of being here and wanting to maintain that. And if it's being lost, it would be good to know that, I think. If it's knowable. I don't know if anybody else feels that way, but the schedule changes. Seems like it had a big impact on many people. If you know why and how, I mean, those... Well, I can speak from my perspective. My old schedule where I was teaching once a week for a longer chunk of time to students allowed me to at least... So that's one part of it. That allowed me to be able to at least teach and have the kids maybe get engaged in their lesson before we had to clean up. So I could teach and instruct, have them work for a good chunk of time or an acceptable amount of time. And then have time to clean up so that it was ready for the next class. And so that I could be prepared for the next class. And so that the students had a fair chance to come into a class that was ready for them so that they could do their best. And so that was one thing. And then we, in the beginning of the year, and this has changed and I'm grateful for it, but we were responsible for transitioning the kids. So right now, Allied Arts classes are back to back. So for example, I might switch with the librarian. And in the beginning, we were responsible for making sure the class that we had could swap over to the next location they were going. So I would swap my kids with Library and her kids would come to me directly. And so it absolutely left no time for me to clean up or for any of us, while I speak for myself, for me to get prepared, like to wash a brush or clear the tables or reset up the materials or, but anyway, so that was very, very, very stressful. And I definitely couldn't do my best job in that position. So shorter classes where it was either like you forego the instruction and have them work for the most amount of time they possibly could work for, or have instruction and have them get started and say, up time to clean up. So that short period of time is still happening, but we did get some transition time. Although I still have, I still have a class that it ends for one grade level and another grade level is waiting at the door. There's no transition time. So like I couldn't even, if I'm doing a different lesson from say I had five, six and then I'm getting three, four there's no way to switch over materials. And so for the first 10 minutes of that class students are helping me set up my class which I think is completely unfair. It's not best practice for them or for me. But that, so, but I will say that we were listened to for some of this and we are not responsible for transitioning classes anymore. And it has made a big difference, but our scheduled time is still really shortened. And I went from teaching one class a week to now teaching two shorter classes a week. And I don't think that's, it doesn't work very well. That's from my perspective as a visual arts teacher. The same kind of result was in PE too. The five, six level decreased by 65 minutes this year. One whole class down and then 10 minutes for each class. So instead of 45 minute classes, it's 35. So that's a pretty big chunk for them of movement time. Three, four decreased by 20 minutes. So two 45s to two 35s. And then the first and second 10 minutes. So just five minutes shorter than it has been in the past. So I mean recommended by the state, we're not even reaching it beforehand before these cuts, especially for the older kids because they don't move as much typically during recess time. They don't get as much activity. And also research shows that that activity is important to learning and to helping retain information and keep them engaged. Along with all the arts, including all the specials, but I really feel like that's a big part of how some of these kids make it through their day. So favorite subjects. That's their favorite subjects, not everyone's. And that's a big part of helping them learn and be engaged in school and making them happy about something. And that often tends to carry into the classroom sometimes. That time cut also kind of hurts some of our outdoor programming, which is pretty important to remedy. Skiing, snowshoeling. We even did some snowboarding last year with the younger kids. You can't do it for 35 minutes. It's not long enough. So there's ways that we are gonna try to work around it this year and try to shuffle and take some minutes here and there, but it makes it really difficult. It makes it rushed. And we'll see how it works, but I think it's gonna be really challenging and will has to pull from other people's times, morning meeting times, stuff like that in order to happen. So that's kind of unfortunate. There's another thing about, when I think of it, El. What I'm finding over and over is that I'm having children come to me talking about how hard it is in the classroom that there's not enough time for things. They feel very rushed. They feel stressed. I had a little one the other day crying, wishing they could go back to kindergarten because the classroom just feels like too much. There's too much work and they don't have enough time in between each thing that they have to do and just generally not feeling happy overall in school, which is really not what we want. We want them to feel comfortable and we want them to feel happy and open to learning, but when they're feeling stressed and like they don't want to come to school, then I think you can add as many minutes as you want to math time and literacy time, if they're not available for learning and it doesn't matter. And I've seen personally in the art lesson, the change because I am in there and I was in there the previous years and there is no time. Children coming from one class to another, they need some time to settle in and to begin to focus on what's happening and by the time they come in and they get settled and they understand what they're supposed to do, they're basically just getting down to that when it's time to leave. So I feel like the quality of the time and the work in that classroom has suffered from my perspective and I'm having children say, oh, this just isn't enough time. We need more time and I want to do this. There just feels like there's an awful lot of pressure because so much of it now is about the maths and the literacy and other things seem to be. There's not enough time to take care of all the things that you need to take care of with children and there are children with learning issues, children with behavioral issues and there isn't enough time to meet all those needs and all those needs are as important as knowing how to read and how to count. I think there's a little bit of binary thinking going on and I think it's a straw man. I think that the conversation about whether we can have holistic education or high performance is a straw man. I think you can do both. That's what I want for our students. That's what I think most of our staff wants for the students. We don't want to speak for everybody but I'm pretty sure we're together on that. And I also feel like this conversation, I'm having a panic attack. There's something going on in the room that's weird. I don't know what it is. It's like there's tension and weirds. Like there's some kind of... I don't know what's... I'm a little confused about what we're doing here and I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. I mean that with the utmost respect. I don't know what it is we're trying to decide about together or what it is that we're trying to... I don't really understand what's happening and I'm feeling extreme anxiety about what's in the room. And I don't really know what to make of all that but that's just how I'm feeling and I'm telling you how I'm feeling. And I agree with you. I'm just... Because I feel like you put your neck out to speak and I agree with you. Thank you. It's a little uncomfortable. What part? I mean, what do you think is... I mean, I think we're really trying to solicit information. No, I agree but I feel like I thought we were coming here for one thing and I feel like there's a lot of negativity and I wasn't expecting negativity. And I don't think... Yeah, and they worry about like we're gonna head down that road. I feel like that's exactly... And I don't think that's gonna be helpful. So I think we are trying to manage what the... Yeah, I mean this is very, very concerned about literacy and math, primarily math I think literacy is less of a concern at this point. And so we are trying to figure out the time issue of the week today. The time, because time is a finite resource and availability at school. And we are just in terms of making policy decisions on prioritization and we would like to have it all, but I don't know if we can. You use high leverage teaching practices which we're all working for. Of course you can. Well, you know, if certain things take more time because then you have a finite space... So Chris, but we asked the teachers here and now we've got feedback and like you're getting a little defensive. I want people to be able to share openly. I hope that's not coming first, but what I'm trying to do is solicit the information for policy decisions because some policy decisions will be moved, I think. I don't think the amount of time in math is a policy decision. So I'm confused about how you brought in math and time. Because if the goal is to prioritize math learning and the idea is that you need more time for math learning, it's taking away time from somewhere else because there's only so much time in the school that far. And it's just simple math if you're gonna do it that way. And we have a community and what are their interests? Their interests may not be in wanting to have more time for math and we claim that we wanna have community input on issues like that. And so I think that's what we're trying to hear. I'll just say that regardless of whether it gets initiated from the top down or from the bottom up, in order to have any kind of a program you do have to make scheduling decisions. You do have to say, let's have third grade math started 930. So whether it's a top down policy or an in house policy, we don't have a free form education in here. Because there are so many new initiatives, some of them are assessment initiatives, some of them are teaching approach initiatives. I think teachers do wanna have, I think I hear from teachers that they actually do wanna have what Neva's saying, they wanna sorta have their cake and eat it too. And I feel like a lot of the anxiety that I hear from teachers is because it starts to feel like it's not a binder, that it's getting lopsided. And I think it's partly because of that, partly to put new things in place, you have to put a lot of emphasis on just to institute them and get the machinery working right. We're doing a whole lot of things for the first time. We've got in one year to just have the different initiatives that we've actually watched this year. It's a lot of new things. And so of course, just pragmatically, those are gonna focus a lot of our time and attention to get them on the ground and up and running. But I think that besides the fact that it just takes a lot of problem solving and a lot of sorting out of schedules and things to get a whole bunch of initiatives launched in the same small sort of window of startup, I think that I guess the character of many of the initiatives does make us wonder whether everybody's on the same page as far as wanting to have both things. I feel like I would never wanna go back to the days when we didn't worry about whether kids of different income level have the same opportunities or whether there was some sort of unwitting, bias in favor of some people in the community rather than the others. The only way that we help ourselves learn about that is to have meaningful data. And some of that has to be quantifiable. But I think that when there's a whole lot of systems in place that take a lot of systems management learning and the systems themselves are, there are a lot of them are software that is repelled by people that are racing to get something out the door so that they can get the contracts from the state or from the federal government or something like that. These systems are far from perfect. So part of the struggle that teachers have is dealing with the fact that the systems are far from perfect and learning how to use them in a meaningful way. I strongly subscribe to the idea that everybody has good intentions. I don't think anybody is trying to sabotage anybody else. I think everybody really wants to do what seems to be best for the kids. But I think, because there are so many new pieces in place at once, keeping that in sight and keeping the level of trust in those intentions so that not only do we trust that people are in the end trying to think about the kids, but that we trust each other as collaborators in getting the kind of education that we want, not just that we're gonna have high test scores, but we're gonna have kids that love school and that love learning and go on to be able to trust that everybody's on the same page about that. We have to have the time to, I guess, verify that. And right now, we're really working on systems. Okay, okay. You should end up with a little bit. I think some of that ambiance of negativity is coming from the feeling that seems to be creating it, that it's kind of this top-down view that we have to guarantee these outcomes and therefore something has to be cut. That's set like a psychological anchor point for a lot of people that I don't think is necessarily a fundamental anchor point, not the whole thing. And unfortunately in psychology, when you have an anchor point, it's difficult to kind of get away from that and look at the bigger picture. And I very much agree on this idea of holistic education and kind of the interdisciplinary nature of how much of learning goes on. Like when I was at the WCSU meeting last night and I'm hearing about how do we improve math, I'm thinking, okay, well, one of the ways you do it is make it more fun by integrating it into other things. You don't think of math as its own separate little ball, but math affects music and affects visual arts and it affects eco. There are so many different ways that you can incorporate math into the curriculum that is not just to stand alone, here's your 45 minutes of math. And granted, I have a stem by it, so I'm a little bit more inclined to think of ways that math is fun, because that's my profession, my life. But it can be in more ways. And some of the other things, of course, we talked about last night are, yes, it's different now teaching common core versus the way we learned it when we were kids as far as road memorization and so on. But I also happen to be a big believer in that common core is a better approach to doing it. And that's what teaching people an intrinsic understanding of the way math relates to our world rather than just, oh, with seven times eight, big, big difference. And so I think that to get rid of some of that ambiance and negativity, what we're looking at is not necessarily how, and believe, we had a big discussion about this six months ago, a year ago, about this word guarantees to you rather than a focusing on guarantees we're supposed to be making about the way other independent minds operate, that we work holistically for collaboratively for how do we make it better for everybody and not necessarily start with an anchor point that says we're gonna have to cut something more to make that happen. Thank you. You know, I totally understand and feel the tension in the room. And I think that that also comes from a point of, you know, we're all here, and we're all caring. We're here for Rummy, we're here for the kids, but we also have to air these concerns that we're having. And I know what you said, like, how's it going? And I think that sometimes people are like, okay, I need to kind of say how I'm really feeling. And I do have to say with the specials that it's been really challenging this year. And I can definitely see that. And I know that that's probably not the road. We want to go down in this meeting at the moment, but I did want to kind of share my perspective as well that, you know, with the schedules of the K through six, you know, Pre-K has had the adjusted times for that. And we went from 30 minutes of library last year to zero and 30 minutes of music this year to 15. And it's really challenging with the back to back scheduling, I know that our lovely music teacher has direct instrument instruction until 9.30 and then comes to me at 9.30. So the 15 is really 10. And so that's just really challenging, I think, at a very young level to get into it and then have it be over. And I'm thinking in that way as well. And I meant to say this a while ago, but then I didn't get my snippet in. So I wanted to add that with you guys. I think as a staff, we have said that the schedule is the way that it is and that we'll never do it again this way, right? Because it is impacting negatively so many aspects of the building. And so having said that, we're now gonna move on. Like, okay, we can't change it. So we're gonna do the very best we can right now. You know, we know tier two instruction should not be pulled out of tier one instruction and that's what's happening. Right, so the most vulnerable kids are getting the least amount of instruction. And it's just because we're stuck in this very unusual configuration. And we now know we will never do that again. So that's a good thing. Can you just clarify that? Has a decision been made to have a different schedule for next year? Because that's the first I've heard of that. And that's the case. And that would sell out of my concerns at ease. You're not convinced that much? I kind of thought as a staff, we said this is not working. We tried a few things that wouldn't change. Yeah, I kind of did to us starting the process very early this spring. Yeah, totally welcome. Yeah, and it's the back-to-back schedules that just really took a huge chunk of the day that then gave us some really awkward little bits and pieces. And yeah, so yes, I think we're committed that we're not doing it this way again. Board member, I really agree with this. There's a lot of stuff I don't know and I make lots of mistakes. But my understanding is that the WCSU when Bill is describing how the curriculum is made, he describes the teachers being the ones who are making this. So I want to make sure to use everybody here feel like those curriculum camps or inputs are accessible to all of you. Is there something we can do to make it more accessible so that this input can be, sorry, one second. Because when we were talking about math, like last night, we talked about math coaches. I heard about math coaching. I heard about pilot math programs. I heard about some online math stuff. But some of these other ideas that you guys have brought up or that you seem to be alluding to weren't really mentioned. Doesn't mean they're not there. So I'm wanting to know if there's a net like, is there something that as a board we can help make things more accessible so that these ideas can be shared? Sorry, I think they're finished over there. Yeah, well I think that that work is super important. It's great. That work is great work. Curriculum camps and curriculum work that staff's involved in. I'm on a bunch of those committees. And the work that we do there is great work. And I think that one of the challenges that I'm finding is that there's all this great work being done. And then there are these measurements that may or may not align with the work that we're doing. And so in that way, there's like this built-in conflict between the work and then the expectation that we have for students as it's being measured by things like the S-backs and Star 360, which I'm not completely averse to. I think it's important to some degree for kids to know where they are relative to other kids. I think that that's helpful. Because that can be a good reflection of our practice. I'd also say that then that also runs kind of like in this conflict with this idea of a guarantee. Because you're doing kind of like this holistic work around the expectations that we want for kids to have that isn't defined in alignment with the measurements that we're using. So we're doing all this great work. It's not aligned. And then words like guarantee start getting thrown around and that's uncomfortable. I mean, that's uncomfortable for me. And I guess I could share a short story. I've shared this anecdote with some people, I think, and it's like if I were a building contractor and somebody called me up and they needed a new roof on their house, they, I could say sure. And I have two options. I could go back to my wood shop and I could cut wood shingles and it would be beautiful and it would be creative and it would be all the things that I'd want it to be. I'd put it on the house and then lo and behold, the roof leaks and who's responsible? Who's responsible for this roof that's not supposed to leak? Well, I'd suppose I would be. I made the shingles, I did the work. That's what happened. And so if you run that in contrast with saying like, okay, I'm gonna go out and as a contractor and I'm going to get, specified building materials. I'm going to get trained on how to install them. I'm going to install them to spec. Then what happens if the roof leaks? Well, then, well, I mean, you could look at this place, like who's responsible? You know, is it the manufacturer? Because it's not the person who put, it's not me, I did the thing. I went to the class, I got the materials, put the roof on the roof leak. So, you know, don't come to me about it. It's like, this is a manufacturer problem. So like in a guarantee system, I'm much more comfortable with getting the company, the company approved, you know, materials. It dissuades me from trying to do something in my wood shop. And I don't know if that helps but I think that that's the conflict that I'm running into because I see the value in a lot of these different things. But instead of seeing how those things can work together, it's like these things are being pitted against each other as in like an either or, it's like a zero sum and there's not proper weight being put on anything. It's like all the weight on one, all the weight on the other. And I think, I mean, that's reflective of like the world we're living in right now but I would hope better for us, you know, that we would be able to find a kind of a creative way out of that challenge. But as a teacher, it's deeply concerning to hear words like guarantee when I don't have a math curriculum, I don't have a reading curriculum and I don't have a writing curriculum and I'm not advocating for that enough. What I'm saying is that if we're going to guarantee, you know, outcomes, then I'm left with very few options as to what is palatable to me as it relates to my own professional risk. So students aren't making progress, adequate progress toward what? Achievement, success, all of these things. Like back up a little bit. We need to, I think it would be helpful for all of us to define clearly what we mean by words like achievement and success and outcome. Does that mean graduation? Does that mean college matriculation? Like what are those words actually meaning? And that I think would give us clarity on a path forward. But back to the other thing, it's a risk to do something that's off the book because if your students aren't making progress in the way that the system would ask you to have your students making progress, you're left in a lurch because now you're only responsible to yourself. There's nothing else to say, well, I did the thing that they told me to do and like it's not happening. And so I think that trying to find a way where those two things, these different interests can somehow find a place to live together. So I hope that that's kind of like the direction that we're going in, but I think the definitions would be really helpful. I'm not sure that we have a clear group definition here as to what we mean by achievement, what we mean by success and what we mean by a successful outcome. Those would be really helpful for me because if what we're talking about is high school graduation, then that's one thing. If we're talking about kids being literate and numerate, that's something else. So I think that would just be like a helpful first step is to identify what it is that we're talking about and then try to do the really hard work of trying to figure out if and how these two things can fit together. That's I think what would, that might be helpful. It would be helpful for me, I guess. We have the test assessments and I'm assuming there are other assessments that you know how your students are doing. We have the testing assessments, which is really what the driver is saying. Yeah, it's toward proficiency, right. And then is there another assessment tool that teachers use to determine how their students are doing? So it sounds to me like sometimes those are not necessarily in a line with each other and don't need to be, I guess. Well, first of all, I have no way of knowing what the expectation is at a given point in the year for Star 360 or for the S-Backs. So as a teacher, I'm kind of at a loss as to what it is that is going to best prepare my kids for the thing that they're about to be asked to do. So I think in that way, that's a little, that's difficult. You don't know what's on the test? No, no, no. So like to the degree that the scope and sequence that's built into the standardized test align with the scope and sequence that's been done in the great work that we've done as an SU isn't clear. We can see the common core standards that are being covered, yes. We don't know. Yeah, we can see the end of the year if we were to expect kids to know what standards are being covered. But what are they supposed to know in February when they're supposed to know? I mean, those resources may be out there, I don't know. They aren't ones that have been made wildly available to folks in this building so far as I know. So, sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, I didn't mean anything. Some of us recently went to a workshop and we looked at standards and people sitting with other people in the state and we were finding that after doing all this great work but our standards were really not aligning or vaguely aligning with common core standards. And it was a little perplexing when we looked at the materials. Why are you guys doing? Yeah, when we were giving the materials that other people are using that are closely aligned with the testing and we were finding we are not in our district we hope that this is not what's happening. And I don't know, that was... Yeah. I'm still thinking about doing that. So what was the difference between the three? It was to look at the common core and breaking it down into incremental steps, basically for kids with special needs, but to look at all the common core alignment and look at all the individual pieces. So we were with the state and all the other districts that were looking at these pieces and... Of course I was looking at the speaking and listening standards because that's my angle. And I'm finding that ours in the district are very broad and they're not broken down enough. And that brings me to that great curriculum work that happens at the beginning of the summer where it's not accessible to all of us because it's in the summer. I wish there was a lot of work done there that no SLP, for example, was there. And I feel like that curriculum work needs to happen during the school year and it needs to have more people at the table. The other little piece that I just wanted to throw in was we have a very large Chinese population around me currently. We have over 30 students in special education. I remember having 12 years ago. Not many years ago, like five years ago. Yeah, so of course that's, and that's going in a different direction now, but that's also affecting other numbers. And it's part of the challenges that we have right now. I was thinking of that too just because I would think that knowing the data that there are more kids who are coming into foster care, kids with special needs, kids with behaviors coming into public schools, that that is at least in part why the shift happened in terms of being able to be more of arts and creative. I think that those pieces absolutely fit in, but when you're having such a diverse population, there is sort of a need that arises to be a little more methodical and following measurable goals. So I'm thinking that's sort of partly responsible for the shift, I would think. What are you thinking, Martha? No, it was- Not to put you on the spot, but it looks like you had something. Well, I think our population in some ways more aligned with the rest of Vermont. I think that we are more like other schools, we're not higher than other schools. I guess I want to make that clear and I want to go higher than other schools. Oh yeah, no. Right, I think that we were always this little bubble and now we're not the bubble anymore. That was my good point that I think that it is. And I also think that we haven't really adjusted to a lot of the behavioral special needs that we have and that's district wide. I think we've kind of ignored it and sort of pushed it aside without really facing it and seeing that it is a big issue in our school and not just our schools, but all schools. And I think that it drains us all. And that would bring me to the idea that I really would love to see more support systems. For example, a full-time guidance counselor. I think that we all know in the last few years that some of our social, emotional stuff has really been challenging for us and it all starts in preschool and kindergarten where we start teaching some of this stuff and I think we should really be putting a lot of work into that. My end is, if you ask me what I really want from Romney School, I want us to graduate really happy, healthy kids who feel good about themselves as learners. And because I think that, in fact, I had a conversation with a parent today of a very special needs kid who was crying after a meeting and saying, kids can be really happy doing, or adults can be really happy doing lots of different things. And you can be a rocket scientist and a goat farmer and both be really happy and that we want to create kids who feel good about themselves and kids who are good learners who like to learn. But that I have questions about how stressed some of our kids get trying to meet a standard. That they just either culturally, emotionally, biologically can't meet. And that's not always been where Romney has been and I think it's where we are now and I want us to really make this a happy place where kids love to learn and feel healthy and feel good about themselves. And I don't want us to be so pressured about academics that we don't look at the whole person. And we are a different school than I think we were several years ago. We're more like in line with the rest of the world and the world is very stressful for these kids and they're coming from two or three different homes and I'm not kidding you. Every day they go to different places and I want this to be a place that's enjoyable for them and not stressful. And that I think I have enough faith in our academic system that we will teach them the math and whatever that math and literacy that they need to know but I think we really have to look at the whole healthy kid. And I think we're all stressed by some of our high needs kids. You know what I think one of the refrains in terms of the math is the foundational work and learning that needs to occur early on in terms of if students aren't getting that and aren't mastering that that they're deprived of the opportunity later because they cannot access the electives or coursework that end up doing remedial work at U32. So if that is a fact, do you have a sense of how we address that? I think it's a shame that they can't access electives when they get up to U32 even if they're behind in their math and literacy. That makes me, you know, speak into what Martha says. I want our students or graduates, I want them, I obviously math and literacy are important. And that's, you know, it's not even an issue they've even considered them not being but I want them to have the like motivation, the knowledge, the passion to go out and seek something that makes them happy whether whatever career it might be but to be able to even do that because they have the skills because they've explored many different avenues on their way through their schooling. So to be able to like say, ah, maybe engineering's the way I should go or maybe it's something completely different. So like to even have that skill or motivation or passion to like go after or even know that they can have that opportunity to succeed somewhere but to having those experiences so they know, they say, oh, that wasn't so much me but this was great and I really enjoyed that and like, you know, work their way up if, yeah, I just. So to think about not giving these opportunities when they're young and then even taking them away or not even giving them the opportunity to do it when they're in seventh, eighth grade, like that makes me cringe. I'm just. I know, that's what we hear. And what I mean is electives, like electives that they want to pursue, they don't have the basic skills to pursue is what I think I've heard and that there needs to be a remedial, they've made a good point about teaching across the curriculum. But if they're passionate about that elective then they're gonna work hard to get that skill that they need. I mean, I kinda look at it in that way. Like don't underestimate a kid just because they don't have that skill then give them something that they're really passionate about doing and they'll work for it. But to like, not give them that opportunity feels like it's gonna be a failure. That's my perspective on something like that. I think Daniel has something to first. Yeah. Oh. I'm actually not sure what we're talking about, I'm sorry. I'm like, this is a very dispersed conversation. I have a lot of things to say. I just don't know which one. So I'm gonna hold off, thank you though. Like I don't even know where to start, but I'm like, really? Well, we were originally supposed to talk about a guarantee. So are our teachers in support of a guarantee? No. Okay, I don't know. That seems like a really strong answer. I agree that word gives me like heart palpitations too. Can I say something a little more about that? Yeah. Because the guarantee is so closely tied to the way it is in measure. Whether we're coming close to fulfilling the guarantee, there's its irresistible pressure to do whatever it takes to get those test scores up. And that sometimes it really helps us be more comprehensive in the way that we teach math, I'll focus on math because it is what people are concerned about because it's where I put most of my attention. But other times, I think what happens is that we tend to think of what we need to do but to get strictly in terms of what we'll get those test scores up. And if the tests were more trustworthy in terms of, knowing that they weren't just pressure-cooked by some company and that they actually seem to match up with our years of experience in engaging where the kids really have math smarts and whether they really get it and whether they really love math. If those all sort of aligned to use another technical word, if the way we feel about what's happening for kids in math aligned with what we think these tests are asking for, then teaching to the tests would not feel like this forced thing. But because the tests themselves are so important because they don't align with each other and because it's just so much work even with great curriculum camps to actually sort of solve that problem. A problem that is created by corporations that have tons of people with big names to market their stuff. A handful of teachers at a curriculum camp are not gonna come up with something that looks like it balances out against this product of big business education. So just to clarify, because I am in support of a guarantee but I would never force it on a staff that felt uncomfortable and clearly there's a lot of discomfort with it. The example of a guarantee that we were discussing was by the end of third grade all students will be able to read. We did not discuss how would we measure that? Would it be S-max scores? This was about as a board committing that our students who go through remuneration will know how to read it. And we would then look if that didn't happen, where is support needed? Where could we put funds to help make this happen? So this discussion was definitely what needed to happen and so I think it's totally off the table now. I just wanna be clear. We were in no way. We have never been all about S-max scores or just the test or teach to the test. The guarantee was a very specific. We were passionate that reading is the way to get kids to do anything they want. I hope that some of them do become goat farmers. They will not be successful if they don't know how to read it. So I just want us to be really clear about what it was we were discussing. And because we're a board and we were discussing it, it felt very top down. The idea that then we're gonna cut something else, that's completely different. So we have not discussed cuts. We are discussing priorities. One of the priorities is it would be great if we didn't have to raise property taxes. But if we were putting that against every kid being able to read, then that's the tough choice we'd be making. So I just wanna clarify that was the intention of the guarantee. It wasn't to shift teachers to just teach common core and don't step outside the curriculum and talk about anything social or emotional. That was not the intention. So I just wanted to clarify that so that you at least knew where the, our passion about it came from. Yeah. If you're talking about guarantee, I am all about guaranteeing that children have some nature of success. And I think that that is worth pursuing. And I think every teacher here would support a guarantee. However, I think the failure is in the structure and the understanding of what the guarantee is. And it's a failure culturally that we have across our nation. We look at ends. And that is not what education is. We need to talk about means. I am happy to guarantee means. I'm happy to guarantee that I will have one-on-one time with a child. I met with all 27 of my, six of my kids in math over the past couple of days. I kept track of it. I spoke to each one individually. I met with them. I met with all 24 of them in language arts in the past two days. I have notes on where they are. Those are means that I can manage and control. And I have built-in safeties. It's called judoka, okay? It's a built-in safety system that if one of the kids is failing, they're gonna see me within less than a week. I can talk to them and we can evaluate what the problem is and move from there. If you're talking about having a guarantee at the end, that is a huge lead time of failure where we're putting out mistakes over and over repeated without measure. And that, I think, may have some concerns for people. So when we talk about a lot of these things, I think we need to remove ourselves from our cultural biases of where education is and what's valuable. For example, classroom time is not inherently valuable. They can sit silently in that room and I can have them for an hour of math. That does not make it valuable. Quality time, and how you define that, I don't know, is what's valuable. And those are the guarantees that we should pursue. It should look like more planning time, quality planning time, across and within teams. It should look like effective training for teachers that's guaranteed. Us spending time to write curriculum is beautiful, but a list of standards is not a curriculum, okay? I've never been, one of the few times I've truly been embarrassed was in grad school, gave a beautiful quote curriculum to my grad professor. You opened it up, looked through it. We probably spent over 120 hours writing this thing. Closed it, slid it back and said, a list of activities is not a curriculum. Go back and try again. That was a big lesson for me. Lists are not curriculum, right? And so, you know, when we talk about curriculum, camp, they're nice. They help me understand what I'm expected to do, but they're not curriculum. We need to really consider what are we teaching? How are we teaching it? How are we measuring this so that we have constant improvement all the time? So, I mean, guarantee, yeah, I'm all for it. But what we guarantee and where we put the guarantee, I think, is the questions we should be asking. Not if we should guarantee. Daniel, just so I have your statements said more on quality planning time, and was there a second one too that- Oh, yeah, I mean, like, talk about, talk about just training. Okay, yeah. Well, you know, I'm, and that's a whole, another big- That is another big issue. When you say guarantee for reading, are you talking about reading at a third grade level by third grade? Or when you say guarantee to read by the end of elementary school? Right, we hadn't defined it at all. We were just saying that every kid by the end of third grade would know how to read. And- By third grade level. I don't know that we said that, but maybe we did. I think that was their articulation. Yeah, that's what's on the red. Right. Third grade level by third grade. By the end of, yeah. So reading, learning, going to read by the- I'll read it. You know, graduating here is different than learning, or being guaranteeing a third grade reading level by the end of third grade for every student. That's really different to me. So, I think they should be able to read when they leave here. One of the big issues that came up with this word guarantee is, like to go to Ben's analogy or even what Daniel was talking about with means is, if you're guaranteeing a roof, you're guaranteeing the fitness of that roof to keep leaks out. You can guarantee your own performance in doing a task. When you try to guarantee how somebody else is gonna perform lower time than that. And that's, I think, we're a big disconnecting. Even in Daniel's speaking of that, as he said, I can guarantee that I will be providing enough quality time in order to be able to instruct this. But if you're trying to guarantee the outcome of somebody else's performance, you just said it yourself. No, I agree. I wholeheartedly agree with that. And I often find myself thinking of absolutely any standard. I think of a pre-K standard, let's say, by the end of pre-K, they're gonna count to 20. I don't wanna guarantee that a pre-K student is going to count to 20 because they might not be ready to count to 20 by the end of pre-K. Maybe in June, right after it ends, they will hit that mark and they will soar from there counting. But I don't want to say, I will promise you that your child will count to 20 by June. That feels really unseemly. So the idea of the guarantee was not that teacher. You, Diane, will make sure it was a collective. It wasn't an, it was a collective. This is our collective obligation to ensure that students have these skill levels at this grade. So it wasn't really an individual that, oh, sorry, you didn't fulfill your guarantee. It really was, it was really more of a commitment to commit whatever resources would be needed to try to do that. When you put a level, like that's already, you just, that can't happen. That is a whole lot of uncertainty. A third grade teacher because even if they've been behind pre-K too and they've been making adequate, or maybe not adequate, but making progress on their own track, it's gonna fall on whoever is there in third grade if that's where the goal is. And I'm not saying that we're not all working with that, but that's just kind of what I think it would be. It kind of goes along with what other people are saying right now, which what I'm really uncomfortable with about an end result guarantee is that I can't control circumstances. None of us can control circumstances that students are in who come to us. And we have so many kids and it seems like more each year coming to us with trauma. And it seems like, for example, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we need to be able to give kids a safe place to be. And sometimes it means like, sadly, sometimes I have to pull somebody from math and teachers have been so understanding about that when there just is not another time to do it because there is something really big happening for a student. And we guarantee for a student who is really just trying to be safe at home and they're anxious and they're scared. And there are so many kinds of trauma and we have some really challenging behavior issues. And I don't expect that that's going to reduce. And we need to be able to address those things. And along with so important to read, and that can help somebody who's experienced multiple traumas get, be successful and be happy. And that's what we want is students to be successful in who they are as a human and be able to survive in society without needing tons of support every minute and to be contributing members of society. But we do have a lot of students with trauma and that really seems to be increasing. And I think we can all keep kids improving, but if somebody's coming to us without any, so somebody who maybe hasn't even been in school for years and coming to us and I can't imagine getting them to a certain, to put an end result guarantee on where there'll be. But like Daniel had said, we can more have expectations for what we can give each kid because we can't control what they're coming from and we can just do our very best to support them and keep them learning in all aspects of their lives. I have a couple things to add about that. One is nobody's mentioned the fact that we have some kids that are just barely hitting their birthdays to make it into school. And they're maybe a year younger than other kids that were just on the other side of that line. There was some interesting research that came out in the last week that says that the rate of ADHD diagnoses is something like three times greater for kids who are at young age than that. We don't talk about that. We don't allow for that one, we're thinking about what kids should be able to perform at the end of let's say third grade. And I think there's just a whole lot about kids that we're starting to overlook. The other thing is I really agree with Daniel's point of view on the thing and part of the pressure that we feel when we talk about guarantees is that article from Levenson and Cleveland, one of the very first recommendations is focus on student outcomes, not inputs. That is 180 degrees from what I hear Daniel say, okay? That I feel like there's gotta be balance. That's the thing that I'm most concerned about is the lack of balance. I don't wanna give up the use of astute test procedures and timely testing in order to just find out how kids do. But when I look at those test results, I wanna remember that some of them were born in September and some of them were born in October. Some of them were born in August. I also wanna think about the fact that I wanna see kids get these goods, of course, but I also want them to love learning. I want them to have an insatiable appetite. And if I get a kid who's got this, I know some kids right now that are not gonna probably make the great level benchmarks. Some of them really love learning. They've got a lot of catching up to do it. They really love learning. I don't worry about those kids so much, but if they get anxious because their test scores are not good, or I get anxious to teach them because their test scores are not good, then I telegraph my anxiety to the child or to the family. I don't think I'm doing that kid any favors. Does anybody feel like, certainly, of the board members, but doesn't it feel like really totally favorite at how this idea of a guarantee could work is worth pursuing? Because it's kind of seeming like it's not really, like we should just move on from the guarantee thing. But am I missing that? Like, does there like another way that we could talk about the guarantee that would be helpful or somehow provide something of benefit? I think it helps to think about sort of what the motivation was behind proposing this. And I think one of it is, one piece is a real concern for students who are struggling. And then the second one is a desire for board members to be able to do something to help, you know? And so I don't know, you can help us with a second, but maybe, but you know, if you have, I would love to hear other thoughts. I've heard a lot about how to support students who are struggling, what can you do? You know, what do you need to do to do the best job of that and how can you support it? And don't cut our Paris. Yeah, that's what I said. We need, I mean, and that's what we've heard. We just heard from the superintendent, right? And I'm just astounded in the climate that we're teaching in and that you would be pulling people who are directly supporting students. And I'm not saying that our support staffs are teaching, you know, our children, which is what I know he was saying that it's better to have direct instruction come from highly qualified teachers, however. Yeah, really excellent teachers. Really excellent teachers. Yeah, really excellent teachers. But we need those people. I mean, you pull them out, talk about our stress levels and our ability to get to those students, that's just going to tip the balance completely in the wrong direction very quickly. Who was the same state? I went along with school day too, but that's just me. Okay. Well, I sure do. We have the shortest school day, I think, in Central Vermont. So what? Let me put that. What? Yeah, so I'm gonna take it through. What'd you say? 30 minutes costs a million dollars. Really? Yeah, and they're worth it. I'm not arguing against it, I'm just, whatever, make that combination of those bus routes. I mean, I just can't believe how short our day is. And our day is short, our day is short. Literally, it's just the shortest day in Central Vermont. And to that point, you know, I think that a lot of these conversations quite frankly have been happening across the supervisory unions, all of the boards collectively have been talking about this. And it's like, everything is on the table. I mean, the idea of a longer school day or a longer school year are even out there. What is it going to take to, what are our priorities? And what is it going to take to meet those priorities? And are we currently constituted to do it in the manner that we're structured now? And if I'm not mistaken, I'm talking, I think that for one of the things that has, I've been thinking about around this whole idea of guarantee, whatever type of thing you want to put on it is this idea of sort of the learning trajectory of the students come through here and that this is, we're on a continuum, right? And this is just one part of their journey. And I think about at least seeing the numbers of kids that are going into U32, that are great behind or two grades even behind in certain core areas, math and literacy in particular. And thinking about, you look at the outside, the other side of them coming out, well, we have a very good graduation rate. It's like one in three kids does not go on to any type of advanced education. And whether it's traditional college or it's some other type of vocational pursuit and to live in this state on a high school diploma is really not sustainable. And so I just, that's where I kind of look at it. This is, what can we do here that is going to set kids up for continued success through U32 and beyond? And I hear people's concerns about putting a word like guarantee on it. I think I look at what are, what is our moonshot? What are we hoping our kids are going to be able to achieve? And sort of that's the beacon that guides us. And how we get there is, we're not exactly sure, obviously, but I think what, for me it's like, there's mistakes are pretty high. And I'm sort of at a loss for words right now. Whatever happened to the language about goals, guarantee just sort of popped up all of a sudden. I can commit myself, I have a lot of energy, I have a lot of creativity. I can commit myself 110% in favor of all sorts of worthy goals, but I can't guarantee it. And I feel like in some ways for me to say that I can guarantee it or to promote myself as guaranteeing it is, it's the kind of hubris I really pull back from. I would much rather set strong goals. I mean, you mentioned the space program. The United States was a little behind the curve. And when they tried to launch satellites into space, they failed, you know, they couldn't guarantee that they were going to beat the Russians to get a satellite in orbit, but they had it as a goal, you know. And, you know, I like goal languages because I think there's more humility involved. You can still have the same measurements. You can still be as creative about thinking how you're going to pursue those goals. I just think it's more honest. I think the concern with its goal is that it is you're expecting that you may not achieve in that in terms of certain aspects of skills that kids should, we should guarantee that they will have that skill. And again, I understand the, but I think that that was the sense of driving behind guarantee as opposed to goal because we are goal oriented. And so I think it was, you know, it was almost, and I'm speaking for myself with my sense of it was that by staying with goals, you're allowing a lot of failure for some kids because they'll never make it anyway, but we've achieved our goal of 80% or 90% or whatever. And so that's, I'm just, that's what I'm, I think I'm articulating why the term guarantee. And you know, we talked about it and, you know, I was in favor of striving for that, but I was also saying if we shouldn't use the word unless we really mean it because people think of the word guarantee that it's a certainty. And, you know, so I was right, I agree. So I was very concerned about using the word guarantee because you're talking about a certainty. But the goal of ensuring a certain basic foundational level of skills. And I think Brian has a fair point in terms of the U32 students, but I think kids don't go on when they don't have the passion for the continued learning. I mean, and that's when they're, you know, if the desire to learn is squelched, then it's like, oh, I'm done. I don't need to go on. I'm sick of this place. And that's where I think a lot of kids fall off the don't, don't go on because they've lost that need of curiosity or passion for pursuing something. I agree with you. I think that's a really good point. The other thing to clarify is it was the board's guarantee to the community. It wasn't a guarantee that teachers were gonna make. So for example, I'm just telling you where the excitement came from before we had this reality discussion. But if we saw data that by the time students were leaving second grade, only two thirds were reading on grade levels. We had to make up a third. Well, then we might talk about how do we extend the school day and get kids home and get teachers paid to work with those students? How do we, we would prioritize funds to make it happen. It wasn't about we're gonna put more pressure on a system that's already feeling enough pressure. It was a board guarantee that would help us focus resources. I guess that's it, resources, time and money. So, yeah. I'd be willing to have a goal 100% of anything. I'd be willing to have a goal of, I have the goal of having all the students that I work with actually exceed the standards. I don't have to say, I'll be happy if it's 90%. I don't have to say that, but I still think that to use the word guarantee, it first sets me up for failure in the eyes of the people who are the stakeholders in my job performance. Mr. Hever didn't make good honest guarantee. He said he was gonna have everybody doing this and he didn't. I don't like leaving up to that kind of pressure even though I can have the goal that I'm gonna have all my students excel and go beyond the standards. I think it's fair to say we would not use the word guarantee. We certainly wanna be striving. Daniel? I wanna return to this idea, whatever words you use, I would deeply caution against the divisional concept of a board guarantee or a staff guarantee or goal or anything. That's too divisional. We're all here for the same purpose. What I would however recommend is decentralized knowledge or intelligence is deeply valuable in getting things done. Termites build beautiful nests. None of them know how they do it. That's fascinating. There is, to decentralize the knowledge and allow more openness of flow of knowledge between the staff should be the guarantee. Traditionally in America we have a CEO or a colonel or any other board that makes decisions and the idea comes down. Directions are given. This is your curriculum. This is how you operate as a colonel because the general said so. That's how we operate. It's almost how all humans operate. Decentralized knowledge is the idea that I may not have all the answers but when I work with everybody who has a few of the answers, suddenly the diversity of answers that's available to me is drastically deeper. And this is how a lot of nature works. Like bees, right? So they don't know how to pick the best nest but they do know that if all of them kind of look at a few nests and then they vote, they'll get a pretty good one. So what I'm saying is that we have a wealth of knowledge here and I think each one of us could offer one small solution or guarantee that would move forward this process and that would be decentralizing it. Offering a guarantee again of an ends or again any word, goal, whatever. The focus on the ends is the failure. The focus on the relationship of how we get to some direction is what we should be looking at. I know personally for me, I have longer class times this year. It requires more planning. I have more personal meetings with kids. That requires additional planning. So where have I suffered in that place? If I were to solve that, if I were to seek quality in the moment where I could stop something, it would say, hey, actually I need like another 40 minutes of uninterrupted planning. Especially if I could contact other teachers to get a little support and help and understanding. So for today I had to run and grab books. That was silly that I had to rush that process. So that decentralization is what we would be looking for the process, not the product. Does that make some sense? I can keep going. I can talk forever. So I would like to piggyback on a little bit on what Daniel's saying in that the schedule, I think it's a schedule issue, but I think it's also the pressure, sort of a pressure where we're not allowed to really collaborate. And even if I wasn't teaching 21 sections of library classes in my week, and I was teaching, and I'm here, yeah, there's 21 at Dodian 3 at Rumney. There's not a lot of built-in time where I, as a literacy and technology and coding expert, would really like to not just spend a half an hour with children, offering them some tools in the library, but that I'm really spending time with the faculty so that they know what resources are here, that they know what best resources. So Daniel's planning this great project, which is gonna take quite a bit of time to gather that material. And really, we had a three-minute conversation. If we were given a 20-minute time, or like a 45-minute, lots of amazing things could happen. And that's just one teacher. I never get to see Ben, like, you know. That's not a lot. That's true, that's true. So, you know, and I don't get to see pre-gay. Like, and that's true in all of the, you know, the specials areas. Like, I feel like we have these experts and that if there was more, you know, time for people to collaborate and work together as professionals, that literacy and numeracy and all of those things, no matter what the area of expertise is would rise. Because, yeah. Do the staff think they have enough time to collaborate? Because that is something that, you know, has been said, one of the primary factors in improving teaching skills is the opportunity for professional collaboration. Do you think you have enough time? Well, yeah. I mean, we hear that over and over. And if it's not happening, then we're not. I think the weight of who we collaborate with has been defined by when we have our planning time. So we have our planning time when kids are at specials. So, the specials teachers aren't accessible during the time that we're planning. Because they're with the students. So, like, it's the self-fulfilling problem. So, this year I have more collaboration time than I've ever had with Christine and Fridget and my other classroom colleagues, which I deeply value, but I don't have any time built into my daily schedule that allows me to collaborate with Alice and anybody else. I think another place where we don't have as much collaboration time, because I think Ben's description of what kind of time is available is fairly accurate, is that it used to be, when I first started working period, that there was the amount of, I guess, administrative and systems maintenance business that had to come up to be dealt with during our all staff meetings was much less. So, we had time to compare notes on some great, cross-curricular ideas and integrated things and projects and special activities that we were gonna do with the kids. We don't have that much time for that kind of conversation anymore, because there's other things that sort of fill up the agenda. I guess the other thing I wanted to say is that, if we had heard, I guess we'd been a fly on the wall or been talking with the board, as you considered this idea of the guarantee and understood that you were really trying to offer some reassurance to the community about whether kids were gonna get what they need here, it'd be a different story than the way it feels to us because the way it felt to us when we started hearing this guarantee language was almost as if we'd been hired hardwired into our job descriptions, that we would be able to deliver these things, that we would be able to guarantee you what kind of progress each student was going to make, things like that. And so, to me, to hear you guys describe your process, gives me a whole different slant on it than the way it felt when the language started coming down to us. It came down to us almost, okay, this is what you have to do. You have to be able to fulfill this guarantee. It's like, you know, somebody else made the guarantee, you guys better make it happen. How did that happen? How did that happen? Yeah. Like how did, like how did they get, so I guess how did, how were you, were you or other staff members, I guess made to feel that way on this? Can I answer that? Sure. The first time we heard about it was those of us who went to that large board meeting in November. Which is when we decided to have this meeting. But then just recently, Bill came and met with some of the staff. And it came up at that meeting too. Basically, he wanted to know our, I guess it was our budgeting priorities. We was just like there to gather information, but the guarantee came up. And he was very clear about it, that not only were some of the other schools thinking about it, but they had adopted it. And he led, and maybe I'm misrepresenting, but I was led to believe that that meeting, that every other school had adopted it. That's what I heard. Besides us. And that the guarantee was, this is very different from what you said, Caroline, the guarantee was third grade, you'd be reading at a third grade level by third grade. He said that. And I think that that, what we're talking about. And fourth grade was by fourth grade, which is very, very different from what you said. And even further away from everything that we have said. So that is what other people heard. So that's where a lot of us got it. And then of course, when people were saying, well, what's this board meeting about? Some of us, I'll plead guilty, we're reiterating that because that's what our superintendent told us. That's what I learned too. Literally in so many words, that's what he told us. And that's your opinion. That's what you said at the meeting. You're not, I mean, I totally. Okay. So that's why we have that pressure. We talked about a guarantee. We said that like, to be fair, one example of such a guarantee would be, but we kept coming back to that one example of literacy at a third grade level by third grade and university together. At fourth grade. At fourth grade. At fourth grade. At grade level at grade level. Yeah. Right, right. So that's very different from what you were saying. I have a question for Ben to go back a little bit. It's Ben, right? About collaborating with the Highlight Arts teachers. I'm curious. Does the contractual workday end when students leave? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, no, so the way that it's applied here, I can't speak to all the schools in this SU is that certified staff are supposed to be here by 8.15 and we leave at 3.45. So that's a half an hour before kids get here and 10 minutes after they, well, really five minutes after the buses roll out. Okay. And early with these Wednesdays are used for administrative driven staff meeting? No, I mean, not all of them. Like we do have, I mean, that's been great. We have these open space times now where staff can kind of raise something that they want to lead a workshop on and then we kind of split up and go to our own places and get the work done that we need to do. So it's not all administratively driven. That is sometimes challenging too because there might be one session that's happening that you might feel like you want to go to and then another one that's happening at the same time that might be relevant to you as well. But it's definitely helpful to have time to talk about. And we've had open space knocked out by other priorities. You know, we've come to a staff meeting expecting to get organized and do open space and something else came up. You know, it's just with a higher level. At least twice right now. I don't want to argue over the semantics of the word guarantee because it's clearly sort of a trigger for us in a way to hear the word guarantee, I want to be careful. But I also want to say that when you say to a community member that you have a guarantee that has meaning to it. So then it's nice to say, well I know you don't really mean guarantee in that way and I'm not going to argue semantics with you, Chris because I really know that we want the same thing. But, you know, Joe Joe down the road, here's guarantee and we all know it has a word. And as Daniel said, I never want to be responsible for guaranteeing an outcome for a child because we have no control over that. And so that's why I would like to move more into what Daniel talked about, which is we guarantee a process. We guarantee this is what we're going to give your child. We guarantee that your child will make progress but we cannot guarantee an outcome. And one thing I wanted to make sure that this is sort of a side, but I want to get it in. Do you know the way of counselors who come into school twice a week? We have two different counselors in the community and I want to make sure the board members know that. That we have kids that really are struggling whether it's biological, whether it's situational, whether it's trauma, whatever it is that we actually bring in two therapists from the community and we have them booked two days a week to see kids on a regular basis. And these are kids, this is aside from parents saying I'm taking my child to see so-and-so because we feel that their mental health is so getting in the way of their learning. And this isn't home stuff, this is worth saying. If it's a home thing, parents sort of need to take care of it. These are kids for women. We have two folk days of therapy saying this kid can't learn and we do pull them from math and we do pull them from art because they can't see everybody in morning meeting as much as Diana would like. All the kids is in their morning meeting. We pull kids from math and literacy every week for two solid days because we believe that those kids can't access their learning. That's the reality of the world we're living in. For some kids, it's a divorce and in six months or a year maybe we can transition them out of it. There are some kids for whom they've been doing it since kindergarten because their personal lives are so stressful. So we can give 100 hours of math a day but some of those kids are absolutely not available to learn it at that moment and if we don't address that piece, we're stuck. I love that. And how is that, how did it come to be that that is in place here? Oh, we have something called, we've always had something called an EST, or not an EST, we now call it SST. We've had a lot of applicants. It's always been the guidance counselor, the nurse, the principal, and then invited people related on who those kids are. And now it's Chris Malone because he's behavior and we meet once a week. We've done this since I've been here. It's actually was mandated. I don't know if it's still mandated anymore but it was mandated by AOE at one point. And we sort of identify kids that are struggling for emotional behavior reasons and they're referred by teachers or whatever. And we talk to families. Sometimes families come to us and say, is there a way, is there a counselor, do you know the counselor? And for parents that can do it, they may take them after school but as the therapists are saying, we can't see everybody at four o'clock. And also we found that taking a kid out for two hours so they can drive them up and then come back doesn't work. Because the reality is we're in a rural community and it's really difficult. So this is paid for, this is outside counseling but we give them a space. We give them a space, they're not security. We're double-edit or insurance. And what I love most about it is that the trauma and the healing from trauma is being left to the mental health professionals. One thing I worry about, I want educators having trauma training. It's really important to know but to think that you are going to be an expert on trauma or that that's your responsibility has always sort of been a concern of mine so I love that. But the fact is I wanna say that to guarantee an outcome when you've got kids for lots of different reasons. Whether it's for example, they have a severe learning disability and they spend their whole lives feeling like I'm not a good person. So they act out, there's a perfectly good example. We have a therapist who sort of works with them so that maybe they can be a little more productive in class. So I would really, really ask that you please not focus on an outcome and focus as Daniel said on what we can offer kids but I'll never guarantee that you can make 10 hoops in a row in basketball because you just may not ever be a good basketball player or that you can run America on in 10 minutes. And I totally cut you off, Brian. Did you have something to say? I'm actually back to the question that you asked. I think we've gone bald with different topics here but the question was on collaboration. Oh yes. And the topic of staff meetings and one of our staff meetings once a month is dedicated to, it was actually yesterday, to inputting data into infinite campus. And while I'm really thankful that Amy has allocated that time for us to do that, it is another taxation on our time collectively to be able to be working together and that's a new thing this year. It started last year but I think that's something to look at as far as just putting a value on how our input into that is how much is it improving the education for our kids, the time invested in. You as the highly educated being one. 334, 334, putting them into IC. I don't value that time and I don't feel like it's, I feel like conversations I can have with family are way more valuable. I know that the goal of the district through that is just more information for families so that they know where their child is at and I understand that. But when we talk about time as a limited commodity or a limited resource that we have, that is taking up time. Is someone else able to do it? I mean, kind of like putting in new voices. Exactly, that was my question. Can there be a data, a higher data person to do that and be proficient? Or is it something that you would have to take with time? Right, yes. So can we just keep putting that? So we can't be. You have to give it to them on paper. Even if you don't, you're not there typing it all. You're still doing the work. Like I feel like you'd still be doing the work of providing the information to give to another person. So then it's almost like double the work. So it can't be, it can't just be handed over, typed in. For me, also just, it goes back to that feeling at an early years level where like, I really value the whole child and a play-based education and academic growth, that balance. And that's something that I'm striving for every year, but it just doesn't feel right at an early years level to be going free. Science, science. Like, where we're out in the world, we're in eco every Friday and we're there exploring nature and we are learning a lot about the world. I don't feel like I need to assess that at that point in the development and put it into IC. I feel like my time is more valuable planning for that and react, taking the experiences, thinking about how it went and changing it for the next time. So that has been an area of stress from me in the past couple of years. And I think that that is another thing that just, yeah, it just creates, it takes away from time we have to put towards planning. And I know like there's some schools in Chittenden County where they pay the expectations that the pair of educators do like photocopying and paperwork stuff with the expectation that then teachers are freed up to meet with parents more often. So that's why I was sort of, what Chris was asking about. So Dave, I just have a quick question about, does anybody know the correctness of the understanding that all of the other boards in the SU have adopted some sort of, I think each one here is the only one that has adopted a guarantee, is my belief. Everybody was close though, when he was here last, I thought- Matthew, I would make Dave the other board you actually adopted. So I- Because it was just yesterday, because I told her she's not familiar as well. And Amy yesterday to this pair of staff said, well, I think it's a lot more than just East Montpelier, it's all, I think all of them have. That's what we heard. Because I- Is that what's being new information? The board meeting, I believe, Bill said East Montpelier had adopted it. Boom, that was the only one. But yesterday Amy said, it's a lot more than just Montpelier. It's, I think they've all either all adopted it or all adopted it. I will find out. I will find out, I will let everybody know. Thank you. Thank you. Steve Caroline's idea of the paper thing, that's what I did last year. I had these like 11 by 17 pieces. I mean, it was sizable. So that I could keep track of all these different performance indicators and standards that we were having for kids. And so that's what I did. And it was funny because that was one of the things that I said, I was like, wouldn't it be great if I could just take this pile of paper and like give it to somebody who could just like do this a lot faster than I can? So that was the first thing. And I think Chris, I wanted to go back to your point because I just want to pose a question. And I don't know. I mean, I haven't thought a lot about it. But like when I hear the word guarantee, there's like an implied or else, like if I buy a fridge or a car or like a whole list of things that have like guarantees. And so like I wonder in the case of this guarantee, what is the what else? And if there isn't one, then how is it different than making a goal? I guess that would be my question. Death by dragon. Sign me up, sign me up, sign me up. Oh, here you go. I did. I did. I did. I did. You were else? I was by someone who couldn't support the guarantee. We would dedicate resources to, and it was not individuals. It wasn't like, oh, it wouldn't be, the teacher failed would be, we failed. So I guess then the question is what's the difference of using the word goal instead of? Well, because if the goal, if you're saying we have a goal of a hundred percent, it I think builds into at least an expectation or a plausible denial. It was only a goal. And naturally like if you have a guarantee for your refrigerator, when you put it, you expect it to work. And so that, I think that's the psychological difference. Between the two. So you're thinking that. So what I hear you saying is that if I don't use the word guaranteed, that somehow I have a different expectation for my students. Representation to our community, we have a different responsibility to ensure that each student not, and it really was not a teacher base. No, I get the question. And it was no, and it was certainly no statement, we don't think you guys are working hard enough or have great concern and dedicated to your students. It was nothing like that. It was just. So as an outcome, as a process, because that's all really then that we're talking about, what's the difference? Well actually it's totally the result. And I think Daniel makes a good point of saying, guaranteeing the process. Saying as an outcome, you're talking about then like, if you don't meet the goal, then that activates something. Some process of reflection. My question is, is like, how does that, how does that, I'm asking, how does the outcome of like, the process that goes forward from a failed guarantee or a failed goal differ? How do those two things differ? Regardless of what you call it. But I think that the word guaranteed has a much different. The ramification is much different. Like when, I don't know who was talking about the person down the street thinking of guarantee in a legal sense. I'm saying you guaranteeing that you're going to do it so you, and so that, and I think folks would say, the goal is different than a guarantee. I think, and that's where I was going. I was saying, guarantee, if we're gonna say guarantee, you have to be willing to, and then let me just circle back because I think that comes back to if we guaranteeing a result here and we guaranteeing to rearrange resources, that's kind of spread across the system in terms of, okay, if we made this guarantee for literacy and math, and we're not meeting it and we have to reallocate resources, that's that kind of has a ripple effect which is problem can be problematic. So what I hear you saying is that you wouldn't be so inclined to make the same decisions based on a goal, but you would be so inclined to make those kinds of decisions based on a guarantee. I don't know what that is. I mean, that's what I hear you saying. That's what I hear you saying. It is a good question, and I think we allocate resources when we hear there's a need. Right, so I mean, yeah, so I would just ask, I would just ask like whether the word is the goal. Oh, and I can do that because it's only a goal. I mean, I don't know, has that been your experience that you experienced people in this building treating the word goal that way? Has that been your experience? No, but as a board we have. I think that has not been your experience with the board in terms of? Not, not, not that I'm willing to speak to you right now, but like... More in terms of not obtaining them? Yeah, not obtaining them, not measuring them, not finalizing them. I do, but... Do you make progress towards them? What happens when this board is no longer a board because you're part of the larger, right? And so this conversation, even though I really value it and I think it's such an incredibly wonderful time that we're here together and talking about it, a year from now you might not be a board anymore and so we'll be told what to do anyway. We're, yeah. One, but you know, that's the hope, it's not that. Well, as some of it are from this board will represent. Right, correct. From me and hopefully they at least one person will represent, so I would like one or two, I think. Yeah, I think that's a really important question. I guess I'll put that back to you, which is to say how would you want to communicate with, if not this board, then another board? What are the mechanisms that we can set in place, at least we're on board now and potentially, it's huge. And you know in Washington West, which is where I'm from, that is what we're grappling with right now. It is a nasty environment there right now because of the lack of transparency and communication between the public and that larger board. It is, I don't know if you're right about it. It's unbelievable. And so if that's where we're heading. Who wants to, nobody wants to. Chris, tell me about it. If nobody wants to be there. You know where folks want to do this again. Would you like to do this on a regular basis? I have just one question that I don't like to, I'm going to turn it into a pocket two, I promise. Does anybody want to stick their neck out and provide any positives? So we talk a lot at the WCSU about these goals that really focus on proficiency levels, increasing profanities, they're all test based. Can anybody give some of the positives of a strong focus on literacy and math proficiencies? Because I didn't hear anything like that from any of you. I heard all sorts of other focuses. Yeah? You didn't raise that enough for sure. It's not just one thing, it's going well. Well, just like, because we talked a lot about, like at the WCSU last night, we adopted a goal of all of, you know, Berlin gets from this many proficient math to this many proficient math and Middlesex goes from this percent to this percent. It's all end point based and it's all based on testing and there's a strong focus on math and literacy. And I just, I've heard a lot of the reasons why maybe we shouldn't be focusing on those things, but I wondered if anybody has any reasons why we should be focusing on them. I don't think there's anything. Of course. No, yeah. No, yeah. Look at that information. Is that another? I feel like- I mean, of course, of course we all want to kiss you math. Yeah, right. Definitely. I think the problem is because it goes without saying and because people are concerned about whether the balances are wack. We've been talking about where it might be out of balance, but you know, I see a lot of teachers teaching math and literacy and I'm a certified elementary school teacher not just a math geek. And I have the utmost respect for it, the skills and the motivation, the dedication of these teachers in the areas of literacy and math. So I feel like even though we didn't talk about it, I feel like there's a really strong emphasis on it. And it's partly because of the way that the issues that came to this gathering shaped up that we focused on the things that we haven't felt we've been heard about. I should rephrase. I didn't think that you guys didn't think literacy math was important, but what I'm trying to say is that we have, at the WCSU level, a very strong, right now, a very strong focus on local and federal endpoints. And is there, so I guess what I'm just trying to say is I'm hearing a lot of people saying we should actually really try to get interested in learning and all these other things are to come. We should provide them with these classes that they love because then they're gonna wanna come to class, they're gonna wanna come to school and they're gonna wanna work harder. I'm hearing all those things. I'm not really hearing a lot of people saying, yeah, I really think that we should be working on getting our proficiency in math from 41% to 62%. So I was wondering if there's anything to say. One of the, what we were told was that, is that the goals that were set were staff driven. Yes, we were. That's what they were representing, that the goals that were put up on the board were staff driven. And in 10 years. We were told that's what we're doing. What? We picked the numbers. We looked at this, that was all from the start of the 60s from one measurement. And we were asked to look at kids where the yellow and the red and count how many we thought we could move. So we were asked to do it. It did come from us, but it was from that one measure. So this wasn't you saying we should move the proficiency. This is you answering question. How many of these kids do you think you could move? Can I have a simple follow up? So did that, when those questions were asked, were you asked, how can you increase artistic expression? That's a student learning outcome. Were you asked how can you increase physical education, music, these other things? No, so I was at the meeting last night and it was very disturbing to me. It was, I saw a superintendent saying, math and literacy are what matters and nothing else. That was the underwriting message. And I saw the school board members as a whole not pushing back on that. And that is going to be our board. Arguably that's our board now, depending how you read what the state board ordered last week. It's really not clear how much authority you have versus how much the larger board has already. And I mean, these are huge issues and I think we all need to be looking closely at it and looking at how our supervisory district is being run and it is not in the manner that this conversation has been talking about. And this is the conversation. This is what I want for my kids, the whole child learning. And so I would say that while the focus of the conversation was around math and literacy, I strongly disagree with the statement that it was at the, you know, basically dismissing every other subject that I mean, this is everything that you talked about part of the core learning outcomes that the SU is striving for, that we've clearly set. So I think that that's an exaggeration. You know, were we focused on math? Yes, because across the supervisory union we're under 50% in proficiency. And yes, it is for one assessment of these, we're at the start of 360. I think everyone recognizes that there's multiple ways in which we assess, but this is one of them. And I think, so one of the things that the supervisory union, so I sit on the school quality committee that was asked to recommend to the board, the SU board a goal and in our student monitoring report for that was presented to us in October, we were provided with the sort of each school's current levels of proficiency and what the numbers of students that were proficient. And then I think what you were just alluding to is how many people that could be moved in each school to advance one year's worth of learning as well as how many would be proficient. And so we looked at that and said, you know, that's great, this was driven from the local schools from the staff creating this, we wanna support this. It's at least something that can be measured. And more importantly, we wanna then hear like know about what select, for example, was asked was, we also wanted to see something around literacy, but we wanted for teachers to reflect and basically learn from that process and what could be informed to do better or do differently. But just as a starting point, I think, you know, for to look at how we are at least across the board across the supervisory union addressing the issue of math. And again, that, while yes, that has been a somewhat of a focus, it is not at, I mean, I can speak, you know, not for everyone, but consistently at different, these different meetings, the whole idea of whole child, the idea of the importance of student experience and how they're accessing learning, the importance of the ally parts are all fundamentally part of those conversations. And I think also one of the things that comes down to it again is the hours in the day and the resource. I don't even wanna say the resource is available, but the way in which we can, you know, I'm just gonna back up. I think to Daniel's point earlier about the sort of top down, as I don't think that is certainly the goal around of our board, and I think of other boards to necessarily create this sort of top down dictation of what is expected. I think ideally it will be a collaborative effort and that was again spoken about last night is that this is however we move forward is it has to be moved forward in partnership with the board, with the administration and with the staff and ultimately with the community. So I think intentions, good intentions are there. Unfortunately sometimes not always the most clear communication I think also comes back. You, there was a stress that in order to necessarily make or maybe improve and literacy, if there's reallocation, there'd be a prior prioritization and in a atmosphere of a set budget in which we're not talking about increasing time, then there would be a picking and choosing. And I think when you're emphasizing math or literacy, the other things that would go away would probably be the outline arts. I mean it wasn't said that, but when you're talking about prioritization, that would probably, I believe, would happen because of again, it's a finite resource time, it's a finite resource, our budget is finite resource. And if you're emphasizing and putting more time towards something, it has to come from somewhere else. And it just shouldn't be pie in the sky here. And you know, what's your time frame for leaving? Because I know you have to be at seven, right? Yeah, probably about, no more than 10 minutes. No more than 10 minutes, okay. So that's, sorry, we're gonna do, sorry. I mean, we can stay, but we just don't want to. Okay, Julie's had her hand just stuck in that position now. I think what I was trying to express earlier is that there has been this huge focus on maths and literacy improvement, which is fine and it should happen if improvement needs to be made. So in extending classes for those and whatever else has come into play, I feel that it feels that some of what is being lost is taking care of the whole child because these goals now have to be met. So I'm in classrooms where there are children who have behavioral issues, who have learning difficulties, who have very chaotic home lives, who then come into the classroom and act in a chaotic manner because that's all they know how to do. So those children already have difficulty, but those children are also having an impact on children who don't necessarily have learning difficulties, don't have behavioral issues, don't have chaotic home lives, but then find their classroom a chaotic environment because of all that's happening around them. So we have to look at how to take care of the needs of these children, those who have identified issues, but also those who are being affected by those children. And I feel like a lot of that is being lost and this is what I'm dealing with a lot. And I happen to care very much about their emotional state as I know we all do and how they operate socially, how they are emotionally. And again, that has to be a factor in whatever you do. And if we can talk about guarantees and we can talk about goals and we can issue all sorts of labels, but we need to really get down to looking at how we take care of these children from the very basic level because it is having an impact on everything. And that was why I said you can add as many elements of maths and literacy as you like, but if you're not taking care of that whole child and I saw the video with the Nate Levinson thing and it was a little bit of a derisory. Oh, they're gonna say whole child, whole child. And we want that, but that's essential. It's absolutely essential because we can make goals. We can make guarantees till the cows come home and those children won't meet them if they are not settled enough in the classroom and within themselves to get there no matter how excellent the teachers are. And the teachers here are incredible. The support staff here are some of the highest calibre I've known. Some of them are aware licensed teachers. We're not just talking about people coming with the wildlife children. So it was kind of hard to hear earlier, oh, well, this is all very negative. It's not negative, it's about being realistic about what the issues are at the core. So when you're talking about devising ways to teach maths and literacy in a better way or a more accessible way, look at these children and how you can meet their needs so that they can then go on to achieve those things. I have three really quick things. Brian, what you just said about the board is why I have been so against at 46. I want all of you who are invested in our town to have a say. I know that our board has divided opinions on things. You're always so civil to each other. You listen to us, you listen to each other. I trust the intentions of this board 100%. Whether I agree with you or on every single thing or not, I do, I trust this board that's looking for the best interest of these children. So thank you for that. I will say that what Kyle had said earlier was born out in the meeting. Bill, again, in so many words, whoever was at that meeting could bear this out. He said, what you said but even stronger, Chris, that yes, we are focusing on math and science and it really, he basically said, allied arts people, because they were all there, just about, no, you are not the priority. Paris, you're not doing any instruction anymore. You're gonna just be behaviorists. He challenged us, well, how are you gonna pay for it? I'm like, I didn't think I was here to raise money. I thought you just wanted to know our priorities. So he took that opportunity to tell us in no uncertain terms that allied arts, you are on the chopping block basically and Paris, you're part of the problem so you can't do any instruction whatsoever. He said, yes, you will be converted to behaviorists next year, that's what he told us in so many words. So it wasn't your best intentions and you're looking at the whole child and wanting all those things, I believe you. But your boss, our boss, doesn't and he said it in so many words. The last thing I wanted to have is a question for Allison. When you're looking for, you said you were gonna look for how many other schools have adopted a guarantee. One thing that would be interesting to me is how did they get there? Like we're so against it, I would really be curious if you can parse it out, I don't know if you can. Why do those communities seem to think that that's okay? Like why do they not have the same icky feeling that we do? Because that would be interesting. I would like to know that. It may not have been community decision. Quite rightly. I mean, we have to just put it in the store. It may not have been decision. Oh, just board. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Something else just regarding the Nate Levinson article that we didn't touch on that much was replacing parents, at least what I got from it, was changing funding so that parents were eventually replaced with coaches. And that rubbed me almost more wrong than guarantees because with the amount of kids, I think about something like our first grade classroom right now and the amount, they're little children. Like they're children, they're little people and the amount of help that's needed even for kids who don't have learning difficulties and kids who don't have behavioral challenges or trauma, they're kids who have bloody noses or neither. I've been with other kids who came up for their shoes being tied today to me when I'm coming in to start class. We need adults. We need loving, caring, supportive, skilled adults to work with kids because they're little people and they're here so many hours a day and need to feel like so they can learn, have to feel like this is a safe- That's where it has authority. I'm asking my board members, as a community member's parent here, that someone makes a motion saying that the Rumney School Board supports whole child learning, the allied arts and their paraprofessionals. And then you have a vote on that right now. We'll put it up here for next week to not even want you to get on the 13th. Good point. So if you can put that on the agenda, then if other things should be added to that, now is the time to say what needs to be said. I just want to touch upon the Nate Levinson model as well. And I know we're short for time, so I'll make that quick and sweet. But the really excellent teacher portion of that, just totally rubbed me the wrong way. Really excellent teacher or not. I think everybody is a really excellent teacher. I'm not gonna speak for myself as a teacher. Other people can think what they, say if I'm a really excellent teacher, I'm not gonna broadcast I think I'm really excellent, but I would be nowhere without the paraprofessionals in my classroom. And I just want to make that perfectly clear that I am extremely capable at doing my job, but I cannot do it without them. And yeah, and it does. And whether it is, like you said, a bloody nose or a tide shoe or tears or a total meltdown in the middle of morning meeting, if I didn't have other adults in that classroom, the morning meeting's now over. And that's just something that I can't say enough of. And I just wanted to make that really public. And Bill also said at that meeting about how we at RUM we have the, helped me the highest special end costs. So. No contrast to that. Just throw it out there for that. So, that's a little. I chose to, that is true because you said that was true. And yet there is no business that I can think of where you would take the professional and you would not provide them with support staff. I have two texts when I go to work. Oh, I have one that's with me. And yeah, I mean, I would be terrible as doing it as a doctor without being able to rely on this. So I was really surprised when I was hearing that just because I can't think of any other industry where that's the case where you send out sort of the. The support staff, exactly. You know, the reason I wrote the long piece that I did for the survey was because I thought, I'd better read the 11th C piece. I actually read two 11ths in articles and went to their site. And I found plenty that was interesting about it. But the thing that I'm hearing tonight is that the things that seem to grate the most. I've been things that might have originated from Levinson, but they've been, somehow they've been translated a couple of different times. So the one we've been hearing these things from people who have power over our job security and our evaluation and decisions about our working conditions. When that kind of information comes down as if this is the way that this institution is going to function, it feels really different than the conversation that we're having with you as our board, you know? You know, I feel like the kind of conversation we're having here, even though we don't all agree, is the kind of personal conversation and the kind of relationships we wanna have with our kids, you know? Some of them are difficult kids. Some of them are kids that are just happy, happy, happy kids. But do we treat them like a family? And I'm worried about if we implemented these recommendations chapter and verse, what we would have is a bunch of different specialists shuttling in and out and any one of them could be the person that says, well, I put the shingles on the roof according to the way I was trained. You know, I bought the shingles that were recommended in this builder's guide. Everybody, you know, has the out of seat. Well, I'm just doing the things the way I was told and I just had this little, so don't blame me, you know, about this kid hating school. Don't blame me if this kid is not reading on a third grade level. I feel like the thing that really made me wanna work here was when I first got hired here, is that it really felt like a community of people that were supporting each other, using each other's resources, you know, and different people had different resources. You know, I didn't expect Scotty Brower and Mary Beth Mastin to have identical teaching styles. They don't, you know. Everybody was different, but everybody had something to offer and everybody shared what they had with everybody else. And that's a really different model than having hired guns come in. That's kind of a joy. But having people shoveling in and out to do this little piece of making things worth it and somebody else being a different little piece, you know, it feels like it'd be very fragmented and really erode the sense of community. And that just has to be... Really quick. Sorry. At first I heard of Nate Levison was when I read the post that you put in, Alison, as a community member and the parent, which I thought your post was great. Although I disagreed with the Allied Arts portion of it and now we said it. Now we said it to you. But I didn't, I don't even know, I didn't, maybe because I'm an Allied Arts teacher, I did not know who Nate Levison was. I have not, I really, unless I did any research on it. So this is really interesting to me. Like if we are putting into practice or maybe potentially, I'll say, because people say, well, we haven't really fully adopted it. Why don't we know about him? Or why aren't we clued into saying you might want to look into him a little bit? But so that's all I want to say. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.