 All right, it is, oh wow, my watch and my clock really disagree, it's 6.06 p.m. I'm gonna call the meeting to order. I haven't shared a quorum. The meeting purpose, we're gonna meet with our state legislators, a superintendent search update, and brain tree and RTCC presentation slash discussions. We'll go ahead and start with public comment. The board welcomes comments but is not able to take any action on them other than to direct the public to the appropriate staff member or to the complaint procedure. Comments are limited to three minutes per speaker. Time may not be ceded to another speaker. Comments are to be addressed to me, the board chair, or the board as a whole, not to any individual on the board, on the staff, I've got an echo. No, no problem, or in the public. Please raise your hand and wait to speak until you are asked to by me, the chair. Please identify yourself with your first and last name and your town of residence. Please refrain from restating comments that have already been shared. You can certainly express agreements with those previous comments. Order and decorum shall be observed by everyone. Shouting and profanity are prohibited. As the board chair, I will maintain the order and decorum of the meeting. And with that, the floor is open. The floor is open for public comment. Please do make sure that if you're here from the public that you sign in on the sign-in pad. Whoop, that's right there, thank you, Jay. So that we can have public record of attendees. Would anyone like to speak? I do have something I don't know whether anybody else does. Go ahead. So I've addressed the group. I'm Martha Haffner from Randolph Center. Anything else that I need to make sure I said? No, you got it, okay. And I've addressed the group in August timeframe on parental rights concerns previously. This is a petition that I would like to see if it couldn't be brought before the public before a vote. And I realize you're saying that you can't take action on anything like it, but I would like this to be entered in as something to that effect. That there's wording on the backside of this about parental rights being observed and making sure that there's transparency in the curriculum contents of what's being offered. And also in terms of, you know, what kind of transactions are happening at the nurse's office and things along that line that files that are held by the schools are available to the public to be able to see, well, to the parents especially, to be able to see. Those are the kinds of things that this is addressing. So there are things that have been brought to my attention. There's been things that the superintendent's office has shared with me saying, look, don't we already do this? There's places where I know that things are not happening in that accord. So to what extent that that can be addressed, whether it's this or there are other things, I would hope that you would give due consideration to it. Okay. Thank you very much. So, give copy to you. If it's something you'd like the board to have, I can take a copy. Send email versions of it to others, but not at this time. You're welcome to. And the secretary already has one. Anyone online? Okay. Can I ask a question? Can you comment on any kind of turnaround time with? No, we can't. Okay. Thank you. All right. Well, it's time for our guests. Sam, if you'd like to introduce this agenda item. Yeah, sure. So, once a year, we invite our state representatives and state senators to come on down, represent our district and present to the board as to what they have going on in this legislative session. And, man, do they have an exciting session going on right now on the topic of ed funding. So. How do I describe this? Well, we're riveted. So, Lane, if you can just keep an eye out. I know Senator Perchaluk was gonna try to make it on Zoom. And Watson had something come up so she can't. And I think Mark was planning to come in person. So he may arrive shortly. But I'll turn it over to whoever wants to kick it off. You guys can come right up. Sure. I appreciate that. And thank you for your introductions, my twin brother. Full disclosure. Jay Hooper, represent the five towns of Brookfield, Braintree, Randolph, Roxbury, I'm serving in my fourth term. I did do two terms on the House Education Committee. So thankfully I have had enough time to become adequately familiar with the stuff that we are indeed discussing in my pillow right now with quite a lot of, excitement is not the way to classify the discussion. But it is certainly a lot of very important stuff that actually could be classified as economic crisis. So as for McDonald, Senator McDonald's absence currently, he's potentially pretty sick right now. I talked to him today, he didn't sound great. He said he would try to make it. Senator Cummings has plans tonight being that it is Valentine's Day. But she hopes that you'll invite her back to engage with you all either remotely or in person. Thank you all for inviting us. I'll let Larry introduce himself and then we can dive into some of that uncomfortable political content. Yeah, so I'm Larry Sackwitz and I represent the same district as Jay. And I'm on the Environment and Energy Committee. This is the second year of my second term. And I am not an expert in education finance. I'm still learning quite a bit about that. So I'm not sure I have a lot to sort of proactively put out there, but I'm certainly willing to hear your questions and answer them the best that I can. And any concerns I definitely want to hear because that's really important in forming our path forward. So I have a question just because I saw either in the paper that there's gonna be a legislative breakfast also next, is it next week or week after? There's gonna be a Monday at 17.30? Okay. Will you all be there? Is it the 19.10? Yeah, we'll be there. Yeah, 7.30 at BTC. Yeah, so that might be another time that we would see in the other folks. Okay, I'm just curious. So, well, without further ado, I'll tell you what, I actually know they won't, well. Oh, no, because it's Orange County, isn't it? It's just Orange County. Well, they represent the county. But they do represent part of Orange County. So I'm not sure if after we change the districts, they have one town that has implications of the decisions that you all make. So they will be invited, whether or not they decide to come, I suppose. In a recent front porch forum, I think Perry, in case it listed the people who he expects, the legislators who expects to be there, who said they'd be there. You can do a little search, you can find it. We'll see what happens. I'm distributing here sort of a summarizing document that I've fished out of the recycling bin just after we adjourned this act this evening around 5 p.m., because I figured you may, yeah. Thank you. It's an interesting thing to discuss education finance in Vermont because it's such a complex topic. I'll give you all some if you'd like to. All right, you can try, thank you. Because particularly with so many new members, should I stand, should I stand? Okay. So many new members in the legislature, particularly on the House side of things, there are fewer lawmakers than many who are comfortable discussing the nature of the problems because of a lack of confidence in terms of understanding what we are discussing. And that extends itself all the way to the voters. In Vermont, we have traditionally protected the notion that local control is essential to the budgeting process. And when we craft our budget, our state budget, the bulk of that is education spending. And every year, as you all probably have been able to observe and could predict, education spending doesn't go down. It tends to go up. And no two budgets in the state of Vermont do not impact the tax rates of each corresponding district. Do you get what I'm saying? You all create a budget. Voters have one opportunity to have what we call local control, which is the veto power on one day of the year, right? Assuming that enough no voters get together and say, this budget figure is too hot. And then they send all of you back to the drawing board to redo the work that you've done over the last several months. And so hopefully school boards that work well together figure out sort of a list of priorities as they do this in the event that they have to return to the work. So as you all know, on town meeting day, those budgets are typically voted on. That's not necessarily going to be the case this fiscal year. And the reason is because we've just explored and actually passed on a voice vote, which was a little surprising to me, particularly because I can't think of a single Republican who really spoke on the matter. We Democrats in the majority have an obligation to figure out what it looks like to mitigate, well, I'm sure you've seen in the news, expected property tax hikes of as much as 18 or 22%. That's unacceptably high for reasons that are economic, but also political. And so this H50, excuse me, H850 was a swift effort to take probably the least lousy of three really cruddy options to encourage school boards, actually no, excuse me, to encourage, oh yeah, school boards to go on your own volition back to the drawing board and decide, okay, we're gonna bring down our dollar figure in our district as far as we can. Unfortunately, we probably know that the math is not gonna meet the mark in terms of bringing down this year's additional tax burden of something around $246 million. It was projected maybe around 200, but then we had the good presence of mind to ask school boards to give us an idea of what plans were and that dollar figure increased significantly, the reason being because, is everybody following along, am I? Act 127 of 2022 was a policy that we enacted to update on the basis of equity, our extremely complex funding formula system. It's the consensus is that Vermont has America's most equitable funding formula. But unfortunately, equity isn't really fully realized and in a lot of places we're seeing the costs for education going up and the outcomes that those costs would hopefully otherwise create in fact, diminishing. And so in Montpelier, we're trying to figure out what to do about that 240 some odd million dollars. And today we started with step one of what is so far being described as a three step process to try and, I don't know, maybe relieve that figure by 50, but that's still not a good enough number in my opinion. And there are a lot of members of the General Assembly who agree that that's not gonna cut it. And so we're trying to figure out how to keep the pressure on the chairs of the money committees and sort of the powers that be the leadership in Montpelier to continue to be creative about what it looks like to shave some budget and also make maybe certain budget decisions this year to buy down this year's tax rates as we have in the last several years with money that we don't have anymore so that we can just really show that we're committed to changing the funding formula. But the problem, of course, is that we've just made great strides in the direction of tax capacity, which is sort of fundamentally at odds with the notion of equitable tax burden. So, Jay, for folks who don't know the ins and outs of Act 127, can you explain what part of that bill is contributing to the increase, the significant increases in budget? So basically the thrust of Act 127 was to introduce additional variables that we use to figure out what our equalized per pupil spending is across the state and district to district. So I think it used to be three or five variables in the past now, it's as many as eight or nine. Geography, English language learners, how old a child is, these types of, that data goes into a very detailed formula that at many stops averages the question of tax capacity to tax burden and what that bill did was create additional tax capacity for districts that have fallen behind because the formula doesn't quite deliver a distribution of state dollars, you know, so that a certain standard over here is met versus the districts where, you know, the gold towns where parents can create boosters and enhance educational opportunity because there's more wealth in those places. There, we, let's see, we call them weights, we updated the weights, W-E-I-G-H-T, and we're discovering that while nobody can argue with equity and that's indeed the thing to strive for, we are seeing that the impacts of 127 are so incredibly expensive that we're actually in danger of destroying the entire system and that's a worse outcome than anyone you could possibly think of because at that point we're running the risk of allowing private interests to buy up our education system and run it the way that they want to and that would eliminate all this democratic process, right? So the problem that I'm trying to help figure out solutions for with the chairs and despite that they might, they might not realize it right now. I mean, I don't know if you read seven days but I was quoted a few times being a little bit direct and I, well, I beg their pardon but I'm certainly not sorry and I look to continue to try and figure out ways to explore a new direction because property tax, we lawmakers, I can speak for myself in my eighth session, that's right, carrying out my fourth term and so I've gone door to door several times suggesting to voters that we're working on it, we're gonna fix this problem of higher property taxes every year and the way we're gonna do it is we're gonna really actually dig into exploring what it looks like to shift to an income-based system which would be generally more equitable across the board, we think and with Act 127, which I supported and it was on this basis, we included a task force to explore what that looks like and so they gave a report to the legislature in December of 2022, which is quite a few days ago and so now we're realizing that we have such a crisis on our hands this year that thankfully it's forcing a little political will to actually maybe chart a new path even though we've just charted an extension to the old path, right? So, is that an answer? Yeah, can you just touch on the 5% cap and what some school districts have done to increase the burden on that? So good question, so the 5% cap that Sam's referring to is this privilege that the bill created in the districts that would need to increase their tax capacity and they pretty much all utilized it, right? Like so many of them that we are having to actually tell them that we'd rather you didn't use that and can you please go back and redo, sorry you wanted a new roof, even though that wasn't how we wanted you to spend that and that's how we're gonna decide to, we're hoping that you can wait on the roof and so we're waiting on data that is weeks and months away, like we won't know until next summer if this bill works and that's pretty scary. Jay isn't it also the case that there are districts that were not negatively impacted by 127 but saw the 5% cap as an opportunity? To raise their budgets in far and excess of that 5% and a big part of this bill is taking away that 5% cap and giving the districts which were negatively impacted an alternative way of minimizing the impact on them and at the same time take away the incentive from all the other districts to go for that extra money in a way which wouldn't have harmed them and kind of set ourselves up for kind of a tragedy of the comments by putting in that 5% cap. They had a loophole that would allow them to get money that they didn't necessarily need but the problem is is if they all do that it's gonna bring the yield down for everybody which is how much we get per student over the course of time and so it would be advantageous to find a better way so I appreciate the fact that folks are working on that quite a bit, yeah. So we simply put what Larry is describing in lane two. In some many cases wealthy districts are utilizing this privilege that we meant for not them. I mean we didn't say you can't do it and that was maybe a mistake. So we probably should actually consider outright delaying 127 but we'll see in the coming days if enough lawmakers agree with that idea. That was the question, what's the timeframe to if this was actually gonna get passed into law? How long would that take from where you are now? Which of course is probably something that's not easy to predict. We're running the audible with doing a no huddle offense on this little, well it's what we're calling the corn hyzer proposal. Well this just went through all stages of passage and it's going over to the Senate. So we suspended rules to hurry along. Any feeling on what their opinions are about it? I think all indications are that it should go through the Senate pretty quickly. It's gonna take a few days because it's gonna have to go to their money committees first and then it'll go to the Senate floor and then the governor will have to sign it. So it'll go a lot faster than bills. So right after March 5th. But I wouldn't be surprised if we saw governor signature within a week. So this sounds like you're gonna get rid of that 5%. That's correct. That's right. So this is an actual sort of amendment or band aid to act 127. But it isn't nailed down that we would force, there would be districts that refuse to do this. And if... But the 5% cap is gone. Right, but there would be districts that refuse to go back. They could, yeah, so part of this legislation gives districts the option to go back and redo their budgets and have an extended timeline too to have a vote. So you don't have to have a vote on town meeting day like you normally would. This bill allows, I can't remember with how much extra time, but I think a couple of months of maybe a month of extra time to take a vote. If you decide, okay, actually, given this new bill, we don't wanna keep our current budget. We're gonna go back, make some changes and then put it in front of the voters like in April instead of March. Right, so if you increased your budget by 10% over that 5% cap, you've got a pretty big incentive to go back and re-look at it if you aren't gonna get that protection of that 5% cap. Because if I understand correctly, if you were going up 10%, you weren't gonna be held responsible for that. You were gonna be allowed to just keep it at a 5% increase. Right, exactly. So that means that the boards would have to face the voters to say, sorry, we're increasing 10%. I would imagine that would have an impact on the local property tax still. The quirky part of it is the 5% cap is on the tax rate. The 10% cap is on the overall spending per student. So it's really quirky. I don't know why they did that split. There must have been some logic to it, but it makes it quirky about, you know, practice. So it's not that straightforward, what I was just saying. Yeah, no, the basic just. Yeah, if you wanted to spend way above, but only have a 5% impact on your 5% impact on your tax yield, then, and now you're gonna remove the 5% cap, then your taxpayers are gonna ultimately sit. Their taxes are gonna go up, and they're either gonna vote down your budget or the legislature's gonna give you the opportunity to go back to the drawing board, redraw your budget, and do what sounds like Governor Scott wants to do is mail-in ballots to try to streamline it. Because one of the other issues of deferring the vote from town meeting day is voter turnout, will inevitably be significantly lower unless you approve universal mail-in ballots. And so in our case, we were 9.9% below the 5% cap because we had a windfall, we were actually, at least on the school side, when you take the CLA out, we're actually asking for over 14 cents, less per $100 of assess value than we were the year before. Now, we made that decision strategically because of the cliffhanger, right? No, we started out there, and then when they gave us the correct numbers the month later, we ended up, we are so far below the 5%, we would have had to increase our budget by like five or $6 million to take advantage of the 5% cap, just, that would be crazy. So as far as we're concerned, the 5% cap doesn't even come into play, we're so far below it. And, Lane, is it true? My understanding is that that's because our district is one of the ones that benefited from the change in weightings from Act 127. Yeah, so my expectation, and you could correct me if I'm wrong, is we're actually in pretty good shape compared to most of the state, especially in terms of the voters and what they're gonna see and experience. Most of their increase is gonna be around their property tax increase side, the CLA piece. But the changes that you're potentially making and proposing with these laws will probably not affect us too much. If anything will either stay neutral or if it prevents a lot of districts from trying to game the system, it might actually benefit us because the yield will go up. And that was always gonna be true. Yeah, so, but not to buy very much. We were in the middle and we're probably on the good side of the middle. Yeah. Or the nice side. Yeah, and so what is, I'm not up to completely up to speed on what the thinking is around education and property taxes in the three towns right now. Where are we looking at right now compared to last year? So on the, like I said, I split it up into this is the impact because of what the schools are doing. And then this is the impact because of the property tax, right? Because property values have gone up considerably. So you get that CLA that comes in here. I can actually pull it up in two seconds. So on the school side, we've actually been doing really well here. It's been the CLA that's been kind of killing us under the information. So in 2022, 23, if you're just looking on the school side, so right, our expenses have been going up, but our revenues have been going up faster. So in 22, 23, we were asking for 7.5 cents less per hundred dollars of assessed value. 23, 24, we were asking for 7.2 cents less per hundred dollars of assessed value. And then for next year, on the school side of things, we're asking for 14.9 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value less. So on the school side, we're doing really well. On the overall impact, when you add the CLA component into things, things are going up. So if you've got a $250,000 property, right? So we'll use that as the basis. If you're in Braintree, you're looking at your taxes going up $343 in Brookfield, $388 and Randolph, $196. But most of that is due a little bit to the reset. There was a reset of the 21 tax rate when Act 127 came into place. And then most of that's due to the fact of, right, the state survey that they do to say, you know, where are you relative, where are your assessments in your town relative to what things are actually selling at? And so this is because their properties are worth more. They got to pay more taxes than the value of their properties. Do you know what the corresponding percentage increases are? Ah, I can probably find that. I see that. 23, 24. Two seconds. I got all the sheets here. I just want to make sure I'm looking at the right one because we've done a lot of. So the tricky thing too is the politics of this discussion are such that, as I said, we've got extremely high level concepts being talked about by people who are in a position to make some pretty impactful decisions individually. And doublespeak sometimes creeps its way into these public discussion. So tax capacity and tax burden are two different angles that you can argue for similar things. And so some lawmakers are suggesting like because we're tinkering on this formula with time we might see property tax relief. It's probably not true, and we probably know that. So we got to kind of make some difficult discussions about how to change gears because this formula has too many components that are just fundamentally at odds with each other. So on the school side, taxes are down almost 10%. When you add in the CLA taxes are up. And so in Braintree they're up 8.7%. Brookfield they're up 12.2. Randolph they're up 7. Or excuse me, 4.7. So again, like I said, a lot of our impact, most of our impact is just because of the property values that we're going up. Change in the CLA between years. Yeah, good questions. Good conversation too. All right, you're out of prison. Eh? Go back, go fix it. Who's all going to fix it? Yeah. Action, action, action. So the other thing that I saw that comes through to us as board members is the changing sort of mandating hybrid meetings and I believe there's some sort of hearing coming up on Friday. For our district, we're doing fine, but I can recognize that other districts that are smaller that may not have the technology that we have, I read something somewhere and I would agree with that side that maybe you can have the law say it's okay to do a hybrid meeting, but you're not going to mandate that everybody do a hybrid meeting. One of the benefits of the hybrid meetings is we definitely get more people engaged. And they may just come on briefly for public comment, but at least they can see what we're doing, you know? I mean, people are busy, so it is nice to have that option for folks, so I would love to be able to see that happen. I'm not sure I would agree with mandating it just because many schools are pressed with funding and just having to spend the money to get the technology to make it all happen and have it a mandated thing. I would err on the side of make it a possibility, but let's not mandate it. No, I tend to agree with you and that happens to be in my committee. We're looking into open meeting law and what it means for the future of digital engagement and what the law should require in the way of standards, so appreciate that, yeah, good thing. So now I'm on House Government Operations and Military Affairs, that's my current committee. Environmental issues, you talk to him. You talk to him, too, but anything else, anybody wanna, do we know how much the setup is here? I mean, aren't most, we bought it all with extra funds. Yeah, but aren't most of those school districts, like they already had to have hybrid meetings in the past, right, so, or did they? I don't know, I don't know. They weren't already required, wasn't already. They were a pandemic requirement? Yeah, they were remote, most places did it. It was kind of funny, like I was in another district the other day, they weren't using owls or anything, but they somehow managed, I didn't quite figure out how what their setup was. Yeah, it seems to me there are simpler. I find myself actually disagreeing with you, which surprises me, but in terms of access and equity, it seems to me that that mandating it is the only way to make sure that it's accessible to homebound people, or, you know, that. Sure, well, yeah, and of course, you don't want one to draw from the other, you know, you don't want that being available to somehow lessen the reality that you get put five warnings in certain places in the town, physical, you know, a physical place to go should be an option for people who don't have internet. Right, right, hybrid, yeah, yeah. But, it's interesting to talk more. Well, and then there's the connectivity, you know, everybody has internet, and you know, so that's where I just get a little nervous about mandating it, until we're all kind of have access. I'll mandate to try. How about that? Just a mandate to try. So, we gotta talk. Encourage, that's why I said encourage. I think there'll be more, of course, Act 46 was a really controversial policy endeavor that took quite a few years to, I was a pretty heavy lift for the lawmakers who were there at the time, neither of us were. I like to claim that I would have voted no. No idea if that's true or not, because I wasn't there. But, we're gonna have to have more consolidation-type discussions for certain places, you know, for instance, St. Albans has a town in the city, and their schools are miles apart. You could find savings in those types of scenarios. Not to pigeon, not to point, not to target them by them. So, I think, well, thank you for all the work that you do. I always tell people, you know, I'm a lawmaker and that's a fairly thankless job, but I don't wanna be my twin brother. He's a glutton for punishment, school board member. That sounds like the other thing to ask. Well, now I feel really motivated to continue our meeting, so thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jack. You guys are done with us? No more questions or thoughts for us? We're all good? Yeah. Well, thanks for having us. Thank you very much. Appreciate the invitation very much. I didn't see anybody come in online. I was keeping an eye on them. Oh, yeah, well, yeah, hopefully they'll come, but they've been busy. They had to deal with the Roxbury Montpelier School Board meeting last night, which I regret missing because Roxbury is in a very different place than... So what are they doing with Roxbury? I think they probably did, and actually, I didn't read the article because I was just, somebody sent me my quote, which was just two words, and you could probably imagine what those are. We'll all take the school, too. We'll all take the kids, but it's the school that's the problem because of the additional costs. And they want, of course, their biggest priority is keeping the school open, and it's one of those things that... That's touching on people's values, and that's a tough thing to do. That's very tough. I figure out a way to eat cake and keep it. No. Thank you both very much. We appreciate your time. Okay, we're moving on to monitoring organization. We're going to start with... RTCC update happens to be on the list first. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah. Chairs are very empty, and I know you all almost saw me fall off earlier. Can't you have kids fix this? I'm sure we can. I have a burn right there. I had a brief slideshow that I showed earlier to the grab. I don't know if you want me to plug in and do that, or... I mean, what would you prefer? My intention, personally, with these so-called presentations is very informal and more of a kind of conversation, but if that will help you... No, no, it's okay. Visual learners are just as important as talky learners, so... Yes, no, I don't need to do that. I am quite fine. Here, thank you. I wasn't sure if you were dying to see it. So things at RTCC have gone beautifully so far this year. One update is that we have a new work-based learning coordinator that's going to be starting in that role in two weeks, which I'm very excited about, but he is currently a long-term sub for one of our teachers. He was on an amazing journey in Abu Dhabi. He built a boat, and he is sailing it across the ocean, and so he will be back when he comes back the week after break. Then Marty McMahon will join us as the work-based learning coordinator, and I have been doing that in the interim. Let's see, we have gone out to our sending schools, and we have done a bit of recruitment. It's been pretty fun and exciting. We have had presentations, throwing t-shirts out into the audience, bringing our food truck and having cookies that we give to the kids, showing videos that are made by the film program, and bringing lots of pictures, and students to talk about their experience, teachers to talk about what the programs are like. So we've definitely had a lot of fun with that, and then we've had those students come and tour our TCC, and they came for three and a half hours. They went to each of their programs, their top three programs of interest for an hour each, and then had lunch with our school counselor. And now our teachers are in the process of looking at the applications and deciding, based on the rubric that we created, accepted students, waitlist of students, and other categories. So yes, so we're very excited about that. Let's see. And I wanted to share that we have upcoming Vermont Works for Women will be with us in March. Very excited about that. So that is aimed at girls and gender expansive youth in grades six through nine. And we are bringing back summer camp. And so we're hoping to have, right now I think I have four, four, maybe five people that said that they want to teach summer camp, things ranging from automotive to Rosie's Girls, which is done through Vermont Works for Women, and kind of a bunch of other things in between, possibly some culinary things. We're really nailing stuff down. I really get it. I think people are having a hard time thinking of summer when it's like snowing. But yes, I did get significant interest in teaching at least a week of summer camp. So I'm excited about that. Other than that, that's, oh, yes, please, of course. Summer camp will be for what age range? Grades six through eight. Six through eight. Yes. Yes. And the one other big thing that I'm super excited about is that we're trying really hard to build a barn before the end of September so that we can expand our agricultural program to also include animal husbandry and veterinary science. And I feel that the animals will help a lot with social-emotional learning, as well as the veterinary science fields and connecting students with the things that Vermonters do, like raising chickens, cheese, milk, sharing goats, raising animals, taking care of them, becoming a farrier. Those are a lot of the interests that kids have had. And I think that those will really be a big draw for students to want to be part of that program. So that's one thing that we're working really hard on. And last thing that I wanted to share is that we are looking to have an academy program, which would be sort of like a higher level program. And by higher level, I mean, it would be looking at students' absences, their grades, their abilities in math, ELA and science, and looking at students that are thinking about college and a higher level careers and offering them easier pathways to college, after RTCC. So that's one thing that is really something that we're focusing on, is that RTCC is both for college and career readiness. And that they go hand-in-hand, if you so choose, and that there are options for students, no matter what their path is, they can take online classes, classes that are you, and that where they should support them either way. So that is my update. Any questions? Yeah. We'll start with questions from the board and then take from the public. I did have one question that sounds like with this Vermont woman. Works for women, thank you. You're addressing that, but just seeing the kind of discrepancy in male and female ratio of students, just trying to see how to bring like greater diversity in that sense in, especially also, we saw on here, BIPOC, LGBTQ plus community as well, and just attracting kind of more of that diverse student body to RTCC. Yes, we definitely want students to feel that it is a safe place to be who you are, express yourself, and that there's something for everybody here. There really, really is. And I think that the more people come and visit and come and see and meet people and see what our community is like, because we're like a big family over there because we're small, but we're, do you know what I mean? We're like, you know, I think that once students come and actually see and visit and experience, they'll realize, oh, this place is really cool. That's pretty cool over there. Chelsea, did you have a question? So much curious about the barn and the animal situation, and if you could just expand on that a little bit. Yes, so it's still in development, but the hope is that it would become an expansion of the agricultural program that already exists, and it would include all different aspects, and we would need to work with curriculum coordinator and experts to see what exactly we're going to spend our time focusing on, but it could even be a switch where students participate for part of the year and the animal side of things and then part of the year and what they already do now, which is a lot of outdoors, woodsmen kind of classes, sugaring, and then, you know, I'm imagining beekeeping and all things animals and kind of like the joining of both of those things to give kids a really well-rounded agricultural experience. So we do have a planned barn, like how big is it? Can I ask you how big the current projection is? Absolutely. They don't know you applied for a grant either for it. So the funding here would be from the ARPSR funds, which are expiring this year in September, and so we analyzed the previous budget and found pockets where the full amount budgeted was not spent, and we would be returning approximately 200 to 250,000 back to the federal government. So I wrote a proposal to build some structures, and so the proposal, and I always use language like approximately, right? So there's room. I have proposed approximately a 30 by 40 foot barn with a classroom space, and they, I originally called them stalls, but they advised that I changed them to small group spaces so we could use them for anything. But I'm anticipating a 30 by 40 foot barn with a classroom, with a kitchen and a bathroom on the site where Raven previously was, right? Because there's already a septic there. Where was it previously? It was far. Far as you can go that way. So where the tech center is, there's that one big garage that's got the seven-day, the seven doors. It was to this side of that. So there's still, the water is capped off. They might have to replace the septic, but they did leave the septic in situ, but there is water there, and electricity also, we preserved all that in case we wanted to do something with it in the future. But building with federal funds has very strict rules around it. So right now we're just getting approval to even go to bid. So I'm waiting for that approval before we can even put out the bid, and then we have to open it for bids, and then we hope to break ground when the snow melts and get it built fast. Does this gotta be done by? September 30th. So you would be maintaining animals on property then, too? Yes. Or maybe they could visit. Well, there's that, yes, we had thought about boarding animals, having visiting animals. How VGC does it with their program? That was gonna be my question is, have you been in touch with the Sustainable Agriculture Program at Vermont State University Randolph now? I haven't, yeah. And they have a vet tech program there, too. They have a vet tech program and they have sustainable ag. I'm not sure how well the sustainable ag has done through that merger. I don't know if it's still in existence, but it's worth probably making those connections because they might have some advice or some ideas about sort of where the needs are. Right, 100%, yes. So, yes. And are you still maintaining the glasshouse greenhouse on the property here, or is that being, is that still used? I don't know for sure that anything, do you know of anything being currently grown in there? I do not know of anything currently being grown, but I know that they're- It's used annually. They're okay. I know that there was talk about using it soon. So, currently I'm not sure, like this moment, but soon, yes. It had a major reconstruction like two, three years back. I remember it wasn't being used for a while because it needed a renovation. They're really nice space. Yeah, there used to be an annual plant sale out of there. Years back. Heather, I have a question. Can you explain the September 30th date is that when the grant funds would expire? Yes, okay. And so, anything that we purchased, we need to have received by then. Okay. But I anticipate honestly that this project will exceed the amount of money we have. So, I think we will have spent that much money on it and then may have to invest a little bit of finishing touch money. For example, say the drywall's not in, but the structure's there and the roof is there, right? Okay. So, I'm just trying to not return money to the federal government. So, yeah, the September 30th is the date that it would expire. Well, they only gave us 7.5 million over three years. Yeah, only. Another question I have based off of that one is where would the funds draw if you did not get it done by September 30th? Right, any finishing touches? Or finishing, yes. Flooring, whatever, we would have to either use our current facilities funds. Okay. Or request reserve funds. Okay. I'm gonna try really hard to get it all the way done. But we'll see. You know how those, from your years here on the board, how those projects go. Yes. And I have one more quick question. I know there were some programs that were having some fairly low enrollment and there was discussion of whether or not those programs would potentially continue in the future. Is there concern about any of the current programs not? Or, I mean, I don't wanna put you on the spot with that, but is there any, like, and if you don't wanna answer, that's fine, but I'm just curious. One of our programs, the education program, education services, does have four students and they are all graduating this year. And so we have one student that has applied for next year and we have another student that I spoke to today that said that they are applying, so that's two. And we met with the Agency of Education today, myself and the instructor, to talk about what are some alternate pathways that we can go to get kids excited about becoming teachers. And so the last time we had a RAV meeting, I had talked about an idea for using outdoor education as a catalyst to get students interested in education in general. And so I did apply for a grant for that, but the Agency of Education's outlook is that they are looking for classroom teachers and that's where they want to put their money. Right, so the results of our meeting today and we're gonna mock up some posters and some advertising materials, myself and the instructor, but what I got from today's meeting was that it would be okay to advertise the education program by way of saying the education program teaches all the components to become a teacher in pre-K through 12 for a school counselor, but we also do it through means that are non-traditional, not just sitting in a classroom, but maybe that we are also kayaking and we are talking and we're learning and we're adventuring and we're doing those things outside too as a way to gain interest and maybe to rope some people in and get them to realize that, oh my gosh, I really do love teaching and helping shape young people and I could do this indoors or outdoors, it doesn't matter, I love it, or I could incorporate outdoor education or alternative ways of learning. So I think that even though the focus is still gonna be really what it currently is, we're gonna try to make it more exciting and take it out of the classroom. So that's the plan right now. I just have a, I'm on another board on the Orange County Parent-Child Center board and we are in the process of trying to build and renovate and staff the building on halfway up 66. One of our biggest concerns is staffing. We are terrified about finding staff. So I don't know if there's a disconnect between because we've also increased our pay. So a full-time infant room teacher can come away with $45,000 a year. So I don't know if that, I know because I was in the field of career counseling and for the longest time I would have young people who wanted to go into daycare and working with really young children and the pay was horrible. It was not a livable wage and so I was constantly steering them to other options. And so I think we're seeing the lag of that now in that there's not a lot of interest. So I don't know, we're working with a number of different people including someone from, I believe the state, well, she's a consultant. Should have been in touch with you folks because we're really, we're shaking the trees just trying to let people know. Our program currently has four students that are graduating from the program and they might really be potentially grateful. We are gonna be ready now because we're renovating a building and we're trying to do it all with grant funding. We're not gonna be ready now. It's been pushed back to January of 25 and that isn't a start date necessarily. We'll think about it like this. If what we're doing works and I have faith that it will increase numbers, it may not be dramatic for next year but I think it's gonna get some people interested by 2025. Yeah, it probably gives us. Maybe the summer of 2025 or the fall of 2025, hopefully, if everything aligns some stars. Be in touch about that because we can be a direct pipeline to. Yes, and that's one of the other things we've talked about is just even being an internship site for. Yeah, I'm sure that their students who would absolutely love to do co-ops with you. So in the interest of the agenda, Chelsea, you had something to say and Martha, you had something to say. So nope, you're shaking your head now. You take it back? No, I'm gonna, so two more speakers and then we'll move on. Go ahead, Chelsea. It's exciting. The idea of bringing in new programs like maybe that program and agriculture and whatever else is out there and a lot of kids I think who would be interested in that. Thank you. I think so too. Thanks, Chelsea. Martha. I was just gonna say, one of my lines of questioning was along the lines of the barn as well, but the other question, you might not be able to answer on the spot. So I'm curious to know what kind of numbers you're seeing at RTC that are moving on for college application. I don't have those numbers off the top of my head. I would have to look that up and get back to you. Is there always- Ballpark percentage, anything that you can comment on this is my first year at RTC, so I just don't feel like I have, I can't even guess right this moment, but I could get back to you. Okay. Does someone have your contact info? No. Okay. Indeed. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming and- Thank you for having me. Answering our questions on the spot. Oh, it's fun. Thank you. Have a good night. Now I'd like to welcome Patty, but I'd also like to express a public apology that you are here for the second time, just as prepared, if not more, that we had messed up last time on our agenda. So thank you very much for being here again, and come and join us. Oh, thanks for having me. I love to talk about brain tree. Like a lot. I really like it. So I am happy to talk to you about it today. Great. I do have sunslides, because I am a visual learner and you have to kind of ground myself. And so, great. So I'm not sure I've met everybody in the room. My name's Patty Sprague. I'm in my second year as a brain tree elementary. So here is some of our faculty. It's a remarkable group of folks who are really dedicated to the achievement of every student in our building. We have 26 staff members. We have 26 staff members. That serves seven homers. Seven homers. Three Ks. Three Ks. Six. We also host an agricultural program and a program in between activities. And our center's interests and strengths and backgrounds are really varied to a really cohesive, collaborative team of people that we have. And then these are our kids. And then these are our kids' part. And we have about 101 students again in preschool through grade six. And they're the best part of school. We're really proud of brain tree school. We were recently named the number five elementary school in the state of Vermont. Something that we're even more proud of is that we were the only school in the top 25 for the poverty rate of 25%. Each year, the agency of education is doing no great snapshots of schools. They score education quality standard domains and we exceeded expectations in three out of the four of those domains. Academic proficiency, safe and healthy schools and high quality staffing. Go ahead. What is investment priority? What is that? Where is that? Yeah, sure. So I imagine that there could be more to that. I think from my, from what I know, it's capital investments to facilities. I think like that. It's also, it's staff ratios, dude. They'll rate you high if you have the right number of staff to students. If you have too many, they'll rate you low. If you have too few, they'll rate you low. So they've got a little sweet spot between the target. We have three priorities that are under bird, are under bird, are instructional decisions. We want students to have connections to their community, to the natural world, to be prepared to engage in certain things. So to speak a little bit about community connections, we built a community by making really intentional connections for our kids. We invite experts in their field to our school. We incorporate a variety of perspectives in our lessons. We provide a lot of leadership opportunities for kids. This year, we welcomed experts in forestry. We had bread and puppets. So we've had a good name, drummer, come in. Right now, there's an artist in our school. We're a performance here tomorrow night. Tomorrow night, if you're a contender or a candidate, come join us and join us in the auditorium at six. To the members from the random volunteer fire department and a few others. I have a lot of pictures of, from our field trips to the Vermont Institute of Medical Science, to Starbase, to other places that kids go. What I chose to share with you tonight is a picture of two reading buddies. This program is spearheaded by our veteran literacy teacher, Janie Jacobs. And it matches our youngest learners with our oldest. Each week, intermediate students take a book and they write questions with their primary counterpart. And I love spending time with our fifth graders and the library. They're so interested in what their partners are interested in. No, I mean, look, about dump trucks, because that's what my buddy wants to read about. It teaches older kids to be flexible and compassionate. And compassionate role models. And it's a really beloved brain tradition. We're really proud of that. We're really proud of that. Upon direction from the superintendent earlier in the year, I asked our stakeholders in various roles. Welcome to mind. Welcome to mind. Let me think about our school. And our outdoor programming was one of the things that comes to mind first for folks. We are on a beautiful 17-acre campus. We have a really strong program. Each month, each month, and summer, and visit, she leads students in gardening, harvesting, and cooking, and eating, and eating, so that we grow in our raised garden beds. Teachers have access to dedicated classroom spaces, which is from everything, and they read aloud in the sun, pre-school program, which is primarily outdoors every day. Every day. And the abundance of land also allowed us to open a farm for the farm called Dantree Blossoms. And that farm stand provides opportunities for kids to learn real business, real business, marketing, and pricing, and inventorying. And it also serves another connection to our community. We have a few producers, local producers, local producers who have items on consignment at the farm stand, which is pretty exciting. We were really fortunate to be in some grant that brought in our students last year from the electrical and construction to out-strips and out-strips with solar power. Yeah, and we're really excited. The board recently approved funding for an ADA-accelerated trail around the property. It's really exciting to be able to welcome even more people to our grounds. So thank you. Thank you, Beth. Is that done? Is that done? Yeah, the universe has its own purpose. They're starting in the summer. Okay. Yeah, and when we get back from the break, the team that was involved in that is meeting the sculpture artist, the Vermont Arts Council is accepting grant applications about installing art in infrastructure. And so we're working with a local artist to put some recycled metal structures along the trail, which I'm really excited about. Yeah, that's really cool. What are you powering with solar power? So it has sides, so eventually we also have a mini fridge, so eventually we like to have more of that. Even just power, so we dark right now. You know, when we have evening events, it'll be nice to have some power to the building. Yeah. Yeah. And is it working? I mean, it's so close. It's so close. Is it battery or is it going to feed back to the grid? Yeah, it's tied to the grid. Oh, it is. And they just got the meter. And so we're working with green mountain power. So this is, it's not quite done. It's not done. You're working on it. It's still in the morning. But the kids are watching the process. Oh my gosh, they were so involved. It was really wonderful. It was really wonderful. They hadn't even been applied to the long-term committee. And students from the tech center came over. And they gave us some of their ideas. And then the kids had their own ideas. Like twinkle lights, twinkle lights. Kind of the dream of what it could be. And they came up with a lot of different proposals. And we talked about the funding sources and the sustainability of it. It was a really fantastic partnership actually between our kids, sixth graders, fifth graders, fifth graders, and the students from the tech center. The tech center students got just presenting to clients. And it was nice for our kids to be clients, too. And take that kind of role. It was really nice. Yeah. And then it's important to us that our students are prepared for wherever the future takes them. The district's new portrait of a graduate really helped us really pull up the exact skills and competencies we're helping students develop. Academic proficiency is a priority. Our teachers work closely together in order to assess and address any misunderstandings or skill gaps. Our intervention team is really responsive to students. And they work diligently to bring all kids where they need to be academically. I talked a little bit about leadership experiences. This year, I started this student council. So we have about 10 kids that meet every other week during lunch and recess. We connect with each other and talk about opportunities for school improvement. Our work is entirely based on student interest. So this year, they decided to focus on playground improvement and increasing our afterschool programming. Fifth grade, science assessments were an area of relative weakness historically when I came in. So we adjusted by incorporating STEM as a special for all of our students. And by having dedicated science class and instructor for our intermediate students. And we were in our STEM lab last time. But I'll ask you to recall the space where we were. We had some really generous looking budget for science and also brand from the Vermont Institute of Math and Science and Science Health Foundation. We made a lot of material improvements to that. The lab. I can't wait to tell Jeffrey I got a laugh. He's so excited. And so we have a 3D printer. We have a silhouette cutter. The last set of tools in our library, which is really fortunate to get a lot of donations from folks like foram. We've had a lot of support from our community, which has been really great. We've been able to do this for a wide extent, which is really exciting in November and actually that day we had a full wide marble room and every grade had a different bill. And the one of the sixth graders, they were building devices for the marbles and they required a team so they didn't know how to make so their team met virtually with an engineer from LED Dynamics who was able to listen to their needs in real time, design a virtual model, then he sent the file to the school and we printed it. It was pretty cool. It was pretty cool. As you may have heard, we've also been experiencing an increase in our challenging and interrupting student behaviors this year, particularly in our primary grades. Our school has 55% of our kids fall by pre-reduced lunch. We're seeing a lot of material made for students that are not physically met by schools, things like clothing and support and support finding housing in the region. In those months to those students, we started to build systems to support students and their families, including opportunities for wellness visits, to ensure that visitors on-site install the weight, install the washroom prior to this year. And we've been working really on a snack program that provides a fresh fruit or vegetable every morning. We've also incorporated some more proactive collaboration and high-end universal instruction. Really kind of meeting up our morning meetings for PBIS program. We have an online yoga which has been really wonderful for kids. We have assembly school recognition and all of those are part of our tier one social-emotional supports for kids. We were recently awarded an Act 129 mental health grant that's allowed us to hire a new staff member whose sole responsibility is to direct services for students who require more targeted intervention. And up until this week, we had an open guidance position and he just was onboarded 15 weeks. So that's been really nice to have that role built in the building. So a full-time guide, half-time, half-time. Yeah, traditionally, we split up. Another great idea this year is kind of splitting and keeping what happened. We had somebody lined up for the position in August and she couldn't find housing. And so our position has been open until now by kind of fracturing it off. We had someone interested and she's been really wonderful so far, all of her experiences with secondary level. Jumped in feet first, so it's been good. And you do have time where they can be there every day but just few hours or do you end up doing a day or two? Yeah, she does two and a half days right now. Yeah, yep. We're just driving. Yeah, I'm happy to answer any questions we have about re-care if I don't have anything. Your enthusiasm is so infectious. I want it. I'm telling you, it is a really great place to be. I felt really embarrassed when the people interviewed me when I got the job. It's magical and that was the headline that they used. But really, it's like a really special day to be at. Sounds like you guys rock it. What do you feel like your biggest hurdle or priority is? You guys are taking a lot on independently, grant writing, doing your outdoor program. What's your next ribbon to? That's a great question. I think we're really trying to think about the STEM program. I'm really trying to think about last year we had a seven day that was shared this year. She's our STEM library in 40s a week. We can really think about how to integrate that back into class. So it is just standalone special for kids? But also what that looks like. What does it look like if you print something for your science project? What does it look like when you actually did this really cool project? Where they made stop motion comics to go with stories that they had written? So really thinking about the integration of all of those skills? I mean, in terms of need, our student behaviors substantially impact our day. Especially at the primary grade. So thinking about how in terms of a district where we're working on tier one, instruction, we're going to train all staff, including veteran staff, retrain in the sponsored class. But that's really where we spend the bulk of our time. I'm sure that kids are ready to think about how to evolve families more. Thinking about kindergarten readiness. And just how to support the needs of our community. Is there anything going on at Brantree that you think it could be generalized or applied in other places in our district? Because Brantree seems to perform at a higher level than the other. As a board? As a board. Yeah. We've been seeing three elementary schools. What lessons can we take from Brantree? I hear your question. It actually ties into the challenges that we're also experiencing this year. As I talk to my colleagues across the state, we have really strong teacher-to-student relationships. I think our work needs to be a student-to-student relationship. We're working a lot of collaboration. I'm working for a student-to-mediate leadership on leadership and kindness and working with one another. The way that kids know that they have an adult in the building, they know every day that the teachers are showing up for them. That's not to say that they are in other schools every day. Brantree teachers, if you think I'm in Brantree, listen to students and teachers. There's folks that really, really love it there. I am not one of those things. Are those like a family? I let people have their families. But really, heavy-duty adults in our building are a really strong community. The teachers are at the top of their game. I came into this role as an instructional coach. I'm a math specialist by trade. And I go into every single classroom. I'm learning something new every single day. Brantree teachers are at the top of their game pedagogically, instructionally. It's a really vibrant and exciting place to be. They were early adopters of every program that the district was working on. From STEM, the math, the ELA. And they just embraced it when they ran. And so that's a good piece of the issue, exactly in terms of just the happiness that the staff do their kids. It's wonderful to go in and walk in. Because you can just feel it in the hallways. But they were early adopters most of the time. Yeah, I will say so. We have a really remarkable, you know, Stephanie Cole is a really wonderful, really wonderful new to the district. She comes to the district. She comes to us from Texas. She's new, but she's an experienced veteran teacher. She's licensed in general elementary math. She's licensed in middle school math. She's licensed in talent. She's a talented teacher. She's specialized in special ed. She's like the best in higher grade. I'm really proud of that. When they had kind of a department meeting amongst math teachers, Betty Young kind of saw that spark in her. And RES teachers have already been coming in to do some peer observations. So there are some of those things happening to really kind of see where the magical pockets are, because they are. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you. And thanks again for coming twice. Truly, I feel it. Thanks. Okay, so here we are. Let's move on to Yale reports 2.3 and 2.6. These are our second read. These are our first. I was asked to do these. I took his work from last year and made some small updates. Okay. Time to cross-streading and get ready for May and June. Gotcha. And so this is the first read. Questions from the board. Concerns. Clarifications needed. What's up? We have time to review and we can stop in and see what's going on. Yeah. Right. Yeah, she got introduced to the notebooks. Yeah. All right. Well, first read. So do your homework, read them through, come up with questions, concerns, go in and see the evidence always available. So if Heather, you have nothing to say about it, then I'm going to move on. There were very small changes. Yeah. Many things were exactly as they were updates, updates. Updates. I updated the evidence and the binders. We have importance in what we'll do in the financial conditions and activities. We allude to, was it in the one regarding the IRS? Is that number seven? Yes, seven. You'll see in the evidence that we allude to an anomaly that occurred. Actually, the issue was seven years ago, but it came apparent this year. The board was surprised at the time. Yeah. The board was surprised at the time. We did not include any employee confidentiality data in this report so it could remain public. But if you want update on what that is, we're happy to provide it. Other than that, I do not think there are significant changes from last year. Great. Okay, thank you. I'm getting used to these glasses. I don't know how to tip my head. And when you start progressing towards old age. Yeah, I know. I know. Geez. But you gave me a minute to fade this out. Annual meeting on budget. That's on leap year, right? Yeah. So the annual budget meeting is at 6 p.m. In the auditorium here at the high school, it'll be on February 29th, which is a Thursday. This will be the last budget presentation to the community and the last opportunity for the community to ask questions and get all the details. There's also the annual school meeting, which is a little bit different. That's on March 4th, the night before the vote. And that's where we do things like we vote on who the officers are for next year. You know, the treasurer, things like that. And then they also do a vote on approving the language in the annual reports. Linda continued to be our treasurer this year, right? She's there until, at least until the vote that would happen on that annual meeting date. Okay. And then what happens? Well, what we'll do is we'll find somebody who's interested if Linda is not and will nominate. I'm a Randolph resident, so I can nominate. What time is that meeting? So that one is on March 4th. That's also 6 p.m., and that's in the RUH auditorium. Peter Nolan comes in and is the facilitator for that. When something's in the auditorium, is remote an option? Yeah, I always do remote for the last couple of years. Especially for the budget presentation, because I usually get people online. And if it's recorded, you know, people do watch the recordings quite a bit. So it's always awesome when work is there. Cool. Yeah. Excellent. What is that? So March 4th meeting, is that called the school district meeting? Annual school meetings. Annual school meetings. Yes, annual meeting. It's great when board members can be present, especially in person. Yeah, I can do the 4th. I can't do the 29th one. I can definitely do the 29th. So that's just the budget presentation. So we usually get a couple of folks that will be there and a couple of folks online. But like I said, if it's recorded, people do. I think they said about 300 to 400 people watch the recording. Is this the link you're going to use, the one that's on your invite? Yeah, if it's already up there, if Kyle already put it in. She did. Yeah. Okay. So... And I've emailed out one round of reminders of dates and things. So as this gets a little closer, I'll start to upload the link in here. So I'll invite the board? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. My pleasure. This is March 4th. And then you said the next one is when? It is the 29th. The 29th. The 29th. Was the budget information? The budget information. And you know, we don't necessarily need that information. But I think just plain presence... Where is that one going to be? They're both high school auditorium. That's at the other end. It's on the agenda. The very bottom. Yeah, they're usually getting ready for the musical. So sometimes the stage is a little awkward. But it's fun to see what they're working on. Backdrop never hurts. Yeah, it's fun to see what they're working on. I guess the update on the benefits request from, well, the failed meeting in Brookfield, I think it was. So Robin has been in contact with the state. They've asked for all previous contracts from Colin. So we've provided that to them. What they are doing right now is assessing, you know, how far back they are able to go and what the cost would be. And so that's what we're waiting on right now. So something is possible. And then it would come to back to us again once we have a figure? Depending upon the dollar amount. If it's something that's low enough that we can absorb it in the regular budget, if not, then it might potentially be looking at, you know, asking for money from the operational reserve. More reserve. Okay. Were you going to look into two to see if there were any other employees? Catherine Fredricks and we've taken care of her. Okay. Hers was just a couple of years. Yeah, we did take a peek. What's her role? She is a K-12 English kind of director. She oversees kind of curriculum for English. Oh, okay. Yeah. So. She's been fantastic. She's like Betty Young is math and Catherine. Oh, okay. She's the DOI. Yeah. Yeah. So with Colin's situation, was he a private contractor or was he employed by the district for? He was, he was employed by the district during the cost cutting years. And so we were kind of looking at the contracts to see what was in them. My guess is based upon how the contracts were written because they kind of seem to change over the years before I was here. Is that they're probably not going to accept all of them based upon how they were written. And then ones that were a little bit more recent, the state probably will say, yeah, you should have been. Okay. Because when he first started, wasn't he splitting time with another school? I don't know. Long before my time. I do know that the big concern was there were a lot of special contracts being given. It was actually one of the first things that, you know, and I talked about, you know, that I've been here seven years and we've had five grievances. One of them was just that was in my first year was because of all the special contracts from the previous year. And, you know, some of these folks really should be allowed in the union and not on a special contract. I actually agreed with them. And so that was cool. Yeah, if you got an AOE license and you're working with kids, that's, you're in the union and you shouldn't be getting a special contract. Right, yeah. So the AOE, they'll decide at this point. Yeah, it's the state all. What's valid, what's acceptable, what's not. And if you do the whole thing, you know, there's a dollar amount. I mean, that's one of the things the board could decide is you know, okay, you know, based upon the number of years, maybe it's only 10 years that we give. Maybe it's, you know, five. Maybe it's the entire thing that the state says he's eligible for. So hopefully we'll get the information from them. Part of it was on, it was delayed a little bit because the original ass was just before the holidays. And then they're pretty good, but they're doing some sort of quarterly reports right now. And they said they'd have the final numbers for us as soon as they're done that work. Yeah, so, all right. I just, yeah, I just want to be mindful of whatever future precedent we set for private contractors at 1099s because in our business, in my business, we use that as a huge advantage in this, like we pay more significantly, but we don't carry the fringe, all the benefits. Yeah, and I think the state will weed that out, but I'm happy to, I haven't looked at all the old contracts, like we're letting the state do the eval on it, but I'm happy to take a look and see what they were. You know, one of the things I was looking for early on was, you know, did, was he given a higher salary because they weren't paying certain benefits and that did not appear to be the case, at least in the pieces that I saw. Okay, yeah. Okay. Awesome. Cool. Yeah, good question. Good, yeah. Making me change folders in my head, so it takes me a minute to follow that. So this next item update on the superintendent search consideration of recommendation from the screening committee and a discussion of this upcoming schedule, it's listed as Jackie, who of course, who Elaine has taken over for. Elaine is not able to be here tonight. She and I have spoken every day this week. I believe Katya, you're going to give a brief. Yeah, I think all of us from the screening committee can fill in pieces here, because I did ask for what we're supposed to relay in public in our public meeting versus not our public meetings. Right, and I think you were correct in your assumption, in your question to her that the recommendation can be public, but the others correct. Okay, so we did convene the screening committee that was made up of representatives from across the district. We met, as you mentioned, Hannah, we had started with one consultant, and then we just recently switched to Elaine who's been supporting us with this task. So we met with the screening committee yesterday, did put forth two candidates to be brought in front of the board, Michael Clark, who's currently the superintendent of Grand Idle Supervisor Union, and Lisa Floyd, who is currently Orange Southwest Principal of RUHS. We have a community forum tomorrow night for individuals from our community to meet these two candidates. For the board, what we need to do is we need to pick a date to have our final round interviews, proposing that be the week of the 19th, so sometime next week for this process to keep moving forward on the schedule that was originally prescribed to us. And just about tomorrow, in terms of the community forum, I would love for as many board members to be there as possible. I'll be just kind of welcoming people and saying hi, hello. And then Sean Robbins. Yep, thank you. We'll actually be moderating in terms of kind of the kickoff questions that he can ask and then ask for questions from the public. There's a lot going on tomorrow night. We've got the, hopefully we'll have background music, frankly, from the auditorium. There's also a basketball game. So I think we can glass half-full it and say lots of people will be in the building. So that may up attendance. I do want to say publicly on the record how much I appreciate the work of the screening committee. That was a big commitment, time, thought, get weighing, coming up with question. You know, it just, it, boy, it looked like a lot from the outside, so I can only imagine from the inside. So thank you, thank you for your work, both to the three board members and to the staff that were on it as well. And is that a question? You can ask a question, sure. So you have the 10 candidates that you narrow down to two. What kind of opportunities have had, obviously, the RUHS principle has had time to be interacting with the community? What kind of opportunity does any other candidate have, or is that? So that's tomorrow at the four. But is it, I mean, have they had a chance to meet and greet with people? They'll be here all day tomorrow during site visits at the school. So Kara, Houston and Sean are kind of acting as the ambassadors of that, of the site visits. So they'll be inside the schools. They'll have an opportunity to, they're kind of having a forum with the staff, as I understand it. And then that evening, yeah, will be the community forum. And the purpose of both of those forums is not just to have time with the candidate, but then for the community and or the staff to send, provide feedback. There's going to be a forum for people to fill in their impressions so that, and they can, and the board will be collecting that. Our consultant's going to consolidate all of that for us. So that will go into our process next week or the week after, depending on when we do our final interview of these two candidates and make our selection. Yeah, and just to be clear, so the screening, I keep wanting to call it a steering committee. The screening committee, this is a recommendation to the board that these are the two finalists, and we'll go into final interviews with them. I just want to make clear this is a multi-layered process and ultimately, yes, one would hope that we come out with higher hope. There's no guarantee. I need to put that out there as reality for everybody. Back to Katya, what you were saying about a meeting next week, let's write in real time, get that on the books. Yeah, we need, it'd be great to have a 100% board presence and participation there. I understand it's a vacation week, but lucky you if you're traveling. I'm not, so. Anne, you had provided a few times that you were available, and that's always, I think, helpful to kind of have a jumping off point. Yeah, if everyone could take out their calendars. I also, well, no, that's not true. I think so that she can do any day except Tuesday next week, it sounds like. Sam, so any time next week. Anne, I think you had said Thursday was an option for you? Thursday is open for me. Wednesday, I just, the afternoon is not available. So Tuesday or Thursday of next week? Thursday is better for me. So should we just say Thursday? The 21st? I could do that remotely. It's the 22nd. I'll be out of town. 22nd? Thursday, Friday, next week, but I can join remotely. Okay, okay, great. Thursday, 22nd. Thursday, the 22nd, going once. Yep. Yeah. Great. We're kind of, how much? Yeah, what are we? I'm going to throw out four o'clock. I can be shot down easily, but. I can make that happen. You have to see. Sure. Why don't we all write down Thursday, the 22nd at four o'clock? Let's go home. Let's check our schedules. Um, and please, if you can get back to me confirming that that time is indeed good for you by end of business day tomorrow, so by five o'clock tomorrow. It's verbal. Okay, can we email to you? Yeah, if everyone could email me that would be great. We have a, an estimate of how long this meeting would occur. So our interviews were an hour. I would expect that they're at least that per candidate. And then we have to deliberate after that. So, and I, I, I would imagine Elaine's going to be with us, guiding us through this process. She's probably going to want maybe a half an hour in the beginning to just sort of help us review questions, settle in, no kind of what we need to be doing. So four, seven, 30. Let's do it. Just block four to eight. Four to eight, I would say at least. Yep. And you'll be in touch with Kyle to warn it? Indeed. Yep. It'll be executive session just in case anybody's. There will be public comment. Yeah. Yeah. Well, typically they're, oh, the final one is typically public. Like they're recorded. You can see them on the internet from all over the nation. The interview, not the interview. The interview. Yeah. Check with, check with your consultant. We'll talk to them. Yeah. Check with your consultant. Yeah. Because we're recording tomorrow night. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Okay. So 20 second, four o'clock. Big. Oh, and as a steering committee member, I will also thank you for arranging the food. I think that was maybe somebody part of the school because we have this in our budget. So to approve. So thank you for arranging for us being fed yesterday. And it was very appreciated. My pleasure. The sandwiches were at back. I'll tell William. It was a chocolate chip cookies for me. Hey, I'm going to rub it in. All right. Oh, by all means. I'm the next one. It's all yours. Okay. Awesome. Board governance policy 3.0. It's a short one, but it's a big one. The board's sole official connection to the operational organization, its achievements and its conduct will be through the superintendent of schools. It's one that comes up often. It's one that, speaking on a personal level, is very much needed to be reminded of for myself. And it's a tricky one for me. To not feel like it's a, oh, boy, I can't, you know, there's a teacher, I shouldn't talk to them. Which is obviously not its intent, but I think it's easy to, yeah. Anyway, I'm jumping off there because it's a tricky one for me. I don't even know how to talk about it. Well, I think we've seen in our own conversations sometimes, you know, maintaining the policy governance kind of mantle of all this can be challenging and not kind of getting a little bit into dipping into the operational. I think we've gotten better at recognizing when we're stepping into areas that is not appropriate for the board to step in or trying to connect it to where does this sit within a policy of ours. But, yeah, I think that's... Well, and I think it's important to remember that it doesn't, it's a connection. It's not a disconnect. It's a connection. It's just we have a conduit for that connection. Yeah. Yeah, I think we're good at rerouting ourselves, especially if we're in, I think I can say to the, in reference to our meetings, when we're together as a board, I think we're fairly good at being able to kind of check each other and say this kind of leans into operational. You know, where is this, where do we see this in our policy? I know, Ann, you're very good at recognizing those pieces too. So I appreciate that. So thank you. But yeah, I think there's always, I think especially again, this is the challenge of living in a small community too. Right. Where a lot of lines can blur. And I think it's hard to sometimes remember that when we're in this role, you know, this is what we represent even in other circumstances where we may run into people in a community setting, so being careful of what we say or how we act or how we represent ourselves. I could also look at it as a, it's an opportunity also to help the public understand what our role is. You know, not that, oh, you can't say anything to me or I can't talk to you because I'm on the board. That's not realistic. But to be able to say to someone in the public, you know, I can't speak for the board. Sounds like you have a concern. Your concern sounds like it's with the teacher of your student or maybe it's with the, you know, the administrator of the building. You can help direct people to where they're going. It's just that you can't then go in and solve their problem. You know, like, oh, talk to me and I'll go in and make this right for you. That's not the way it's going to work. But just to help the public understand kind of what our role is and how we function. And always, you know, they can always, they really want to go up the chain of command. The door is open at the top too. Give them a call. Give the next person a call. Anybody else want to score us? Yeah, I mean, I think we do this pretty well as hard as it may be. And as frustrating as it may be for some people in the public when they do want a response and respect our role as to say you gotta go through the proper channels. Work in progress, always a work in progress, especially with something as tricky as policy governance. It's hard. It's challenging. Do you feel like this is one of the things that, especially for as we're bringing in new board members, likely, we will be bringing in new board members at our next for our next meeting, like this is one that I think really is one of those that like, you have to help people understand that pretty quickly. Because again, people who don't, all of us came on here. I shouldn't say all of us, but we didn't have backgrounds in policy governance. And that was, especially if you came on as a parent who'd been involved in your child's school, that was an interesting, like it was a really different thing to be, to get used to, as far as how you did have that kind of access to anyone as a parent and as a board member, it changes, it shifts. So I think that that's just one that we should kind of keep as a forethought of like, when we're onboarding new members, that this really becomes something that they understand quickly. I think it's perfectly placed in the self-evaluation schedule, as it were, that we're talking about it now. And I also just want to acknowledge that the way that we talk about our self-evaluation, thinking back to that, not chart we used to do, but the scoring thing that no one ever wanted to do. And we spent 12 seconds on it at the end of the meeting. The way that we're talking about these policies and how we understand them, or don't understand them. I think is really productive. Excellent. We good? Anyone? Okay. Great. Report out on governance training. And how was it? And Sarah, Sarah, were you able to go? I wasn't. My son's birthday was that day, so. So no. Okay. No, I wasn't. But Heather and I attended and because we had three, we were able to sign everybody up because they weren't going to charge anymore after three. Yeah. So you all should have gotten, and I'm having Heather just pull up the email. So Debbie Sengizer is the, she's the person at the VSBA who specializes in policy governance. She and, now I'm going to blank on the other woman's name who I've met before. Jean? Jean. Jean Collins. There we go. It's Collins, right? Oh, she's, yeah. She's awesome. Yeah. She was over in the Rutland area. It was the 8th or 7th. That's great. What is that? Otter Valley District. And so the two of them did the overview of policy governance. So the beginning presentation was recorded. So there's a link to the recording. And then she also included, there's also a link to a shared folder that has all sorts of policy governance information, some links to some other school boards. So the really nice thing about the training is we were with a bunch of other districts who were using policy governance. So I don't know if Heather noticed, but because Brent K had brought policy governance really to Vermont, our district was sort of, everybody was sort of like, ah, Deosa, Deo, you know, because we sort of introduced it, or I shouldn't say we. Our district in its history had introduced it around the state and sort of promoted it. And so, but it was, it was really, I thought it was a really good training. It was really interesting to hear what other districts are grappling with. We have several virtual sessions. They're listed there where they're going to cover certain things, one of them being monitoring. And then one of the things that we covered during the training was just looking at, like state required and federal required policies and then governance policies and how districts put them on their websites. And so you'll notice in one of the, I think, was it even in the presentation maybe, they had, they used examples from different websites. And I was looking again at our website and the one that I liked, and I would encourage the rest of the board to take a look, but I thought Mansfield Union High School or I think it's school district now. Are they a district or are they a union? I forget. I don't know. But anyway, I liked the way they had their policies set up on their website. And so I think that's something we could look at, because even where we were interviewing candidates and a couple of them mentioned going to our website to look at things and stuff wasn't there. So, or it was just hard to navigate. And I think it could be put up a little bit more clearly and for the general public. Like we're not, we don't have any of our monitoring reports up there. That's our accountability. That's where we're showing, you know, how we're keeping, you know, accountability to making sure certain things are not happening and to making sure certain things are happening. And those reports are listed on our website. And procedures, what I liked about the way Mount Mansfield did it was they also listed their procedures. So like the complaint procedure could be there. So anyway, that's something I think we should think about as, as a board. And I believe, was it in that section, onboarding new board members, I think is like the first thing. And we really need to think about that. Most policy governance boards will review, do a full board review, because really when you reorganize with new members, everybody needs to kind of get that reorientation. So this might change too. Yeah, may change rules on the board too. Right, right, right. So that's on the 7th at 6 p.m. From if you didn't get the email, that's the drop in. Everybody should have gotten that policy governance. Except for those folks like Chelsea, sorry, but you're she's not returning. So we only did the members. I'll talk to Debbie and see if we can put the new people on when they come in. I don't know if we can, but we might be able to just add them in. Can we not just share the email? Yeah, oh yeah. And they'll have the link. Yeah, then they'd have the link. Yeah, I will ask. Yeah, I'll ask just to be a rule follower. Yeah, not right. Any questions? All right. I appreciate you representing us there. Yeah, no problem. Getting us access to the, you get some water. Okay. Equity policy. Okay, yes. Now I'm not sure I've done this as I should because this is just a recommended policy. So this isn't one of the governance policies. Like this is right. And so it, but it includes language in the recommended policy that an annual report will be given to the board. So I'll go through what I have, but I do want to let you know that I think there's some interest in students working on this and bringing it back to you in May with a more robust, right? With some student voice and the students coming. So, so let me just basically the policy as we've adopted it is recommended has seven provisions in it. So I, for each provision, I reported on some data, but I definitely know that if we, you do permit us to come back in May with some students, we can have more. So I analyzed just the Caucasian to minority data, which across the district was 92% Caucasian and 8% minority. When I broke it out by schools, it varied between seven to 10%. Actually, it's lower at the tech center, which we'll talk about in this report. And male to female, I was very surprised to find that this 50% male and only 46% female, which was interesting. And I would like to add to this, if we are permitted to come back to May, information about our language learners who identify as ELL, and it's much harder to get data on students who identify as LGBTQ plus. It has to like go to classroom to classroom, you know, this type of thing. It's not in our student information system. But I think getting students involved will be able to get more of that information. And as far as our socioeconomic information, as Patty shared, brain trees up to 55% identifying, right? That is the highest. But both the high school and the central Randolph Elementary School are at 40. And so I'll get that data as well. The second provision is asking that we are ensuring high quality curriculum, access to facilities and technology. So I put in some information there about curriculum, access to special education services. We have, we only have about 880 students in the entire district. And 149 of them are on IEPs. And additional 65 have 504 plans, which is for medical disabilities. And another 74 are on educational support. So there's a lot of accommodation available in this district. As far as adaptive technology, we get students what they need, as evidenced by the iPad Braille printers, Braille computers, the Phonak audio systems to provide universal design for students with hearing difficulties. I've also given you a chart here on how we're doing right now with ADA compliant facilities and spaces in all USA, in all of our buildings. So I've given you a chart there with the school, where we're doing well with ADA compliance for spaces and opportunities for improvement. And you can see that there are a few spaces that cannot be accessed by a wheelchair bound student in the district. And I've outlined those spaces, such as our weightlifting facility in high school, the mezzanine in Brookfield, and the central office second floor. Our provision three speaks about that effort will be made to analyze this data, to provide equity of access to staff and other resources in each school. And as you heard when people came out to speak about rise, this is sort of a hot topic, right? And so this is another place where I'd like to add a lot more data. We've just recently begun to use DESA at the elementary level and Wayfinder at the high school level to learn more about social and emotional needs, but could be added to this report information about behavior data, HHB incidents, and Title IX infractions. But I found again that that data was not easily uncovered and is, I could have given it to you for last year for our state reporting, but current state of the union where we are right now, it's, we compile it annually at the end of the year. So I should be able to have that for you in May with student voice. Provision four is that we're taking in information perspectives from families, perspectives from students and the community. So I, as you know, Lane has been diligent with having open forums, listening sessions. In addition, the board engaged in the portrait of a graduate last year, and moving forward, we are contracting with, for learning, for the youth risk behavior data called Getting to Why. And we are using all of that information to inform our programming. Provision five ensures equity of access and looks at disparities in opportunity gaps. So what I've provided with you in this first report is a look at AP and Tech Center, sort of this like just a snapshot. You know, I considered looking at other classes, but I thought this would really say something. And I found, I was really dismayed by some of what we found. Yeah, I see, I see you, yeah. Yeah, this is really what, yeah, hard to look at. Right, so you can see there's a really mostly white males enrolled in our AP programming. And in our Tech Center as well. So there's definitely room for improvement there. And I think you guys had some great recommendations for like advertising and other ways we could improve access to the tech programming. But I really want to hear from students about this like the highest level courses. Why, and how might we invite females and people of color to explore those highest level courses? I'd like to add to this, I didn't get it, but I would like to add dual enrollment. Like students who are accessing right in college, I'm going to actually make a note to myself on that. And okay, provision six is regarding professional development to ensure that our staff is prepared to provide culturally responsive and culturally relevant instruction. And I cited that we, the RUHS students created and provided microaggression training to the RUHS staff. And they're going to do it again. So it was rescheduled, but then we have no day. So it's going to be rescheduled again. And I'm happy to invite you guys, if you would like to come, because it's pretty powerful to hear from students like their experience of being marginalized. And also, I cited that we have just finished professional development with Greg Stoller. He came for two half-PD days to give our elementary staff tools on behavioral responsiveness. And we have upcoming, on March 4th, unpacking bias training, which we funded with our stronger connections grant. And then finally, provision seven is regarding the creation of a strategic plan that aligns to all of these goals and our portrait of graduate. And so I've cited in here that this is work to be done. This needs to be, in my opinion, this needs to be work for the next superintendent that's done, and it's going to take time. It's a big project, but it needs to have many voices and be done. So I'd welcome your feedback on this initial report. It's in the board packet. Can you repeat the socio-economic percentages again? I don't have them exactly right. Okay. However, in my recollection, Patty just cited over 50 percent students living in poverty at Braintree. And I believe, I don't have the exact percentage, but I know that Randolph Elementary and Randolph High School are both in the low 40 percent students in poverty. I think it's 41, 42 in that range. Okay. Where could we get those exact numbers? I probably have. I think they're probably, yeah. But if you want to proceed, I can get it printed handed out. I don't want to get it right now. I'm just curious. Willie Walker, our director of child nutrition, is compelled to compile all of this data for what used to be free and reduced lunch. Right. But we can now use data that's connected to people's access to Dr. Dinosaur Medicaid and people's access to food support, which has greatly brought truth to our numbers. It's brought truth because people didn't want to fill out the form. Right. And so online, too. I'm curious. So I will get to now that it's across the board with offering free lunch to everyone. How are they collecting that data? Is it free to Dr. Dinosaur? Right. So we still ask for the FNR form. Okay. And we're permitted to use Medicaid information and permitted to use food assistance. The, I think it's called SNAP, the EBT, right, Food Assistance. And our numbers were so significant that we were given a three-year lock that we don't have to keep proving it for three years. So we have universal meals, breakfast, lunch, and we're moving to do the after-school program meal for three years. Great. It's really, that is great. But I will have Willie give me those numbers and forward them to the board. Quick comment. I heard that the food banter in town here, they're up 63% over last year in the amount of people that are going through it. Yeah. And they're doing all the school vacation programs, too, and SNAP program. And the skip is coming up next week. They still got food for thought coming out of high school. Yeah. But Colin and Jason and I know there's a lot of supplies going out. So I just want to say that I would welcome any and all updates and interpretation and different voices. So I am all for you returning with this kind of information with students. And this can also be used as evidence under our Global 2.0 because we added the language of inequitable. So it can be part of what's listed as the evidence that we are moving, that we are being equitable. Thank you. Interested, the LGBTQ plus being included with the RTCC is because... Well, see, to get that data, I was able to just have a conversation with the principal. And she knows the population's small. And so, or with the teachers, and because we don't put that data into our SIS, our Student Information System. So you have to interview people, like how many of your students identify to you that this... Have come out. Yes, exactly. And so that's how I was able to get that data. That came from Nika and the teachers. Whereas at the high school, given the time constraint, I wasn't able to... And plus, I didn't do a full analysis. But I think when I get the students involved, they're going to want to do that. They're going to be curious and want to say, okay, we know this is a portion of our population. We know they're often marginalized. Do they have access to... And we'll see what measures they think are important. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Female to male ratio just is really, I find it quite disturbing and puzzling. Right. Because your ratio is not... I mean, it's awful bit, but it's not that drastic between male to female ratio in the school district. But when you see these higher, you know, these advanced classes, and then RTCC, it's interesting to see the discrepancies between the two. Yes. And also, if you think about our students, I really shouldn't have labeled this BIPOC because I put also other and Asian. Like anyone who wasn't Caucasian, I put together. And say we're typically at 10%, right? 90% Caucasian, 10% BIPOC, Asian, and other. The numbers aren't in line. If there are 13 seats in AP World History and there are zero students who are not Caucasian, where is that one student? Right? There's just, I think... Yeah, there's opportunity here, which I think is good for us to be able to see it and that's kind of a... Absolutely. So, thank you. My next, I've already spoken with some of the teachers at the high school who work with groups of students and they're eager to have students create a survey and students do some of this work. Great. Yeah. And I took way more than my two minutes. Yeah, please. That's okay. This is... Keep us informed and send out those invites. It's very interesting. Yeah. I'm sorry, I missed that one. For the invite to the... Yes, send out the... Good training. Microagrection. Yes, when it's rescheduled. I will be back too. Please. Let's see. So the consent agenda, I'm trying to think if there are ones that we want to pull out or if, Lane, you wanted to touch on anything from here, the funds request or... So there's... I can give you the funds request really brief overview if that's helpful. Great, yeah. So the M&T Bank, this is just changing the signatory. This is for a scholarship fund that we maintain because Woodland leaving, putting somebody new on there so that we have access to it. The combined balance, this crowd refund is an interesting one. Basically, the court, it's a scholarship. The court is the overseer of it. And then once a year, we actually just provide them documentation for their oversight purposes that, yeah, the money's in there. We haven't done anything with it. Or if we did do something with it, this is what we did. And so that's the documentation you see. Basically, it's just, you see the principle and you see that there's interest each month because nothing's been taken out of it. They had some quirky... When the parents put the money in for that fund, they wanted it to occur interest until it reached a certain dollar amount and then we could start using it for scholarships. That's still probably 10 to 15 years of the future before we get there. So, but this is just the reporting of the court just to say, yeah, this is the statement. We agree with the statement and then we send it off to the court and that way they can say that they've done their oversight function for the year. Gotcha. HVAC, this was a part of the big grant that didn't quite pay for everything to put in the air conditioning, the heat exchangers, the air conditioning and the heat at Braintree. They needed a little extra electrical work to get things hooked up to the grid properly and so it's a request for funding for that. And then the last one I believe is funding for 30 radios. Radios are how we communicate to kids safe when the teachers are taking them outside for the day. We also have a couple of schools and you'll be getting a request for funding on this. The elementary schools are having problems with their intercom systems as well and so they need the radios to act in place of those intercom systems to make sure that everybody is notified if something happens. But since they've already been doing work at RTCC and at the high school they've already replaced those, the same company is going to take a look. It'll probably have to go out to bed and then once we get dollar amounts to upgrade the two little schools we'll put a reserve fund request in front of the board for that to get that work done. They have intercom systems are just bad. Yeah. Loud enough for people to hear. They compare cost wise with just having a phone since phones do a lot of that already. That's what they have right now. They're not loud enough to hear over the kids in the normal day and they've done a lot of work to try to adjust that. They don't need, the lucky part is it should be a lot less expensive at the elementary schools because they don't need the VALS, right? So it's a little bit paired down system compared to what they're using at like the high school VALS system and everything tied together and all the clocks and all the classrooms. Yeah. So yeah, no good question though. Does anyone have any changes to minutes? Shouldn't have started there. Any edits to make? Good. Contracts, any questions? Those were the two brain tree. That she was talking about. Started, yeah. Right, one of them's grant funded with the Act 112 mental health grant. Yep. That Patty was mentioning. Well then, I think we can take it as a whole kick and caboodle. Ah, thank you. Appreciate that. I have a motion from Katia and a second from Anne. Yes. Was that to approve the entire consent agenda? Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Thank you, Chelsea. Opposed? Abstentions. Awesome. I will sign things. Superintendent's report. Do you want to? Yeah, I can. A lot of that was, we touched on some of it when the legislators were here. It's just about the work that is happening at the state level to try to plug that loophole so it doesn't affect everybody. If it passes, like they said, and it has the desired effect, we should be either unchanged or we should actually benefit. Our tax rate should actually be a little bit lower, as far as I can tell. So we'll keep our fingers crossed that it passes. It's done a really good job communicating this. Yeah. If it doesn't pass, it may have an impact on the yield depending upon how many districts take advantage of that loophole and that might change our tax rates. Somebody tried our tax rates out. Because it's out. But I think they'll get it passed. They seem pretty confident. And I think they're right based upon what we're hearing from the Superintendent's Association. Disappointed they didn't foresee that. It's kind of ridiculous. Writing. Yeah. Do they think people just wouldn't notice? Nope. They're cool. Do they think they're really dumb? No, I think they probably assume they're positive. He thinks I'm really dumb. I know that. Okay. Let's see. Financial report. Anything? Where we're on track. We're good. Yeah. We're good. Robin, believe me, if there's anything that fits well with you there, she's... She's nice. She's good. Yeah. Yeah. So action items, if you can come tomorrow night, 7 o'clock, right here. Please do. Everybody should have in their calendar next Thursday, 4 o'clock. But please do confirm with me by email, by end of day tomorrow. And just if you want to jot down the March 7th drop in online about onboarding new members to policy governance, I have it on my list. So I'm mentioning it. Yeah. I think that's it for action items. I think there is a need for an executive session based on the two things listed there. So, no. So I will entertain a motion. Very excited. Executive session at 8.24, inviting in Lane and Heather for a personnel discussion. And 4500. And 4500 report. So Kyle Katia made that motion and Sarah Second did it. I don't know why I'm leaning this way. I should lean that way. And can I just recuse from conversation but stay for the report? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Seeing if it's not heard, yes. That's our favorite way to have you say, no, I'm kidding. Okay. So 8.24. Thank you. We'll see you there, Chelsea.