 Stockbridge District Board of School Director, regular meeting Tuesday, September 7th, 2021 at 6.30 p.m. via Google Meet and at the Stockbridge School, live, ending time. All to order, adjustments to the agenda. We have at least one. That's all I think we got. Yeah, is that we need to approve a treasurer. So we'll make that, so that'd be. We're in a school district treasurer. A point, a point, a point, a point. I know there's lagging. A point, good. Thank you, thank you. Could that be 3.2 or something like that? Let's make it get in there. So 3.1 will be assigned time keeper 3.2, a point treasurer. And that's all set, I'm very happy. I don't hope you know her last name because I forget her last name. Good, any other adjustments to the agenda? Patrick or Justine? Or me. Anything? No. Okay, Justine, thank you. I think we just need to, are we all good with changing the agenda? Yeah, I'm proud of it. Robert? Yes. Okay, good, thank you, Patrick and Justine. Good with changing the agenda. To add the pointing the treasurer. Patrick, yes? Yes, sorry, it's just tough to hear everybody. You know, I'm sure, I'm sure, especially with the mask on. Yeah, that doesn't matter. Justine, you're good with the change to agenda. I am. Yes, thank you. Okay, let's assign time keeper. I think a point treasurer should take us five. Yep. At most? Yeah. Approved minutes of Tuesday, August 3rd. Let's give that five public comment. That'll be unknown. Board comment. Do we have board comment here? Mr. Bill? I went and met with the select board the other night and had a discussion with them about the generator. Okay, is that, do you want to bring that up under 8.3? Sure. And we're talking about, okay. Good. Robert, do you have any? I don't just breathe by it. Go ahead. I don't think we have any board. Justine, do you have any board comment? I do not. Okay, so I think we're gonna say zero for that. Reports to the board, we'll give that 20. Be efficient. Okay, after we're learning arc, I think we need to give that at least 15. Planning, R-Sed Board retreat, another 15. Yeah, Stockbridge Generator Project. Hopefully 10, yes, Jamie? Yeah, I think that'll be all right. Okay. We talked about Patrick. Patrick, I know what he's gonna say. Rochester High School plan for winterizing that. I'm gonna give that 20. So we're tuition of religiously affiliated schools. What do you think? I don't know. 10 probably. 10, okay. You don't have to necessarily take action tonight, but I want to give you an update about that. And I want to provide players use of high school. I'd say, let's give that, let's give it 15. I think it's gonna come under the same, the winterizing actually though, but maybe take less. All right, and then action items, I think we usually end up voting in our discussion. So I think we'll give that a zero. New hires, resignations, anything? Yes. Yes, we do, we do. So we'll give you five. Yeah. Public comment. I didn't ask you, I'm here. Are you okay being our timekeeper again? Thank you. Thank you. I shouldn't assume another public comment, question mark and future agenda items, we'll say five and maybe get out of here. So super, just for super clarity on the timekeeper public comment is the two minutes per person, five minutes per person. We have actually never set that. I went to a meeting recently where they were doing three minutes by the town meeting. I know it was five. So I've heard different. I think we could probably set it as a board. If you want to, we're gonna just set out the timekeeper. I think three is a good time personally. I think it's reasonable and we're trying to really try to keep these meetings under, I think people can make their point in three minutes. Jamie, is there a policy on that? There's a policy. It doesn't specify time. So it's something that we're gonna look at the policy committee to see if we want to revise through our public comment. I think he could use some more gravels around anything so that nature. I think three is good and we can talk about that. I think, Mo, do we want to talk about that tonight? Is that something we? No. No, let's keep going. I was just curious really. Good. Yes, Robert. Just a comment about public comments. I'm glad to see that you have more. You have more than one public comment rather than just one at the end. Well, this was particularly for this, this is actually a suggestion from Tim Pratt because we had the high school winterizing which has been a definitely a contentious issue before and that we wanted to make sure that we heard from people before we took action and then after it was. It isn't always that way. Usually we save it till after, but I think it's been a practice that when we feel like there's something where we want to hear from people before we take action, we put a public comment before it. Now that's good. Yeah. We can do it even if we don't want to hear from them. Yeah, no, no, that's fine. Well, you're right. No, I think you're right because it does. The thing is that the idea I know from about public comment is that it's supposed to be specific to what we've talked about on the night. It's not about necessarily bringing in other things. That's one issue that's been clear. So in other words, they don't know what we're talking about until we talk about it, but we can talk about that and we can certainly make that a priority because I know you feel strongly about that, you said. Good. Can I say, let's appoint a treasurer. Do we have a treasurer? Yes, we have. We received a resignation of our current treasurer and Becky Klein and Kristen LaPell has agreed to step up. Who is the assistant town manager at Rochester? Town clerk at Rochester. I believe yes. Yes. She is willing to take it up, but you're very excited to have her. I will entertain a motion to appoint Kristen LaPell as treasurer for the R-Sed Board. So moved by Robert, seconded by Bill. So like an auctioneer here. Oh, sorry. All in favor, let's start. Discussion. Any discussion? Thank you. Do we need to specify in the motion that the treasurer had the authorization to be added to specific accounts? Tara is on, she'll know if she knows that or not. We do have both mutual fund accounts as well, financial accounts in that aspect, plus bank accounts. And I do have a note. Thank you. Yeah. Ray, I was just about to ask you to do that. So we can see. Hi, by your board taking action to appoint Kristen as the treasurer, you're giving her the authority to act on behalf of the board. The next steps will be that Rebecca will need to work with the lenders and change over the authorization. And that usually will require a signature letter in some instances, depending on the lending institution. Sorry, is that a case by case basis or account by account basis? I can't recall on White River Valley Credit Union. I think that's the one I needed the letter for when we changed. I know Amy had worked with Tully Spacing on People's Bank on one of your trust accounts, what needed to be done. I'm not on that account, so I'm not familiar with what's necessary. Mascoma, it's just a matter of Rebecca reaching out to them and signing over the signature card. Okay. And that's the reason I asked. I have an email directly from Joanne Mills at the credit union that states, I will need a minute from the board meeting with authorization to add you to the account. So I just want to make sure in our motion, it includes enough that she can be added to the email. It's just of what Tara just told us as we, we're good with just the motion as it stands. That's good. Good. All in favor, Justine. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Bill. Yes. Sorry, I spoke for you. You got to be careful with that. Good. We have a point of treasure. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Becky Klein has done it for a long time. Definitely appreciation of the board to her for all her conscientious work for us. Much appreciated. And thank you so much, Kristen, for stepping up. Good. The sense agenda, 4.1, approve the minutes of Tuesday, August 3rd. We have them attached here. I found no, I just found no glaring changes. Anybody else? No. Can we have a motion to approve, to accept the minutes? Second. Seconded. Any discussion? There being none, Justine, yes. Yes. Patrick, yes. Yes. Robert, yes. Ethan, yes. Amy. Yes. Bill. Yes. So approved. Very good. Our first round of public comment. I don't have a list here, so I'm gonna rate it if possible. If you could help me. Karen Rubin would be the first on our list. Karen, do you have any public comment at this time for the board? No, I don't. Thank you. Thank you, Karen. Lyle will be talking to him. Todd Harvey, do you have any comments for the board at this time? No, I do not. Thank you. Vic Roboto, do you have any comments for the board at this time? Well, you're muted, Nick. Vic, you're muted. Yup. I love the muted look. And everyone's ready. Different applications have different buttons in different places. I'm sorry. Of course. I'd like to save it for the discussion around the Rochester High School of Plans for Shedding, if I could. Excellent. Thank you. Tim Pratt, do you have any comment for the board at this time? No, I might assume not. Is that the last person there? Okay. Very good. Public comment. Board comment. Patrick's gonna move his comments to when we get to the eight three. So nobody's come up with any other comments at this point? Very good. Oh yeah. I just want to say how great the school looks outside and inside the grounds on the building, the structure that was dealt to our classrooms. I mean, it's just, it looks ready to go. And it's always energizing to walk into elementary school. And then this one's special. So I just wanted to pass that along. I will add to that. Thank you, Bill. I will add to that that I very much appreciated the open houses and going and meeting all the teachers. And I'm sorry I wasn't able to be at the stock where you went as well. But it was just a good, clear evening. And I appreciate that very much to the administration and to all our teachers who stayed up for them. Thank you. No further board comment. Let's move to seven reports to the board. Seven one. Superintendent. Hey, good evening. So I've been getting out into, I was in both of your buildings on last Wednesday. I'll be here tomorrow to visit with students in session. I was at part of in service in Rochester, which was great on last Wednesday. And you're my last two stops. I know that on to Adam has been in all the buildings already, which was terrific. And so by all accounts, I've been really impressed with what I've seen. I've got a letter going out to faculty thanking them for all their work and preparing for the kickoff of a school this fall. It's clear to me that the work's paying off, seeing really focused routines already in place in our classrooms. I've been really impressed with their new hires and the energy that they've brought to the buildings. And there's been a real enthusiasm there. And I would say that just the focus at in service was clear. So that was terrific. And so with that said, we're still short staff in some places. Our side not as much as other places, but we're specifically so short staff with interventionists. And I mentioned that in my reports. That is certainly a statewide trend right now that's really concerning. I know multiple superintendents. We've discussed the idea that whether or not the agency would have want to look to incentivize special educators specifically to move to the state. We do have a few special educators that are going to be supporting students virtually. This coming school year that we've been able to hire outside of state, but are going to provide interventions and supports virtually. They're not, there are contracted services that we've done it. So, but with all that said, just acknowledging that faculty have had to be really flexible. How many of you are short right now? Special educators, I'd like three to really be at the staffing levels the way I'd like us to be. Going into the summer, we would have been happy with two more bill. The third for me is just that we've had an influx of students. Our numbers also across the ESU, enrollment-wise are as solid as, we've seen them in a long time. Rochester is back up to 100 students unless it's changed since last week. I know I got Newtons back up over 100. Sharon Elementary has classes of 23, 24, 25 grade. So in general, we've had an influx, which is terrific. Now we just gotta get the staffing levels where we want it to be. And of course, that is an issue in not just education right now, right? Like I was at a restaurant the other day that was closed in several hours early because they can't find staff. So the other thing we're gonna look to do is to just continue to talk about with other SUs, is there opportunities to share expertise, right? Specifically when we think of special education, we have done better at leveraging virtual. So if there's a place where we have additional staffing, you know, we have some capacity and they may be looking for that or they have some staffing that we're short, how could we share in some of that? So that's something that we've started discussing too. Just to tell you, Robert, fill you in on that. And Bill, I don't know if you know about this, that we're already sharing RAID with tech going to... CVSU. CVSU and getting back from them as a business manager who's been mentoring and working along with tech. We have an MOU in place with that. So that's been a trade-off that we've done already. So we're hoping you do more of that. Can I just check from people who are listening? How's Jamie's, can you hear him? Okay, thumbs up, everyone's hearing him? Great, thank you. Just had some trouble with one of the meetings before. Well, one question for you, Jamie. I'm sorry, you wanna... No, that's good. And so I just was gonna wrap up by saying it's really exciting to have kids back in the buildings, you know, that speaks to why we do this work. If I'm just, first, I just wanna, I asked this at the SU level and I just wanted to ask it here so everyone's clear. There was some concern about being out of step with state law as far as how much special ed we had a member. And I just wondered if you were gonna talk to the... No, we're in compliance. Yeah, I'm not concerned with that. Okay. But with that... That was a concern a couple of months ago. Yeah, we are in compliance with our IEPs and what we're looking to do now is now that we've had students move in, so we have additional services needed that how do we look to use interventionists to make certain that we're in compliance with IEPs? So we may have less targeted intervention. Intervention for students, not service via IEPs at the moment, but all of our students who are served via IEPs, those IEPs will be met and we'll be in compliance with it. Okay. Robert, you had a question. Yes, when you're using contracted services, does that provide creating any problem with the union? It has not. No, they've been working with us. That's a great question. Now, the union's been fine with it. They understand the staff's shortages. I would say we've worked really hard, administration and union to really make certain that there's open lines of communication both ways there. So those things don't creep up. So no, that hasn't been an issue. That's great. That's really great. That's really strong. The three short-staffed is SUY. SUY. Yeah, I didn't know anybody else driving around the state. Everybody, everybody has got hope on it. And the other big issue that hasn't hit our side is I've got, I'm very short-staffed in busing. And so it hasn't hit our side as much, but in general, that has been a frustration. I sort of alluded to it in my letter. I went out to families on Friday. But that's been a bit frustrating. So I'm meeting with the transportation company the first and next week to problem solve that. Good. Of course, they were contracted service. Further questions for the superintendent? Justine. Oh, thank you. Patrick? No, I'll set. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Good. I think we're good then. Thank you. We'll be on to the principal's report. Put it in there. Yeah. So, including that, there's quite a bit that's been going on in the past month as we got ready to open school and we're open, so it's just exciting to have kids back. Probably the best part right there. And we have lots of new staff members and faculty members, but I feel like we're starting to pull them together well and get everybody updated on all sorts of things and we're all speaking the same language. I think, like Jamie said, I think the biggest piece is our numbers have gone up and that's a great sign. Means people are moving into the area and we're starting to expand quite a few of our offerings this year. So where languages have started, which has been great. Education has started, pathways and flexible pathways and personalized learning. That'll start this week and really kick off for students as special. Yeah. Oh, sorry. I'll let you finish first. There's probably more. It seems like there's been a lot more, but it's been a great start so far. Good. Yeah, my two questions are, well, I'll say, my son's schedule he was supposed to have a library today, but he said he didn't have a library today. Is there some hold up in library? He should have had two specials to that. Yeah, he had, on his list, it said... He had a library and outdoor education. Door education, exactly. And he did not have a library today. So I was just curious if there was some hold up in that. That's curious to me. I will find out. Good, thank you. And I didn't see art on his schedule. So we've reduced the art to a position last year in our budget. And so it'll be on a six week rotation. Gotcha. So art will start for six weeks in suffrage and then alternate with the pathways, position, and some writing. So they will get both once they try master, it'll just be in the shorter implement. I think it would be useful to send out some information about that because we were just confused as parents looking at it. And we were like, pathways, is that art? You know, I just wasn't sure. And what pathways is, I think it'd be good to communicate with everybody. So we know what pathways. Pathways and also the outdoor education because I know there was some concern, particularly from some Stockbridge parents about outdoor ed and what its use, what its purpose and objectives are. But I think it should be coming home Thursday from our outdoor educator as part of Thursday Holder. Great, great. Excellent, thank you. I have nothing further. Does anyone else have comments for our principal? I just want to comment. I really liked the third bullet, number one. Both campuses are scheduled for classrooms that has been built to implement 90 continuous minutes for literacy instruction, that includes reading 60, 75 minutes of math and intervention block and a writing block. And I don't know if that's a repeat from last year or it's accelerated, but that's exactly what we need when we're moving our kids ahead. So that's, I'm very impressed with that. Let's take the MSU question. By the way, let me get around and make sure. Amy, do you have a question? Well, thank you. Great pocket, great information. Robert? As with all the reports, sometimes we get overwhelmed by the acronyms. Yeah. So this is right in my opinion too. It doesn't have to be in every report, but perhaps a cheat sheet. A cheat sheet would be worth it. I actually, Robert, I make it a point, whenever I, cause Jamie loves the acronyms because he knows them so well and he uses them in his conversation. But whenever we're in public forum or in the meeting, I just say, what is that? And Phil, you're always saying, what is that? Cause I really support that. I think we need to be very clear. Cause most of these, I'm still trying to S back and still even after seeing it the other last time. We're in a balance assessment. Yeah. And what is MPSS? Multi-tiered system of supports. Which, and we're going to do a lot of board development around that. Yeah. It's something that I hope comes down in the retreat as further board development. Good. Justine, do you have anything for a principal? No, I think the report is so great. I'm happy to see it. And I wish you luck in the first part of school. Thank you. Patrick, do you have any questions for our principal? No, other than thank you for all your time and effort. I realize if we did it again, we do not have a notekeeper. Are we? So I was going to add that. So I've got a, I've got the record, the recording secretary for Tumbridge is going to do your notes. So we'll send a video and then we'll process them. Yes. You can say, Mariah Silly. Mariah Silly? That's good. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mariah. I appreciate it. She's not on here, but she'll see it. She'll see this. Thank you, Mariah. Much appreciated. Much appreciated. And forgive me for, I need to always make sure that we have someone. Good. 4.3, Business Manager Tara, please. Hi, everyone. So you have my report in my discussion items. I indicated that we would review your fiscal year 2021 year end projections. So prior to any adjusting journal entries that we receive from the audit, the projected surplus for FY 21 is $4,723.66. I realize usually, yeah, we get this as a printout. Yeah, she, I asked her, she said, no, she's giving it to us in the meeting. Oh, okay. Not in my report. I said, I would discuss it tonight. Okay. I love those. You'll start getting the one-sheeters again. Okay. So we're gonna do the one-sheeters quarterly. So you'll have the quarterly one-sheeters. Jamie and I talked through that. And then if at any point you as a board want your expenditure reports, I can generate them for you just like I could before if you want them. But otherwise, each quarter, I will give you the quarterly projections. So currently we are working through in the business office, all of the FY 21 audit prep work that needs to be done. The auditors are coming to the office September 20th through the 24th to do their actual physical audits. So we are working through all of the general ledger reconciliations and all the additional fixed assets and all that type of work for the balance sheets that need to be done. Plus we just got through our first payroll of the school year. So that's always a big undertaking. And then this week will be payroll number two. So so far that's running pretty smoothly. And then Jason has completed his week long child nutrition training program that he had to do, which was a overview of all aspects of the child nutrition program. So he will start to take over all of the child nutrition duties that I was handling in the past. Which I'm very happy about. So then if you guys have any questions, I'll happily answer any that I can. One question for me to start off, what does the increased tuition do to our expectations budget-wise? The increased tuition? Increased tuition. We have like 10 more students at Rochester. So is that going to affect? Well, are they tuition students or are they residents? There's over 20 more students than what were enrolled last year and it's a mix. And it's a mix. So we will get revenue dollars from the tuition ones and the other ones will help spread the per pupil spending. That's what I guess that's what I wanna know about. Yeah, it's how that affects what we budgeted for. We budgeted for a certain number of students and we've now got more both going out and coming in to our building. So I'm just wondering how- Does it change our tax rate because that already went out? Yeah, no, no, no. I'm just wondering how does it, are we short at all or are we doing- I will meet with Wendy, Ethan, and we can review that. I don't have any of the specifics around who's coming in, who's going out, where they're going. So I will need to get all of that information before I can generate those figures for you. That would be lovely. If we could have that next month, that would be lovely to hear from. Thank you. So we're on top of it, just so we don't get any surprises. I mean, by all indications, if we were much more conservative with budgeting revenue, right, tuition, as we were noticing that's an area where we were over estimating and projecting. So I would say that if we have more tuition students coming in and we budgeted, that's good. These will have an increase in revenue and the need does a nice job on the expenditure side. So remember for us to come out in the black, we had to work incredibly hard on the expenditure side because the prior year's budget had, we had overstated tuition and COVID did not help, right? Like a lot of tuition students chose not to necessarily come to school and homeschool. And so that did bite us. So that 4,000 doesn't seem like a lot, but that was a ton of work by the staff and the administration. No, and I don't expect anybody to have this right at their fingertips. It's just, it caught my attention and I just wanna know where we are, just so we're over here. We're still... Yeah, we know where we are. That's right. We were enrolling students Thursday morning last week. Nice. Which is really exciting. Yeah. But so we still need a little backup. Absolutely, absolutely. Lindy and I will get together and we'll have that information for you for your next meeting. Great, thank you. That would be wonderful. Thank you very much. For the questions for our business. I do. Bill first? Yes, thank you. I was gonna ask Lindy, what's some feedback you get from those 20 as far as why they are coming primarily to Rochester? Was it the reputation of the school that they recently just moved in? Were they moving out of? What do you call it? Burbia. It's the education at home. Or was it just the COVID? They came home and they left and then they come back. Do you have any sense of... How many movements is Rochester? Do you have any sense where that was 20? It's a mix of both. Quite, or all of the above is what I should say. There's families who were home polling who brought their kids back and I'm not sure who was more excited, mom and dad or the kids. They just came back. There are families who are new to the area and relocated and this is where the housing market landed them and it was within their proximity of where their new job is or working remotely. We do have some families that are still, parents are working remotely. I don't have quite as good of a read as the number of families who's moved into Handpacking, Granville and why other than there does seem to be some family connections. So they're more and their cousins have come to Rochester or other family members. The bus that goes from Rochester to Handpacking, Granville every day is at capacity. It's nice. Yeah, that's nice. Great to hear. Great to hear. Well, I'm of the belief that of a young family, I mean, young children, and I'm moving to a community one place I'm looking at is what kind of quality education are they gonna get? And so I think I would like to think that some of those folks moving in it wasn't, I love the house. Yes, but also the kids are gonna be well taken care of educationally. And I think that is a blessing for the school, other kids in the schools and also economic development for our communities. So that's really good news. Amy. So on the topic of the food service last year, and again for this school year, the students are all students are able to receive free and reduced lunch, breakfast and snacks, no matter what their financial situation is because of like state or federal money, right? So how does that work into our budget, what we budgeted as a food service transfer, what gets covered with that money? I mean, is staffing covered, is food purchases covered? What, I know that's just not a budget that we ever really see or a spreadsheet that we ever really see how that food service all kind of lines up. And so I'm wondering about what that money is used for and everything. Historically, any general fund transfer that was made into the enterprise fund for trial nutrition program was used to offset salary and benefits of the staff. Okay. Being that we moved, as you recall, food services centralized at the supervisory union as of July 1st, the food service inter fund transfer will not occur. It'll be an assessment build back to the individual districts at the close of the fiscal year. Okay. And the money that the state or federal money that we're getting, is that essentially just for the cost of food? Is it just for the purchases of the actual goods or on what does that money cover? That is for food and supplies is primarily the reimbursement that we get back from the federal and state reimbursement rates for each of the meals. And then also it goes towards your salary and benefits for your staff. So it's all essentially all eligible expenses under the child nutrition program. That's what that reimbursement can go toward. Okay. The issue is that we don't have enough folks eating to generate enough revenue. It's revenue and expenses, right? So all that money is revenue in your enterprise fund which will go to the SU. So that money comes to you guys and then it'll be used to cover cost of food and salary and benefits. But the issue we have is, and why we're trying to find more efficiency the most that we can across the SU is that the number of mouths that we feed both students and adults is not generating enough revenue to make up the difference. And that's in a normal year. And that's why I'm kind of wondering how this COVID year and the money that we're getting. It helped us last year, but by helps us, it has us running less of a deficit in food service, right? I mean, I think what we have to wrap our heads around is food service is a losing proposition. We are going to have some type of deficit in food service. Well, she can make meals to go for the workers. Well, or if we want to fundamentally change how we do it, right? Which we haven't discussed. But that right now we have all of our kitchens open. Like we said, we're going to, our staffing levels are the same. And so with that, are we trying to find some savings in more bulk purchasing as we move on? Yes. But at the end of the day, the salary and benefits is the drive-right. Okay. I would also bring up the issue of food choice because my son looks at the calendar and says, yes, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no. And we make the lunch. I'd be happy to pay, you know, say us some time in the morning. There was a couple of options. But I mean, I just think, and I thought this was one of the objectives of bringing everyone together is that you looked at what foods were more successful while meeting the standards, but were also popular. That is the plan. And again, this is our first month. Yeah. No, no, no. I understand that absolutely. Yeah. And I was more asked not like where we're going just about this, so thank you. No, no, you answer your, I think this was sort of a follow-on that I was. So the Child Nutrition Team has met and they meet monthly and they have worked on a centralized menu and calendar for each of the districts without losing the specials that they did within each of their buildings and finding popular recipes. And I mean, we're in the first two weeks of school. So they've done their first September menu and then they'll get together to work on October and November's menu. And that's the plan. And then like Jamie said, ultimately doing the bulk purchasing, getting that moved, it gives you a larger discount from the goods and services that we get from our vendors. And then also, you know, the continued professional development that we're going to be doing with the Child Nutrition Team to work on those exact things, to work on recipes and what recipes is successful in one building may not be as successful in another building. So working together to try and get combined recipes which ultimately ends up with combined ingredients to get more popularity and items. Pizza, five days a week. What's the problem? All right, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think you're right though. Having some variety and choice on the menu is important. Oh yeah. Even if you have a main meal having other options, I think is important. Well, yeah. And again, it's... I know there's the waste issue if it doesn't get eaten, but having the option on the side that can be packaged and re-put out into plums. I think there used to be more of it at Rochester. I haven't obviously done it in the lunch room in a while, but I remember when I used to go and have lunch with them, they're worse. It was a salad bar, a chopped veggie bar with a peanut butter. And salad bar was back today in Rochester. Great. I don't know how well... Yeah, we'll see. ...vertize that was. If it was a pizza bar, as I said, no problem. Good. Justine, do you have any questions for our business manager? No, I don't. Thanks. Patrick, do you have any questions for our business manager? I do not. Thank you. Robert, do you have any questions? All right, good. Thank you, Tara. Moving on, 7.4, the policy committee. Okay. Draft 5 went out today. Yes. Draft 5 of the anti-racism policy. We've been having some very good discussions. I wasn't actually at the one. I was away on vacation for the big one, August. That was like Thursday. 13th. 13th, yeah, that was a lot of people attended. There was a lot of feedback, a lot of discussion. And we went through... Who's the man? Glenn? Glenn Wiley. Glenn Wiley, who's been really sort of the organizer of this. I think in some ways you can say organizer of this policy. The anti-racism... I would say that the rest from Straff or Mika had done a lot of work originally. And then Glenn, she stepped off the board and Glenn has followed up with steps. Good. He did a very organized list of all the issues specifically that everybody had with the racism policy. And the last time we went, we went literally one item by item over those and came to full agreement as a board how we felt about each issue. And I think we had a good open discussion about each issue. And they were very good ones. Is there a need for this policy? Of course, one of the questions. Why now? Things like that. Why not anti-bias or... What was it originally going to... Equity. Equity was originally an equity policy and they got changed to this. All these were raised and discussed. And the policy committee said we feel good about this with a few minor tweaks. And so now we have draft five, which has been sent out. We said it's time to move it to the SU board where the SU will talk about it at their next meeting as I understand in October. September. September, sorry, end of September. And the date for that meeting, just so I can, if people want to come, I would encourage any of you listening, come to one of these meetings and hear the discussion. It's the 27th. Thank you, the 27th at six o'clock. It'll be on Google Meets. But I would encourage you, I would encourage you to be at this discussion. All board members and anybody who's interested in the public. This is a, this has been, I feel it's a very important policy. It's also a contentious policy among people who feel it's not appropriate this time. So I think it would be really good to have all of you hear the debate first on. But I think we're at a good place. I'm ready, I'm ready for the board, the full board to look at this. We'll leave the process as they will, they will look at the draft five. They will then either move it forward or send it back to the committee. Those are their options. I think we're gonna probably move it forward, which will be that then we'll come to the individual boards who will then have to vote up or down on each one of it. Vanda. Yeah, so just so everyone knows, it won't be one for adoption by the full board in September. It'll be one for comment. And so based on that, that will inform whether or not we need to do a draft six or not, based on the feedback of the full board. And then it will be one for adoption by the full board in October. Is the timeline we ended up going with and then it will come to all the local boards in November. There'll be about 13 months. But there were several board on the policy committee and there were several members of the policy committee who were like, we're ready, we're ready for this. We feel like there's been some very good. Jamie's been very diligent in getting in public feedback. Good, any questions on this? Robert. I just want to say that, in terms of expectations I've read through the current draft, not the most current draft. And it takes some getting your head around. And I think there's been excellent work, but when the rubber hits the road and when it comes to implementation, I mean, you're basically trying to institutionalize a very difficult subject. And so please expect you're gonna have hiccups and you're gonna have need revisions in the coming year as you actually implement that policy. If you consider it a starting point, then I think that's probably the right attitude. Yes, I have made this point that I'm ready for it to be out there so that we learn about it. That brings up another point about it that's important is that this is really about, this policy is about safety. It's about safety for students and access to safety and feeling safe. It is not at this point about curriculum or specifically saying we're teaching this or this or this. It's really about students feeling safe. And I'll tell the story that I just recently started interviewing some African-Americans in the state for a show I'm putting together and one 20-something who grew up in the Berry school system. Said racism exists as a cut by a thousand knives. It's not a blunt instrument over the head. It's not burning crosses. It's an assumption that exists. And he said it was very, very challenging for him. So I'm really working for that man and for all the younger versions of that man who exist in the school now. It's very difficult for me to put myself in the shoes of the black man in the United States. Yes, I mean, my history has been a close association and friendship with the African-Americans in your neighborhood growing up and on. And despite that, I just know that the more I know, the more I know I'm clueless about it. And that's why, as you say, it's time to get it out there and see if it's actually successful. For the questions, Amy, Bill? Yeah, I just have a comment. I read an interesting blog on Vermont Digger and there's an opinion piece. And the author was talking about how this anti-racism is so important for the economic development of our state that if we're gonna thrive, we've got to attract and keep people from all cultures and all ethnicities and the people that live here have to be open and willing and to welcome and to care for everybody. And so it was a very interesting perspective. It's more than what's doing right and protecting. It is, I think, an important building and an exciting rhythm for the future of the state. And that's why I commend the policy committee and the people that have pushed this so hard is this is an important building block and it's well worth the effort, the five drafts that you've gone through. Thank you. Justine, do you have any questions or comments? I guess just a comment to piggyback on what Robert was saying, I think that the drafts probably will still continue to come, but bringing it out and as a piece to for more comment, I think the more commenting and the more learning we all can do will lead us toward like what exactly we're looking for in the end all and where we can put ourselves, what shoes we can put ourselves in and creating this, whatever this document and implementing it. So I think it's great that Ethan's ready to put it forward because there's so much you can do, theorizing and hashing things out but having it available for more eyes and more people to discuss will be really helpful and helpful for me. I've read all the drafts and I know I have a lot to learn but I'm interested in hearing other people too. Thank you, Patrick. Any comments, questions? Yeah, just bear with me. I'm actually sick right now. So having a tough time talking tonight but no, I'm just really excited to see this being implemented, especially considering I have a student right now in Stockbridge. So I'm proud that she gets to be a part of it. And it's just something that as a family, we try to have appropriate conversations with our daughter about it and she's only six but it's a tough thing to navigate even as a parent. So I totally agree that it's good that we're getting it out there and I do see hiccups and problems along the way or obstacles to overcome but I think it's a good thing to start implementing. Good, thank you. Good. I think we're ready to move on to seven, five negotiations. Well, yeah, we reached tentative agreement and so which is great news without going to mediation which I think was a huge success. I think both sides go correct me if I'm wrong. I think both sides felt really positive at the end of this. And so I just sent the negotiations committee the final draft to review one more time with a fine tooth comb, Sarah Root who is our speaker and I read each word in the new master agreement in comparative versus TAs and the old one. There's a couple of little slight things that they that was fixed. So I expected the support staff is gonna ratify this week or the first and next. So if you can mark your calendars, I do need a poem for next Thursday. I was able to work out with the board chair, Kathy Galuzzo that will host a full board meeting special next Thursday for ratification. And then of course, we'll need a poem for our side too because you do have support staff represented at that master agreement. There's still two districts that don't. There'll be the 16th, 16th at six o'clock. And I will get this document out in front of all of you. Can that be on Google Meets as well as? Yeah, yeah, it'll be both. And I will send this to you, all the board members and then ask board members who may have questions or concerns to feel free to reach out to myself or their rep before. And our rep has to be clear as well. And Bill was great. He was there the whole time. And so, and then of course, we'll also go into executive session if there's any questions, go to full board level and we'd look to ratify full board and then do breakout meetings. This really loves those. Remember the last time there was kind of, we've gotten better, we had breakout groups. So we'll do that afterwards. How much time on the 16th? I think if you could play out for 45 minutes this shouldn't take more than that. Thank you. And you got that, Patrick? You got that, Justine? Six o'clock on the 16th, roughly 45 minutes. Good, thank you. Okay. So just as time keeper, everything is so very important for us to continue talking about but we have spent twice as much time on board reports as in allocating. Oh, I'll keep that in mind for next time. It's important we have a lot of good stuff to talk about, so I'd hate to stop us. No, I know. You can also poke a pin at us on a regular basis to say, okay, that's enough. Or at this time, okay. I just want to take a moment, Ray, thank you. This works. We can see people, they can see us. So thank you for making it up for so well. I really appreciate it. Good, let's move on to 8.1. I said COVID-19 procedure protocols and the focus on outdoor learning. The board will discuss next steps in providing appropriate outdoor learning spaces, including existing tents. Do you want to leave this or? I'm happy to. At least get it started. We do have to scoot out just a little bit more just so Robert, we can see what I was thinking. Yeah. We took to these tables at the time we did it. All right, we're going to go straight on to each other. We are, we are, we are. So we have outdoor spaces for almost every grid class. There's one shortage in Rochester because we had a tent for down last year, but we've had great weather. So, so far the tent has not been the limitation of outdoor classes happening or learning outside happening. But we are at the point where we need to, and I'm open to ideas, find a way to replace the tops of the tents at the very least because the canvas just will not hold much more. Like it'll be interesting to see what happens tomorrow evening when we're supposed to get some rain. I can tell you what's going to happen. It'll pull and it'll start to fall. The preschool one I know in Rochester has been pulling and dripping through and about to rip out. Yeah, and same with one here and one over there. So looking for a company potentially that maybe just makes the tops of the tents or a place that's not that, like that's going to give us a heavy duty canvas because people really were out there until November. The other issue that comes up with that, of course, is that those are not strong tents. And even if you have a good tarp on top, you get that snow weight on it, we'd reinforced Amy's all crazy and it still just went, enough snow and those things are going to go. If we want to save our frames, I think being realistic about when we're done and using the two, the four hard outdoor spaces we have. Well, another thing I would propose is just we slowly start to impact and that there is someone local who has tents made and brought and I know Bethel Middle School, White River Rally Middle School, excuse me, in South Road and has used this person and had them. They made tent tops? Well, I think it started with rented and then they invested in some that were just for them. Right, but at what point do we want to just be saving our money for investing into these more structures? I mean, because I really do think- I don't know the cost of either, really. Well, I think it's worth, yeah. Yeah, no, I think so, I mean. Because these structures are great, but you cannot put 20 kids, six feet apart in that like we're outside the structure, which is fine right now. And you mean this is the green, the trust structure? Yeah, the trust structure. Or not big enough for classes of? It's pretty tight, it's not for- For a class of 20? Yeah. And that is six feet apart, even with the air flow, those extreme air flow coming through? Yeah, but we still have to be six feet apart to have our money back up. Oh, that is okay. Outdoor that is, I didn't realize that. Okay, okay. Well- So it's worth comparing and contrasting, I mean. I mean, as someone who spent a lot of time with those frames last year, and I have to say I do notice that I'm not jumping into it this year, like I did last year yet. I don't know how much money I would put into those tents. You know, that's a real question for any, like get what we can for, if we can get another fall out of Oldham, this is my suggesting- Because you think it's past, but so much more money and time- Yeah, then if you're buying tops, you're gonna be looking at, probably two or 3,000 per top, for a good quality top. And then you do that for all of them, suddenly you're looking at almost $8,000 per school, and that's another structure. That's another trust structure. Could we get by with three trust structures per campus for the year with rotating? You know, as opposed to designating each class has a structure, could it rotate in three with that be enough? What do you need, I guess, is the real question. You need structures through the winter, really, don't you? I mean, fresh air, outdoor learning. Yeah, yeah. And how often, how many classes are using these spaces now, and how many did throughout the winter last year? What do we see the need throughout the winter this year? So throughout the winter, we didn't have any space up and running last year. Okay, so it's... The winter adjustment, it made, was that folks were outside for... 10 minutes every hour, 10 minutes every hour. I think it was 10 minutes. I think it was 10 minutes every hour. And it turned into basically a focused recess time. Right, like a nature walk. Yeah. Sledding was big, I know in Rochester. Right, sledding was big. There are times of the day when we walk through either building and I end up outside, because everybody's outside. Which is great, that's what we want. I mean, we are not even eating in SAG right now. For lunches, all lunches are outside under our space. That will be... I'll go ahead, Bill, yeah. The... The hard part of it is the structure's cost. What are we looking at? 8,000 to 9,000. Yeah. I think it's 9,000 was the last one that was... And that's installed. That includes installed? Yeah. Does that... How many students does that structure accommodate? Well, what can you do? 16? Yeah. You could do about 16, but you get up to 20. Yeah, right. You can have them... More in it and have outdoor learning, but they have to wear the mask, right? Got you. Okay. So you could have more in there, but they'd have to have... I mean, some still. I'm a little surprised we haven't really been using that front trust structure. I mean, our school years just started, but I know last year, it really didn't get used a lot. Oh, right now there's a rotating schedule ahead. Okay, good, good. Because I wanted to make... And then again, I know that Amy has a designated space for herself, but is that something that should be rotated through by other classes as well? When she's not... When she's down at Stockbridge, could that be used by the class? Right, and I think that's the schedule. It'll still be shifted out in the coming week or so, now that we're almost out of full week at school. Would you like two more structures for campus? Trust structures. I think we have to have the conversation about where they're gonna go. Where would we put them? I mean, Rochester, I would say take the place of those two structures on there. I have a question. Yeah, no, I'm just kind of curious as to whether it would be more valuable to have two more structures of the same size or try to find a way to build a slightly bigger, civilian structure that could potentially hold more students as that's even in need. And maybe in Stockbridge, the only location I could think of is down in the lower field toward the solar. Yeah. Just so you know, they did put up a 30 foot version of this. It was $11,000 for that, that 30 foot version, which I think would cover your 20 students at extra 10 feet. Yeah. Bill? Yeah, I have a few questions. Is any federal COVID money available for this? And so that's why we think we're talking about safety of our kids. Yep, yep. Good way to spend it. And my gosh, we get a COVID outbreak and education is jeopardized. And the other thing is whether our building reserve fund would be another potential source. It just seems to me, this is a, we need to hear from staff what you need. This seems to me, there's a way to fund it. Yep. So just so everyone knows, that's, we would use extra money to pay for this. I personally think we should put it into, I mean, there are some limitations with trust structures as they are. You get some wind and the snow and rain are gonna blow right into them. And I think we need to figure that out. I think there was a lot of concern by Cricket McCusker, who's the engineer who approved the design, not to put something on there on the sides, but I think we could possibly use the tent because there are actually, a lot of the tent sides are actually in pretty good shape that we might have a fine way to put that in there to cut down on some of the wind from the side. I personally would say, let's put this, let's do the structures. Let's give you something you can use. And if you need in Rochester, a 30 footer. Okay. Then let's figure out how to do that. But tell us what you need. Will anybody in our next meeting say, if I had my, this is my, tell us everything you want. And then we'll, it's our job and Jamie's job to figure out how we pay for it. Okay. And what's nice about these structures, when I'm kind of asking this, is it the fact that they are potentially movable in the future? So that rather than building like a open barn that has just an open structure that has doors that slide open and shut, because that's not movable. Like, is that why these structures are better? They have no, there's no cement foundation. They're basically secured into the ground by their weight, the structure itself that holds them rigid and also by the cables that go into the ground that are rated to 3,000 pounds per cable, much better than the cement buckets, much more secure and safe than the cement buckets we were using for the temps. I think there's, you know, these, these, as people might not know, these are designed by Ryan, Ryan designs right in Rochester. They're still experimenting with some other possibilities as far as sides, you know, doing things like that, we can certainly experiment with that too. The idea, and maybe this is what Patrick's getting at, you know, do we build something bigger outside? That's a, I mean, that's a very good question. And maybe that would be a reason if we did to try and get our tents through a couple more years to save up the money for that, because that's going to cost more money, it's foundations, it's piers, whatever, to hold it in place. These are, these are, you know, taken part of all and movable. Right. That's one of the things that is nice about them. I mean, it's, sorry, can I just get the robbery as well? Just a quick one. I mean, based on the trends in increase in student population, you should definitely be going for larger size. I mean, don't even bother with the smaller stuff. Yeah, I think I would agree. I mean, I also think while we have the extra money here, and we know we've been very successful in raising funds as well, I don't see a problem with, you know, maybe two more structures for each school. One of them for, if Rochester is the place it needs it, for the 30 footers. I can show you the 30 footer if you want to take a look at it. And so you can decide if you think there's enough space what we would need. And I mean, you know, there are the designs out there. I'm sure Patrick probably has some concepts of whether the designs, that said, we could get this going soon and probably by snowfall probably have more structures for you. If we go with the Ryan design, that is one of the benefits that they're right here. I don't know how busy they are, but I could find that out. Okay. Yeah, that's my good approach. Yeah. Tell us what you need. All right. Dream big. And then we'll figure it out from there. Good. Anything further to say on procedures? Focus on after learning, but I think questions about the COVID-19 procedures and protocols. Obviously masks and masks. I mean, we are, we are certainly taking a more conservative and cautious approach than the guidelines that were provided us. For example, the six foot distancing when masking, Wendy's doing that. That's not a requirement by the Department of Health. So I want to make certain folks know that. So it's not this construed that that's, I don't want someone saying to me tomorrow that's not what was out there. So what we are doing is requiring masking inside. We are looking at each building as an ecosystem. So we wouldn't even consider looking at our masking current protocols of indoors until at least all students within the building we met an 80% threshold, not just those eligible for vaccination. So that is a difference. So the guidance right now is those eligible. So I'll give you an example. Like what it would mean is, is if at Bethel, which is close by, a lot of their middle scores are eligible. The guidance would be that once the middle scores say 80% they could remove their mask, even though the elementary students couldn't because they're not vaccinated. We're looking at that whole building as an ecosystem. And that's what we'll do. I don't, in regards to when will there be approval for elementary each students to get vaccinated? I've heard anywhere from January to the end of this month, right? And so stay tuned. We will work hard with the health hub to prioritize vaccinations in our school setting and I'm still trying to work out right now with our current staffing. As far as nurses, how to get surveillance testing up and running, the agency of education is sponsoring a weekly surveillance testing. The issue that I have is that we got 10 buildings, 10 schools and having enough manpower to do that weekly and then get it off. And so- Especially the younger kids can't do it themselves. Yeah, so we want to do it. It's just how do we pull it off? And so that's something that I continue to talk with the nurses in our COVID coordinator about. I did, I know the agency of education just provided further guidance today saying that they may be able to help staff that. That's certainly feedback the other superintendents have given them that we want to do it. But we need the manpower. There's need help. And so that's what we're trying to figure out. I'll comment just from our experience last year that we were following my sixth grader. I mean, she didn't even notice they had masks on and not throughout the entire school year there was no running nose, there was no cough, there was no throat by anybody. And you always, always throughout the winter would have something you would. And so- And then the proof of that was everybody took their masks off from the summer camps and then everybody got sick. They got colds, just got colds. Like almost everybody, I know a bunch of colds went through the towns. So it is very effective. It's very healthy. Is the surveillance testing a sampling sort of testing or is that what? So you sign up to get, yeah. So it's weekly COVID testing. Of everyone? Not of everyone, those who opt in. It's an opt in for staff and students. Last year we did staff monthly, about monthly I think. That we could pull off. When you add students and then you add the weekly. What sort of percentage do you think you would, your, I mean- Percentage of staff. We heard- What was the percentage of the ecosystem? That I would expect if we did it. No schools, not many have started off yet. So it's hard for me to say data-wise. I will tell you that our staff percentage was about, it depended on the building, but it was close to 50% that we were doing last year. And so it did trail off as people got vaccinated. That's what we started. And I don't know necessarily how many students. It's something that I've talked to Shane about. Maybe we start by surveying to see the number of students we're actually talking about. Does that make better sense, get a sense of the manpower I need? Was that rapid test or no, was it PTR? No, you have PCRs and you have to package it. You got to print the labels, you box it all up. I mean, there's several steps to it. Forgive me if I didn't see this, but have you put out a reminder of what the protocols are if a child or a staff member is found to be positive in a classroom? Just a reminder so we know that is it still the isolation policy of the class? Keeping the rest of the school in. Last year, we just went remote with the whole school. That process would be different this year. What I talked about is that we will have classes go remote. But unless we felt like there was a situation where we had several students positive within a building then we may say we're hit pause like we used to last year. Our process last year was if we had positivity within the school we just pause the school for a minimum of three days. Contact raised and then started back up. But we will do now, if we do that right now we can't count those as student days, like a snow day. You have to have 51% of your students into the building to count it as a student day. So what we would do is we would go remote with a grade level if we had positivity within the school and it could be multiple grade levels and we would still meet that threshold for attendance while the other students are remote. Let's hope we never get there. I have colleagues that have gone remote with the whole school. Right now there's no waiver to allow that. And my sense is unless one, the legislature could take action on this, they're the ones that can provide that permission. Of course they're not in session. Or if the governor went back into a state of emergency that would authorize the secretary of education to provide that permission. But right now we're not in a state of emergency. So the secretary can't authorize that. So I've got some colleagues that I frankly think I rolled the dice and just said no, we're gonna go remote, you know, what? I basically say that it's a state day. Call us no days, but we're... Well, the issue that we have with that is is that we're part of a master agreement. We're a bargaining unit, right? And so if I got to people working and we don't count those as student days, then we would have an issue on the other end where I'm coming to you and saying as a board, we owe people now per DM money in order to meet the minimum requirements for student days work. So those are all things that are going into this. Here's what I will say is that we're gonna do what we think we need to do to keep people safe. So if that meant we're just even not saying we're gone remote as a building, like we're just gonna go COVID day for two days now because we don't have authorization to go remote, then that's what we would do and we'll have to make those up on the other end or we put those in place of some in-service days. The union worked with us on that last year. So we'll figure that out. Or is the BSDA working with us to make the governor aware of these problems? Yeah, no, I think, yeah. I think that there's been a lot of advocating from the VSBA and also the superintendents association. I know that two superintendents spoke out again today. It was on CAX speaking to the fact that we could use some support and some more tools to navigate this. I mean, we had a lot more support to navigate it last year. Because of the state of emergency. Because of the state of emergency. Like being able to pause and just go remote. Yeah, great. Good. Further questions? Yeah, I have a question. Justine? I wanted to ask Jamie what the protocol was for communication, if there's a positive. Will the whole class know about that? Will the whole school know about that? Will all the... We would notify the whole school like last year our same procedure. Yeah. Okay, thank you. There's a COVID team that meets. You'd get a call from a principal. You'd get a letter from me. Those that are close contacts will get notified by one of the members of the COVID team. And certainly our communication with that folks know if their actual class is going on remote. Thank you. Patrick, questions for this? Are you all good? I guess I just got one kind of piggyback, justine. But I know that we have a local day care program provider that our two-year-old goes to. And our other daughter who's in kindergarten on vacations, she'll go there as well. And that one day care provider is going to have four different school districts that she's dealing with this year. So, she's implementing her own protocols, basically, because of that, where if the kids do go there on vacation, they're gonna have to wear a mask. But I think if there is a situation or an outbreak in one of the schools, will parents be told timely enough that say it happens like last year, I know that one was literally just before during one of the breaks. And as a parent, we need to know in order to tell the day care provider so it doesn't start spreading to other school districts and whatnot. I just know that that's a concern for other parents that even have children in day care that don't yet have a child in the school system. So, just like again, everybody needs to feel safe. So, I just wanna make sure that that can be done quickly enough. All contact tracing falls on the school. The Department of Health does not help us with that. That's, we're expected to do that. And what I would say to you is, is that anytime we had positivity last year, we were able to notify folks within before the next day, right? So, we got a notification one night was at 6 p.m. We were able to notify everyone by the next morning. So, that's where that team comes into play. You have to interview folks, right? So, part of it is interviewing the students, specifically the older they get, the more we don't always know where they are after school hours as well, right? So, that interview is important. But as soon as we know we notify and that's why we used to pause and just go remote. So, again, if we know we have positivity, that's why we would pause a grade level. Doesn't mean everyone's a close contact, right? We're gonna keep them out of the building, notify them that they could have been, and then we contact close contacts. The issue that we've had in the past though, of course, is you notify the close contacts, but then a close contacts positive. Well, I don't find that out until several days later. And that close contact may have other close contacts that weren't in their first batch. And that's where folks can get frustrated about why am I finding out now six days later when you originally had an event six days ago? Well, it's because it wasn't the initial positive person that was your closest contact. It's a close contact of that. Oh, it's just difficult to trace, that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah, no, we try to jump on it immediately and get that information out. Now, I'm at a board meeting tonight. There could be something going on, but I have people that take care of it, not just me. But I assume that it's a privacy issue that you can't just blast it out. I cannot tell you who it is. To say, so-and-so, it has to positive. No, no, I don't think anybody's names should be used. I don't think that that's... Good. You feel satisfied there, Patrick? Yeah, absolutely. I have another question. Sorry. Is there a situation where the Board of Health may direct you not to announce a positivity that's been in the school? Like if there hasn't been any close contacts or because I heard through the grapevine of the positivity at the open house. And I didn't hear anything from the school about that. The Board of Health would never notify us not to announce positivity. If there's positivity in the community and the person was never positive at the school, we're not gonna announce it. I get it, yep. So it's about time and just like you were talking about before with Patrick, it's a timing issue. It's a timing issue. Okay, that... I think it's important to know that we've got community transmission occurring right now. That's just the case, right? So I can't announce any time there's a positive case in the town, but certainly if there's a positive case and it's been positive within the school community, that's when you're gonna get a phone call. That's when you're gonna get a letter. Regardless of close contact, just the positivity will be announced. Well, if it's within the school, there's gonna be close contacts more likely than not. Meaning students and teachers, not parents of students. Right, right. Okay, thank you. So the key for us is was someone able to pass on the virus while they're in the school community. That's what we're looking at. So that's what we consider positivity within the school community. Persons found to be positive for COVID and they were in the school community when they could pass the virus on. Great, thank you for clarifying that. Oh, no. Oh, no. What a world we live in. Well, there's lots of questions around the community about this stuff. So if we can hash it out, we're in a situation like this. No, that's good, and I'd encourage you, I would try to remember that question when I do those questions and answers because that's a good one for me to try to address. Yeah, I love those questions and answers, by the way. Thank you for doing that. I have one more question. So with that being said, I'm just trying to understand this and I know, you know, so basically I'm just thinking what if a parent or a sibling that's not in the school ends up, you find out they test positive? I mean, obviously the family should be doing their due diligence, keep everybody home. I guess, is there anything surrounding that scenario that needs to be understood? So if a parent test positive, a student would then be forced to quarantine, student would get tested, student comes back positive, we worked in with the Department of Health to trace back when were they contagious? If the student was in the building during being contagious, that's when we notify you, that's when we would go remote with certain classrooms and that's when we start to do close contact identification. I think it's important to remember what we were talking about last year, mitigation. We're doing, it's our best, this is the best we can do. It's not full proof, there's gonna be very instance, there's gonna be examples we haven't even thought of. And I think somehow we might think that it's full proof and it's not, there's always gonna be, well, we might know that for three days and they were in the school and maybe they, you know, blah, blah, blah, it's mitigation, it's the best we can do and it's why these outdoor spaces are very important and why we should get going on them as soon as possible. Because that's what helped us healthy last year, was getting our kids outside, I really believe that, and being diligent with masks and hand washing, which we are, it's not gone. You know, I think we're really in some ways, we're a lot wiser, but we're really in the same place we were last year. I just, I hope there's a lot less fear in some way because we've been with this, but it's, I think we have to let go of the freedom of the summer a little bit and be realistic, but it is mitigation, it is the best we can do. I wanna piggyback on that and point out what a great set of campuses we have for outdoor learning and how lucky we are compared to some other schools who have different environments that might not lend themselves to this kind of learning. So it is kind of a beautiful thing amidst this chaos. And I think a great place to spend this, Bill said, a great place to spend money is making the outdoors even more attractive for us and more usable. Good, are we ready to move on? Yes. Everybody? I think we've blown this. Yeah. I'm keeping out of this. Oh, of course. Twice over, yeah, twice over, yeah. Good, good, good. I was wondering if we could do eight two and eight three and we've got Gemma waiting here for us. And I just hate to have to, because there's gonna be some talk about, and I know shuttering and winterizing is a big thing, but that's a relate to the players. I wonder if we could move eight four and eight six, what? Oh, move eight four and eight six, blow up. No, up, up, up, so that we can get to them. Oh, do that first. Yeah, so they're planning for the retreat and the Stockwood Generator Project could go later. Are we all okay with that? Yes. I don't know if Justine, you see or Patrick, but we have a representative, channel see here from the four of our players. And I just don't want to, because we've got some discussions to do here. If we're good, we would then move to eight four and then go right to eight six after that. Because then I think we need to discuss eight four before we can discuss eight six. Cause eight four relates to eight six. Good, any objections? No. They're being none. We'll go to Rochester High School plan for shuttering or winterizing for the 21-22 school year. And Lyle, Lyle, is there any chance you could get some light on your face? We can't, I'm not sure. This is my wife's COVID teaching den, but I'm not good with the lighting here. Let your fan, you've got to shut that light off behind you. Shut that light off behind you, that's possible. I don't know. I can just see you, I mean, you know. All right. But if not, let's go ahead. Let's go ahead. What have you got for us? So I've talked to quite a few colleagues about what ramifications of taking and turning off the heat and electricity to that building are. And my gut feeling was, you know, going in the same as it is coming out of all those conversations is that whoever ends up with that building, if we do choose to let it get room temperature, which obviously could be well below zero from out winters, is not going to have much of a building left. If you drain those boilers and you drain those sprinkler pipes and you drain or try to fill the domestic water with glycol and so on and so forth, you're going to have major problems when you turn everything back on. Your septic system could be frozen. Your traps underground, if not treated properly, would be frozen. Your foundation would leave likely and cause all sorts of structural problems. And I just don't feel good at all about saying, yeah, you'll save some money on oil heating, you know, not heating the place. But I'm also concerned, and I haven't heard back from Visbit, but I have a call into them also about, they feel about ensuring a building that has no fire protection because there's no water for sprinklers. There's no power for fire alarm systems and no way for the fire alarm system to call out if there's a problem. It's just a bad, bad idea if you want to maintain any value for that building, in my opinion. I've talked to Norm Metkind, who you probably have heard of before. He was the former school energy management person at the superintendent's association. He completely agrees with me. I've talked to Derek Madden, who's an amazing plumber, which is also my background. And he just shakes his head, no, no, no, don't do that. And it's just huge problems. So I cannot, in good conscience, tell you to not try to maintain some minimal level of heat in that building. Having said that, who is gonna ultimately end up with this building should know that and know that there's a cost associated with that and perhaps help to heat that, in my opinion, that's not up to me. I can tell you that we're gonna look at having the pneumatics controls person that had serviced that building in the past, take a look to see if there's any other way we can stop any fresh air from coming into that building, which means cold air, so that we button it up tighter than it has been, obviously. There's the old heating systems have a minimum amount of fresh air that they allow into the building because it's typically occupied. You could mitigate that by boarding up the outside air louvers and just bring no fresh air into that. But again, that means it's unoccupied, especially in cold times. If you're thinking about having anybody in there, you have to rethink that strategy. Well, just, can that be done zone by zone? Well, I believe it can. Yes, I think you can, and that's why we're having the controls guy go there and take a look at how those dampers are operating and where their minimum settings are and whether it's cheaper to just disconnect the louvers and jam them closed from the inside or just board them up from the outside and then leave some areas that's still functional, which you can do with the pneumatic system, I'm guessing he can figure out a way to do that. So if you were gonna use the auditorium, for instance, you would have to look at it from that approach where you could still provide lots of fresh air for space of that size. So there are things that we're looking at right now to see if we can get better control how much fresh air we bring into that building, which ultimately means how much cold air we're bringing into that building. Okay, good, so now we got this. Seems like we have sort of two decisions here to make tonight. One is, yes, no to this mothball. Part of this goes with what Vicks about to tell us too, which some of us have already seen, which is that the estimate, the grant timeline is much longer than we expected. In other words, the work will not be done till well into the second half of next year, if I'm right about that, Vick. Would you like to speak right now, Vick, and add that in, get that clear for us? Yeah, thank you. And also Catherine, who's my co-chair in this project, she's on the phone on number that ends in 2-4. I don't know if Ray needs to unmute her or if she can do it herself. Oh yeah, no, I see, if she does star six, she can unmute herself to talk. If she presses star six on her phone, she can unmute to talk. Okay, that should be listening in, so I hope she'll do that. I wanted to speak to one specific aspect of this whole difficult issue. And that is the timeline and the approval we would need from the school board in order to obtain the grant. I recall last spring when we applied for the, it was a community development planning grant and put a lot of time into it. We were successful. We got the grant award, though there is a condition of the grant award that we had to obtain formal authorization from the school board to allow access to the building during the life of the project. And at that time, the school board approved for a year for April 7th of 2021 to April 7th of 2022. There's a letter and then there's the, what's called the licensing agreement that goes along with that. So we were very, certainly grateful because without that, we would not be able to get the grant. So we got the grant was awarded. We moved immediately to write a RFP for consultants. We got an excellent consultant who's been down this road many times before both in Vermont and in rural New York state. And it was a bit of an eye opening to better understand what it takes to do a project of this scope. And I did share with Ethan the project scope and timeline, so you have that detailed information. But I think it's not something we could foresee last spring but rather than this project being a six month project, it turns out to be a nine month project based on a significant experience that this consultant brings to bear. And as difficult it is, we appreciate knowing the reality as opposed to not knowing that. So that forces us to come back to the school board tonight to ask for approval for extension of that letter and licensing agreement. He starts at the mid to late September and we're talking about mid to late June to finish up that project. So we're asking tonight for approval to do that. And then we'll need to go back to the select board next Monday and discuss this and see if they would agree to that extended time till two because our desire was to have this all done in a way that we could present to the town in the spring and get a decision and get this decision behind us. But it's just not feasible for us to be able to do that. And that's why I'm back tonight on that point. Well, one thing, Vic, I've realized what you said is that actually that clarifies for us. We've already made a decision because we've given approval for access. I need to read over that approval. Well, I'm just saying, but in principle, in principle, and he's loud to said, you don't let anybody in that building if you shut off the HVACs and if we've given them access till April. I just need to read over a lot of it. I don't remember what it's supposed to be. But I think that is, and that's what I'm hearing anyway tonight. So it does sound like- The letter said that there's a, like a four or five page agreement goes to the letter. Basically says that the town has given permission to enter the building for the purposes of the feasibility study. So there's consulting architect and engineer, they need to take measurements, they need to visually examine the condition of the infrastructure and all that because part of their scope of work is to give us a plan for facility improvements that would be needed in order to put the program content into effect. They can't use the engineering study, which did that exact same thing. Well, they have that. And, but there are maybe- That was not long ago. With that as well. And there's a space plan as well. So part of the program concept is to have an adult daycare center to have a child daycare center and the educational adult education and other related programs. So the purposes of the assessment are for those programs not to turn it into a school building. And so it's a little bit different. And it's not something they need access to all the time. They just certain days they'll need to get in there and look and there's only so many hours in the grant for them to do that. So anyway, so that's our request is to extend it to end of June of 2022. Well, well, going back to what Lyle says, it very, I take what he says very heavily because I mean- Yeah, no, no, no. This is a building and we can't, this is an asset of our district. It's like a $3 million asset. We can't just throw it in the trash. So how can, I feel that we should heed his advice and try to do some more buttoning up, but that would really be irresponsible of us to do the potential damages to this building. Somewhat beyond that, actually. I'm already at the point of what Lyle said, which is this isn't a matter of that anymore. It's a matter of who's paying for it. This is really about who's paying for that heating for me. And I feel very strongly that we cannot ask the Stockbridge voters, after the promise we made of September shuttering it, that we can ask them to pay for this asset that is no longer of any use to them, but is only potentially of use to the Rochester town. So I think we need to know how much it costs to heat it last year. What portion of that could be broken out to be Stockbridges? And this is, I'm proposing this to everybody. And at least that amount is raised by the town of Rochester or by the Envision Rochester group or anybody else to supplement this. Because I do not think we should be asking to heat this thing one more year. I think it's fair enough to ask Rochester to pay it for the bill for it. And we do have money on the budget to shutter the building. Well, shutter, but then again, that is budgeted. I mean, and that was something when Stockbridge voted for this budget. They agreed for that money to shutter it. They did not agree for that money to heat it. I think there'll be a lot of bad clashes if the money's used in any other way. I agree, I agree. I think it would be the worst decision we could make right now. I think we need to be very clear about it. Now, I mean, if the town is considering taking the building, has there been any discussion? I know that you have all these dreamy ideas, but you have to also look at the fact that this building is pretty old and there's a lot of issues that are gonna come along with it. So at any point is there going to be a decision to demolish part of this building because if that's the case, and if that's even, if that's the direction they're gonna go with a portion of the building, then that's something to consider. And we don't wanna be heating a building that we're going to essentially demolish part of it. And I don't, I mean, I'm not saying that that's what should be done. I'm just saying, if that is even a possibility, how do we navigate that? Perhaps we should unmute. Bad party. Well, yeah, well, but it's, you know, this is really our decision though. I mean, it's really our decision about what we need to go forward. I think. Well, what are the costs? I, I, what did it actually cost? What did it cost last year? What did it cost last year? Tara's got it. Wonderful. Tara, can we hear from you? Hi. So if you have the same utilization for propane this year that you had last year, we are looking at, I just had the page here, I switched pages, $26,504.28 based on our negotiated contracted rate for propane this year. And again, that's the same utilization from September, December and March deliveries if they're the same this year. And then the Rochester High School electricity. Propane, it's oil. It's oil. It's oil. It shouldn't be propane. That should be oil. It's oil. Oil, not propane. Sorry. Looking at one letter word and saying something different. Yep. So electricity, I don't have the cost on this sheet. If you give me a few minutes, I'll pull it together. The electricity in that building also is used by the elementary school, correct? No, two separate though. Two separate. Yes, but used by the elementary school have any servers, any phone systems? Is there anything that the elementary school uses for the electricity of the high school? Plus the buses. So that is a district cost. Some of it, yeah. I don't know how to say that. I know how would you break that? I've got numbers here as of FY21, 19,787 for Rochester High School. Fuel. Yeah, fuel oil. And electricity for Rochester High School of 6,077. That says from the annual report of last year. Hello, can I? So our negotiated rate, Ethan, for 22 is substantially higher than what it was last year. We paid $1.50 a gallon and we're at $2.07 a gallon this year based on oil increases. So that's why we have the substantial increase in the oil. Electricity seems to be trending the same. Can I speak? This is Catherine. I've been trying to unmute her. I think I've finally succeeded. Can anybody hear me? Yes, no. Hello? You can hear me, good. So I just wanted to say something that I think is very important here. And that is that the repurposing of this building and the acquiring of it by Rochester is not to just benefit the town of Rochester. The repurposing is for a regional resource. It will have childcare. There's essential need for childcare and essential need for adult aid. There's an arts and learning center and maker space. There's a business incubator space. And the point of the feasibility is to actually not only consider the capital improvements and the cost of that, but also the sustaining of the building by these programs, as well as to explore better use of it if something beyond what the proposed program is there. This will benefit everybody in the quintess area and maybe even beyond. And so I don't think we should just think about this as the town of Rochester's benefit. It will benefit people who live in Stockbridge as well as in Rochester, Pittfield, Hancock and Grantville. And I think it's wrong thinking to think this is just something that will benefit Rochester. The other thing is that with this letter that gives us access till April 7th, we have spoken directly to the consultant and they believe they will be out of the building by April 7th. So even though the buttoning up of the feasibility study will take a while to get the very reliable numbers that we all need to know going forward, they will be out of the building by April 7th. And the other thing, and this is from the architect on our committee, Dick Robson, who strongly says that it would be a mistake to artificially apply a deadline to the consultant that would lessen the validity and the veracity of his report. He said, go with it and support it. We've put in hundreds of hours of this volunteer group to come to this point. And it seems to me that it will benefit everybody and we need to all really understand that we're in this together. Fair enough. I will, my answer to that would be, we have made promises to the Stockbridge people after hundreds of hours of discussions and meetings about this merger and gone through a very divisive double two votes. And we have to keep some promises here. We have to keep some promises here about how this goes forward. We all want to keep promises. I understand that this is not in any way to disrespect the process that the school board has been making throughout this very long process since the merger. We understand that. And we are working so that the town of Rochester will acquire this building, but that you can understand why the town of Rochester needs to have the voter support and the voters need the information from the feasibility study. So it's going on. I mean, we got a grant to come to- I'm not questioning any of that. It's a very simple matter. We need some money. It's fair, I think, I believe it's fair to ask at this point, we have been carrying this building now for two years. Rochester is included in that. Rochester is included in the carrying of the building. I understand. And it's time for, it's time for some, I think it's a very reasonable question. The rest of the board will have something to say about this. I think it's a very reasonable question. I think it's a reasonable question. Ask for some money. I think it's a reasonable request too. I really do. And I will bring that request to the select board at the next meeting. I think what I would propose is that we have a specific dollar amount we're looking for tonight. And then we approve it. And we approve a dollar amount we want. And it doesn't just have to come from out of the Rochester select board budget, you know, the town of Rochester budget. It could be donations, it could be fundraising. I agree. I agree. I think our job is to be very clear about what we need to make this, to keep this building open as the resource, it will be hopefully for everybody. But right now, we have a promise to keep that Stockbridge should not have to pay for this. And I think we need to- So I agree. I agree with what you said. And I do think it's a doable fundraising project. I do. So it would be very helpful to have a dollar amount that's the target for the fundraising. Great. So let's say we've got, we're looking, what was it, 6,000? Say it's 7,000 for electricity. 26,000 for oil. I, again, I want to say that I feel like the enough building supports the Rochester elementary school. Is that true? Do we know if that's true? Lyle, do you know if that's true? Well, Ray, what do you have? What do you have? I know the servers were there. I think they- I'll move to another one. Well, hold on, Ray. The phone system server, the wifi's still on in the building. Whatever fire controls there are, I don't know how they relate to the building. But so- And the buses that- Door control. The buses use the power from the high schools, is that correct? Well, I see that, but I just, I gotta say to the board, if you sell this building tomorrow and the town approaches you for a dollar, I'm looking at Lyle and Ray to fix all those problems. Just so we know, right? Yes. I hope that there can be a discussion about it to make sure that that is a need. But I'm surprised that if we have been seeking to sell this building for two years, why we haven't done that? Yeah. I think we've taken some steps, right? That's how you go over there with- Yeah, stuff that- It's hard to split the fire system apart. Right. So I guess that's my concern if we're talking money now, that the electricity does support the elementary school, which is part of our district. So I think from what we've talked before, that the 25,000 we budgeted could certainly go to these projects, separating things out. That's what it was. That would be, that's what it's there for. So we've got money in the budget, that should happen, I think. I think we've already said that should happen by approving that money. Yeah, that's the point. That that separation out with that 10,000. Let's do that. Now, if we have running costs going for roughly a 33,500, the only way I know of doing this is what is the percentage of the overall budget? Is it 60, 40? It's not that easy. Well, but I mean, we need something like that. We need a- I understand. I didn't know you were going to ask this question until you walked into the door, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm just saying, give me your numbers because we want to leave tonight with a number. I think it's fair to leave with a number. Thank you, Robert. What? I mean, but you're assuming a full year here on these figures. So what are we talking about? Well, April's pretty much the end of the heening season, almost. I mean, March, maybe, but we're really talking about- But you're talking about, if you're talking this number, you're talking about, from this point backwards as well, you're talking a full year. Yeah, because it did July to July. Right, so you've got to take that into consideration. But this is for a full year. This is for a full year. I believe this is for a full year. For a full fiscal year. Which I think- July, August, September, we're already two months late. What you're saying is we're already down two months. Great. Well, I've got building use. Again, I can give you these numbers because I can show you over the last two years historically what your buildings use each month. Right, Chris Riley did that for the SU Energy Committee data. So we have that data that we can look at. Well, we can also just divide, if this is 36 and we divide it by 12, I mean, that gives you a 3,000, basically 3,000 month. Oh, it's a lot more in the letter. Well, your energy usage is significantly higher. But this is the full oil bill and the full electric bill for one year. I don't think 7,000 is enough. Isn't it? No, I think it's 12,000. I think it's a thousand dollars a month in electricity. Great. I'm just trying to get my number here. So as far as electricity is concerned, from June 2020 through November 2020, you averaged about $420 a month. Okay. Starting in November, your electric bill then doubled. So your average that I only have in my system right available at my fingertips from November through March, you then averaged about 1,069 a month. Adjust the high school because it's on it's phone meter. Right, it pumps in the fans. And then on the oil again, that was based on what you got filled in your tank in September, December and March. If you had the same amount of gallons delivered this September, December and March at the new contracted rate, it would be at that $26,504.28. So just to clarify what dates we were referencing on those numbers. Okay. We got a couple of different things here. We have $25,000 in the budget, which was budgeted for shutting down the bill. Okay. And they even said maybe it'll cost less than that but maybe it'll cost more with this breaking out. I'm gonna say, and I'm speaking for Stockbridge and I welcome the Stockbridge people to come up and speak for that spending any of that money, Stockbridge would agree to spend any of that money to help with the division of the building, right? To taking things apart so these two buildings are separate but that none of that money should go toward heating the building from the Stockbridge side. And I think we have to think about it that way that you look at that $25,000 and you break it up into, you know, $7,000 and, you know, what is it, $15,000 or something like that. That's sort of what Rochester put in and what Stockbridge put in and what we can do with that money. And so that we can spend $7,000 on money separating things and maybe we can take $15,000 and we can put it into, I'm gonna say this for a number right now, $40,000. Total costs for that building. That's for a full year. So let's say, what do you wanna say? It's $30,000 to get through a winner. But these are estimates. These are estimates, we need ballparks here. We don't need exact numbers. We need estimate, $30,000. So $30,000 to get us through to April. $30,000 of which we, Rochester can say, our share of $15,000 that we voted on, four of that $25,000 could go to that. But the seventh, so I think we're looking, so that leaves us then with another $15,000 that we have to raise, the ballpark. Very ballpark, but it's a very real number, very doable number I think. Yeah, I think, would you agree, Vick? Wouldn't you agree, Catherine? I think we could do that, especially if it got started now. Yeah, we're hoping to lower those utility costs by altering the controls and really minimizing fresh air into that building too. But didn't allow you, I mean, should people not be in that building even if they're doing measurements and stuff? No, I'm not worried about, no, that's not what I call occupied. Occupied is, you actually have classes in there and trying to provide a certain CFM per student, and that's occupied, the definition of occupied, but just having, I mean, it's a huge space to have very few people, and there's plenty of air, it's like being outside of that building. Great, thank you, thank you, that's a good clarification. So good, do we feel good about this? Does this need to be a motion of any kind that we were asking Rochester's slash board and vision? Oh yes, I have something I need clarification on. So as an example, to move the phone service and the phone system from the high school to the elementary. Yeah, if that leaves the high school building without a phone system, that's what we want. Well, no, the phone system is such an option, the fire system, isn't it? Different lines that do that part, but I'm talking about the phone system for the building, not the fire. I, except for he personally, again, this is me speaking myself, except for he, that is keeping the building viable. I'm fine with cutting off other services to the building. Heat and electricity is what we wanna need to keep the building viable, phone service. Right, but you're just stopping the service, you're not pulling the wires out of the ceiling. No, to get the phone system to the elementary building, we physically have to move it, it will involve the phone system vendor, and then a change from CCI, the phone service provider to physically move their equipment to the other building. So there won't be a phone system in the high school building after this? Right. Correct, okay. I'm okay with that, but if there needs to be some sort of fire service in there, whether it is, if you're gonna have it occupied. Can I ask what the cost of that would be I mean, because I think since we're presenting this to the select board, we would also like to have a total clear picture of what is being turned off. And if the select board feels, for instance, that it's important to still have the phone service in there for the people that are in there doing the survey or in the event of some emergency that there needs to be a call, because I'm not sure that there'll be Wi-Fi or that cell phone services will work. I mean, we have to really understand what the circumstances will be once the, as you call it, the separation or division of the building process is happening other than deep electricity. Robert? I would like to just take a step back and say that you're talking about making these changes, spending a lot of money to move services when once the building has transferred to the town the town will be more than happy to allow you to use space and for the offset of whatever the electricity which I did take measurements on your systems was not that much. So it seems like you're rushing to make, to spend money to make changes that are not really necessary. Well, it's budgeted for this year and I'm not sure we're gonna be able to budget any money for the high school for next year. We have it in the budget this year to do these kinds of separation things in preparation of the sale. That was the whole goal, was to get it ready for sale to private, possibly a private person which didn't pan out, but now to the school. I'm just saying we've got that money. We could, well, right now it sounds like we're gonna need to do that. And when is the school vote? When did you vote on the fiscal year for the next school year? So I do believe, you do that in May, right? So I'm hoping that we will have enough information by that point before the school board meeting to put to the voters of Rochester so that they can actually send a message to the select board in terms of what they wish. I mean, we have to work within the school timeline and all this other stuff as we all know. There are a lot of parts that have to be considered in all of this, but in the end, we want a successful transition in which the voters have said this is what they want. The Stockbridge people are happy that they haven't had to pay for what they didn't want to pay for, but that we don't have a school, a building whose services we would then have to pay to just put back into place again. That doesn't make any sense either. Not with just the JCC to the elementary schools. We're not gonna do that. That's what we're figuring out right now. Okay, so we have two decisions. I mean, one decision is whether we're gonna ask for the town in some way to come up with $15,000. The other is whether we wanna spend some of this budgeted money to do this separation work. Those are separate issues, I think, right now. Lindy, do you have that? Well, so I'm gonna defer to Ray and Lyle, but I do believe those services are gonna have to be separated anyways because then we will be two separate entities should this ever happen. For example, by our system and so alert those off, we just see myself get phone calls to let us know that it's going. We need to make sure that the high school doesn't need once that transition happens. It's not Jesse or myself. Getting a call. Getting a call. And you get a town chase over the streets. Well, that's right, but the service is still there. They don't. They don't take it over until they take it over. But we have to close some of that out and move it just what we need for that. Am I wrong with that? But as long as we carry the responsibility for it, we should be getting a call. Oh, absolutely. That was just one example. But like the phone services, I understand the wiring piece, but like. So the complication here is that, and these numbers are very rough. If it's $1,000 to move the phone system, literally the box that runs it, and $1,000 to move the phone service, the wires that consolidated puts in there. The caller's point was that if the town takes the high school building over, they're gonna have to put more than that amount of money back in to adding services back. Now, whether that matters or not. Well, and technically, while we're responsible for this building, I don't think we can actually have it without fire safety, which means phone service. So because we are responsible until this deed, this deed, we own this building. Now at least, at least until September of next year, which is a big change for a lot of us. Let me suggest that, you said there are two possible votes on the amount. You were suggesting $15,000 to go to the Board of Selectment of Rochester for their consideration. I certainly would support that. The second thing is I don't think we're in any rush to separate the wires. And if I, because for one thing, we don't have the value of the assessment of the consultant team. And I don't think there's any burning issue to separate the wires in September versus May. And if it comes down that we need to do that, we could encumber the moneys in May to protect those moneys beyond the fiscal year and allow us to do it later that summer of 2022. If it's not spent. I need to be billed on it. I agree with Bill. Hold on a sec. I'll double check that. Patrick, just hold on. Let Bill finish it. I'll double check that because I'm municipal finance. Once you've been encumbered, it's an encumbered. And now it needs to have a contract. But if you have that money, it doesn't mean it has to be spent. But it does have a contract. Patrick, next. No, I agree with Bill. I think, yeah, I don't think that we can make the stoppage residents pay to eat the building or anything. But I also think that we're a little premature on wanting to separate the phone services, considering both buildings are so intertwined and it may not be an issue once the town of Rochester or if the town of Rochester does move forward with taking the building, then it may not be something that really needs to be done. Or if it does, you know, I think this is something that maybe we wait to see how the town of Rochester moves forward in the next six months here. And then we can make a decision how to move forward with those funds. Robert, I can point out that if we need to, we can put up quick as one of the articles for the next school meeting is to have those funds in a special fund to carry forward to the next year. You just tell the truth is that the most efficient spending of those funds may go into the following year. And as we just put that in, that the school has done it in the past, the town has done it in the past. And the voters are usually have never injected to that as long as you target what that money has been spent for. Good. And it sounds like we only have one vote ahead of us. And that is to request. And this was a very arbitrary ballpark amount, 15,000. If you want to raise more, we would love it. I'd say as much help as you can give us with this, politically and as far as supporting our promise to really take this building off the burden of the R side. It would be a really great show of faith not to be able to have a vote as of yet. I understand that. But if you could come up with this money to really support this, I think there'd be a lot of good will around it. So, last few cents. We will start out as soon as possible to start raising the money. We were already going to launch a capital... Hello, am I still here? You're on, we can hear you. Yeah, we have to come up with our matching grants money. And we'll just enlarge that and make a start the campaign on that. I do believe there'll be people making larger and some people smaller donations, but it'll be a very sort of good test of the whole process to start that right now. Good, good. So, should we make a motion? Do you want to get any feedback from the select board? Representative here. Pat, do you have anything you want to add into this? Is she in here? Can you all hear me? Yeah, yes. I really don't have anything to add to any of the discussion that's going on tonight because I will be having my own discussion with the committee next Monday night. So, your discussion has a bearing on my meeting next week. So, I'm really at this point all ears. And that way I can deliver what I know from this meeting to the other select board members. Great, thank you very much. I want to join a motion that we're asking, are we doing any motions with us? Any motion would be good. So, what I'm hearing is that you're, the motion would be that you're requesting that the administration, once again, winterize the building for 21-22. Correct. And also requesting that, is it Envision Rochester, is that the group you're asking? Well, I think Envision Rochester and or the select board raise an amount of, not less than $15,000 to help defray costs of that heating for that period. So, don't move. Did we hear that? It was recorded. It was recorded? All right, Vic, you got something? Thank you. You're muted still. I think Ray has something to say. Sorry about that, I'm sorry. All right. So, and I just don't know how that fits in with the need in order to affect the grant, to get the permission to occupy the building through June. If we don't get that, then the grant is voided. So, I'm not sure how that ties in. That's good. I think that's a separate situation, which I was going to remind Ethan about. Yeah, that we need to vote for the extension as well. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We will do that, I think. Yes, you're right. That's, yep, we gotta do that. Let's get this done first. And then the idea was that we are going to winterize the high school building. This is the motion on the table. Winterize the high school building for the 21-22 winter time and are requesting that the select board of Rochester and or admission Rochester raise an amount, not to be less than $15,000 to help support that meeting and that's, and it was seconded by Robert. Is there any discussion on that? Justine? No. No. Patrick? No. Good. Are we ready to vote? No. Good. Bill? Yes. Amy? Aye. Yes. Robert? Patrick? Yes. Justine? Yes. Good. And your vote? Yes. So moved. Excellent. Second motion will be that the Rochester, that the Rochester Stockwood Unified District extend access, correct? Spend access to the building. What was the date? Okay. To the end of June 22. To from April through June of 2022 to Envision Rochester and the Grand recipient. Yeah, to the town, because the town is the grant recipient. To the town of Rochester access, because that was a mess. For the feasibility study. For the feasibility study. For the feasibility study. Yes. We get the idea? Yes. So moved. Sorry, what's your name again, Mary? Mariah? Sorry, Mariah. What's the best? You're talking about. So moved. Thank you. Any discussion? I think this is a good idea. Yeah, I think it's a good idea. Robert? Hi. Hi. Amy? Hi. Bill? All right. Patrick? Hi. Christine? Hi. Jason? Hi. We have it. Woohoo! Good work. Thank you. Thank you very much. Woohoo! Thank you very much. Nice one coming. Once we got into this, I know what I knew. My kid better. But we really had to do this before we could address you, Gemma. Sorry, Gemma. But no, we really had to do this work because now this is maybe a viable thing. I really wasn't sure if it was. So, you've given us this letter here. Players access needs. You haven't seen this, so let me just read this out to you, Justine and Patrick. The Players Theatre Access Needs. The Rochester School Auditorium has occupied an important place in the 42-year history of the White River Valley players. Most of our major musical and theatrical productions have been performed on that stage. Prior to our using the space, Rochester High School students enjoyed performing musicals, comedies, and dramas in this auditorium. It is fine acoustics, excellent seating, with lighting and sound systems updated over the years by the players in the school. Visiting performers and audiences have commented on the high caliber of the auditorium, noting that it's an unusual facility for our rural area. I'm here, this is Gemma speaking, on behalf of the players as producer of our full production, Triple Play. This production consists of three short plays enhanced by music and poetry. In the tradition of the players, much of the material in Triple Play was written especially for this production. We plan to present one evening and one matinee performance in October 22nd and 23rd. We hope to have our rehearsals and performances in the Rochester School auditorium. While in the past we've paid for custodial hours during the evenings of our productions, we understand that the needs of the facility have changed. We're prepared to pay a fee for heating costs based on the number of hours needed to have the space heated. Besides needing access to the costume room above the stage, we would need the stage and music room on the following dates. Proper room access as needed. Proper room is up in, it's in the theater space for those of you who don't know. It's up a catwalk. The weekend, this is the time they need it. The weekend of the 9th of 10th of October, five hours each day. The weekend of the 16th and 17th of October, five hours each day. 18th through the 21st of October, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. each day. Performances Friday 22nd of October, 7.30 p.m. and Saturday 23rd of October, 4 p.m. So there's only six rehearsal days needed? Most of the rehearsals will take place off-site. Okay. Six. So what you've presented here is the full amount of time you are looking for. And that includes even gathering, and it's not just the rehearsal time, it gives you some time to gather and get people together and getting out of the space. Yeah. Understanding, knowing that space very well, as I've directed many of the productions there. It's not really realistic to turn the heat on an hour before a rehearsal and expect it to actually be any warm in there. Actually need to keep it warm. It's pretty much for a period of the week that you want it or the period of time you want it, starting almost the day before. I notice it's weekend, so it is, they are back. So I think, yeah, we're talking, I don't think it's really five hours each day. I think it's more realistic to say it's the days. I want it for the days and it's probably starting on the 8th to really get the thing off. I mean, we're not talking freezing cold, we're not talking January. Right, oh, it is October, right? Yeah, it's not as bad. It's not as bad. So maybe we'd be okay just to turn the heat on that morning. And the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 21st, I'm sorry, count to these days. I didn't keep it through. Yeah. More than six days. Is that at least on its own zone? Do we know? Yeah, it is. There's three zones, right, Lyle? There's three zones and that is, when we heated, when we gave Suzuki, that's my understanding. Wait, is the shop space in that zone? No. So it's just the home act, lobby, music room and auditorium are on one zone. Yeah, I can ask Brian Boucher to verify all that and to make sure that we have the ability to just parse out that area. Yeah. And again, we are talking October, which is wonderful that this is in October and not in January. Because the heating for those is gonna be a lot less than it would be in January. We need to come up with a dollar amount, is what they're looking for. We need, well, permission. Permission for them to use it for how much? Well, I mean, it's fine with me just tonight and well, I guess I'm gonna have to talk to the board about the cost of it. So I guess I need to know something. Yeah, we need to give you a ballpark of what it would cost. I mean, it may be a very general number. Well, in sept, I think we would need to dive into those heating bills a little bit more and look at the amount of oil that was used between September and December to be able to kind of come down to what the cost per day is in that. I don't know how to do that. Yeah, I'm gonna have to take it. Heating degree day units. A lot of people talk about this. You also have a rental fee that you have gone with Green Mountain Suzuki Institute. You may look at what that standard rental is. I don't know what it is, but that might be a point of reference. Wait, it's a special rental. It's a Suzuki is a special rental per head. It's not per participant. It's per participant, it's not for space. Yeah, it's not done in the institute. I don't think it's gonna cost that much in October. And I think we should be able to do this and work with the players to be able to make this happen. What's the ballpark you were thinking $1,000 for all that time or $500? Can we make a ballpark? I was trying to say so. Well, I'm just saying, you're heating degree day units in October are vastly different than in February. You just don't have to put in that much heat energy in October to do what you need to do in February to get the same outcome. It's not gonna be a substantial amount of money. Maybe just covering the cost of Brian making sure that he can parse out that part of the building and make sure it operates. It's not money. Well, that's how I was saying, if you looked at the bill, you could figure out how much per day, how much is used, it's like your car. You figure out how much gas mileage you're getting by. Yeah, that's the most real one. When you fill up. Can we just do a general number? Yeah. It's something between three and five. Three, 300, does that sound? To motion to a step for three, that we give permission for them to use it for these dates for a rental fee of $300 total. What's our normal fee? Are we also needing the custodial hours? Right. Do we still need that? I know we had because we were in operating high school so we wanted to make sure that everything was back in order, sort of the opening of school tonight. Yeah. So if they take care of it, if you vacuum and you take care of it in the bathroom, if you take on the bathrooms and everything like that anyway, so we would love to have basically a look as we left it when we come back. I think that's reasonable. So that we would waive the custodial fee. Does that make sense to you? We would waive the custodial fee and just have an electricity. We would put it in the bathroom in the next day. And that was why the custodian was there on hand. Yeah. I also just think it's important to make certain it looks respectable. Yeah. I know the standards and Gemma was impeccable about following through. We usually left it in a better shape. I figure you probably did. Yeah. Because often when we went in after a high school production, I would listen and then we made it beautiful. Justine, you have something to say? Yeah. I'm not sure if anything's changed since right before Suzuki, but the bathrooms and the plumbing were a concern when we were gonna let Suzuki in there. That's gonna be new for a performance by the players. I'll triple check, but it was all functioning for Suzuki. It was all functioning for Suzuki. Okay. I didn't know that. Okay. Our motion to grant the players access for specified dates in October for a cost of $300 towards heating and electricity. Or rental fee. Rental fee of $300. I'll move that. Do we have a second? Second by Amy. I should give the new and giving names because this woman doesn't know who we are. Just again, Bill, Amy, Robert, Ethan, Patrick and Justine are on the screen. Any discussion? There being none, Robert. Hi. Amy. Hi. Bill. Hi. Justine. Hi. Patrick. Hi. Hi, Ethan. Oh, so moved. Congratulations, Chenla. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciation for you coming in your preparation. Keep going. Thank you for your patience as well. I'm excited. All right. We did that. Generator. Oh, they're good. Yeah, generator. Get Lyle out of here. So we're at eight to eight, three. We're just going all over the place here. Eight, three, Stockwood Generator Project. Great, we'll come back to that. We're going to come back, yeah. Just make sure, keep me honest. Getting another person out of here. Well, what do you have to tell us about a generator? So they approached me to put that out there. So I took what they had from years past as far as a proposal and took all the parts that I liked out of that and then sent it out to several vendors. We got mostly people saying they're too busy. I don't know if that was due to COVID or just lack of workers or what. But we put it out to, I want to say, four or five different vendors. And the only person that came back was Brookfield who was the original provider of the proposal. The generator that they proposed was big enough as we discovered to do more than what the school needs. So in anticipation of future electrical loads for HVAC equipment that is likely to use more electricity, we were pretty happy about that. They also did all of the work for the most part. There's very little that they left out of their proposal, which is good because we don't have a lot of staff to dig ditches and things like that for pipes and so on and so forth. We went ahead and put in the transfer switch. We did that because we didn't want to interrupt any school days whatsoever. And so we did that in the summer. Whatever generator we choose, we can hook to that transfer switch. But at this point, we're hoping to go with Brookfield's quote that you probably have in front of you. Is that an automatic transfer switch? It would just switch over to the generator. We looked at it last time, didn't we? Last? Yes, yes, it is. We're talking about one of the biggest problems right now is getting an underground propane tank buried. The provider that we have right now has no interest in burying a tank, which I'm not sure exactly what the reasoning is. So we've approached a different vendor for propane who is willing to bury a tank and we're waiting for a proposal from them. It's not that big a deal. I guess we would have one vendor for the generator, which is you're gonna use very little unless there's obviously emergency because it's only gonna run when it exercises once a week for a little bit. It's about a 750,000 BTU load for half an hour just to warm the generator up and so on. And then we'll have another vendor for propane for the heating units and the kitchen. But we really don't want to go with an aboveground tank because it's just unsightly and it's in front of the building because of where the generator has to be and has to be in proximity of the main entrance to the building for the power. So we're making progress, but we really need to give Brookfield to go ahead to put that unit in and start digging the hole for the propane tank and so on. So that digging, putting the tank in below ground, is it is or is not part of the original price cult? That's really not part of their quote. It's just, that's what I recommend for that particular unit is to have a certain size underground propane tank and they have best luck where there's CV, oil and propane, I believe, and they have no problem. Do we have a ballpark? Do we have a ballpark? 5,000 to a period? Oh, no, I don't believe it's gonna be, I think you probably leased the tank. It's not gonna be a huge number to bury the tank. We haven't seen it, so I really don't want to, I don't know if that's changed. The last I knew CV oil didn't lease the in-ground tank. I don't know if that's changed. Say again? The last I knew, maybe which is like a year ago, CV oil does not lease an in-ground tank. Only in that route. Again, that's why I haven't seen his proposal. I know he's willing to put in a different tank in. Okay, yeah, it would definitely have to be purchased if it was from CV oil. I know somebody that I just recently worked with for a project and they had the best price around for a purchase of an in-ground tank and they provided the excavator was through junction fuels and wood stock. So that might be of interest to look into. Yeah, for comparison's sake, yes. Yeah, yeah, correct. Don't get me wrong, I'm pro CV oil all the way. That's what the Brookfield indicated that they're a very reliable company. So that's what we want. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, could we approve the generator, the Brookfield contract and then approve the tank part of the cost afterwards? Or that's what I'm trying to do. I don't actually need you to approve the tank. I need you to approve the generator contract and then approve using the reserve funds to pay for that. Okay, that's all we need to do tonight. Great, let's do it. Did we have a... I don't want to... Andrew, do you want to add about you did approve Coach the Select Board? Oh yeah. Yeah, so I spoke with the Select Board the other night and just kind of brought up the scope of the project that we were... Our intentions are to move forward tonight. And with that and kind of the timing and everything, I agreed with the Select Board that it was unrealistic for them to really put like a dollar amount on whether to give us 5,000, 10,000, whatever. That's an example before the end of this budget year was unrealistic because it wasn't accounted for and we're at the end of the budget year. But they do want to show their support. They do want to help. And the only way that we could think of a solution that was made sense was for us to go through with voting for the install tonight. And then our thoughts were is that the town could pay the annual maintenance costs associated with the generator. And that shows that they're, they support it and are willing to help. So I think that that's fair. And they agreed on that or that will need to be decided at their town annual meeting in the spring? I think it needs, yeah, I think the decision, because basically like they said, they can't really make a decision until January, so the next budget year. But they, we left the meeting with their support and thinking that was the best solution to move forward and that we basically need to approve it tonight and then get back to them and we can then get something in writing. But we had a verbal agreement the other night and we all agreed to move forward tonight and that they do have their support. Tara, can you pull up the bid, please, so that you can read what the total bid was? Just another note, the annual maintenance that we chose while the unit is under warranty is a yearly visit, I believe. They recommend that after the warranty period is up that they do it twice, I believe yearly. Yes. Which makes sense to me, obviously, just so the select board doesn't say, why are we doing two visits now, not just one? Because- No, and I went over those numbers. Okay. Yeah, we were very specific about it. And also we did agree that the one time internet monitoring system fee for $700 was also a good idea to move forward with. Okay, thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you. I would make a motion. Okay. To approve the bid of $28,600 and $83. $53. I'm sorry, $53 to Brookfield. Brookfield. Brookfield service for the installation, for purchase and installation of the generator as proposed in their bid. And to be funded by a reserve, the Stockbridge Reserve Fund. Stockbridge Building Reserve Fund. To be funded by the Stockbridge Building Reserve Fund. That's what words in your mouth. There you go. I'll second that. Any discussion? I'll take the vote. Justine. Hi. Second. Okay, we'll take it a second. Okay, I just wanted to be sure. Yeah, second. I don't know. Moved by Robert. Robert, seconded by Bill. Yeah, thank you. I'm sorry. I, by Justine. Patrick. Hi. Robert. Hi. Bill. Yes. Amy. Hi. Ethan. Hi. We have a generator. Good job guys. Thank you. Good. Holy smoke. We did a lot of work. It's been a lot of money. I should be maybe safe a lot of money. All right. Thanks, Lyle. Thank you, Lyle. Thanks, Patrick. Let's go back to 8-2, please. Planning for board retreat because we don't want to put this as the last thing. We have a date. Let's remind everybody of our date. Week from Saturday. Saturday the 18th. Saturday the 18th from nine to one with 12 to one being a lunch. And nine to 12 being the meat of our meeting. And we're meeting, I forget, elementary school. Elementary school in the Rochester. Rochester. Yep. That's what we said. Yep. Elementary school. Great. Somebody's getting bagels. Oh. Right. You said nine to nine in the morning? Nine to 12. Nine to one total with lunch. Do we know what we're doing for lunch? Most importantly. I know. Forget the haul. Yeah, the heck with it. Yeah, I mean, I was gonna possibly look to pursue our food service to cater. Oh, sure. I'm trying to do more and more of that. I don't think it's your cook, Wendy, but that's the SU food service in general with cater. I'm fine with that. If not, we'll do a fallback. But yeah, I mean, both at that time, cafe would be open. Maybe the Maple Soul would make us lunch. I don't know. It's part of my effort to try to put in, keep an influx of our public dollars within the program. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think that's good. The Four Seasons New York would not be a bad choice either for somebody who hadn't had a good meal in a long time. What's that? We once had a retreat at the police station at the time. We once had a board retreat at the Fire and Ice. That's pretty good. That is pretty good. Okay, so the agenda. So we've got this email here. We just got some initial thoughts. Initial thoughts. And I know, Bill, you have some very clear ideas about what, and this is before when we were doing it prior to a meeting. So we actually gained an hour by having it on a Saturday. We gained an hour, sorry, what? It's like another hour in that agenda. We get to put more on it. Yeah, I mean, although we do tend to run long. Yeah, we do. Well, I'd like to chat. I also like to make sure everybody gets a chance to get a protocol. I just feel like that. And I know that takes other board chairs, but public through. Okay. But I think it's important. I like the icebreaker activity. Board composition strengths. It's a protocol. It's an SRI protocol. So school reform initiative protocol are now looking at, as leaders, as board members, what type of leadership you tend to look toward. Like a North is more of a get it done. So the idea would be to start to look at the composition of your board and what your strengths are, so that as you start to possibly look at additional committee work and or special projects that come out of your goal setting, that you have a sense of what board members are you gonna look to have take on certain responsibilities? Nice. That's the concept behind it. For example, you do not come to me for budget numbers. Right? But I may run long, but we have a good people in meetings. You know, we'll get things done. That's my, I see myself. Well, that sounds like a good idea to make sure. Now, is missioning, visioning work the same as goal setting that Bill has talked about? I don't know, Bill, what are your thoughts? I'm comfortable with the way it's written. Okay. Mission visioning is very broad, but the way Jamie's talked about here, that we try to work and define what our board's three major goals would be. And as you know, I really think goals are a very positive way to get action, to reach success. So I like that a lot. And if we have more time, we will too. A couple of things that struck me are three things. One is kind of like board protocol. You know, what are the expectations? What are our responsibilities? And if we've got a problem, how do we resolve it? And there's just a bunch of stuff that the board members have been here a long time. Know about, by memory, that I think for the new members of the board, it's good to discuss that. If no board member can vote for the board, only through the board can vote and make decisions. If we're talking about talking to the staff, we need to work through our chairman and through the superintendent. There's a series of protocols, and to the extent that we're aware of them and understand them, I think it's very, very helpful. Another thing that was worth it is the board's role, vis-a-vis the superintendent and the administration. And I mean, we're the policy setters. We're the visionaries and everything else. The administration are the ones that gotta carry it out. And to the extent that we can focus on, this is our objective. And then the administration says, okay, if that's the objective and we'd like that, here's how we're gonna carry out. Here's our strategy to achieve. And so many times the boards I've been with, I could get down in the woods, they're almost played the administrative role. And to the extent that we can pull back from that and talk about the bigger issues, I think that's worthwhile as well. So, no, I like this line. Thank you, Jamie, for putting it together. I think during that protocol, it's probably a good idea to bring in the Vermont League of School Boards or whatever it's called. They have a list of what we do and what we're not supposed to do. Yeah, BSPA. And they just sent us, which we haven't seen before, but I think each board member, even the old timers, I'll review this in your underlines. Now, I go into that meeting because this might generate questions. I didn't understand why this or that. Part of the time we should have just a kind of Q and A freewheeling. But that's a very good resource. And just a reminder that we do start the training series at the full board level with the BSPA in September. They're gonna be about 30-minute segments. And that's just with the full board? You're gonna bring that down to the... Yeah, just for the full board. But you're all invited and I encourage you to do it. Okay. And do they... I mean, to get them to come out seven times every month. Not real listed, right? Not real listed. But to get them to come out once a month. Well, and do they get the announcements? Yeah. The full board gets the announcements. I have to do it as board chairman. I didn't do it all last year and I have to do this for good. Then does this feel like a good agenda for us? Yeah. Board... So icebreaker activity, board composition strengths, mission visioning work. That's the... And I'll send out the protocol ahead of time. Okay. Just so you guys... And then we'll get board protocol. And it'll be an SRI protocol. And then there's a closing activity which I might come up with something actually. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good. Now watch out. Um... Whoa. Hello. Who is Patrick? No, Patrick. Patrick was shaving, I think. Good. Do we need to approve this agenda? No. No. We'll look at it. I'm good. I think we're starting to wrap up this meeting as well as this. Maybe not. We'll see. Looks good. Thank you. Thank you. We're good, Justine. Was that how that sounds? Yeah, that sounds good. I'm not sure what you're reading from. I don't have... I don't think I have that. Sorry. Is it an email that he sent out? To just Ethan. Just to me. No, I didn't just send it to you. No, I sent it to everyone at the beginning of the meeting. So it's in your email. Oh, I didn't get it. Anyway, I'm reading it. It sounds fine. What if it's... If you read it all, sounds good to me. That's the problem with the... Art said looking at the group email sometimes you don't actually know who's... I assume that everyone's always getting it. If it's on Art said, I sent this just to you. Yeah, I know, but I did just send it to everybody else just before that. Okay. Good. Patrick, you have any comments about that? No, you did not. I did. No. I sent it to the Art said board. I'm not on the wifi here. And there's no problem. Oh, there you go. Okay. No problem. Okay, good. Let's move on. No. I think all we have is, yes, eight five tuition at religiously affiliated schools. You don't have to decide this tonight unless you want to decide this tonight. So there was the Supreme Court at the federal level. There was a case in Montana about providing tuition to religiously affiliated schools. The Supreme Court ruled that public tuition dollars, public education dollars can go to fund religiously private independent schools. So somebody chooses to go. Yeah. And the guidance now from the agency of education and their attorneys is that yes, we should be providing tuition just like you do as a choice town to religious affiliated schools like any other independent approved school. The tuition rate is set by the state. So it'd be up to the state average. That's right. But before you didn't, in Vermont, there was a law of the land went to the Vermont Supreme Court and it was that you could not use public tax payer money to then go and pay tuition at a religiously, a private religious institution, right? We never paid tuition before. So this is new. So I met with Dina about this. And so there's two ways to go about this, okay? The board can make a motion and approve us paying up to the state average. Okay, there's that approach. Or there's approach and some of you may have saw from the BSBA that just came out. We don't have policy on this yet. So I'm bringing this to everybody. We're gonna start getting bills soon to send out a letter and that the administration would adopt a procedure meaning Tara and I to require each religious affiliated school, independent school to designate what percentage of that their tuition is going to fund the religious teachings of the school. And we would hold that percentage of their tuition. But Dina made clear to Tara and I is to know that she believes that that will be litigated soon if we withhold it so that we are potentially opening ourselves up to litigation. Now, if we decide to pay it, the ACLU may come after us. Exactly, yeah. So either way, we can be opening ourselves up to litigation. Can we move to the junior? They very advocate the free speech and separation of the tuition. So yeah, I just, I think we need to go in eyes wide open. They don't necessarily need a decision tonight. I would say if we go the first rate, pay it. If the ACLU, the ACLU is probably not gonna come after just that. They're gonna come after a lot of people. We all do it. It's a class action. It's much the spread out the liability. This would represent multiple. I really, I feel, I mean, I understand the principle. There's another district in the SU that did approve. That doesn't have to, that doesn't have to do the same with just, you know, Granville Hancock did weigh this two months, actually, and they decided to pay up to the state average. Yeah. I would be inclined to follow that route is based on which side the litigation might happen on. So, but we don't need to. I don't know. I always like, if it's something quick and easy, we all agree. Let's get it done and not have to bring it up again. Justine, how do you feel about this? Not quite sure. I'm just thinking about it rapidly. I'm not sure. If it turns out that we're not decided, we won't, we'll put it off till next time. Yeah. I think this is a good one for you to wrap your hand around and advise us. I think this is your strength. Yeah. So maybe we, maybe we should come back to this next. That's fine. Yeah. There's two options here, right? Yeah. I think there's a necessarily a right or wrong. I think it's weighing the risk. Yeah. And we're not gonna, it's a problem if we wait a month. No. It's not like there's any bills banging on our door right away. Well, we're gonna start getting them soon. But what I've said to Terry is our procedure around paying tuition is gonna be that we will only pay one semester anyway. So even if you put a percentage on it afterwards, it's not like we couldn't do that. Okay. I guess one of the questions I'd be curious next month if we could, I would like to see a postpone to the October agenda for Jamie and Tara is, how much administrative time would be involved in trying to separate and evaluate the religious time and then try to put those at the dollars? And to me, that's one thing we don't have a lot of is administrative time at our upper echelons. And so, and that's an important offset for me because it's number one goal here is quality education and it starts at the top with your time to put on the important thing. So, and I'll ask kind of that question next month. Let's have a table that we might get out of here before night. Yeah. Well, can we ask any questions? I guess, you know, the question is like weighing, you know, what the outcome may be, what Dina's prediction and, you know, litigation costs. I mean, it's kind of like a, how you wanna play the game situation if you're gonna be in litigation either way. Is there an opportunity- I guess I could say this, if we got litigated directly, right, we got named for not paying tuition, then more likely than not, Dina's gonna represent us and that's coming out of your pocket. If we're in a class action suit, we're gonna kick it to vis-va and you pay insurance for them to protect you, right? And then they're gonna hire an attorney like Patreon Lynn who's gonna represent multiple districts. Like you said, it's gonna be almost nationwide. At some point, yeah, this is going to be litigated. I don't know where it probably is. And it's gonna be big and so we're just a small stack in the bigger. I doubt this one. I mean, if we're all good, passing it off to next time when we're fresh, let's do it. Patrick, you good with that? Yes. Good. I think we're all agreed. Great, let's table this until next time. And you can table this, too. Move to the table of religious, day-to-day schools. Do you have a second on that? I can. All in favor, signify by saying, aye. Aye. Aye. Aye, October. Aye, table to the October meeting. Great. Public comment. Do we have anybody left? We have a music teacher. Oh, we have what? Oh, music teacher. Hi, this is the very last one. Oh, my God, sorry. Sorry, this is actually really great news. This will be such good news. Not this will be great news. So we have extended an offer to Mary Holman to be our music teacher in Beaufort Chester and Stockbridge School. She comes to us after a year in Ruffin City School. Are you having trouble hearing, Justine? Yeah, I couldn't hear her the name. I'm not sure who it is. Yes, sorry. Mary Holman is our new music teacher for Rochester and Stockbridge Schools. She comes to us from Ruffin City Schools after a year as their long-term sub in our music position. And then prior to that, she has worked several jobs, including engineering and construction and a bunch of different areas, but has a music degree in her under that. So I move that. And does it grade? Does it grade? Is that going to be a way? So we're not a licensure. Yeah, that's right. And there was a good quote from them when they recommended her in town. Oh, yeah. Both principals, because she was in two schools, said that never in their career, and they'd been in it for a while, have they not had problems in music classes and actually had kids requesting to go to music class. That seems really weird. Wow. Yeah, I've been in it the other day. And while they're, I was so psyched because of how I find out as well, they came home and said, so what did you do today? And he said, oh, we have music. And I was like, what? I didn't know we had a music teacher. And he said he had a great class. So I was like, sorry, do we need to accept that? Yeah. Move to accept the new hire for music teacher of Mary. Holman. Holman. I move. Seconded by Robert moved by Bill. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Excellent. We have a public comment. Do we have any public left? I do not see any. I don't think I've ever gotten to the end of a meeting since I've been a school board member and not have a public here. Quick, quick. Sorry. Sorry, I'm not supposed to do that. There's somebody just on. No. So we welcome public comment. Of course you're welcome. But it is unnice. I'm happy. No, it means I think we're doing our job. Or we board them to peers. Yeah. Board them to peers. Sorry, that was uncharacteristic, honey, but I carry a little bit of the trauma I know of the last two years in my body from the work we've done here. And anybody out there knows that who's been at the meeting. Good. We're now at future agenda items. I think we have. We'll get an update about how much the propane tanks gonna cost. We'll talk about religious schools. But I think we've made some really good decisions tonight. I'd love to hear a little bit more about the new outdoor. Sorry. No, go for it. I think I was just about to say the same thing. I would like to hear more about the new outdoor program and what Amy's doing and what's going on and what we're going for. Yeah, I think Amy would be, could we get Amy to give a presentation at this point? Is it too early or too late? I'd love to hear that. Thank you. So we're gonna have agenda item, your wish list for outdoor spaces. Great, great. I like big writing stars all over. Yeah, no, dream list. We want a dream list. This is what we should be able to do. I don't think it's a dream. I think it's a reality. Yeah, yeah. The numbers and we make it happen. We'd like to add the possibility of talking about goals. Well, we've had our, we're gonna be doing that at the retreat. Yeah, but it's very likely that we'll, there's interest in the board to pursue and I'm talking about academic achievement goals for our students for this fiscal year. I think there would be a likely follow-up with this board and with the Supervisory Union Board. So I'd like to just kind of possibly reserve it and before you finalize the agenda, if you're comfortable with that. No, I think we'll put our goals, discussion over goals. And we're going to do that in the retreat because we're going to be talking about focusing on that. And if there's a thumbs up that this is one of the goals you want to pursue is the board, I'm interested. But I think you can't only do academic achievement goals or single school, you need to do it supervisory wide. So I think if we're interested in that would also need to pursue it through Jamie through the SU board. Is that an SU board retreat? There's not. So just so you know though, the SU goals that were adopted by that board and their continuous improvement plan of those three goals, you keep CNS report out, MTSS, proficiency based learning and interdependence. As far as speaking to what is the criteria for measuring that around success, that's something that the SU board could engage in. And I hope that when I facilitate it for you, what I've done with other boards is they've started to put some mean on what does that mean for our district? You can have an umbrella of creating a comprehensive system of supports, but how are you gonna measure the outcomes of that, right? Well, we've got state mandated outcomes and we test all over the place. And I'll show you a graph of what I've got that isn't meant to be necessarily for presentation, but you'll get very clearly what I'm talking about is something that I think is very logical for the SU board to consider and giving you guidance moving forward. Yeah, I'm fine. Why don't you share that with Kathy and I? That would be the right means. Yeah, and I'd like to share it with you. Of course. Yeah, go ahead. Yep, thanks. Just briefly, when we were talking about protocols, something came to mind is when we were talking about sharing any people who've gone through a rather divisive couple of years and new board members with me, perhaps very useful to examine what were the best practices for dealing with That's a really good idea. a very, with very controversial meetings. That was a really good idea. We have learned a lot. We have learned an enormous a lot. And it's not like we didn't have controversy with when I was on, but it was a different form. And it'll come back. But right now we seem to be in a time where people are trusting us a little bit. But what we've learned, there's no reason that the new board members need to literally read on it. Exactly. Well, I think in talking honestly about mistakes that we made right on the previous, you know, the previous iteration of the board, I think we made some real mistakes. We lost touch with our community. So yeah, let's talk about that. Can we add that to the agenda and just squeak in sometime in the afternoon? At the retreat. Yeah. We're not a whole new direction. New leadership, new, new, new. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. I move. Second. All in favor. All right. Thank you all very much. Thank you all.