 director is that looks like 636. Yes. This is our first meeting after the town meeting day elections and our first order of business is to elect a chair. So I'll entertain a motion for chair. I'd make a motion to appoint Jim Murphy as the board chair. Second. Any discussion. All in favor. Any opposed. Motion carried unanimously. Thank you. Thank you everyone for trust me with this again. So let's do let's do public comment and then we can elect the rest of the officers and then we can move into the agenda. So we'll be moving the election of officers up before the consent agenda and then we're also adding co-curricular appointments to the consent agenda which I'll pass it on. And first off, congratulations to Mara Aniket and Jill. Thank you. You're welcome Aniket and Jill. We will be assigning new mentors and catching you up but the first few meetings you'll probably be able to it's it's a decent time so thank you. But we're all very excited to have you and thank you for stepping on this. Thank you. Like we're excited to be here. So public comment not seen any. So let's move to election of officers. So we need a vice chair, a clerk, and while I don't believe we need a new vice head of parliamentarian to resolve any kind of process disputes. Rudy would you like to remain as vice chair? I would be happy to. Sure. Do I have a motion to appoint a vice chair? I make a motion to appoint Bridget as our vice chair. I'd second that. I was in favor. Hi. Any opposed? Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Jared cannot make it right. She's out of town. Yeah. Is she her? She has been in her current name. Do you think she wants to continue serving? We can delay the appointment. See I haven't heard her make any complaints that that title has been overturned. She's not here. We all know how that goes in meetings when. Should we appoint Jared? If she takes some screens we can reappoint. Yeah because we might forget. Is she going to be present for us? Two points. I know. No thanks to no. I wouldn't ask our parliamentarian but we have that. She would need to be sworn in first though before she could well act in a meeting. Oh was she elected this time too? She was on the ballot this time. Did she get sworn in? No. I think I attended an email to you. The results in Rocksbury are in final. They had to recount some of the ballots. Everything is still temporary in terms of so no there hasn't been an official calling on her race even though she was an uncontested election. But so no she's not been sworn in. So can we make can I make a motion that we delay the appointment of the clerk until next board meeting? I don't know if we can get a motion on that or can we just do it? We can just table it. We can just do it if we remember it. The motion would help us remember it. He's the best. He's the best. We have great members. Ironically it's the clerk that we're in. I mean unless someone else is really issued to do it I guess it's Jared Murphy's work that I did. I don't know enough about what the clerk would do versus the non-obsessions. That's fine. Thank you. I don't think so. And parliamentarian Ryan you're the previous brother. I am currently yes. Well previously. Do you want to remain in that role? I'm sure you've memorized Robert's rules. I think I would strongly I would try to persuade you to. I'm a jailer and I can't or either of you like Robert's rules of order nerds. No okay. A little but not enough to stop me from that on my first day. Yeah partly pros not of a gas. I mean I've got a firstly dog eating copy of Robert's rules. So I have one with me so I guess I can hand this seal to the old that's all right all right that I move that we appoint Ryan as the parliamentarian. I second that. All those in favor? Aye. You opposed? Great. Consent agenda and just so you Joel and etiquette I'm sure you probably know it's consent agenda works but a lot of our business we just do with consent agenda basically since the packet so we don't have discussion on it we have a motion to prove the whole consent agenda if there's an item that you have questions about or want to remove for discussion when we bring up approval and consent agenda you can make a motion to remove an item and then put it on the on the actual agenda. So with that in mind and with the addition of the co-curricular to have a motion to approve the consent agenda motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? So for our discussion budget vote results the budget pass yeah it was either between three four three or two four three four uh two um six thirty eight or six eighty three immocular. Immocular. Do we know anything about the Roxbury? I spoke with a town clerk this afternoon at about four o'clock and it sounds like there were some issues with some of the ballots so they were doing a recount all across the board tonight so there's nothing presented right now at all for the results in Roxbury. So what I got from you last night was two four five four in favor eight six three opposed. Okay that was pretty close. Yeah. Um yeah so past overwhelming late um immocular it's a good job and I think those numbers even if everyone in Roxbury opposed it I think we can still be signed. I know that's not the I voted in favor of it. Yes that's okay it wasn't ever. Because it'll be important. That was not the case of Roxbury. Yeah um so uh I think we had assumed the push past hopefully it also passed in Roxbury and you know we're one district so the votes probably those votes are totaled from both towns so even if even if Roxbury were to um if the numbers of our query did not add up to a yes vote it would be totaled to the whole district so uh Roxbury has won about the 11 11 the population of Montpelier. Approximately yeah. Do you know what the population of Roxbury is off the top of your head? The 2010 census was 691. Okay. And that's kind of the standard number they get used a lot. So the other uh the other piece I want to bring up um because with Libby not being here every sooner we're going to want to push your policy monetary imports to next week. Yeah we also don't have student leadership for that. Yeah it might be a very very quick this is the latest even without even had they been here this is the latest the general I've ever seen. I was thinking that heading into this. Um yeah most meetings are out this way. You guys are easing this into it? Yeah Mara I'm very much like you guys always end at like 10 o'clock at night. So I do want to bring up that uh Steve Henson I was just going to ask you if we were. Yes uh submitted his resignation to me yesterday effective immediately. Um so we have a thing in Santa board and I want to thank Steve for his years of service. He served for quite a while and um it was a real strong advocate for our kids and our students. Uh so unfortunately Steve has has stepped down I think largely due to personal scheduling reasons. Um so we do need to put out notice uh Anna probably you know maybe post on both the district website and our facebook website that we're we're looking at applicants. Um should we set a schedule for when we want applicants by or should we maybe wait the meeting to wait until we need to have some conversations with community members and see um what the answer is. I know that that's a requirement. Yeah but I so the one thing I just wanted to bring up is when are we next in Roxbury because if we is that the first is that the first meeting in April because if it is then we'd be we wouldn't want to do it that night because we want to get people a chance first. Yeah that's right and I hate to push it another meeting. So that would be in April in five weeks. That would be a long time. And how does do you have a copy because I know everyone's got the winter spring break Tuesdays and last week. Sometimes we don't. Oh sometimes we meet this. Sometimes we like crunch them. Right. Yeah the 20th to the 26th of spring break so we're scheduled to meet on the first of 15. 15. And we do not have on the 25th. I and yeah so why don't we. Why don't we put April 15th as our decision date and if you know we need more time to get candidates we can always push that back but I think um I think the 18th of this month is way too soon. Yeah and the April 1st meeting is in Roxbury and I think it would be good to have it in Montpelier so especially in Montpelier. Yeah exactly that would give Montpelier residents the ability to to come if they want and it would make it also easier for candidates to appear before us. Jim how long has Steve's term left? Steve was elected a year ago so it would be a two-year term. I think we need to talk to John Odom and see whether our appointment would be till the next town meeting day or there's also an election in November. My guess is and I haven't looked is that probably it would be November just because it's the earliest election yeah we could appear on and then that election would be for either a year and a half or a year depending on what day it was for and yeah the person at point doesn't necessarily have to run for that seat so if they you know wanted to see how they liked it and then let the seat be open you know they could not run and they couldn't get the film through the gap so our students are here either. They might be at the basketball game. The semi-final. That would be sick. That would be better. So um so we have several committees that have kind of varying degrees of work. We have I think we have any, well we've got the the only real special committee we have right now is the MSN. That in language immersion right? I mean Negotiations Committee isn't a special committee but once our work is done we hopefully will have an agreement for two years. Yeah um yeah so we have several committees and we have our Negotiations Committee which primary responsibility there is to negotiate with our three unions. Right now we're in negotiations with all three unions hopefully for a multi-year contract. We've had a series of one-year contracts so that committee has actually been a pretty heavy lift and when negotiations are in full swing it can be a fair amount of work. That's that we've got our current Negotiations Committee in the middle of negotiations and if this gets wrapped up it is likely that the Negotiations Committee will have anything to do hopefully for a couple of years. And who are the three entities? How is that split up? Is it the teacher at all the schools and then Paras or something and then Custodial? I mean I'm just wondering with it. Right it's teachers instructional assistants have a separate unit from the teachers and then there's an AFSCME unit that covers support staff IT and custodial employees. Yeah pretty much everyone but the administration. Except that the people who work in the food service opted out of the union a couple of years ago so they're not in any of the unions. And we split up the negotiating work a little bit this year except Ryan is taking it all along. Well we added Andrew and I had been the two that have been appointed Negotiations Committee in the past but since we had all three units that we were bargaining with this time Bridget stepped up to help out with the MESA and the AFSCME negotiations so we threw somebody else into the mix to help out with the workload. Yeah and I think it would make sense given that we're in the middle to I don't think we should. I think we should keep that community intact. The teacher side I think we're fine. That was my thought coming into tonight but we're in the middle the faces are familiar. It would be a bit silly to reshuffle everything right now unless somebody had a really strong desire to. Yeah it might be it might be it's a committee with a lot of work and it might be a committee with even more work to come in midstream and have to get up to speed. So I would entertain a motion to appoint those three members. Oh because we have to reappoint the committee. Can I do it even though one of them's me? Yes. Okay so I'll move that Andrew Bridget and Ryan be appointed as the negotiations committee. No second. I'll second. I was in favor. Aye. Any opposed. Great thank you again for doing that. I know it's a heavy lift and we really appreciate it's one of the most important things this this board does. We also have a policy committee. The policy committee was quite active when we were changing districts because we had to reenact all our policies. We changed our structure a little. We were a policy governance board and there's a few things about policy governance which I will not go into now that didn't quite fit our board. So now we're I think we call ourselves governance by policy which means we're largely policy driven but we don't we don't do things that a true policy governance board does like for instance approve the budget it's a consent agenda item. That's something that we're deeply involved in. So the policy committee's been very active. Most of the work on the merger has been done. Now it largely kind of deals with kind of discrete policies used that that come up you know for instance you know diversity has been kind of an evolving policy and the policy committee has done a lot of great work kind of figuring that out for us. The current members the current members who are still on board are Bridget and Ryan. I don't know that's that's a committee that we might be able to to reach out. I don't know if you guys. I don't want to speak for Ryan. I will say that I feel like because Ryan and I got pulled both into the negotiations work that we have been having a hard time keeping up with doing some of the pending policy things me definitely definitely me it has been somewhat challenging to try to keep on top of. Sure and we do have a third person so there should be this should be a three person committee as a standing committee which hasn't quite been the case for a while now either. The things that we kind of have on our agenda are related that are fundraising. The gender policy. Gender and gender identity. There was a discussion of having a sanctuary policy. That really didn't go anywhere for the last year but then a religion policy did come up in the past couple meetings. Yeah so there was discussion of possibly amending equity policy to include those are the some of the things on them. The burner right now. Yeah. Like I said at this point in time the policy manual is in a pretty good spot but obviously it's a living document and need addressing in the future. I would be happy continuing on with the policy committee to see through some of the stuff that we have still been kind of kicking around. I'd be happy to renounce my seat in the finance committee to lessen my committee involvement. I would very much like to be on the policy committee. Would be great. I was going to say that I think it would be a I really really want to do that. I am indifferent. I can stay or go. I think the new members have an interest I'm happy to. I'd love to hear what they all are and I might be more willing to know. That's a good point. Sure. I have an idea of what some of them are but you have a list. The standing committees. Yes. Let's go through and talk about the next one we have is the finance committee is the finance committee which basically gets a deeper dive on when we get the budget we get a fair amount of interest. We get a lot more questions than we do but we really don't do line by line. We don't delve deeply into the numbers because there are a lot of numbers and it's a lot of stuff we just don't necessarily need to know to make informed decisions. So basically what we've established the finance committee for is just to have a discrete group that meets with Grant our business manager and he does that deep dive and then if that committee feels that there are pieces from that deep dive that would be good to bring to the board and discuss or just to have that context for general board discussions so they can interject and maybe answer questions that the board members might have. That's basically the role of the finance committee. And I would say that the finance committee compared to say the negotiations committee or this Main Street middle school building committee that I've been chairing I imagine also compared to the policy committee is lighter in terms of overall work. There's four quarterly meetings a year and then you might have a couple of additional meetings throughout the year to address some other issues like for example when the audited financial statements are complete. We have an opportunity to talk with the business manager about those if there is some like there was a gift that was made to Rocksbury school district and there wasn't much information attached to it and it's like how do we handle this $10,000 or some of money. You know the finance committee gets involved in those types of decisions but it's not it's important work but it's not super time intensive compared to some of the other committee assignments. And then yeah yeah and then so and then the other main committee that we have is the superintendent evaluation committee which is basically what its name implies. But fortunately thanks to Becky Bowen she did a really good job of putting together a form that we use each year basically you know kind of starting starting around now around the time that you know contract for goals happen. This the environment committee will work with Libby to kind of set four third goals for the year and then just have some you know general performance criteria that we expect the superintendent to do. You know put those together and then as we get towards you know the end of kind of the contract cycle the evaluation committee will put together a draft of how we feel the superintendent's doing and then bring that to the board and then we'll we'll do a performance evaluation. Is that annual? It's annual. And the contract expires in July? Yeah the contract expires at the end of June so we've gone through that process and one of the things we'll bring both the view up to speed on is kind of where we are in terms of you know the regular process for that because we'll have a we'll have an executive session soon to make that decision but most of the work has been done. I can give you copies of the evaluation and her contract and you know talk to you both offline about what we've done so far. And when when would you say that's that's a committee that is more seasonal in terms of work intensity? When would you say it's most demanding? It's kind of in the spring to you know work with Libby to set her goals although she does a lot of it herself it's it's I mean the goal setting is more of a check just to make sure that that what she does aligns and then kind of right after budget season towards the end of budget season is when the real evaluation occurs so it's the kind of I would say it's the kind of thing that is a really heavy lift for one or two people for a concentrated period of time yeah like you really need to be able to lean on one or two people to write out you know write out an organization and yeah discussion and that takes but it's that part only lasts for a few weeks yeah it's a lot then like putting the evaluation together is the heavy lift and that that requires some thoughtfulness and are you currently I'm currently on the committee and I would like to stay on the committee and I mean I would you know I'd be with Libby weekly so but I think it's good to have obviously other members bring other perspectives and then we have as a as a special committee the MSMS building committee which is a broader committee that's not just board members but has several community members as well as well as at least one city council member I guess I guess now we have two three three oh Dan J with two members oh yeah that's so funny they're still I think planning to serve out as parent members but we Tina is now no longer on there okay so we will need another school board member I will say I think it will be helpful to have another school board member on there can we still have three city council members do we have do we end up having an accidental city council meeting that's a good question well I don't think it's a quorum but it could break yeah okay they could warn it as a meeting potentially is yeah we'll have to discuss that uh or yeah but it is a it is a Montpellier Roxbury school district body that has community members serving right like it is something that's right yeah we felt that there needed to be a parent voice on the committee and it just so happened that the two parent members then were so inspired by a main street middle school building committee's work that they decided to run for city council Dan Richardson and the J. Harrison yeah so and they've been very helpful on on that work I would not want to lose either of them we are on the back end of that process I'd say we're probably like six I want to say after we have this meeting with the board the next board meeting that's going to consume a bunch of time is a presentation to the board about where we are and getting some insights from you and if there are any members of the public there getting some insights from them as well after that I feel like we're it's going to be kind of downhill for there in terms of the workload but there's still important opportunities to provide insights and help with community engagement and help kind of put a bow on the whole process yeah so even though you'd be coming in in the middle and I feel like a lot of some of the heavy lifting will have been done there's still a lot of opportunity for contributions there and we meet once a month but sometimes people have like some committee assignments or like out of committee assignments yeah I feel like it makes sense just for the kind of doing it and that's pretty much it don't we need to replace Michelle on the language immersion committee oh yes I think yeah yeah the language emerging committee is not a board committee it is a it's an administrative committee but it's a board member exactly Jerry is on the principal search committee in Rocksbury yeah Steve is on the SPED committee but I talked to Ludwig and she said that's far enough along the process that Steve's going to stay on it but even though he's no longer technically a board member it would probably not be productive to put any work in the at this point so Ryan you just mentioned the principal search at Rocksbury is there a similar board representation for the Main Street Middle School is that typical process okay although but it's ultimately the superintendent who does the hiring yes the way that process works is the the committee the committee helps pick the candidates for the first round and participates in that first round of interviews and for reasons of confidentiality that process is all quiet because you know people want to keep their searches searches quiet until it reaches a certain point and then you know the process you've seen with other principal searches you know the candidates that come out of that process and that's basically um you know Libby makes the ultimate decision but I think she's on all those searches she's had more or less deferred to the consensus of the committee and then that process goes to you know the public interview process where the candidates come in for you know a very long day yeah and then you know community and teachers yeah so and then the the language immersion committee is a committee that's headed up by Mike Barry who's curriculum director that is looking at the integration we passed not this year but last year um funding for a study on creating a language version class that would be basically it would start at kindergarten and it would be one of the what would you have classes now it would be a cohort that basically starts that does their learning in a world language and that cohort sticks together through you know go through elementary school and they have you being that you know they it's a way to get kids who are an age where they learned both more easily and and with a totally different part of their brain language to to make them you know very proficient in another language and it's it's got some unique and cool elements it would it's it's not you know Spanish for kindergarteners it's kindergarten Spanish or French or whatever language so the committee is looking at whether that's feasible feasible and desirable and if it is how how it could be implemented and answering questions like you know what language would it be and you know how to be structured and how do we make sure it's equitable you know all those questions um and Michelle has been on that committee and I think they're I think they're pretty deeply into the process but obviously we want to continue the decision we made by a certain time I would have to check the the timeline has come and gone um and I think it's it's been a more involved process than originally anticipated um so there's still in it and I haven't been I'm not sure when the anticipated date I asked Mike about it when he was at one of our meetings a couple months ago and it seemed like it might be the kind of thing that would stretch through the summer and into the fall I kind of got I kind of got the impression that the only real hard deadline they have is they want I don't think they want to go this another budget cycle I think they want to be able to by the next budget season or to be next fall say whether this is something we want to do or not so we can either commit or not commit he also mentioned it was things like you know this organization that's kind of leading this effort they don't do it in an isolated chamber there's a committee that's formed with teachers and community members and a board member and community members can't just take five days off to you know iron out a plan and go and visit a bunch of schools around New England that are implementing these programs so it's all about figuring out when can you get people's schedules to record and that's also really extended the process yeah and I'm sure for who wants to step into that role you know Mike what's the time of you bringing up to speed and I think there's I think there's a fair amount of literature on the program in general because it is something that other school districts have tried including at least one and maybe a couple in Chippin County Jericho I think we're starting but yeah Jericho has one and I think there's several others that are either considering interactive and to practice and my understanding is that it's been it's been a good program I think that's it call those standing committees helpful special committees so um so we've gotten negotiations as the same um just go on committees and do you both feel you have enough information to do you want to express interest now or do you want to wait until we sure um I don't have a super strong interest but finance sounds good the superintendent evaluation sounds good to me and the the building committee sounds good but I don't have any strong preference for over one or the other at a very similar response actually um I I did think I had something of value and I do I do think I have something of value to offer to the building committee it sounds like it's further along but um I'm thinking it might be helpful for me with my communications background if you do think that there is sort of a public engagement piece that's coming up but I think it might be helpful to be on that um and I'd be happy to serve on either finance policy or the superintendent evaluation um sounds like the policy one is a little bit more sort of ongoing and there must be some sort of a regular check-in with the manual or they reviewed on an annual basis or something like that and then it sounds like maybe there's some ad hoc things that are assigned to that committee as well when things come up is that reasonable it's essentially when something might come to light that there is a hole or there needs to be something updated the the superintendent has a policy review manual that she keeps track of her making sure that she's monitoring everything and doing her job following all the policies and you know laws change you know the Vermont School Board Association will make us aware that you know there's been legislation change at the federal level that our federal nutrition policy would you know the one the one that she presented tonight they change the mandates change so we had to change our policies to make sure that we're in line with federal state guidelines so yes they are all kind of living documents in that sense that they make sure that everything is up to par yeah um so policy committee Jill's expressed interest and i'm maria interested are you maria you just didn't any other committee um i i did you say that language emergent really doesn't need anyone at this point it does it does i'm interested in going to you okay um so for policy i don't know purchase if you're if you're done it could be jill mara and ryan i am fine i'm fine you still might get referenced that's okay you're pretty solid legal reference in case you haven't noticed that's good that's good uh so we need a motion for that appointment i guess i'll make a motion that the policy committee consists of mara jill and ryan a second i second all those in favor i um so finance ryan you want us to follow up correct i'd be happy with that um honestly if i if i'm not on there i'll hold a court meeting so it's it makes sense yeah i know you need yeah that's why we have a finance unit yes i'm aware of this i will annoy everybody on the board with questions if i'm not um you both express interest you can both gotta help you do i was gonna fight you too hard i'll definitely defer it on a cat i don't want to sign up for everything and then not be able to do the job we should keep in mind that jerry will want to be on so yeah she's certainly the superintendent of the origin committee that's right if on a kid is on finance and i'm on finance i almost wonder does it make sense to have jerry be on finance just so that there's a wrong story we've talked about this before over including roxbury and overstretching roxbury robs yeah so she would have so jerry would be the principal search is a short time thing so she'd be the clerk she'd be the finance committee and where else would you call the superintendent evaluation committee i mean the finance but it's not as big of a lift in terms of the overall workload i'm not going to speak for her but um if the rest of the board members felt like it didn't make sense to make sure that there was a roxbury rep as part of that to be totally informed and part of those in-depth conversations i don't think she would mind terribly because it's not as big of a i'm sure she's probably be doing more is the principal search committee right now than she would in the finance committee we can tentatively have her there and we can always adjust when we have a third person like she's feeling really overstretched okay let me have another person rather okay let's do that so anika andrew and jerry do we need that motion yes we do so move anika jerry and andrew for the finance committee yeah second i'll second all is a favor hi any oppose all for serving on the finance committee um superintendent evaluation i would like to stay on that i don't get your interest as well yeah uh and i think jerry is interested in continuing as well um i'm fine the one i felt like most strongly that was the building one so okay we don't have a motion for is that enough three that's three yes me uh anika and jerry right i can do it i'll move that we appoint jim anika and jerry to the superintendent evaluation committee second all is a favor hi any opposed excellent um and then i think we just need to reappoint andrew and appoint jill to the main street middle school building committee i move that we appoint andrew and jill to the main street building second all is a favor hi any opposed and then i would well this is a question of point tomorrow to the world language committee but i think since administrative committee we don't necessarily need one but but as well motion to i move to appoint tomorrow to the language immersion committee second that's a favor i can do the same for jerry in the principal search well i think it says it's ongoing we need to to reappoint i i have a question though i just realized we should have asked this at the very beginning have you two been sworn in yet yes we have all three of us right yeah john oden was off so he had to do a work around somebody else who can do nicely definitely but yeah so yeah so we have yeah this is what i heard john without our little friend like we're gonna have a quorum if jerry can't get noticed either but now we're all a good deal um i think that's our business for the night so well it says new board member initiation yeah i wonder about that i was like um after the hazing harassment late policy new member initiation well you're not finding that that's our connotation yeah that is yeah no i think we just those the welcome yeah the welcome and uh are you planning to meet with these two i am planning to meet with you guys are there any questions that anyone yeah has about oh there's there's a training of some sort that happens isn't there like in the summer yeah there's a vb there's some vbs trainings i would also recommend both of you go to the vsp website and there's kind of a packet for board members and the core members um which is kind of it's in like a powerpoint format it's just has a lot of the basics down i would just scroll through that spend some time um john i will uh uh you know let's get together some folks here and i can kind of you know answer any questions and just bring them to speed on some things um if you wouldn't mind if i joined in that i i'm sure that you all have questions that it will not have occurred to me to ask it so other than the vacancy is this is this the board i mean jerry's and then we have a vacancy but yeah is that everybody else the students are sometimes here which is yeah bigger and the superintendent is usually here with me okay yeah and um we have talked about mentors yeah i mean that's not something we have to vote on it is not going to be a vote on but does anyone i'm happy to be a mentor anyone um thank you and i'm happy to be one too um so i guess you guys can say it's not an initiation but we're getting bigs call that yeah so i'm happy to be in here um so bigs and littles and for sororities and fraternities i was in a fraternity i think one of one of the good things that's on the bsba website like either through the essential toolkit for school board members or their webinars is they kind of they kind of talk about like what school board members should get involved in and how to deflect and handle things that should be deflected to the administration and how to do that constructively and appropriately and keep um you know some of our policies cover that i mean we used to give people the policies in paper when they existed only in paper but now that they're electronic i think we just tell folks that they're on the website but there are there's a couple of policies that talk about the relationship between the school board members and the and the administration and the superintendent and kind of a division of authority and handling communications with the administration and seeking information that kind of stuff okay when jerry started we had said obviously ideally we all read the policy manual we all know all the policies but here are the really important ones that for you how you act as a board member and how we interact with the administration and the superintendent like these are kind of the big ones that put on the top of the list to read yeah no exactly some of this intuitive and some of it's untuitative but good to know so um do you already have a mentor i don't think we give marama to her so okay so i think we should just pick now right yeah um i'm sitting by one of your mentors yes there we go we just need to jill and i are surveying on the main street middle school building committee together so which are the easiest and y'all are on super it's not there yet yeah great i was so we plus we work across the street yes we do i'm like oh that's great we more people can join the car pool yes the car pool yeah i love this car is typically it's a like me in the high school parking lot at six one or two cars go to roster that would keep me from going to the yummy ice cream place every time that is something that i'm so basically excited with this car pool it sounds like we didn't have more meetings in our office i'm sure we'll keep you so i did just want to take a moment i i had every intention of writing each of you individually and explaining my interest on being on the board and and sort of introduce myself a little bit better but everyone's been really gracious in reaching out and i've learned a lot about you already and i really look forward to working with you and just really quickly my background is for many years the majority of my career i worked at the agency of education as their policy and legislative affairs person so i did communication with media and with the public so i worked closely with the school boards association and principal association and i worked for the state board of ed which is why i do sort of have some robert's rules knowledge but for the last four years i've been the director of property tax at the tax department so that part is a little rusty and meanwhile i have a pretty good handle on how you know the numbers go from when you pass your school budget to when you get your property tax bill i kind of understand that sausage factory i do have a daughter at the middle school and i i i've been trying to be really clear that i wanted to be on the board despite that not because of it i don't come here with any sort of set agenda or axe to grind quite the opposite but i do have that perspective that i think would be helpful and as someone who's grown up in amont and seeing you know the group of the northeast kingdom and now i'm here in the great big city of montpelier i just i think i'd like to think that i have something to offer but i definitely will have a lot of questions and like i said a lot of these pieces are things that i saw from the other from the other side from the state side and so i will be asking what probably seem like um odd questions and i just appreciate everyone's being so open and forgiving as we ask those questions so thank you thank you for serving now absolutely yes to have a few on the board okay and if you want to introduce your public no need i wasn't planning on the year but i can't but yeah i've met with um prison you um so just to give a little bit of background i'm this is completely different from what chills coming from i have never been in in um any of these situations before uh by own a small it company so i come from business background and uh by i've done civil engineering as my bachelor's and master's so a little bit of different background but um i'm excited to be on this sort of table and and learn as much as i can and offer whatever i can um my my services so what you know a few things that interest me were as as we went through the the committee assignments the finance and then um the evaluation committee like something that i've done in the business background where you know even though you don't know things it's a different skill to be able to evaluate and and work on um so that kind of interest me um coming from the civil engineering background um that's where the building committee kind of perp my interest but again as i said there's no specific preference towards um one or the other but you know i just want to take this opportunity to thank you guys to to accepting us and welcoming us into this so exciting as Jill mentioned i'll have a whole bunch of questions which most likely will be some very stupid but i'll ask them yeah and it's kind of a good time to come to work because you know we you know kind of our our two main things are superintendent oversight and the budget so you know those kind of heat up heat up in the fall although you know we do we do think about you know the kind of year round and actually we do other things like the policy etc but it's a little time before you get to budget swing learn a little more about the school's administration and can i ask a like protocol question so we got email addresses set up today the official mbs bt so is it safe to say that that is our email address that we can use and give out for board work and yes and i was and it's all subject to public information so i don't want to start having other side conversations or texts and things like that i can use that email yeah use that use that email for board work um you know if people contradict you on personal email try to direct it to board work because people will you know you're in the community they've got your email addresses it's probably not said they'll use email address they have so you try to direct people to your board email and certainly initiate any board business from your board email yeah and then obviously uh you know you're still a parent so you know advocate for your kids on your personal email and you know advocate as a parent um so keep that separate too but i think that's the biggest thing and actually until really like two or three years ago we didn't have separate we didn't have separate accounts but it is there were some public records requests both to us and to you 32 and it was just very clear that it would be much better if we just use the public account for that purpose i will say as a parent just a slight warning which is that um because you're now in the mpsvt email system you might your email will autofill like for a teacher so yeah you really have to do you have to make that effort to place your kid related stuff on the other email yeah um yeah and then be aware of meeting laws of anytime you have three board members on a communication you are a potential violation of open meeting law um so the only information that can be shared in that type of setting and that includes like having drinks with three needs if you're you know if three of us coalesce three needs we should not be talking about board business um the only information that you can convey is a kind of purely administrative stuff like you know the meeting will be at seven or do you want a carpool do you want to put things on the agenda you can set an agenda over yeah um yeah and you can send agenda items to me uh to request um and have them put on the agenda nine members at a time they end up there i might want to discuss with you or have questions or you know we might want to park it maybe a little in a different spot in terms of just you know laying out the agenda you know weeks in advance um what if what if there's something i i know i've come before the board about a particular piece if somebody wants the board to address something or has a question of the board or has a statement they want to make to the board about some particular pressing topic i assume in a lot of cases people probably blast it to the board but is the protocol that we send things to you are you the channel through it or because if i then forward it to the rest of the board have i now just created a meeting i'm just i can imagine i would i would send stuff to me okay at least yeah um okay and i think we try to filter most board requests through me um just to make sure that we're we're not we're not doing that um and if someone emails and this happened i think we got one today before the meeting so if someone emails the whole board you can respond to them and you might want to respond to them but you shouldn't respond to everyone yeah just you can respond directly okay and it's also important when you're talking to members of the public or potentially for us that people understand that you as an individual board member you might be expressing your opinion but sometimes might differ from the the majority vote of the board on an issue that's fine um you know first amendment it's great but it's important to distinguish that for people that you're speaking as one board member you're not speaking as the entire board because the board itself does have authority you know that one board member on his or her own does not yeah and there is yeah some different protocol there um i think the bsba guidance kind of says once the board speaks the board is spoken yeah i think that's right i think i think the bsba sort of and that's not a law or a requirement but the protocol would suggest as a protocol for board members to to at least think twice or avoid criticizing the board's action after it's happened but as andrew said you have i mean you know you're in politics and but it's important to say you know this is my perspective so say for example you did you were in a minority vote on an issue and you were talking to a member of the public or a member of the press about it you you are you can certainly express nobody there there is nothing here that would limit your first amendment rights to say you know this is this is how i feel about this issue but general protocol like richard's talking about this to say but you know we are a board we we act at you know as as a single unit and just because i didn't agree with this the board has spoken this is the decision of the board and you know the sba protocol is generally to support the board at large even if you disagree on the matter after a decision to be made but but it's not a sure requirement and then it sounds like logistically items come from you anna for the board meeting okay and they're your mailing addresses and phone numbers public information and available to people to write and call okay i think we actually took them off the website i used it to text jim yes i think they are i thought we'd take the physical addresses but do you get calls and mention phone number phone numbers and what do you do you get do people get calls i'd say i have do i have i'd say not the bad majority comes okay email i mean and the second thing is people just catching you somewhere right sporting events sporting events go on travel grounds there's it's in our it's in one of our policies i think it's our superintendent board policy which is if you're communicating with the superintendent or have a request of the superintendent to copy jim and um yeah and and also do not go to administrators directly right like the superintendent like kind of the the pathway to administrators is through i need to fix this that puts everyone in a very awkward place i will say in practice though with the superintendent i feel like there are some there are some in practice like exceptions that role like if we're working on a negotiations issue we'll work through and then i generally like to share things with jim just so he's in the no but um or like we're putting together a mainstream middle school building committee i don't know if they want to fill up your box too much yeah i'm kind of thinking of like it's a doorway thing i mean there's like a new matter a new initiative that you want to bring up with liby you know kind of involve me at the onset but then if it's just logical like okay like that's great you know chill let me go work on this and that might involve you know a series of communications over a series of months like once the ones that doesn't make sense for you to be involved it's totally fine to have an open flow with her on that matter but if there's something like what we do and um there's a new set of issues and i kind of go back to the doorway how are the students appointed are they um does the school appoint them from yeah student leadership or something okay so they're not on this march cycle like we just did yesterday okay so we had a meeting tonight with no public involved um but you know you somewhat frequently get public coming and sharing comments concerns praises whatever it's tough sitting here and having somebody tell us please do this or do that but our role during a meeting with the public comment period isn't a chance to interact with the public in the setting it's really it's a chance for us to listen um and kind of absorb those and maybe use them to make decisions later on in the meeting but during the public comment periods of our meetings even if we have a hundred people here going through the microphone we don't typically respond to every single comment every question every direction that the public would like to see and that's not the case as we have you know say a principal or a grant or someone else coming up you know making a presentation on a program or the budget then obviously you know we can all ask questions or if it's a member of the public who's giving an actual formal presentation on an issue um you know interaction that but for like the public for the set of public comment period yeah it's we're in the same mode which can be depending on the topic can be hard to sit here and not react or give you know give the type of assurance or response that and is it safe to say that you are also the spokesperson for the board on things like social media and uh like to search for another board member it seems like that's are we supposed to help get that word out is there a yes i think you can definitely help get that word out and uh social media is tricky uh you know i think many of us here are on social media so it was around various groups um you know i will share from time to time and michelle was really good at this and yeah steve did a good job too and yeah we're just as shared as well you know just kind of general information especially when a topic comes up i found that helpful i think there has been some advice then that you just don't want to do that at all especially and also even if it's just on a information level if board members start coming in if three or four of us start talking you know and kind of getting one of those chains on forms um are we in violation of media laws uh so it's tricky i i try to be pretty selective but there are times when it's it's useful to engage and sometimes especially if it's you know it's a matter that's controversial and it's blowing up and maybe blowing up a non-helpful way you have to maybe contact me and and see but if if you know it's something like well then you know say there's a people are asking some questions i think opposed it's solely safe is you know uh we're talking about it this next meeting you know if you want more information there's a title you know just you know getting information out there i think can be if it's again if it starts to blow up or you start to feel like you're opining or getting into a real dialogue especially if others come in anything else and again you know um i don't know we don't have a system for letters i would just say let's try to just have a few you know coffees over the next few months just to make sure that you're checking in with questions um and i certainly want to be with both of you just to go to speed um on a couple things because you have a couple decisions to make and that's that's mostly one thing for jail we have the main street middle school building committee next monday it's the second monday of every month it's on the schedule for are those here that they're also here by down the street and how do you generally find out when committee meetings are happening like i assume once you're in them you maybe decide when you're meeting next but they're all announced they have to be publicly warned so anna would send out to the entire board whenever there's any committee meeting happening yeah the committee should appoint a chair they can do that with my next meeting yeah but the the committees are also subject to being less that be be warned and that's that's right because sometimes political times that's been forgotten and you're about to meet like settle set aside a lunch for a meeting and you can't do it so it helps them be warned then conversely if it is worn like i like it could come to the building committee meeting exactly anybody can come to the building committee meetings yeah we encourage encourage one and ten yeah which we have not got but that's okay we'll do better better engagement okay well we rarely get out here before the eighth but i think we can pull that that will be up second yeah better thanks all