 The Montpelier-Roxbury Public School Board is still in session. Do we have a quorum? One, two, three, four, five, yes. OK. The first. May I put two additional items on as I noted in the email? Yes. I'd like to add to the agenda the appointment of Paul Giuliani as district moderator, as well as adding the validation resolution as an agenda item for the MRPS Board, please. Public comment. Is there any member of the public here? I wish this to affect anyone. OK. Moving on from public comment, the first action item is the approval of the minutes. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of February 21? Make a motion to approve the present. Second. All those in favor? Any opposed? The next item is the approval of leave of absence requests, which are in your packet. Yep. I would say a motion to, right, we need a motion to discuss them. So a motion. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? What they are. I'll just have the two. So right. For the whole year for Hannah's request? For both of them, I think. For both? Yep. To return then, 2019 year, 1920 year. Did we accept the request for leave of absence? I think it's been moved. Yeah, it's already been moved. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Anybody else wants to pass those to Brian McCann? All right, should we do the Giuliani? Yes, that would be great. So since there was no actual voting that took place in either municipality around a district moderator, it simply needs to be an appointment by this board because it is a position that's required as a standalone single district. I've been in touch with Paul Giuliani, who was the moderator. If you recall for the initial MRPS organizational meeting, he is happy to continue in that role. All we would need is a motion from this board to appoint him as moderator and affirmative vote. A motion to appoint Paul Giuliani as the moderator for the MRPS district? I move we appoint Paul Giuliani as the moderator for the MRPS district. Second. Any discussion? So there were two other positions also. Are those not necessary? They were voted. They were voted. People ran, and they were voted in. So he was too? He wasn't elected. No one was elected. No one was elected. He wasn't on the ballot. He should have been on the ballot for a march, and he wasn't. Thanks. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Any opposed? Mr. Giuliani will be the moderator. And then, Brian, can you talk about the validation resolution? Yes. So the validation resolution is for the board's consideration tonight. The purpose is to put to rest any concern that the 2018 annual meeting warnings weren't published or posted precisely as required by the applicable statutes. There's no indication as such, but this is just a safeguard. Essentially, Paul is covering his bases for us, both in terms of his role as, well, now moderator, but prior to that as city attorney, because currently the way that the Montpelier ward would obtain funding for a bond is through the city, because the city currently is our source of revenue. We draw our money from the city, because currently we're still under the city charter until July 1st when we go off on our own. So in order to dot all the i's and cross all of the t's, the resolution that I sent you will cover, if any are discovered, any statutory violations that may have been made in terms of posting the warnings about the bond. To be clear, Tammy Legacy, who is the district clerk who was duly elected, affirmed the postings for Roxbury, and John Odom affirmed the postings for Montpelier. So there is no indication that there are any irregularities, but should any arise, this would allow you as a board to say, if they came up, we're still validating that these were posted appropriately. And Paul can begin the process of warning the Vermont Municipal Bond Bank that the affirmative vote took place, and that we're going to need $4.9 million to complete the work that was a part of the bond. Do you have the text of what you need? I do, yes. I do. I can read it for you. It says, whereas pursuant to 16 VSA 706P parentheses A and 24 VSA 1756, notice of the March 6, 2018 annual meeting of the Montpelier Roxbury School District here and referred to as the district, was given in part by posting and publishing the warning thereof, along with warnings for the annual meetings of the city of Montpelier and the Roxbury Town School District. And whereas, as provided in 24 VSA 1756, notice of said district meeting was to be published in a newspaper of known circulation in such municipality, once a week for three consecutive days on the same day of the week, the last publication not to be less than five, nor more than 10 days before such meeting. And whereas, the requisites of the statute relating to the publication of the district annual meeting warning containing an article of business relating to the proposition of incurring bonded indebtedness, not having been complied with because of oversight, inadvertence, or mistake of law or fact. The Board of School Directors desire to avail themselves of the validation provisions of 17 VSA 2662 and 24 VSA 1757. And whereas, at the March 6 district annual meeting, the proposition of incurring bonded indebtedness for the purpose of making public school building improvements, Article B, was approved, those voting in favor being 1763 and those voting opposed being 631. Now therefore, the Board of School Directors hereby finds that notwithstanding the failure to comply with all of the statutory requirements incident to the call, notice, and warning of said district annual meeting, the required length notice of the purpose of said meeting has been had accordingly. Be it resolved that to the fullest extent permitted by law, the Board of School Directors hereby ratify, confirm, and validate that all action taken by the district at the annual meeting thereof on March 16, 2018. And hereby certify that the foregoing was approved and adopted by an affirmative vote of at least two-thirds of the members of the Montpelier School Board of School Directors of the Montpelier Roxbury School District at a regular meeting thereof held on March 21, 2018. And the attestation will come from the district clerk. Is there a motion that we adopt the resolution as read by the superintendent? So I'll make a motion that we accept the resolution as presented. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion or questions? I do have a question as to clarify, Brian, not about the resolution itself of the process. So Paul, as a district moderator, would be speaking to the law and bank? No, Paul, as the city attorney is beginning the process. There will have to be, at a subsequent meeting, a transfer of deadness, because in order to get the process started, we're doing it under the auspices and procedures of the city charter, which we are still under, but there will be a transfer of that deadness prior to the incurring of the deadness on or before July 1st when the MRPS Board becomes a district entity unto itself and will take on that deadness unto itself. So it's multiple hats, is why it seems to be. Yes, yes. Any further questions or discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Great. The next action item on the agenda is to adopt five policies that we had the first reading on back in Roxbury in February. And those are the HIPAA policy, the home study students policy, the harassment, hazing, and bullying policy, the nutrition and wellness policy, proficiency-based graduation requirements, and travel reimbursement. That's actually six. I think I was counting one. Yeah, that's six. So I think my first question will be, does anyone want to discuss any of the policies further tonight? And if so, tell me which ones. Of those six. Of those six, just those six that we'll talk about. If there's no interest, and we did go through these last time, if we're just going to adopt them, if someone could move them one by one, move that we adopt each policy, that would be great. I move that we adopt the health insurance partability and accountability act compliance policy. Second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I move that we adopt the participation of home study students policy. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I move that we adopt the prevention of harassment, hazing, and bullying of students policy. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I adopt. I move that we adopt the federal Child Nutrition Act wellness policy. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I move that we adopt the proficiency-based graduation requirements policy. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And I move that we adopt the tribal reimbursement policy. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. It was very efficient. All right. The remaining policies on the first reading are policies that we haven't seen before. And I just want to talk about some different categories of them and then figure out what order to address them in. The in-district elementary school transfer policy is coming from a collaboration of the policy committee and the superintendents and was primarily handled by Ryan. So when we talk about that one, I'll ask him to introduce it and walk us through. The next three, the conflict of interest code of conduct and superintendent relationship policies. We're not really intended to be warned tonight. They were intended for a board discussion for the benefit of the policy committee and kind of getting us ready for next week. So I think we should probably discuss them as a group. And Ryan and I can both talk about those and take input. They're definitely not at the wordsmithing stage. They're at the how are folks reacting to these and where are we going? So not having them for not having the first reading tonight then on those? They were warned that way all the, you know. Or just do it as a way to open it up. Right. Right. But they're in a much more preliminary state in terms of input. Are we pulling the great advancement policy? Because we don't need it anymore? Right. Because we don't need it anymore. I should say we found out from the VSBA that the great advancement mandatory policy is inconsistent with the proficiency-based graduation requirement. And as such, it's no longer going to be a mandatory policy. So that can be stricken as we will not need it going forward. Makes sense. So we're not going to talk about that one tonight. Substitute teachers and the volunteer and work study students are coming from the superintendent. So we'll ask them to talk to us about those. And the fiscal and budget policies. Grant has the business manager. Grant Geisler has asked us to talk about. I was inclined to start with those so that he could go home. Does that work for everyone? Works for Grant? Works for Grant? I saw that laugh. Since we've started, you know, two hours behind you. OK, so you have no objection. I think we will start with the fiscal management and budget execution. And I'll ask Grant to come up and join us. Do we begin by with a motion on it? No, because it's a first reading. Just read it. There's no action tonight. So it's just a first reading. So Grant will walk us through them and explain why we're talking about them. And people can ask questions, et cetera, et cetera. I believe there were similar policies prior to the decision by the non-pillier public school board to adopt the policy governance. That was my first question. So when that happened, these came out of policy. So we don't have these in NPS. We don't have the policies. They kind of ended up, by default, becoming procedures since they weren't part of the policies under policy governance. My issue is as we start going through audits, AOE visits for things like fiscal monitoring, special education reviews. They are expecting to see many of the items that are within these policies as policies, not as procedures. We just went through and are still going through a special education audit. And these were presented to the AOE. You'll see that they don't say on the policy. They just have the designation and the title. So don't ask, don't tell. We provided these. I wasn't asked if they were officially policies or not. I believe the assumption from them was that they were policies. They were reviewed, and we did not have any findings on these. So the assumption was that they were policies. But if asked, I would have to admit that they are not actually at policies because the board hadn't approved them yet. So I wanted to just clean that up, make sure these are identified as board-proof policies so that we're set for any AOE reviews. And actually, our auditor would be expecting to see these things captured as policies. I've basically taken perhaps 10 or 15 different policies and just wrapped them into these two documents. So that there's only two policies that we're looking at just for the sake of simplicity so that you're not hunting and searching for different aspects of these. Fiscal management talks about fiscal accounting and reporting, things that are statutory requirements of the board. And just some of the procedures like year-end procedures, not procedures, but activities, talks about fund balance, auditing, student activities, setting up student activities, those kinds of things, and capitalizing assets. The budget execution is basically what it says. It's any kind of requirements related to executing our budgets each year. And so that talks about things like bids and purchasing, requisitions, purchase orders, reimbursements, grants, gifts, and donations. So I think in these two, we've tried to wrap up everything that relates to business office activities and statutory requirements. A big piece of these documents has to do with federal fiscal requirements, federal procurement requirements that are federal and state related. So I could go through these with you or I could just allow you to read through them when you would like. I'm not sure what else you would like to talk about at this point. So these don't exist as Vermont Association of School Board sample policies. You've crafted these based on what MPS used to have. Based on what MPS used to have, what I had in Essex Westford, what some of my colleagues have. In some cases, there are separate policies for each of these headings, like fiscal accounting and reporting might be a policy. And so what I did was I tried to put fiscal management topics together in one policy and budget execution together in one policy and just cover it in two policies. So a lot of this is language that was similar to what we are kind of showing as procedures. Although that doesn't really make sense because we have procedures under these. So you have procedures associated with procedures, which doesn't make sense. Whereas if these are adopted as policies, then it does make sense to have procedures under these. So VSBA has these kinds of topics covered as recommended, not mandatory. But a lot of this talks about statutory requirements that the board has for fiscal management under 16 VS8563, I think it is. So I think it makes sense for these to be captured as policies. Questions? First of all, thank you for doing the work on this. This is I think the appropriate place for this. And I was thinking about as the board puts together other policies like on budget creation, we're kind of looking back to the current MPS policies. And there's a social overlay, that sort of environmental purchasing overlay that is in that policy. And I don't know whether would this allow for in the future, say, if we decided we wanted to amend this, does that work to be able to lay over a local purchasing or environmental purchasing or some other overlay? Because I see there's some, it's pretty specific about what, at a minimum, you have to do. But I don't know whether you're allowed to lay over more on top of that. It would get tricky, because federal procurement would not allow for that. It would not. Federal procurement is cut and dry on what you have to do. If we're using local funds, we probably could do that. So we would have to look into how to kind of separate that out within that section. Maybe there's a subsection that it relates to federal funds versus state and local funds. Or where funding sources allow these shall be used or whatever. Correct. I see. So it looks like in the budget execution, that's where you would put something like that if you, if we agreed we wanted to do it in the future. Yeah, under the bits in purchasing. We have had, I mean, that is in our policies now. It's in the MPS policies. And the question is whether it rolls forward and where it would go if it rolls forward. Because we're deconstructing the current policies in the new system. So this is part of that deconstruction. The language as it exists right now as our policy that relates to that. If we had a federal fiscal monitoring visit, we would be founding in violation. Not out of compliance. These are great. Anyone else have any questions for Grant tonight? I guess the only thing, do you feel comfortable? I mean, there's a lot of specificity in here. Do you feel comfortable that everything in here is that you want to be held to as policy rather than as guidelines? I'm comfortable with it the way it is. Because to me, another added benefit of this is related to any kind of transition that might occur. Just not having to search through to find, oh, what do we have to do related to this topic or that topic? We can pull out two policies. Oh, yeah. Everything is in here. Huge, yeah. So if there's personnel turnover, it's nice to have it all captured in one place. If there's any kind of more detailed procedure, I mean, there are some procedures, but it's more like the federal procurement forms that you have to fill out in the specific process you have to go through. So my preference is to have it spelled out like this because I can just pull this up in one document and see, basically, from A to Z what's required. So not unnecessarily prescriptive? No. I mean, if you're putting my whole world into policy and it's only 11 pages, I think that's pretty good. That's pretty good. Great. In the budget execution policy under employee reimbursement, is there language there that would say that it has to be consistent with the negotiated agreements? And are you confident that this is consistent with the negotiated agreement to the extent it has to be? And under employee reimbursements for travel and professional development? It should be because under professional development, it relates to any kind of professional development approval forms. So by tying it to those approval forms would make sure that we're always in compliance with whatever. Right. So to that point, the negotiated agreement only provides that, no, this is we're speaking about teachers, would only provide for course reimbursement. It's very specific as to what can be reimbursed. Travel is not reimbursable for teachers under the current negotiated agreement. So that would, as long as we are staying within the approval process that currently, the procedure that currently exists, this would, this has room enough to not violate the commitment we have through the negotiated agreement. So there are instances, if I'm understanding this, where the district does pay for travel and attendance for professional development that's outside of what the negotiated agreement is. As long as it is, we cannot do it for teachers. But for example, if a member of the leadership team were to go to a conference and there is a cost, a travel cost associated with it, that is reimbursable. But for a teacher to travel, that is not a reimbursable cost under the negotiated agreement. We can only cover the cost of the tuition or the cost of the course. So teachers never travel for school business? If they do, it's, I mean, they may, they could do it as mileage. But if a teacher was flying to a conference, we would not reimburse them for the travel or the hotels associated with it. But this says that we would if they were traveling for school business. So that's the kind of thing I'm trying to flag. Well, so. We reimbursed for reasonable expense. So things like the IRS rate for mileage. So if somebody is, tomorrow I'm going to Roxbury, I can put in for vicinity travel. If a teacher did that, they could as well. So for, to your point, we would still flag this anyway because as a teacher puts in for their professional development, only the principal and I would sign off if it's professional development covering the cost of the course. We would not sign off on, and we have returned forms that have included either lodging and or travel costs associated with it. And so we've asked people to resubmit only with the course cost included in it. But you understand my question is, do you think the policy here is capturing that intent? Because it says, in this language about travel, or does it need caveats around? I think that was the purpose for that last sentence, which is the reimbursement process. It's the same identified in paragraph 2 below. So if somebody does travel for professional development, they would have to fill out the form. The form would then be spelling out whether they were allowed to be reimbursed for travel expenses. And it would not show that they could get travel expenses. So I think the first part of this is that there is situations where we will reimburse for travel, for vicinity travel, those kinds of things. But the process has to be spelled out as part of the professional development form. And on that, there would not be an authorization for travel expense. Other questions or discussion about these? Thanks a lot, Grant. Thank you, Grant. So these will have to come up at another meeting. And if anyone has questions in the interim, I think you feel free to send them to Jim. And Jim to pass them on. Thanks, Grant. All right. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Ryan, do you want to turn to the transfer policy? So we exist as a single district now with a couple elementary schools and middle school and a high school. So the question is, are students in different communities able to transfer to the elementary school since it's the same single district? Because that was an immediate address before. So we've talked to the superintendents, both Ryan and Lori. We reached out to some other districts. We got some policies that other districts have implemented regarding this question. There's been burgers all over the process, state of the month. How are new districts handling this question? Multiple towns, multiple buildings, students allowed to transfer back and forth, et cetera. And what we presented today is an ever-consolation of our conversations with the superintendents and then going through those other policies. The starting point had really been the conversations with the superintendents that at this point in time, the structure of our district probably doesn't make sense to have students transferring permanently mostly between the elementary schools. Maybe in the future, it might make sense to reevaluate that. But at this point in time, the size discrepancy between the buildings and the communities, it really didn't make sense to offer that mostly because we didn't expect it to be a reciprocal trading. At this point, I'm not expecting as many Montpelier students to be transferred or moving to Roxbury. So based on that feedback, the policies we've reviewed presented in one paragraph is the introducing policy that were, excuse me, the introducing elementary school policy that the board is examining. So this one's short, so maybe for the audience, I will read this one. Students in the Montpelier Roxbury School District will attend grades K to four in the elementary school located in their town of residence. Provided, however, at parent request, the board of school directors may adjust student enrollment within the new district based on individual students' circumstances and the superintendent's determination of capacity to serve the child. Pretty straightforward. Pretty straightforward. Any questions? Sorry, I'm lined with the article's agreement that we voted on June last year. Yeah, thanks. Steve? I think it's great. I think that I'm concerned that the provided, however, is this gigantic loophole that it's basically saying, yeah, but we actually will. And I'm not saying we shouldn't, right? I mean, it seems like what we're saying is absolutely in district transfers are totally allowed for a reason is really what the policy says. Right, and we could, I mean, there are a lot of ways you could do it, right? It could be for exceptional circumstances. It could be for extraordinary circumstances. You could raise the standard, you could leave it here. Will we have procedures? Will we have procedures? Yeah, that give the superintendent criteria, or? I think it would be up to the superintendent, could probably develop them, but I mean, since we don't do this in MPS. It's not what we do, though, because people do, I mean, we've been doing a couple of these in the last couple of years. Not this, though. This is really different. This is an intra-district. It's inside the district, but still switching. I mean, would we be looking for a similar case to be made that it's, you know, the child's needs can't be met in one school and they must be met in the other school? Or is it far longer? This is not about IEP decisions that would be made by the IEP team. It does not come to the board. Right, but it's, so I think that either we need to come up with a word that indicates a standard, right? Or we need to create, or we need to instruct the superintendent to create a standard, one of the two. Because it seems like right now where the standard is to serve the child, individual students and the superintendent's determination of capacity to serve the child is that where we wanna leave it? Maybe we do, but it means that the student's needs cannot be met, or it's not even that, that the school does not have the capacity to meet that child's needs or best educational interests, or best interests. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it requires the superintendent to decide that the school can't serve the child's needs. I think it says you, right, it was better. And it's also a May, so it's not even saying that, it's not saying the request has to be granted. It's just saying that discretion there to grant it. It's broad discretion. Right, and they have to come to the board, it's up to the board, but it's based on a recommendation from the superintendent. But it would be great to have a clear, any kind of clear standard then capacity to serve, I think, would be helpful in making those decisions. Are you thinking the kind of standard that would really be like, these are the factors to consider, or just sort of indicating how strong a showing you have to make, that it would be exceptional circumstances or something? Just clear language about not the specific circumstances, but the, I guess I'm just struggling with the phrase capacity to serve the child and what that might mean. I might be satisfied if it was just the superintendent's determination that a particular school is in the child's best interest. But you know, it might, the kinds of, well, I mean, I think at Ryan's point all along, I don't wanna speak for him, but- Because of extraordinary circumstances or something. I mean, I think one of the things that Ryan had mentioned to me that we're struggling with is that we haven't gone through this yet, so it's kind of hard to know. And for example, so one example that I would think of is that you might have a situation where it's more driven by the circumstances in Roxbury. Like if you have only one fourth grader. Right. It wouldn't necessarily be so much about the student as it might be, maybe that's a situation where the parents in the district would say, would you rather come to Montpelier for that year or not? Or you could have a kid who's really just very unhappy there and has nothing to do with this, you know? That's a whole different thing because do we want to a huge question and maybe this was already decided in the merger process and I'm not recalling, but if there is only one kid in fourth grade and of course it's to the benefit of the district if that one fourth grader is located with all the other fourth graders and we don't have to provide fourth grade for the benefit of one kid, can the district make the decision to move that kid regardless of the interest of the parents and the child? Well, you know. I mean that's not addressed in this. Right, well and also I mean, presumably in the ordinary course the administration is looking at enrollment and how it's happening and could be flagging these things well in advance. Right, right. I've been having you made so that the new board could be considering them in its house. Well moving any grade from one building to another is just a board decision, right? How do you do that? Like when fifth grade moves to the middle school, how was that decision made? Because that's all that would be moving the fourth grade to union or whatever would just be a decision. Yeah, but it would, you know, contraven this policy unless the new board changed it. Well as it's written I think it will. The question is, should this policy address that situation in addition to addressing a situation driven by the child? I think it should. Or I've actually have already had a Roxbury parent say, can't my kid go to school at a particular school because it's closer to where I work? Yes. That would be very common. That would be very common. That may be a common request, but really? This is not a convenience driven education system. I mean a lot of our parents work in Burlington or Waterbury and the kids go here. So I don't see that as justification to move them personally but I know there may be people who do see it that way. So I just think it would be good to be. Maybe we start, the first part of that problem is what if the school's needs are to move children out. I think we should maybe put a caveat in here that this does not apply to a situation where the district's needs or the district's, you know, just sort of pull that out of the puzzle and put it back where it is today, which is there's no policy on it, the board just decides. So rule that out as one of the reasons. But then otherwise, we're really talking about the student's educational needs, not the extraordinary needs of the family. So the extraordinary needs of a family, we're saying, or at least Michelle, I think I'm hearing would not be the reason we would do this. It would be the extraordinary needs of the child's education. And I don't know if extraordinary is the word you want, but. Can I speak to that? I would lean towards more, some sense that there's more clear definitions, especially in the early stages, simply because I think we're all doing this in good faith to try to make this work. And the more clarity that the board could provide for me around making it about educational needs, I think would be able to head off very easily potential convenience conversations. Because I think as I would say that as it's written now, it does seem that the caveat is relatively wide and people could potentially spend some time with the board trying to haggle over individual student circumstances that might not be in the best interests of the first, the early stages of this merger. Which I think for me, trying to look forward is to really hope that we are able to sustain a really good enrollment at Roxbury. And I wouldn't want, I think something firmer that would give both the superintendent and the board the opportunity to make it more about educational standards. I think would be personally, professionally better. Ryan, did you have any? So I was thinking of the conversation. I don't think we discussed too much the idea of the district making the decisions to move students around. And we had talked about the scenario when you do have maybe one student in one grade in Roxbury. Thinking about our class size policy, there might be a scenario in the future that say the third grade class in union elementary is pretty big. It might be exceeding the upper limits on the class size policy. Would the district have the ability to say, well you know what there's actually room in the class size policy enrollment for the third grade in Roxbury Village School. Maybe it makes sense for us to try to encourage and try to push some UES students to RBS for that third grade class. I don't think we really considered how the district as a whole or the administration might be thinking about moving students around or how the administration might be potentially considering transferring students. That's why that needs to be explicitly kind of taken out of this policy I think is to state that, you know, that I mean the other piece is how does it fall? Let's say that a student's extraordinary educational needs sort of justify a move but if we bring one more kid in, we're gonna have a problem. Can that be a factor to say, you know what, this year we're gonna say no because it's gonna be a huge problem but next year it wouldn't be a huge problem so give it a year. You know I mean does that or is that then violating the good faith of this which is no no, we're putting the kid first if it doesn't meet that threshold then, the threshold's high enough that that district need will always be subordinated. How high is this threshold? It seems like if you want that, right, the threshold which should be high enough that the district will always be subordinated to that somehow. The capacity to serve prays almost makes it sound like, well if we've got room for them. Yeah. That's not necessarily what we're trying to say. I guess I have to say I have some concern about drafting it in a way that suggests that there would be a test based on how well we think a school is serving a child. I mean I thought that the child's educational needs are being met because this is not, again this is not about IEPs. That's handled by the IEP team. So, and both schools should be serving the children. All children who live there. All children who live there and you know I don't think we want to set this policy up to be something where parents are coming in saying we'd like, we think this other school is a better school. If they don't, we shouldn't, we should go just fix that problem. You're right, it's a great point. Was that what you were thinking to myself? How likely is it that there's going to be an extraordinary circumstance that's not special and driven? Right. There could be a, you know, Any medical? That's not, that's not. Or social. Right, there are, yeah, sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I could definitely foresee a social situation. What would people think of a second sentence that was something like, the board will only grant exceptions to this policy in exceptional circumstances? Exceptions are acceptable. That just makes it high. Right. It makes it clear that it's a high standard, but. They'll make exceptions for exceptional circumstances? Oh, well, it's better. For extraordinary. It's got to have to be a high, like extraordinary or something. Like has to be very, like extraordinary circumstances. It's just, sure. I don't know. That's definitely better. But then we're talking about, as you're kind of refining, you're talking about social or health reasons. Not that that would in some way be, improve their education by being here, like closer to a hospital. Or not that they're that much closer to a hospital, but, you know. Or if they're the only girl in their grade in Rochester and they need more peers. Possibly. Or they're, yeah. You would think a Boolean problem could be solved, but they can't always. It must be. We have a statutory responsibility to fix that one. But maybe we fix it by moving the kid. So, yeah. Many other thoughts? Did other policies that you looked at make references to either the district approach, to the district making a decision or parents approaching the board? Were there other policies that broke it out in that way? So, it was a little bit tricky to compare our situation to a lot of the district's policies that they looked at. Something because the other districts that we had comparable policies to examine were much larger. You know, they had like three in five schools for elementary alone. The communities might have been more consistent in terms of population. We were actually the only policy that negated the opportunity for interdictic choice. Oh. So in a place like Burlington, they're gonna look at it differently. Because it was really tough to compare our district with some of those other ones. So, we have two schools that are fairly assisting the populations. Did you get a sense of what basis they would have for moving, like among the schools, say, in Burlington? Are these just pandemonium up there? So, it was the middle of summer. So, there was Swineas River, Carwood Union. And so, it's not the decision to move between the schools that was primarily elementary school because most of the districts had a union high school or middle school. It wasn't something that was just, maybe we'll give it a try this year and just see how it goes. If you committed to transfer, you essentially performed the rest of your academic career as an elementary student in that other school. So, it wasn't something like you would- You could make a one-time permanent career. Yes. Right, it wasn't something that you would do every other year, kind of depending on what was happening. If you chose to switch to elementary school A to B, then you were in B for the rest of your elementary school education. But no sense of the basis for it? So, it had to be initiated by parents. It came back to administration and board approval. And I'm trying to remember if there was almost like a one-for-one ratio to make sure that there wasn't gonna be a big transfer of students from one school to the other. I don't recollect there being that one-for-one situation. See, I wonder if that's the better way to handle this. It's just to say no unless there's a one-for-one. And just be, just no unless there's a one-for-one. When is that in America? Exactly. So, the idea is, and that makes a clear statement that our objective here is to keep the populations stable. Cause that's really the only thing we're concerned about. We don't, other than that, we're happy to do anything. I mean, unless we have some social, like community-based concerns about, no, we want our kids to all be educated in the same place, which is a reasonable objective. But, I mean, really our concern is sort of like, let's not drain off kids to the bigger center. Well, the way you do that is you would say, no, unless you can find someone to swap with, a one-to-one. And then we don't really have any problem with it. Do you think we'd fall back to the parents to find the one-for-one? No, no, but there'd be a list. Like, here's seven people that want this and there's no one on the other side or whatever. You know, I'm not saying that's a perfect solution, but it's pretty transparent what we're trying to achieve and we're not leaving it to some cloudy standard. I mean, I think the most important thing about having this policy adopted soon is just that, that we're transparent to everyone in the communities about how this is going to work and so that parents aren't emailing, saying, can I switch my kid, or, you know, that we can say, no, there's a policy. This is the way the policy is going to work. And I don't think we're trying to predict what's going to happen in two or three years because that's a learning experience and we know that. No, that's fair. I'm inclined to go with Bridget's suggestion to change the second sentence to refer to extraordinary circumstances. That would work. Recommendation, you know, the board can, it can. The board will grant exceptions only based on extraordinary circumstances. Yeah. It's still just enough leeway to make a determination based on individual circumstances. Yeah, it's extraordinary circumstances which impact students' educations, right? Right, not the family extraordinary circumstance. Students. Education, right. Or educational experience. I would just leave it. But I, you know, it's up here, whatever people think. But again, I, first of all, I think it could, I mean, it could be an issue that's not exactly educational, like the issue of health. I hadn't thought of that, and not of that. I mean, it's a tie there, but it would really be, it's because this family has made a compelling case that there's a medical reason that their child would be better off placed in a mom-player school. But even that would be to improve their educational opportunities because they would be better able to stay in school kind of thing. Right, but it's sort of more, It's more gray area. I feel like if you say relevant to education or relevant to your, your inviting people to say, I search for something. You know, the issue is that I think there's more educational opportunity in one school or the other. That's a judgment call. We don't want to discuss. Which is really a difficult thing to assess. Right, or I just don't want that future. I don't know. I mean, there, you know, not in all situations, in some it is, but you know, there are, there are, you know, I could think about if a student had a seizure tendency that might not manifest itself as part of a disability that's impacting them to the third gate, which is adverse effect, but might need access to a nurse five days a week, which currently in Roxbury doesn't have it. You know, and so like under that circumstance, I would come to the board and say, this is to me a very compelling case of a non-IEP, but still educationally related situation where it's in this child's best interest to be in a building with a nurse that's staffed there five days a week. Something to that, but that, it's still very rare. I mean, you know, that's, but one. But how do you, under that same standard, how do you say, I'm sorry, the, you know, your work schedule and your, the extraordinary inconvenience you have around the cars in your family doesn't qualify? I mean, do you have enough to do that? Do you have enough to make that call and to, because I think that's a much more likely application you're going to receive and probably get two or three of them every year. So just as long as we feel good about the languages, it's going to kind of make that clear to parents. So they feel like I'm not even going to bother, or I get it. This isn't an arbitrary standard. I'm not being treated to an arbitrary decision here. Just, that's all. Just being careful. Yeah, no, I know it's, it's a tough one. And we may have to change it. Did Rocksbury have anything like this with Northfield? I know it was in the same district, but. So there have been students in the past who for medical reasons, like the scenario Brian's talking about, were actually served better in Northfield than Rocksbury. I don't remember, I mean, Chloe's sitting in the audience to probably give you the details on whether or not that was an IEP decision or if it was just a medical reason. But there have been instances where, yes, there have been Rocksbury students who have been placed in Northfield for whatever the extraordinary circumstances might have been. So the tuition requests, they had to pay tuition to the district. Uh-huh. So that would have been a different. Different enough that it's hard to compare. Yeah. Do you feel like you have enough to come back with a different. Do you have to go with a couple of options? I mean, it comes to the definition for the criteria for what extraordinary circumstances is and then, yeah, so it's out of that and for sentences and getting verification there or maybe deciding whether or not, like Steve had mentioned, it would make sense to include the one-for-one language as well. But yeah, definitely student-driven, not family convenience. Seems like it was generally in consensus in terms of the direction of the policy. It's just the language itself to get worked out. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, guys, this is hard. This is really, this is a really hard one. Thank you for taking it on and we'll come back. So substitute teachers. Sure. So the only recommendation, Lori and I would want you to consider, and this comes specifically from the current MPS policy. Sorry, yeah, MPS policy. Where it says unlicensed persons and licensed educators. That number right now is set at 15 in MPS. And that was a procedure that I inherited that was formerly a policy but became a procedure when we went to policy governance. So essentially the standard is set higher for non-licensed and licensed but in the wrong subject area currently in MPS. Candidly it turns into a little bit of a paperwork type situation where we have to very quickly recognize that a long-term sub is needed and can only through the current procedures serve for three consecutive school weeks. It's not impossible. I think the intent was a good one when it was written. I would say practically speaking though, if we're looking for a long-term sub, this is a safer scenario. We do ultimately end up getting the provisional license in these circumstances and these circumstances are rare. So in fact, I can think of not one time this year that we've had to go this route but I do know it depending on certain educators, life circumstances and situations. There have been years where Candidly Heather has been scrambling with me in the agency of education trying to get an appropriate provisional license. And also very Candidly, substitute teachers are a perennial problem in Washington County. There are a lot of schools that are jockeying for a lot of educators. So it's on a decent day. We may have a lack of coverage in some of our buildings and some study halls and some double coverage. So I don't have a strong feeling either way. I did want to just make sure that I pointed out that the current MPS procedure has both of those numbers at 15 days. But this is the recommended mandatory policy from the BSBA. So this is legal to do 30? Correct, correct. You could go as with anything that comes from the BSBA, you can always go stronger but you can't go the other direction. So you couldn't say 45 or 60, right? You could be more stringent, which is a consideration. And I get the spirit of that. At the same time, when we do advertise for a long-term sub, we typically get better candidates and it's for the most part, a situation that we're usually able to fill. It sometimes comes at a cost because typically those people are also our daily subs. So it goes to the overall question of substitute teachers and the availability up in Washington County with a lot of schools with people who have life circumstances and take days off here and there and then be able to long-term need as well. So, Lori, do you want to add anything to that? Any questions or discussion on, no? Any questions or discussion from the board on this? So you're recommending 30? I am recommending 30. I just did want to bring to the board's attention, it's currently 15 and MPFs. But I think 30 is a reasonable amount of time. 32. Right, that's what I told them. It's, I mean, right. So I mean, we'll still be going if they're not, we'll still be going for the provisional or the emergency. It's just a question of how quickly we have to actually obtain it. All right, hearing no further discussion, we'll move on from that, which will be warned again for adoption for our next meeting. Volunteers and work-study students. This is a mandatory policy and it's currently word-for-word the one that we have both here in MPS. And I'm fairly certain it's also in Washington, South and Roxbury, right, Lori? This is one that we both had as is. The most important part for me is not necessarily the definition, but the policy. And that's that we are screening people who are coming into contact with our students and this meets exactly the procedures that we use, sometimes to the frustration of the people who are trying to serve. At the same time, it's something we take incredibly seriously. Those of you on the MPS board and probably Ryan would recall some of last year's conversations with Act 166 and our private partners in terms of the licensing and background checks against registries. That's really, for me, that's the most compelling part of this policy. What's the level of volunteerism that triggers getting screened? We go right for it. Unfettered access to students is... I've never been screened. Yeah, I've never been screened. Well, unfettered. Yeah, that's what I was asking. Alone with a child without someone who has been screened and is not on any of our registry lists. That was sort of what I was getting at. Right, so. If you're gonna be the sole... So if you are alone with a child without someone who already has had a background check in the room visible to you and that individual, you would have to have a background check in order for that to take place. So if you're the parent that's reading to students in the back of the classroom and the teacher's there. Do not be correct. That's correct. Because that teacher would have done background checks. I have one small request, which is to change the superintendent's shell to will. We're trying to... Sure. Absolutely. We're trying to be consistent. Sure, no. Thank you for catching. And I'll try. And then the screening process will... We'll go all the shell to will and open. Yeah. Thank you for catching that. Any questions or discussion about this one? Thank you for... So can I warn, as long as we make those changes from shell to will, we'll also warn the volunteer and work city students to be adopted at the next meeting as well. Yeah, everyone's good with that. Okay, great. Thank you. I'm seeing tired people around the table. Yeah, I am. I'm gonna skip to class size and... All right, well, I'm just gonna say that I just have a strong sense, given the time and how tired people are, that we should not talk about the code of conduct and we should just talk about that at the retreat. We need a thorough discussion on that. I'm seeing people that look like we haven't had a night. It's a pretty big topic. But if others feel strongly, I'll do it. No, I think it needs discussions. Let's not do it tonight. Okay. I think that was to move that to the retreat. The class size policy is on the second reading. Can you go over the changes that were made to it? Yes, so, Lori and I, let me just pull that document up, sorry. Lori and I came up with a way that we think will honor the spirit of this policy and capture the practical nature of how it operates at the Roxbury Village School. And Lori, I'm gonna say, why don't you just come on up in case I botch this? We're gonna try to do it because of the unique nature of the Roxbury School and in an effort to truly support that school going forward as a well-enrolled educational institution. We are recommending that the board consider a cutout for Roxbury by classroom and not necessarily by a grade cluster. Because as it's current, Lori and I went back and forth on this for a long time to try to get it to fit kind of the UES grade clusters and we were each coming up with all kinds of scenarios where I was like, oh, that'll work, but wait, because then it's a cluster. And it wasn't until probably an hour and a half into it that one of us said, what if we did it by classrooms? So the idea is it would read Roxbury multi-grade K4 as it does in that first column. Minimum average number of students per classroom would be eight, optimum average would be 10 to 12, and the maximum average, and we went big here, would be less than 40. We think we're okay there, but we did a lot of different calculations and this really gives us a lot of rooms, a lot of room within a two-classroom system. And then the caveat here is that no teacher would have more than two grade levels per classroom. So given actually everything that everybody was talking about before, this would cover a lot of fluctuation possibly based on enrollment being one or in some cases zero. It would still give the principal and the leadership team the flexibility to adjust the number of grade levels in a single classroom, but it would also give the board the flexibility to say that it's within the policy given a lot of different potential permutations of fluctuations either up or down at Roxbury. So this Roxbury would essentially have its own cutout, but it would be in an effort for the board to honestly support the makeup of the building now and how we could potentially see it going forward. How did, did I capture that? Okay. All right. So I get it. How is this relative to sort of the SOP, the sending operating procedure of how things have been there in terms of no more than two grades for a teacher and up to 40 in a classroom? But that would require... At the top of my head, I don't recall our existing class size policy, but it hasn't been something that's been relevant to Roxbury's discussions about education. The operating procedure in the past had really been, it was up to the administration team, superintendent, the principal and the teachers to sit down and look at enrollment. Next year, we're gonna have classes custard like this because that makes the most sense based on the number of students. Isn't that different than how we've been operating in the past? It just has some numbers to go along with it really. But if you had three grades with very small numbers and you might be tempted to put all three of those grades with one teacher, you might have five, three and six or something, right? You really can't do that under this policy, which may be very healthy, but I'm just saying that it does limit you in that way. I like that limitation. I think from a teacher's perspective, that probably gives some sanity, but I don't know if it's consistent with what's been going on. So we did that for the teacher's sanity because we didn't think that it would really be reasonable to have a teacher approach. If you think about the fact that within all grade level currently, let's take third grade of uni elementary school, the variation in student abilities within that one grade is incredibly wide. Multiply that by three or two to have a total of three, that's a really difficult expectation for a teacher. But it also, if we did it by classroom and limited the classrooms to two, it gave the board the most flexibility within just that parameter. That's not to say that you couldn't have standalone. You couldn't have a single K because you could, it just says no more than two grades per classroom. So you could be flexible and nimble to meet any fluctuation in enrollment that the board would hopefully see coming based on predictions coming from the team. But it also would keep at least relatively close to the model that's happening in NPS. And so it wouldn't be that different. The only differences is that it's by classroom and not by cluster. But you might have a teacher who has just worst case scenario. Kindergarteners and fourth graders and has 38 kids in the class, one teacher. So ideally we wouldn't go that route. I mean, we would try to keep the level of sanity and say if we had to combine it, we would do a K standalone and a three, four together. You know, like that disparity in a classroom would really not be educationally wise. I think we're trying to, because the clusters were K two, what was tripping Lori and me up was the clusters were K two and three, four. So we kept trying to look at different clusters, K two and three, four at the Roxbury Village School and come up with all the possible permutations to get in here. And the only way, so we were approaching it from that lens. So I'm telling you the thinking is you would have a K one potentially. Or a one, you know, you would have two consecutive grade levels as clustered in a classroom. Are you okay with having your hands tied to the word consecutive? Yeah, I think so. I think that's really the only reasonable way to go forward. Because to your point, I wouldn't want a teacher teaching a K four, a classroom with K and a classroom with four to fit within the letter of the law for this policy. So it doesn't explicitly say the classrooms have consecutive grades of them, but it's assumed or it's... I think that's a good point. This discussion means that we should put consecutive... If I'm the teacher, I'm thinking, okay, yeah, that. Yes, agree. That's what we, you're right. Because we're thinking it off of the clusters that we're currently running for. Yeah. So we'll do that. It's very creative. I like it. Okay, so we're gonna add classrooms. Consecutives. And then you're gonna just modify... We're gonna put that in. Yes. So that this, because this K to eight will now have to say from up here or something like that. You'll figure out. We'll figure out a way to put that in. Yep, absolutely. Definitions of classroom in the grade clustering. I'm curious, Bridget, was it purpose? That the K to eight class size tables that was guidelines as the nine through 12 was labeled as parameters? Consistence. Very good catch. There's really no reason that those should be different, right? I wonder if they're different in the current policy. I have no idea. They don't, plain English, they don't have any different meaning really. Necessarily. No, I would say change them both to guidelines. Just why not use an easier word when you can. Anything else? Class size policy? Great. So we're not gonna adopt that tonight. But is it okay to have this on the next agenda with these changes to be warned for adoption? Oh, great. You bet. Great. Last meeting we had a discussion about on the high school page, this section on requests for courses, student schedules, et cetera. Actually I think the student schedule thing may have been added in the interim because I don't remember that from before. We definitely had a discussion. There was no consensus to take it out. There was a discussion about taking it out. But we didn't decide to take it out. I did not think that we had, that there was a consensus that we should take it out. But if we want to revisit that, this is the time to do it. I come back to the fact that the principal asked for it and said it was important to have it there. And I don't have any other place to put it. No, I think that. So, but. All right. All right. All right, so that will be the end of the policy work for tonight. We will have the retreat next week. What is this on the agenda? Well, that is the next thing on the agenda. Let's discuss the board retreat. I think I should have asked Jim what he thought. But from prior discussions, I definitely, it's about the board policies. It's about the kinds of policies that were on, you know, just for some consideration tonight around conflicts of interest and code of conduct, definitely, but also the, what are currently in our policy as the board superintendent relationship and board governance policies. I think it's about getting some really serious sit down around the table time to figure out where we're going on those. So folks should bring their policy manuals with the current policies. There were a number of attachments that were sent around at our last meeting when we talked about governance generally, some of the BSBA policies, I would definitely encourage people to bring those to, because those are some other models that are out there for how you could put these policies in place and read the ones that are here tonight. And so I think what we're gonna try to do is, oh, and the other thing that we need to talk about is are we gonna have some kind of a strategic planning process or public engagement process around the ends? So I think those are the, this is my best recollection that those are the two big topics. It's like direction on those, that big category of sort of governance policies and the ends policies. We're definitely not adopting any ends policies at the retreat, but I think we wanted to have a conversation about how we're gonna get to the point. Where do ends policies come from? That's a great way to prove it. So we have, I think the long-term important task has been much more formal in your retreats. You've had a moderator? Sometimes, not always. I think I'm hearing Steve Dale's name picked around at some point after one of our meetings. Do we have a moderator assigned for this retreat? Steve Dale? Do we have a locator? It is Steve Dale. It is Steve Dale. Do you want to go? Do we have a location? Keep us on track. We do not have a location yet. We do have a time, it's nine to one, but Jim and I have not secured, we've not got a location yet. Oh, cause we're just staying at a log, yeah? Oh, usually we have it in the summer and there's nobody here. We can't use, we don't just... How many people is it total? This group, plus Jim, plus Steve, plus me, plus Lori. I think my office is a little too small for that. Well, cool. We'll check up at the agency. We'll check up at the conference room. I doubt it, though. Is there anything else we can talk about? It's a joint meeting, so it is open to observers. Yes, there'll be no public comment section, but people can come and observe. I just want to review my notes so that I can organize us for our next meeting. To confirm, we are pulling the grade advancement policy from our list, since it's no longer mandated and the board just tonight adopted the proficiency-based graduation requirements. We'll be reading the in-district elementary school transfer policy for the second time at the next meeting. Budget execution, fiscal management, substitute teachers, volunteer and work-study students with the edits around shall to will, and the changes that we just discussed in terms of the class-size policy. All one, two, three, four, five of those will be warned for adoption at the four, four meeting, which is our next meeting. That's the four. Say that again? I thought there were four, that would be more. I've got budget execution, fiscal management, substitute teachers, volunteer and work-study students and class-size policy. Oh, class-size. Yeah. Okay. That's good. Yes. Second reading for in-district and elementary school transfer policy. Do you, how do you want me to deal with the board ones? We'll discuss those, just keep them as- They're not, I mean, they were not ready to be warned. So they're just, they're gonna be on for the retreat for discussion, but they're not. We can keep reading them, I guess, if you wanna say that. Yeah, it doesn't hurt, okay? Okay, I'm good. Motion to adjourn. So moved. Second? All right. All those in favor of adjourning? Aye.