 at 7.02. There are no adjustments to the agenda. With the consent agenda, move the minutes of Tuesday, March 21st, 2023. Do you retain motion? I'll motion to approve the minutes of March 21st, 2023. Second. All in favor? Say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Do we have any public comments at this time? Do we have any board comments? I just, I had two things. One, I just wanted to shout out to the middle school softball coach. He put a lot of hard work and time down at the field here. I don't know if anybody's familiar with the field down here, but it's basically ingrown grass turf. So him and a bunch of volunteers this weekend, they were able to hit a road tiller and put a lot of their time down there to make that field look good. It does look great. I noticed it when I drove by. I just wanted to give him and others some kudos on that. Is that the truck? Yeah, Jeff. And then the bowmen's. The bowmen's. I can't remember. Lisa Flint's husband loaned them to the road tiller and tractor. So yeah, worked out really well. That's good. And then I guess I was going to bugger up the agenda, but I had asked to put an athletics and arts discussion on, on the agenda item. I see it got put in there for future, future consideration. I think, you know, just a little tidbit of that is really, I was kind of thinking about that we have, we have a really good roadmap and template of, you know, how we go about doing academics with our schools, but I don't think we've ever sat down to see, you know, how do we run our athletics department or how do we run our arts and music department so that all campuses kind of work together with those and not just the, what we call the in-school sports or in-school arts, but, you know, the out-of-school piece of the spring sockers and the AU's and the Chandler hulls and, you know, all the different pieces of how we can come together maybe to design a template that we can work with. You know, like an example right now is we have, you know, let's say basketball. You know, the students in pre-K up to fifth grade, they do FOU sports. So that's a completely different identity. And then once they get to middle school and it becomes, you know, more in-school unrelated. So often there might be kids that maybe don't have skills for their age group or things like that or how can we best in the in-between seasons accommodate everybody's schedule the best that we can with scheduling in-school season sports and maybe, you know, AU or something like that. The other thing was kind of neat that it's starting to gain traction here is that we have several AU teams but we all have different names. So, you know, instead of going to a school where they say, you know, we're all blue steel or something, you know, instead we have, you know, we have Wildcat basketball and we have Lady Wolves and, you know, so we have several different things. So it's just kind of like, let's figure out a roadmap. But that looks like I also think that if we do develop something like that, it'll help us when we go to the voters about possible extensions for arts and music department. You know, if we have, you know, this is where we want to get to and makes it easier to pass a three or four million dollar bond vote on something like that. So hopefully in May we can talk a little more on that. Any other board comment? I'll move to the celebration of learning. Maybe the school partnership. Hey, hi. I'm Mary Schell and I'm the community school coordinator and I am so happy to be here. I've worked for the district for a year and I, or the supervisor union and I have an opportunity to share with you what the goals are of the grant, the community school grant or my role in facilitating the grant. So I'm happy to be here to share that with you. I have a PowerPoint, but I also have handouts that I'll just pass out to you here. What I tried to do is do a crosswalk of the community school pillars and goals with the strategic action plan action steps. And what I think is super exciting. I'm not sure how many have to go down. I think it's super exciting is that the White River Valley supervisory union is indeed a community school. Two more. You've got them. Yeah. You guys want more? Yeah. I think we're all set. And in looking at the strategic action plan and looking at what I'll introduce to you is the five pillars of community school. Everything in the strategic action plan fits in the five pillars of the community school model. So the community school model is something that has been established in a number of states and Vermont with the passage of the community school act in 2021 wanted to create their own model of community schools. Nationally, the community school model has four pillars in Vermont. We have five. So I'll go through what we're doing and how it fits under those five pillars. So in 2021, the White River Valley supervisory union received a three-year grant. One of five schools, I'll say, in Vermont and the only supervisory union that received it. So we're learning as community school coordinators what it means to be a community school in Vermont. Vermont gave, through this act 67, the legislature gave different amounts of money based on the proposal that was submitted. Our proposal primarily focused on the White River Valley middle school in year one. Right now we're in year two and it's expanding to include the high school. And next year, many of the grants, goals and strategies apply to the whole supervisory union. So sometimes I'll be talking about the high school or the middle school or the whole supervisory union. And I hope you'll just bear with me. And in this packet, it goes through each of these strategies. And it'll be clear in terms of the actions that we're taking and if it applies to the high school, the middle school, the supervisory union. So I just want to clarify that about. Okay. Great. Thank you. Okay. What's a community school? A community school is both a place and a set of partnerships between the school and the community. Community schools have an integrated focus on academics, health and social services, youth and community development and community engagement. Community schools emphasize real world learning and community problem solving and this approach leads to improved student learning, stronger families and healthier communities. And I think we all know that, right? I think that's why we're here. Okay. Thank you. Great. Moving on. Okay. The first pillar is integrated student supports. I think this is a helpful diagram as well and it gives a little bit of additional information pertaining to each pillar. So this is considered the first pillar of integrated student support. Whereas the school, we're thinking about mental and physical health services and that supports student success and how we do it and how we've been doing it through the community school grant is to focus on restorative justice and restorative practices and also... I don't know if you can... Let's see. There's something in red there. Ray, can you... I don't know if you want to click on that or if that would take you to a different place. If you don't mind. Oh, that's not the right place. I'm sorry, let's go back. So that isn't linked. Well, that should have linked to our White River Valley High School food pantry. So we have a food pantry that we're establishing and the high school students brought the need forward to Dana Decker and Earl Clinton and created a food pantry that students are accessing and there's a write-up I think it's probably in the principal's report as well on the food pantry. So that's a really, I think, exciting example that then hopefully will be replicated elsewhere in the SU. Students are coming to school expressing that on the weekends they haven't had access to food at home, etc. So this is an effort where Dana Decker has been working with the local food pantry and establishing an in-house pantry at the high school that students have been able to access. They've also been, students have been creating meals and giving them to others who need meals or just have that security. So we're also, with that first pillar we're doing professional development on restorative practices and we had a Bethel University class where we were able to communicate to parents what the restorative practices approach is and using circles as they're happening at the middle school level in particular. Okay. Next one, expanded and enriched learning. Thank you, Lake. So this is a focus on students' self-directed learning in terms of the grant strategies. We've been focused a lot on developing our flexible pathways programs both here at the middle school and at the high school. Andy West has developed quite a rich flexible pathways program and has included a number of community partners and individualized activities that students, learning activities are doing, that students are doing in flexible pathways. He gave me a whole list of just what's going on just in this latest marking period and he has students working in elementary rooms reading to students. He's partnering with Regeneration Core planting microgreens in the school greenhouse. Students are doing Duolingo, Duolingo and Code Monkey. They've established a weekly school store and that's been super popular because the students are doing all of the purchasing and planning for that and he has students that have been making maple syrup two to three days a week with Bonna and outdoor education and he has a number of community partners coming in talking to the kids about what they do in the community. He's had physical therapists in. He's had some other like virtual interviews with people that are working so he can provide students with the understanding of different jobs that are out there and he also had food pantry folks come in this week and they're going to have a dinner to support the food pantry on May 4th and so you'll be hearing more about that. Okay. Oh, the big one. I'm sorry. With the link there, the After School Club. Ray, do you mind clicking on that one? Yeah. We have lots and lots of After School Clubs in this PowerPoint that's also on the website. So if you go to the WRVSU website, you click on Schools, you go to the far right, you'll see a number of links for community schools. This is linked there as well. We have lots of clubs that have been established and if we... Yeah. Let's see. Perfect. Thank you. In the middle school, we started clubs in October. We've offered 19 different clubs. Last year when I suggested, because I knew a lot of the community schools were creating after school programs, it was suggested to me that our middle school students would not access clubs because there was an assumption that all students were involved with sports. Well, 21 to 24%, 23 or 24% of our students every month are engaged in clubs. So that equals a little bit over 200 hours every month of club activities that are going on. We have an additional 10% of our middle school students that are involved with the Success Club. So those are athletes that are finding time really helpful after school to focus on their academics as well as keep up with the demands of the schedule that athletes have. We have a number of clubs that are co-led or led by community partners. So these are parents or people in the community that wanted to help out. And the grant has been able to provide stipends for that. And I'll talk about Tri-Valley Bus. After about 41% of all of our club participants take the Tri-Valley Bus. That's pretty exciting. Okay, thank you. Now I'm done with the clubs. And we can, if you don't mind, we'll take a step back there. Thank you. We have also had the ability last year to have Tycho Drumming, an artist residency. This year we'll see what's going to happen with our artist residency, but we hope we will have an artist residency. We've been able to also invest in 25 bikes and a bike trailer that will be used both at the high school and the middle school. We're also building a rock climbing structure at the high school. So Jim Hewitt's just over the moon happy. There's lots of good stuff that he's helped to facilitate, things that he's been working on and gathering support for. We have had adventure days at the high school and the middle school where students are going bowling and skiing and fishing and skating and we've been able to provide for that through the grant. We have a couple of summer programs. We have a paddling camp that we did last year. We're going to do again this year, this summer. We're connecting kids in the greenhouse and at the high school. We're also building a greenhouse as well. So we have so much great stuff going on and I could keep going on and on but I'm going to stop because I know I don't have a lot of time. So Ray, next slide please. Thank you. Another important pillar is the active family and community engagement pillar of community schools. Our goal is to increase the engagement of families and community partners in school related activities, meetings and events. I'm sure you're well aware of the community conversation calendar that we've had across the SU on different topics including math and mindfulness and wellness and clubs. And so that's been a way that I hope we're going to start opening up that pathway of families and community members coming and learning about flexible pathways and all the other activities that we have going on. Next year we hope that every school will be hosting their own. Let's see. We offered 15 Bethel University classes here at this school this year in March and we also had five of them co-talk with students and teachers here from the middle school. Let's see. I'm trying to think what else I want to highlight here. We have so many community partners that we're finding that our relationship with them is we're all facing very similar needs and a desire to connect. Let's say there's a teacher that wants to connect with an engineer in the community but doesn't know one. It would require us to do individual research to find out who that engineer is that can come in and speak to a class for example. So what we're working on is I think we're going to go with a local wiki where we're going to try to create a directory that's crowdsourced where all of our community partners that have this desire to network and have a collective impact can join together and populate this resource. So we had a Bethel University class on it. The goal is to map our assets and have a means where we can all connect. So hopefully in the next year that will be a resource not only for community members but also teachers that might need that one person to come in and meet with their students. Let's see. So I think that's a big piece. The next one will be great. I like to think of community schools as addressing expanded learning opportunities through active family engagement, integrated sports so all students have access to the classroom and how we make that happen is through a collaborative leadership practice. So with that collaborative leadership practice the goal is to have as many stakeholders sitting at the table as possible in order to make decisions about how we do education how all kids can access the classroom and provide expanded opportunities. With the collaborative leadership practices that addresses the role of a community school coordinator. It also includes stakeholders like the Department of Education. Justa Carolus is coming to visit with us. On May 19th she's from the Agency of Education. She's our main contact at the AOE and she's taken a great interest in the work that we're doing here at the supervisory union level. She's working on logic models for all of the five community schools and she's intrigued by ours in particular and wants to think about how to create this statewide model for community schools looking at what we're doing and trying to scale some of the work we're doing in that way. So I'm really excited about that and we have monthly meetings with AOE. I have them in terms of a cohort group as well as community school coordinator trainings and then we have our quarterly check-ins. Collaborative leadership and practices one of the main pieces that I think is standing out in our work that's catching the agency's attention is our positioning of students at the center of what we're doing. We're embarking on a portrait of a graduate effort where we're identifying what it means to be a graduate of White River Valley Supervisory Union and we're putting students at the center. McKayla Martin gathered students together with the help of Up for Learning and students are being empowered not only to facilitate conversations but to collect data from as many stakeholders in the community as possible in order to inform our process. So we're positioning students at the center of their learning and at the center of decision-making and what it means to be a community school. I'm super excited about it. So there's more to come on that. And lastly, safe, inclusive and equitable learning environments. So our strategies around equity includes and this is really the lens of how we do everything. Every decision that we make whether it's in the strategic plan or whether it's in decisions about programming we have to make sure it's equitable. So as soon as the, for example, as soon as the idea of clubs came up we needed to think we couldn't just offer clubs and expect all families to be able to get here at 430 to get their kids. So, gratefully, Mike Reader with Tri Valley Transit has met with us and we were able to establish a bus stop here at 430 that could serve club members and athletes and bring them to South Royalton. So that enabled access to after-school clubs to kids that might not have been able to access our programming at all. So we have 41% of our after-school club participants that take the bus. So it's just so fun to see them get on the bus and talk to the bus driver and just feel really comfortable with public transportation. So that's this extra really cool piece. So the board knows we'll have late buses at the high school level that will be able to bring kids not only to our Bethel campus but also to our students on late buses to many of our sending choice schools throughout the SU like it's going to go to Rochester at like 530 and nine things. So that students who may want to stay after school for extra support or an activity can and then hopefully access that public transportation to get home. Okay, we also have been doing school-wide reads. I'm glad, I'm sorry that you got ahead of me. The book there, dress-coded, is the book that's the middle school school-wide read. This year the Newton School, as well as Chelsea are also reading that book and we have the author coming to visit. The author will be having an assembly and a workshop here on May 4th and at Chelsea on May 3rd. So if you'd like a copy of the book and if you'd like to read the book along with us you'd be more than welcome to join us and we're looking forward to that. Let's see. Can I just piggyback on that for a second? Yes, please. I know that Bethel Library is getting involved in that too and is hoping that some of the students will come to the reading group that's reading the book through the library too. Exactly, we're going to be doing that on May 24th. Okay. So thank you for reminding me to share that. Let's see. I think that's the highlights. I left out that we are a generator school. We were identified as one of the eight schools in Vermont to set up a maker space here at White River Valley Middle School in order to provide students with opportunities to get some of the skills necessary to join in to fields and manufacturing and technical skill areas, learning different ways to use manufacturing machines and 3D printers and things like that and primarily the software that will then enable them to move on and use CAD and different things that the likes to do too. So, with that said I think we can move on to the next slide Ray where I just want to share and this is a slide I just added from another slide deck that I had because I think it's so important for us to be aware of how significant this community school movement is. Community schools started just as places where families and students could gain access to health and social services and then the model has evolved to include not only those support services but also strategies to enrich learning and in Vermont we see community schools as being the umbrella for Act 77 and proficiency based learning expanded learning opportunities flexible pathways, et cetera but the big piece with Vermont and why Vermont has five pillars and out four is this equity piece. That in Vermont we know how important it is for all students to be able to have equal access to their education in a way that enables them to learn in safe environments, in equitable environments and this last piece that's there that I think I just put at the end of my emails because I think it's so powerful is that our state legislature has made a statement that every child should be able to grow up with the opportunity to achieve their dreams and contribute to the well-being of society or public schools must be designed and equipped to fully deliver on that promise. So thank you for letting me share and I'd love to continue a conversation at any time. Thank you. Thank you. That was really great to hear and it's great to see the good work that's going on. Does anybody have any questions for Mary? One thing I think would be good to have a conversation about is this is a three-year grant and we're in year two. So looking at how do we make these things sustainable so that once the grant is finished like what do we need to continue and... Yeah. Yeah. We're starting those conversations. Right. For example, a big thing for us I think is like one, we've tried to use it for a lot of one-time investments for some supplies, but things like clubs. We are... The timing is right that 21 Century Grant's up for renewal and so we've already contacted the agency to say that we want to expand middle school programming within the one-planet program and probably model it after the club idea because it's taken off so well. So we're... And there is interest at the agency level around making certain we have a strong sustainability plan and even possibly recognizing that we may need some additional funding past three years just to make certain that we're fully whole around sustainability, that they may actually grant us another two additional years to just help with some things that have weren't one-time cost. So... But yes, no, we should continue that conversation. And that's why in the crosswalk here I highlighted the action steps from the strategic plan that are the same as what we've been accomplishing with the grant. And so I think once I go back and kind of cross-reference it, we'll see what isn't sustainable in terms of what's extraneous to what's already been identified through our action plan, I think. I don't know, it's a... Right. It's more what have you been paying for with the grant that we need to continue paying for and then either finding other sources or something like that. The clubs right now are in that big piece. Yeah. And that's stipends for the... Yeah, yeah. You know, the nice thing with TriValve Transit, which has been a huge addition that we've been able to bring on from the community schools grant, but it's... We're leveraging public transportation, so we're able to do all of our transporting right now for under $5,000 a year. That's pretty great. So I think, you know, in general, there's been a lot of, like, one-time purchases, like bikes and trails, like that trail. Those are big items that we wouldn't have known that we necessarily do. But it's not like we've brought on a bunch of personnel other than Mary or things like that. Really, it's the after-school clubs that we've been paying for the personnel piece. Okay. Thank you very much. We're continuing the conversation. All right. We'll move on to Jimmy. Now, so you have my report in hand, and Mary, I did highlight your website, actually, so I did provide them a link if they wanted to connect on it. And so it's been really great working closely with Mary, with Owen being out. Mary and I have been meeting weekly. She just makes certain we're staying on track with the grant, and I've been attending the agency check-in meetings as well, which has been terrific. The other thing that Mary mentioned that I just wanted to highlight that boards will be involved in is that the board should have a graduate work. And my goal would be that we look at possibly leveraging some August retreat time to engage with a group that is starting that work with the board to really talk about what is it that we want our graduates to be able to really convey when they leave. And we're going about it as WRDSU Portrait of a Graduate to really emphasize this interdependence across the SU and the idea of being that, no matter where you may leave at a school level here in the SU, that we want to be vertically aligned and tracking toward the idea of graduating here at 12th grade. And so, I think that that's going to be a powerful thing for us to really look to bring some more cohesiveness across our schools is through that lens of thinking about ourselves is if I leave a school at the end of sixth grade, well, what is it that I need to have for skills to be able to be ready to do my next chapter? It's not just about 12th grade. And so I just wanted to highlight that. And then finally, quick legislative updates. I talked about it at the full board yesterday. The big one, I think, and two big ones for the White River Unified District right now is one in an email that I think you all should have received from the VSPA. I believe today, or if not, you'll get it tomorrow. There are some talking points around the bill. H486. Can I get that one right this time? Yeah. The PCB bill. Is looking. They proposed a bill that would pause PCB testing for a more comprehensive deferred maintenance bill for Vermont schools. The housing committee had done a lot of work at studying Rhode Island public schools and how they were able to fund infrastructure capital improvements to offset deferred maintenance in their state. And so the thought process is that we should be looking at how are we going to fund if we have multiple schools in the state all of a sudden come with increased levels of PCBs. Right now there's a little funding set aside, but certainly not enough if multiple schools started to have heightened levels. I think there's also a desire to look at the research some more to see is the benchmark set at Vermont the appropriate benchmark for PCBs? Or was it set too low versus national standards? We are the only state right now doing school PCB testing. So we are sort of the guinea pigs in this. And so that bills into the senate so what it does is it calls for a pause in a more comprehensive plan around how to not only deal with PCBs, but deal with deferred maintenance in Vermont schools in general. So that is in the senate right now. And there's an expectation that the senate is going to make is going to decide whether they're going to move forward with that proposed bill or not by the end of the week. So that's one. The other one is the pre-K bill which is in the house ad. The senate essentially called for a study committee and that was about it in their bill. And there's a possibility that the house could possibly look at increasing what we currently get right now for our students in pre-K is a .46 even though we educate them all day. We don't get a 1.0 average daily membership. We know that early ads important. I don't hear anyone in my place saying that it's not important. I think we can all agree on that. The idea that it cost that much less to educate a pre-K student makes zero sense and we know that early intervention is important. So I'm certainly continue to argue that if we're educating our students 5 days a week full day that we should get credit for them as a 1.0. And so I'm hopeful that there's going to be further work at the house ad committee to amend that bill to include that. I know the house ad does have a desire to add that language to the bill. So those are the big ones right now. The other one that went over to the senate which wouldn't have a direct effect on us was of course the bill around religiously affiliated schools around Carson v. Makin, but really about how public dollars go to private independent schools and I had kind of I don't know if folks could pick up on it my senses when that house bill went over to the senate that it was probably just going to lay there and my senses that it's going to lay there it's kind of dead on arrival. So that's where that bill is. And I'll entertain any questions folks may have. PCBs they said they've tested for those already. No, it's a 5-year testing plan right now and so your schools have actually been tested. That's what I'm saying, our schools have been tested. Where can we find out what those results are? They're posted probably somewhere on the department of health website. I can't tell you exactly where. But we were not close to the threshold. Thank goodness. So we're clear, we're good. That was my question because no, we're good. You would know it's going to senate and it looks really good but it's like in the meantime that is our PCB level. There's a concern, right? So the way this works is if we were elevated the department of health and human service department immediately would be meeting with us and saying you have to take immediate action and so we would be sending letters out to the community and things notifying them of this. Yet there's no action plan of how to actually abate this. And we are already tested and we're maintained at a better standard because they're wondering if they want to loosen up the standard. So these two buildings are good. So these two buildings are actually above the standard that is already in place. My interest though is that I have other buildings. Of course, of course. But this is our board so I'm asking, our buildings are I was saying it the way it was. But I also have interest in all Vermont schools and what folks need to remember is there's no funding mechanism to deal with this other than the money that we've set aside at the Ed Fund. So anytime that they directly tap the Ed Fund it is going to affect our budget. Change the deal. Meaning it changes the tax rate. It's horrible but PCBs. Well I think that part of what they know, part of what I think they're saying is is that everyone agrees that we should be concerned with PCBs but there should be an actual plan of how to deal with it. Thank you. Thanks, Jamie. So you have our I think Jeff is online and Principal Bradley we got sick today. I would just highlight for the elementary we're still doing what we're doing every week, every week. Every month we celebrate and learn about a different character trait. This month we're on positivity. Next month is courage. We welcome faculty from the campus. We're so happy to see her. We're happy to have her back. She's been missed. Most recently had our books and bagels community builder which is always fun for kids to sit and gather in the stage groups and just just commune together and eat and look at books. Always feels good. And then I would say just try to put some pictures in of the elementary see a little bit of what it looks like when we walk around although right now if we walk around there's actually chickens in a pool chicks in a pool and Rebecca and some of these are the highlights because April is a little heavy with testing so we've been doing a lot of testing this month. So April showers bring me flowers but April testing brings you made out reports so no that's what's coming. And then finally Angela Smith has been doing a really lovely job at our whole red school but I'm feeling it in the elementary of working on diversity and leading some staff meetings but most recently brought in guest readers from Vermont Student Anti-Racism Network which is just really lovely to read the proudest blue that happened on the Buffalo campus. So connecting with our greater broader community that's a little taste from the elementary and I don't know there he is. Yes so from the high school some highlights from the high school would be Minimath came over to our faculty meeting to discuss the track my progress data results for the 8th graders to prepare our high school staff to identify needs one of the nice flexible pathways transition that's going on in the PLC is one of our students is doing a cookbook five students recently just passed their driving permits we have for the community outreach we just had student like conferences last week which allowed our teachers to be able to support students in their personal pathways and so it was great to have a lot of the parents and community into our school. We recently had a New York trip with our music program they aren't in soul if you missed it what a great evening of community having so many different members into our school is outstanding we had a blood drive recently where we donated 39 pints of blood our dream program is as strong as ever we just had a mini graduation with the kids which is a mentoring program and the last thing is tonight we had 30 families come to our we are Wildcat night for our recruiting and we had a lot of different families from different schools that were here which was really exciting from Stratford we had Chelsea students Tundred students so we're doing some things right it was a great evening alright thank you do you have any questions for the schools Tara? Good evening everyone sorry just got connected so on my report for the month of April we just outlined what's happening in the business office and all of the due dates for the reporting that we have closing out third quarter and gearing up for the close of the fiscal year and then two big projects that we've been working on end of March and April is transferring the supervisory union financial software from the old system that we were using into the same system that we are utilizing for all of the districts and then Lisa and Christy and the rest of the business office team worked on reworking the onboarding process for new hires and trying to make that more efficient and having less need for multiple meetings throughout the onboarding process and really trying to solidify a more more efficient and smooth growing process and then if there's any questions? Thanks Tara We have a policy committee Board's Ability and Code of Ethics meeting Ron do you want to take the space on this? Is this the adjusted? Well this is not the adjusted from last note because this is what I went out in your actual packet so there was some adjustment that was made last night so So working on the board members' ability it's pretty much copied from the this book the central we are making some adjustments to it Do you have notes on that? I don't Yeah essentially the policy committee you've got the one that you have in hand but the policy committee was presented last night with some feedback from members that to really strengthen us that we would say that board members shall act within the scope of their official role act within the scope of their fiduciary role to just strengthen them a little bit and then there was some other edits in regards to the process around a complaint to just make it a little clearer around how to Will for shall is what you're saying the previous word that was being used as Will and now we're using shall Now it says board members agreed to conduct next house It says board members shall conduct Okay So with the changes to the process this is kind of pulled from the It's pretty much pulled from the policy we have around conflict of interest So were the edits made to kind of make it not as specific conflict of interest because like one of the things is that it's asking the person to recuse themselves from the issue which isn't really an ethics thing That's not what was actually brought up That was not No, it wasn't about recusing themselves. It was more about that the person making the claim would need to specify within this policy what area the board member violated Correct Yeah, so I mean I guess like if it is a some of these things are kind of conflict of interest type things but other parts are like disability type things So in the thing that's in this packet they have things like some of the steps or recourse would be like ask the person to resign or something like that It seems like having kind of specific recourses to specific a certain recourse for a certain violation Yeah, not so much that but this seemed to be very much the same as the conflict of interest thing where there's this specific problem or specific issue that this person has a conflict with whereas this generally I think is more this person's behavior is out of line that's not necessarily tied to a specific thing so what do you do when someone's behavior is out of line and one of the recourses in that case Really all we can do is censor Right, but I think that's what we should put in there is like we will censor Shouldn't that be a procedure Right, but I think that's kind of what this is This is what it essentially is to place it out Peggy Page two Oh yeah, no, it's been fixed just not in your pdf copy And the the header on that section is complaints of board civility code of ethics and number two covers both it's just that 2C would be the only one that covers a finding of civility Which one? 2C It's the only one that would cover civility because it would either be a we feel you need to be censured or we do not because censure is all or nothing you're either being censured or you're not so as it's written now 2C does address civility while 2A, B, and C address code of ethics issues I'm just saying as that makes sense to me that it could be left like that and you just wouldn't have well actually A and C it could be dismissed or it could you just wouldn't have somebody it would be an automatic recusal I guess is what I'm saying if you're voting to censure yourself because that's automatic recusal so I really feel like it maybe does cover because If you want to send me the more specific I find in the book exactly where it talked about the discipline piece so I had just the but if you guys want to send it to me I'm happy to share that with the I mean the it's a little different that they have in the book here because this one talks about I guess it would depend on the severity of this conduct but this one here talked about you know that upon the first one there would be it would be an informal discussion between the board chair and that individual on their conduct and then and then it says after three documented instances then they would start to take these other steps which the three steps they had laid out and there was board level discussion of misconduct including a possible vote to censor communication of misconduct to the community presented by the board members the board member issuing a apology or you know something like that and then the third which would probably be on the most egregious pieces would be where the board would ask the individual for them to resign and granted they don't have to but you know that would be something those are the things that were laid out that Grady is looking for yeah I like that approach in that there's kind of first you got it's not like you go immediately to a public hearing well I don't know yeah I think that's hard because this could be someone yeah that's a community member right and I guess it's going to be gray areas and everything right but I think if you have that I think if you have that procedure and it comes to you with a complaint you can say we are taking the first step where we are telling the person to stop if this behavior continues then we will take another can you send that to me in writing and I'll bring it we can bring it to the committee they seem they were I think this group was yeah that would be important for me to bring forward to them that language there should be some sort of timeline as a response and I think the one that we had gotten there last year that I think a lot of the reasons why some people became angry was because they didn't think that we were moving quick enough even though it's challenging because we only meet once a month so to you and I we think that we were moving fast enough but to the average person they thought that you know it just so happened to be right after the meeting so it was like almost two full meetings and you know so would there be something in there about like kind of like if there was a misconduct thing at school usually there's so many hours or so many days that a follow up would be yeah I think that we could say that would be addressing board member conduct this is what you want you know maybe you could put something in there I know board realistic for boards meet once I can photocopy it you know maybe you bring it up page 92 and then the sample process that the complaint would be heard some of them are on different pages or different books depending on what year book you have I would get this photocopy Chris if it played out the way that it did last time though it could still be almost 60 days and I mean put yes put it in writing I agree with you but it could still be it could still be a length of time that makes people uncomfortable unhappy for us to get around to it unless we hold a special meeting and that would I would say that would be if somebody really was yeah a real a real serious transgression to hold a special meeting just about that and maybe it becomes something like maybe we put in there you know something within 60 days and then when somebody says why 60 days you can say well you know the process in which we meet is if we have a meeting on a Tuesday and something happens on a Thursday that's because at least you have something in there where an individual that makes a complaint can see that you know there would be action within so much time they'll feel heard so yeah so I mean the three things that this says the board can do like the formal things is the board level discussion of the misconduct including a possible vote of censure communication of the misconduct the community represented by the board member a formal request for that person's resignation from the board of directors you're looking for just those tools to be added yes I think so and then you know I think that the having the chair or executive committee having some discretion is like I think the boards I don't mean to speak for but this was raised I think that there is a concern at least from certain board members of having that language in there it's what happens if the board chair is actually responsible for that behavior right and I think you can say if the complaint is against the board chair the vice chair would respond like but you know what I would be worried about is if you have somebody who just spams complaints and we have to hold the something at the that's what they were trying to do is bring forward that that there was more detail in the new model around you have to specify in writing and exactly what part of this policy was violated right but you know I what I like about this is that you can ask the person to stop you know like basically give the person a warning and then if they don't and then respond to the person who made the complaint saying we have warned the person about this behavior their first defense continues you know this is for kind of minor offenses if there is something major you go straight to a meeting and it's of the minority we agree this violated but you know it's a warning you know it kind of gives a bit more if you can figure out if you can put that in writing I'd appreciate it I think it lies that way I can't remember again what source it came from but I can set the degree of severity that's where I think this gets really starts to get right and yeah because anything short of I mean I don't want to say anything short of criminal behavior but we've been elected and ultimately you know you're censured okay I'm censured or all of it all the way through is got a certain level of right but I think you know the board as a whole indicating what they think is appropriate behavior and what they think is not. Oh yes no no I like setting the standard but they we have to be careful that we don't overreach as well. Do we want to continue discussing this or shall we move on? I think we need to move on. Sounds good. So yes I'll try and send no it'd be great. Any suggestions let's policy adoption act to adopt the WRVSU special education policy as the full board last night at this point I'd entertain a motion to adopt the WRVSU special education policy. Motion to adopt. Do you have any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Are you opposed? Any abstentions? Thank you. We have adopted the WRVSU special education policy. Alright so I'm moving on to discussion items. The district building security and safety protocols. I know we had briefly started this discussion many months ago. I believe at that time can you say that the school had an assessment done or did have one or was getting an assessment that goes along with So I have brought in and done some assessments on certain school buildings and prior to my tenure Mark Moody had come who is a consultant and done assessments on all of our buildings. There was a couple other buildings that I brought in back to this current year and done some safety assessments. We have not done it on either of these two buildings but we did do it just before COVID hit was my understanding. Is that correct Andrew? Yeah I'm trying to actually find it because it feels like it wasn't long ago but it probably was that long ago. Yeah I think it was just before my tenure. So I think a part of putting this one part is the things that continue to happen unfortunately at schools and at times children may not be as secure as we'd like them to be in certain instances. The other piece to this is just the structural piece which as you can see just in this building we have upgrades that need to get done anyways because you can literally see through the door. So there's energy, weather type entry doors that need to be replaced so while we're having to replace these we should be talking about dual entry points. So I mean now the old single entry pieces are now frowned upon as security slash energy efficient entry ways so you should have that just like in school when you walk in you have a dual entry system where you can either secure the outer door or you can secure the inner door and it also makes that transition of heat better when you're going from outside the inside or vice versa and I know unfortunately you know even if you walk through this library one you'll see how that one goes together which is an old elbow of the door that holds it closed and you know the door on the backside of the gym you know there's a hole in it like that big and then your entry doors they're not weather proof they're not sound proof I'm sure Andrea hears it about 100 times a day when somebody comes through that door now and goes salam and one of these times that glasses is going to come flying out of it so we're in need and there's some there's some doors in the backside of the high school that have some of the same instances that need to be done so I guess I was trying to think of it's kind of like the heating system like we've taken quotes for years but like it's time to get these things fixed and we do have some money in our funds I think it would be an appropriate time to maybe I was thinking on this portion of it maybe task the buildings committee to seek out these plans or proposals to have these done because they need to get done anyways and the second piece of it is the piece of you know I was looking through some some grant programs and some programs through the the DOJ and there's a school violence prevention program that's out there that has grant money about hiring resource officers you know and a good thing I think a lot of us when we went to school we had resource officers at our schools in one fashion or another I mean the first part is the resource officer is you know they're in the building for many different types of protection it could be an outer threat but it also could be misbehaving physically we do have those once in a while like the lockdown girls the resource officers can also be trained to do and help with a lot of different issues that we deal with every day when it comes to you know violence prevention drugs and alcohol abuse they can even help out we see it a lot more now with cyber security and some of the things that we are having to deal with phones and these things that we've been hearing about a lot that we could spend time on I was looking and they do have some three year grants out there where they actually will pay for they'll pay up to $125,000 a year per resource officer for three years I just kind of going back to my days of the daycare programs and those things that you don't see anymore we do or have had some like an alcohol abuse type things on our campuses and then it's kind of one of those things I'd rather be proactive and reactive if something ever happened to one of our campuses so the other thing I was looking through and maybe it gets covered Jamie on the if you do a security assessment but they go through things or recommendations of things like time per incident how long would it take for somebody to get here and if so would they have the proper training to take care of things now I don't know so I guess the questions that I have and I think we can we can just on the building security thing I think we can take care of two things at once just because we do need to do upgrade store doors so maybe we can make those accesses secure and I'm sure Andrew you go back and forth to both buildings and both buildings have two different access pieces right so could we make it so that our campuses are similar so your access would go to two buildings because we do have often people that go back and forth and coaches and teachers and things like that so we can make it easier and the access would be a resource officer something that we'd like to see at our campuses do we have one person that goes back and forth to campuses maybe a few days a week in each campus or do you have somebody every day all day something for us to think about as a board you think yeah thanks for those thoughts I would be curious to hear what the administration thoughts about whether there's any general would be I guess I yeah I wouldn't think about it I guess but do you guys want to yeah I guess I would just need a little time to chew on it and think about how best to leverage it sure but I do think the entry doors sort of deal with it yeah absolutely I think that's something we can do right away yeah that sounds like a great idea like I said they're not better proof they're not that good they're they're trying for an upgrade there I mean I don't know if that's out of the scope of work of the gentlemen that we worked with for the HVAC systems if they perform those types of duties too but I think we've been on the energy efficiency report among the lights and all that stuff they did talk about the entryway at one point way back when we started as well one of the IEM measures I think we just didn't go that route just because it was two years ago we didn't have as many reserves at that moment but I do know that there was talk about a double entryway there but I also agree that there's one of my other concerns is and it's something that I know that the architect at Royalton was going to be drawing up was a lot of our high school students come in in the mornings not actually in the front entryway they come in in the back and how do we create a much more inviting and safer area there for them to access off their back parking lot kind of looks like a back alley back well it also doesn't it's a similar issue I mean we're also talking about doing that performance space upgrade which would be that and I had said to the architect that they should be drawing that up so we could look at it and see what that area should also tackle that I'd say it's fair to say at this point we should never draw anything new up without taking that into consideration the double entryway ever yes that serves a dual purpose short term getting a camera on that door would be brilliant because we can't buzz kids on that door so that's why we all try to park in the other parking lot well then that should be a quick fix that should be sooner rather than later yeah other than I don't know how safe I feel like that is okay has been my concern that's been brought up to me and I get to worry about there's no one actually laying eyes on and the plus that we have right now in our entryway at least here and at the high school is is that a physical person can lay eyes on you can't have someone that you recognize a face and just buzz them in but there could be danger to the left-hand side of the door okay yep I get it the actual recommendations is you really get away from these cameras that just someone's looking at a screen and you're buzzing in that you set up your situation where you can see even a situational moving type thing but I mean we're going to have two accesses so cameras that can see the whole person right or what we've talked about is if we redo that entryway possibly there's an office space down there okay but presumably you wouldn't have multiple people letting people in now the recommendations would be that yes or I mean thinking outside the box Jamie the camera doesn't have to be positioned I mean the camera could be positioned so that it's at the backs of the people at the door and you could see Jesus four people at the door I totally hear you but what I'm saying is based on the audit we just did on a building is that they want what they would say is that you want someone in a situation to lay their eyes on anyone you're actually allowing in so if we were going to do it right I'm just saying that's the recommendation and that's why the dual entry is the way to go it's just like a bang the outer door is always open you want to go to the ATM but the inner door is locked right and then there's cameras in the entryway to be able to see you know kind of a 360 view of who the individuals are that you're buzzing at right now now there's some issues with the current layout to make it work but yeah well so I would still say from a safety standpoint I hear out of convenience it's easier to buzz people in the back way but I would better that they're still coming to the front door where our admin assistants are actually laying eyes on them we currently have during the school day sure we currently have kids entering through that entrance absolutely and there's adults standing there at the start of the day so we're still doing that that wouldn't it's not like it's locked in there and we have our next facility committee May 5th or 6th it's May 8th so we could I guess that's something the board wanted us to do we could start talking about that and get somebody to give us a quote on what the work might entail and maybe we can do all of it or some of it or get pieces of it started it seems like we kind of have our summer work planned out and then we were kind of talking about that there would be a second round of upgrades like some of those other things that were on the list like if we could get this into that like the air and humidity pieces that we were talking about there was all the stuff that didn't pay back for itself we kind of did all the stuff that we can do with the bond or not bond performance contract this time there's still other stuff that needs to be done which is not going to be performance contract so that's one of those things so let's make sure that this gets into that and then why don't you guys think it over about the resource officer I can send you the link to the school violence prevention and speaking for myself what I would like to hear is not like I mean partially it would be what would a resource officer look like but also is this how we want if we have an extra $8,000 to have an extra staff person like is that the staff person we want versus supporting the school in a piggyback off of that and this might just be my ignorance because I'm just joining do we have an emergency management policy is it written the staff has access to it and do we coordinate with town and state police and that's sitting there and have we ever run a drill every month we get a drill so we have some idea of the time response time that we could get from the Bethel Barracks or the town police well it's excellent because they come here when it starts the big question that we have is the response time we always think we know but we don't so an example I can give you is when the squatting calls were happening across the state and we thank goodness were not part of that there was 40 to 50 cops arrived at Montpelier High School within less than a minute and Randolph got two state police folks and it took them over 15 minutes that's a pretty big because they were all going to a different location right you could again ideally I think we would have thought it was going to be a lot quicker response to Randolph that was my point it wasn't because they were all headed in different directions that day okay are we ready to move on from this discussion item and we'll can I probably should have said this at the adjustment to the agenda but would anybody mind swapping 9-2 and 9-3 so we can let Tara go after we deal with the audit I'll do it so why don't we discuss the part at this point possible action Andrew so I sent you all the fiscal year 22 audit in that email was my memo outlining the highlights of the audit plus the PowerPoint presentation that returning board members have seen every year about as a board member what you're looking for in the audit and also to the board members I didn't receive any questions so if there's any I can try and address tonight I'm happy to do that otherwise I can go over the management letter recommendations and then hopefully have acceptance of the audit does anybody have any questions for Tara why don't you do your summary so the management letter recommendations are not a surprise they're the same findings that we had in fiscal year 22 as far as recommendations sorry not findings recommendations being that our bank reconciliation needed to be done within 30 days and then our general ledger recommendations also needed to be done within 30 days of the close of the prior month so as I explained at the full board and also through our discussion with our auditors is we are on task with that now but when we lost our accountant midterm in fiscal year 22 that put us behind in getting our bank reconciliation in general like the reconciliation is done within 30 days but they are all done now and we are completely up to date for the month of March and then the biggest thing out of all audits is we actually had no findings so that's always really exciting it was just good news very hidden news thank you Tara thanks for all the work that you put in on the audit over the last many many months yes we've been in audit since last May so at this point if anybody has any questions I would entertain a motion to approve the 21-22 fiscal audit for the White River Unified District so what should I do? is that appropriate language? yes is there any discussion on the motion? all in favor say aye aye any opposed? I got it as accepted thanks Tara thank you all very much have a good night back to 9-2 statement of support for the LGBTQIA community possible action something that asked to add the agenda so I'll let Henry speak to it I know we had a previous statement that didn't pass and the calendar wanted to get something that maybe could so I sought out similarities in certain statements that other school boards had made this one actually doesn't have my citation because some of the framing did come from the Fairfax Virginia school board in their statement to their constituency but to find something that maybe we could approve and that was right down the middle and fairly approval and that everybody could agree on so if you don't mind I'd like to read it now statement of support for LGBTQIA plus students in WRUD the White River Unified School Board understands that our LGBTQIA students, staff, and families are worried about the impact of recent proposed model policies on transgender and gender expansive students in other parts of the country according to the Trevor project which conducted 2022's benchmark national survey of LGBTQ youth mental health one in five transgender and non-binary youth attempted suicide in the last year LGBTQIA plus youth who found their school to be affirming reported lower rates of attempting transgender and non-binary youth found their own home to be gender affirming it is necessary to ensure our school community is a place where all students can live without fear of prejudice discrimination, harassment, or violence our policies and regulations will continue supporting our transgender and gender expansive students, staff, and families White River Unified School Board policy protects students, educators, and other staff from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity White River Unified District relies on robust parent, guardian engagement to help provide transgender and gender expansive students with protections and supports we will continue partnering with parents and guardians because their involvement is necessary to student success furthermore our school board is committed to following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which was upheld for sexual orientation by the SCOTUS and any prohibition on gender identity or discrimination in 2022 with Judge Neil Gorsuch providing the majority opinion and 16 VSA statute 131 which requires acknowledgement and respect for students gender identity and action and instruction as a component of community health mental health and human growth and development protecting supporting and affirming our transgender and gender expansive students is critical to achieving a safe and respectful learning environment for all students and providing them with equal access to educational programs services and activities the work to do so in a holistically and inclusive way continues but we know that from this commitment we will not waiver we declare these eight principles will guide our work for the community benefit for all students that acknowledge some classes of student may be subject to additional stresses and need additional support from us respect for the diversity of our students staff and community integrity upholding the highest ethical standards in all of our activities accountability taking responsibility for our decisions and actions transparency openness and candor in our communication collaboration working together to achieve our shared goals quality providing excellent service to our constituents safety ensuring the safety of our students and staff and inclusivity creating a welcoming and supportive environment for everyone if anybody has any questions for me as to what I was thinking or where I was going with anything I'm happy to speak thoughts on this statement of support I think I just have to go back to prior comments that I had back in November the I mean we currently have policy C 28 which is transgender and gender non-conforming student policy that that reaffirms the state statute and we also have our newly conforming declaration of inclusion statement that we have for the school and I think like I had said before I understand that there are different groups of students that we have in our schools that at time you know, at time need the additional support but we're not listing all those groups in this statement and to add one group but not add other groups I think would be unfair to students that are suffering for many different reasons I do like the I like the bottom part of it where you talk about that we declare these eight principles will guide us in our work to the community benefits of all students and I think putting together something that encompasses all students would be more inclusive I've got to think of the students that think of all the students today that are dealing with something students that come from households that maybe became hungry maybe they are abused maybe they are dealing with a divorce or a parent that's not there or a death in the family students that deal with every day that we see with image issues, confidence issues eating disorders, ADHD substance abuse behavioral disorders major depression anxiety there's so many groups of students that don't have a statement again providing one statement for one group but not for the other I think is doing us an injustice but I had said before in November that I'd be more than willing to come up with a statement that supports all of our students equally and I would be more willing to work on that and to approve something like that but to do it just for one group but not for the other groups I can't I think that it's hard for me to think of another group of kids that is under attack across our country this group of kids is under attack right now yeah there are lots of kids with lots of problems I agree with you Chris that we do have kids with lots of problems socioeconomic ones that are the ones that get me the most but those kids aren't being attacked constantly in the news in states where they live and there's no telling that this isn't going to happen in Vermont that what's happening in other states what is it I think there's 13 states so far now that have passed legislation against this group of kids specifically it's kind of terrifying and so that's why I would support this just because this is the group that's being attacked these are the kids that are feeling as though they're not welcome and I would say it is in our community if you look on Facebook groups there's posts specifically saying basically singling out transgender students there's no posts saying anorexic students shouldn't be able to take part in it it's not to say that that's an issue as well and those students need to be supported and that's what this group is well I mean I know back in November I'd asked for the data for our campuses which at that time there was two documented instances of bullying or harassment as a result of sexual orientation and I think we all can agree that too was too meant to be right but it wasn't exactly what we would think it would be it wasn't that both cases were directed towards LGBTQ kids they were split that was against an LGBTQ person that was against a non-member and I agree with you that if you look in the news tonight and you talk about other states this is Vermont not necessarily what's happening in another state is happening in this state Vermont has always been on the forefront of equal rights for all people and if you go back and look Vermont was the 13th state that had civil rights pieces so it's Vermont's always been on the forefront of these things and and again we um yeah let me just say one thing we just had the discussion about security and safety protocols if you look at our local district we haven't had any instances but looking nationally it is a concern because you see data that's like incidents all the time that happen elsewhere so in that case you're willing more broadly and be proactive about communicating and working on solutions to something that hasn't happened here yet but we don't want to have it happen here and so I think in this case but I could say principles should apply anyway so I did tailor this in hopes that everybody could just agree that this was good but my thought I see what Chris is saying but similar to the gun safety and such just because it's not happening here doesn't mean we don't have to address it if it's happening nationally we've got 13 states who are actually at a state level legislating against what we legislate as correct in Vermont and going against a scotish decision on gender identity for being a civil right they're actually legislating at a state level against the Supreme Court of the US so what we've got is a case where we would be disingenuous not to address this and in doing so in addressing it we will remain at the forefront and we will remain the best in class state for civil rights and human rights and children's rights so what we need to do is we need to address this so that we are continuing to be on the forefront of addressing it and I think to not address it in some way for us is disingenuous because we need to make a statement that we believe this and that this is where we're at so that when other states other school districts, other supervisor unions look at us and we are the shining example of how to treat people in a community so that's all and I wish it wasn't necessary I wish that we didn't even have to discuss this but I also I wasn't on the board at the time when the data was collected about there being two incidents that was reported back in November two incidents that are documented I wonder how many incidents there are that have not been documented I know that a lot of kids are very leery of reporting things that have been said to them or have been done to them if they had a statement like this maybe they'd be more willing to come forward because they'd realize okay, I've got some allies here but maybe according to the Trevor Project which is an acknowledged study and very respected done in 2022 maybe a statement like this would keep just one of those kids from killing themselves because they felt left out as a trans or non-binary kid and if this statement saves the life of one kid because they feel seen then this piece of paper was worth me drafting up and bringing to you guys tonight if one kid doesn't kill himself or herself because they feel that they are seen I'm sorry, I feel strongly about it well, I think on my end of things that I've said before and, you know, the sad thing with having discussions nowadays is just because you may not be in agreement of a statement of support that doesn't mean that you're anti a group and it's very sad that we live in a society where if you are not directly in support you're against, which is not correct and and I could go into that more if I need to, but you know, in this case I have to look at my daughter today and my daughter is bullied and harassed in this school that wanted to take her own life and we do not have a statement of support for her and she was one of the two people or two instances I mentioned and I don't I want to find something that is encompassing everybody and we could put together a statement of support that includes all groups but you just have one just to support what does that tell the other kids I mean, I want to save all kids this support is saving one group of kids what does that tell about the child that doesn't fit this group tonight that is bullied and harassed that wants to take their life is their life not just as equal as the next person's life? I mean, again we got to think all students and put together a statement we could put together a really strong statement of support for all of our students and include different classifications of students would that be covered by an anti-bullying policy? I mean, what you're saying you're saying out loud right now is all students matter and it's the same as looping back to the Black Lives Matter discussion where we say well these lives are disproportionately affected by this stuff so we're trying to support it's that disingenuous argument and I don't want to be in conflict with you but like all students matter you're just throwing that out because this I actually did the SCOTUS I did the SCOTUS I have to live with a teenage daughter that for the last six months I've had to be to ER visits I've had to wait for mental health counseling that isn't provided I guarantee your principals in the school can account for how many days I've not been in the school because I've had to deal with her mental health and she was buoyed and harassed by LGBTQ members I'm not saying single out a group I have lots of friends that follow under LGBTQ lots of friends, lots of peers lots of co-workers but I'm saying it's not fair to do a statement for one group and not for all the groups and then to say that it doesn't matter I'm not here on a political thing literally all students do matter every student in the school matters every single one so what is this something we could add to this because I don't know what I would call another group that would get included in this there must be a way of awarding it so that I think we need to recognize that there are a lot of students that need guidance or guidance that do not actually fall into the LGBTQIA heading members or what are you going to call I mean it's and that's true there's children like you said divorce couples that do need actual guidance and I think we need some kind of statement that would fully support so maybe another paragraph could be we recognize that there are many students who are suffering from depression or whatever that are also in need of counseling or I can't think of the proper wording off the top of my head but yeah including another paragraph about that I think that the ending of these 8 points that does include all students it literally says all students if I may point that out in the bold I think the way that it's written it's written in to say because we want to support all students we need to make sure we're supporting you know like the overall goal is to provide support for everybody and this is just a specific thing because this group is being you know publicly like is a current issue this is our stance on this group specifically but we want to support all kids and like I'm perfectly happy to you know if we want to have more or something like that I think that would be fine I like the way that you started that off that we want to support all of our students and then have a qualifier but in this case we understand blah blah blah did I hear a beep on the somebody wanting to speak on Peggy did you have something you wanted to add can you unmute her she can unmute looks like maybe she's typing she had something before that said that she was having issues with her well if you want to type something in feel free my this is obviously a volatile issue and I understand because I also have a daughter in school so I understand Chris's frustration with the personal part of it my question is in terms of this do we have a responsibility to a constituency to give them what they're asking for and in my experience so far being elected to this board I have found that people would like this to happen so while I am in agreement with the statement and this is more where my feelings lie this is also my I feel my duty to my constituency as I've been asked to do something of this sort so beyond the personal I feel that this is my duty as a member of this board because the people that elected me asked for this so that's why the reason why I'm providing it I guess at this point you can entertain a motion to approve it as written or to amend it my motion to approve is written okay is there a second I'll second it any further discussion on the motion I would prefer to see an amendment I like the statement I don't disagree with it but I would like to see it include more through this okay okay I think at this point if you have wording that you would like to make a motion to amend it then you can do that otherwise I would like to see an amendment at the beginning okay you know I think if there's something specific that you want to have there's a motion on the floor so we can amend the motion to amend the wording if we have a wording to be done or how would you amend it really what about at the beginning if I may something to the effect of given the understanding that we respect all students' rights and everyone has a right to a safe and inclusive environment and the White River Unified School Board understands that LGBTQIA students and then pretty much as is with the amendment at the beginning addressing that we acknowledge that all students deserve a safe and inclusive place to go to school we have that the declaration of inclusion provides that but this provides something more that's why there's a dictionary this provides something in excess of our statement that we need to address because of certain issues with this community or we could approve this statement and then at the next meeting we could approve another statement that encompasses the rest of the student body I'm telling you with all honesty Chris I will approve any statement that protects any student and we could do ten of these that's not my problem doing more of these isn't my problem we want to do we want to do one for kids of color, we want to do one for female students we can address this over and over and make the most protections and statements and really this is a statement of support so all it is is us coming out publicly hey we're with you guys we understand we see you and I'll do that for any kid in the school system any statement any time you write it up and we'll at least talk it through and just like this one got cut down from the larger one in the fall we will get it passed any statement that protects any kid in any way and I'd be more than happy to do the you and I can meet and do that and I'll work together with you especially if we can pass this tonight I'm all for it I'd be more than happy to sit down and write other ones and I mean it, we could go and we could sit down and we could craft another policy no problem but I'd like to pass this tonight very much so does anybody want to make a motion to amend the language or did you do that, Greg? possible wording the WRUSB firmly believes that all students regardless of need to be educated in a caring and nurturing environment then continue the document we have regardless of being regardless of sexual orientation and gender okay why don't we just get rid of the word and just I mean if you take the regardless of it sounds similar to what I was proposing so I'm pointing it away, we need an introductory sentence like that or do another I mean you can do both statement whatever is easiest whatever it's best I like the idea of the introductory statement without the regardless as you are because I think pointing out that the goal is to support all of our students this is addressing one segment of all of those students but we want to support all of our students I like the statement and I just would like to be a little more inclusive I think that having that introductory sentence is a good way of saying that that's the goal it's not like it's a single out so we want to break down I'm doing it now so we need a motion to amend the motion I make a motion to amend the motion for amend the statement why don't you read how the statement is it will read, I'm sorry I'm still writing too the white river unified district school board only believes that all students need to be educated in a caring and nurturing environment then continue and stop there I was reading Peggy's words and then after environment as written the statement as written after after nurturing environment has that been moved in second into this one so we'll vote unless there's any discussion on the amendment to the motion go ahead Tammy can you repeat that it's what's written in Peggy's comment but without the regardless up okay so the white river unified district school board firmly believes that all students regardless, oh I'm sorry firmly believes that all students need to be educated in a caring and nurturing environment period okay got it, the interrupted sentences or disjointedness was causing confusion in my life thank you clarifying so we have an amendment to the motion to amend the motion on the table all those in favor say aye any opposed Peggy can you give us a thumbs up okay good thank you oh yeah why don't you type aye into the chat okay so now the we have the amended statements up for a vote we'll call the question at this point all in favor say aye aye okay any opposed next Peggy alright the statement of support passes and thank you guys for working through that and coming to a productive place in the element I always talk through it okay so we'll move on to the school district population projections so you have the population projections in your packet this was provided to us by the we joined for the first time I've been superintendent with the New England school development council and part of why we joined that was to provide population projections for all of our districts but also some special ed data analysis for us historical and then some projections in that regard which will continue to be used for budgeting purposes but so what you have here is the way we reunified district historical data they did use census data from 2020 to also fill out their algorithm for population projections they've told us that their standard deviation will get smaller by the more that they do this over time and so this is their first time working with us as an organization to continue to work with them annually and so what you can see here in regards to their cover sheet is that that you know enrollment in general across the SU appears to be stabilizing versus what we saw in regards to decreased enrollment prior to now which is good I think the tricky thing for our district in general which this does doesn't necessarily take into account but I think it's important for folks to know is that as we continue to work on recruitment activities and things of that nature we could have way more bodies than what they're able to account for necessarily right now in our actual buildings so make certain that you understand that necessarily being taken into account with these projections currently we have some capacity that we can fit those points in and that's what we're working on so my question on this is just I'd be curious to know what the projections for other towns around the state are just since our area diverges so much from the state average projection that's down 10% over the next 10 years or whatever so do they see the same are they projecting that sort of decline elsewhere but not in our district or do you know what I'm trying to say I do, yeah, no I'm happy to reach out we'll ask that question you mean where is the state losing students that we are in terms of that timp yes why are we exempt from the state trend that they are looking at the birth rates and it happens to be that our population projection is different for our area that makes sense but it's kind of a methodology or something I think it's worthwhile does anybody have any other comments or questions about the projections didn't you say at the full board meeting didn't you say how small the deviation was going to get they didn't provide us with that they didn't they just said they would they would get much tighter I remember you're saying that but I didn't remember if you would set a number when we were setting there like that it's going to get this much better expected to be this much better it's a pretty big dip in enrollment due to outside factors certainly aren't going to be factored into this so it's good to see the general line of the land let's see what happens alright moving on we've done the two action items already as part of the discussion and we're on to public comment is there any public comments hi just for clarification what is the board's intended difference between the declaration of inclusion and the statement of support that was just amended it is rather unclear as to the differentiation between the two and I'm just trying to understand the board's intended difference between the two do you want to speak on that for the new one as a member of the constituency I sat through the meetings in the fall and was subject to listening to the other statement and being involved in that as a public participant this one is to be in place of that one because that one wasn't agreed upon and the part that I was actually in agreement with Chris about was providing some facts to back it up that say this population is in fact protected in this population is in fact in danger so they are in fact protected because of the I put in the SCOTUS ruling and the Vermont the Trevor project is the lynchpin upon which really the proof of this is this population needs critical support at least publicly in that these kids are in fact provably higher rate for suicide and higher rate for many other horrible things that are happening in their life and at least one third of them can't even speak about it in their own homes so this statement is to guide us in our principles specifically for that community and how that and now that we've added that amendment it's how that community interacts with everyone else around them because we've put all students in several times so now that actually has us coming and going this is how this community relates to all the other students and how all the other students relate to this community as a community that has some additional difficulties and so the statement of support I hear your words specifically on the statement of support that was discussed this evening so back to the question what is the board's intended difference between the declaration of inclusion and that statement of support so while your answer focused on the statement of support can you talk about the declaration of inclusion then what the difference between the two is I can't because I didn't pass the declaration of inclusion so I think it would probably be the declaration of inclusion was passed I thought the board meetings I think it's just the declaration of inclusion is a broad statement that encompasses everybody says that we are against discrimination in all forms and all that whereas this was a statement of support of a subset that is facing specific challenges thank you no further questions okay I actually have a couple of comments so I have some questions for the board members and feel free to answer it if you want or you can stay silent I know we have a lot of policies and things and we claim that we're upholding different things so I guess just in our everyday lives if we were to see something happen or read about something that was bullying or harassment or discriminatory would you stop say something do something about that in general in your own lives that's right often yeah do you believe that that it's always left or right yes or no do you believe that sometimes it's a favor of something but maybe not move forward with it because of maybe the way it might interact with another policy or a precedent that it might I think some things are but I can tell you decisively that I believe some things are absolutes there are some things in this life that are absolutes but do you believe that it's because you're not for or against an item that you know just because you didn't say yes or no or you're pro something yeah I know where you're going without if I didn't believe what you were insinuating I wouldn't be able to sit on this board with you that sometimes that there's slight nuances to every issue I wouldn't be able to sit here and even have gone through what we went through if I didn't believe that there's nuances to issues and that it's not all or nothing so I'm glad that you guys all said that because did you know that and I know you know because there's several of the board members that are part of this that there's a community forum and Royalton that there was post about myself that were put on that that were definitely bullying, harassment misinformation I have it all printed out here our ex board member is actually the person that put this up and she put it up while she was still on the board I know that there's two people on this board right now that are members of that group and I do know that and I do know that one person that's on the board right now is good friends with the other administrator of that group and I guess after you just sat here and said that you saw bullying, harassment or discrimination or things like that that you would stand up and you would say what are you doing? Now I will want to think there's one member of our society that was able to do that and exclude them from that but why did you guys not do that? I think at this point your conflict with that one individual has become very personal and additionally I don't engage on social media even a fraction as much as I used to because I was chased off of social media by certain parties and actually had to leave multiple groups because of a similar thing to what you're talking about where I was just harassed into the dirt and that was not when I was a board member that was when I was a personal member of the community I was being raked over the coals and honestly you're talking about the one I think I know what you're talking about but your ex-wife put on Facebook and I provided with that she called the Vermont State Police on me so what I'm saying is you just sat here and said that if you did see bullying and harassment that you would stand your ground and say something Bullying is when somebody can't stick up for themselves I think you can stick up for yourself I'd like to stick up for myself on a forum that is private and that would be a member of that I'm being discriminated just because I might take a stance that doesn't mean that I'm an anti I'm not anti LGBTQ just because I don't vote in resolution that's crap I have so many friends of mine that fit into that group just like I have friends of mine that are different color different race, different religion it's disgusting knowing that two of you are sitting right here that didn't have the courtesy to say hey you know what isn't this site because the site is supposed to be about if you read through it it says South Royalton Billboard no bigots or something like that and then if you read the rules it's about a non-harassing space where we can all get together and talk but there's this garbage on it and let me finish and if you've ever been attacked like that you would think that you would separate yourself from groups like that and you said I would avoid that conflict and I wouldn't be a part of that group but you're a member of that group now I would say which I'm not a member of a lot of groups if I was a member of a group and I saw somebody say something about Rodney if I thought it was right or wrong I would say hey you know what this is probably not the right forum to be talking about stuff like that the person can't defend themselves or whatever and I would excuse myself and make the statement but again this goes to kind of a board of conduct we are in the public's eyes all times we are board members we don't get to take the hat off for five minutes so if you're on one of your board members is being trashed by a lot of misinformation bull crap and none of you stand up to say wait a minute this isn't right or you know what if this is going on I'm going to have to recuse myself then you're violating this board of conduct that we're already passed hold on guys let's not get into a back and forth I'm saying we print a lot of things at a point of personal privilege I believe the three minutes that the public speaker had is up and I would like to make a public comment go ahead thank you I graduated from what was South Wilton High School in 1992 he was a classmate of mine who had to go to the school board to get permission to put a gay cartoon in the yearbook I also knew somebody who took a same sex partner to the prom in the 2000s and at the time that was a really big deal and I would just like to say that this too will pass 10 years from now 20 years from now history will be on the correct side thank you I'm happy to discuss with you personally is there any other public comments new hires and resignations I have got I'm going to say more I'm going to say she is coming from Boston local roots here related to Miss Franny Staples so we're thankful for that I'm going to say Dan we're hiring Dan I was just starting to say I'm sorry Dan Morrison who's been serving as a long term I was thinking is there somebody I don't know I don't know hiring Dan Morrison also who's been serving as a long term substitute just Gordon's lead so he's lovely and wonderful and really wants to be here because it feels like a great community to teach in happy to invite him to the red community not exactly certain of everyone's exact assignments yet but to be determined so those are the two hires that are real and I'm still working how many more positions do we need to fill? because contracts haven't been returned yet we're currently engaging in interviews with librarians right now is one thing I'm working on right now we do know we have a care professional position open so yeah to be determined not exactly certain yeah the high school has a part time social studies that they're trying to fill and we're filling the high school PE position have they been a couple months back but weren't we trying to fill a foreign language that's also never done that's not my job I just remembered I remembered from a previous that we had we were kind of wondering if we're in good shape I feel like I feel like this was a year of people relocating closer to home honestly I don't think anyone's believing that they're super dissatisfied but they're having opportunities closer to home really the librarian had a baby and she was closer to the Shulbert area and she was a job in Shulbert so we'll know more soon I think everyone's be willing to deal with right now no I would say we're in a much better place than we have in previous years there's a moment in time I feel like you're going to do labor shortages and everything so don't worry about that okay we don't have any others so future agenda items the expansion projects updates and a discussion on that for the activities we do you get your track by progress data report is in May for academic data okay our next meeting date is Tuesday May 16th at 6.30 at the Royalton campus motion to adjourn seconded