 any adjustments to the agenda that anyone has? Approve the minutes of Monday, March 28th. So moved. All right, a second. Second, Ethan. Is there any discussion on the night? Bill has a discussion. Two small points, but under 8.5 and 8.7, 8.5B. We've got a new account, right? Yes. And we're celebrating. That's the way I spell. And 8.7 is more of a question. The policy committee, we're going to be working on two additional policies, social media and verification of student residency. And I looked in our policy notebook and I thought we already had a verification of student residency. So I'm wondering whether that's the one or there's a reason to go back to it again because it was 2019. Yeah, we're going back to it. They're going back to it. Gotcha. All right. So there's no change there. Thank you. So we'd like to like to approve the minutes with Bill's change of spelling of a spelling error. Oh, and one other thing. Sorry. This is my thing under 8.2. What's MTA strategy? I wonder if that's MTSS. That's another typo on the part of your click who did not review her minutes before submitting them. Thank you, Bill. No, I'm missing. I'm starting a new vocabulary thing in my notebook about terms because I'm a slow learner on that one. So I wasn't sure whether that was a new term that I just wasn't aware of. No, thank you. I'm really, I'm really sorry. I was sometimes when keeping minutes, I pay attention to meetings and then my note taking starts so that usually I have time to review them often. I'm sorry. We're going to change MTA to MTSS and we're going to change the hire of a new accountant instead of new accountants. Right. Any other discussions? If not, can we approve them with those amendments? Yes, we approve the minutes with the my motion to to approve the minutes with the amendments. You just said right. Thanks guys. Thank you, Bill. Thank you for reading the minutes. Board correspondence and communication. Does anybody, has anybody received anything this one? I don't know. Okay. So I'll go see if Phil's here. If not, we can go on to reports. Phil is here, the person to do the presentation tonight. So we're just bringing Jamie's checking on where his, he just did the board chair training. So now he's, I think, have a call in between. So we'll wait for him to come in. I'll skip to public comments. Is there any public comments? Anybody on? He's just going to use the restroom. Do you want to start with reports? Oh, perfect. Do you want to start with my report? So we will go to Jamie's report while we're waiting to fulfill to get in. So you have my report in hand. I want to just highlight I'm really excited about the work that we have planned for the upcoming summer months. There's a lot of really exciting proposals coming for out of each district. And there's some cross pollinating around the work that will occur across some of the districts. So I just really wanted to highlight that. The other thing I wanted to highlight, I knew there was, there was a few questions about when we would have upcoming data reports. And so I just wanted, I asked, did you get that email right, ready to project just so the boards know what's coming up. This was adopted in August by the board. And what was presented was both the budget calendar, how we would go about budget development, and then when we would see academic and social emotional data. And so if you keep scrolling down, you'll see, and I mentioned it, or it's on the agenda for future items is presentation on our alternative social emotional programming for next month. And that will hit the special ed data report. And then also at your local districts, you'll get social emotional data at each district level, which you've received previously this year too. And we'll look at some comparisons throughout the year, but also across as compared to last year. And then finally, you'll see that our benchmark assessment data will be in June for our local assessments, meaning track my progress and start 360. You'll get those at the SU level and also at your local districts. That assessment happens in May. And we're currently happening with SBAC testing right now. I don't expect those to become and you'll see we did predict this unembarrassed until August. And so the that's when we'll plan to present your smarter balance assessment consortium. And so just want to remind you of this data calendar. We'll definitely look for feedback on it. And then we'll have another one to put forward to folks for consideration next August. And then I also just wanted to highlight we've got some we're moving back to in person PD, which I'm really excited about, meaning more on a state level. So we do have the Vermont positive behavior intervention and supports conference happening at the killing and grand put, which is sponsored by UVM and the best, which we had schools attend for a long time. But it's been virtual the last two years. And so it's finally back to in person. And so we have multiple teams going to that, which I think will be great. And then also the admin of treat we plan to do at the VPA conference so we can engage in professional development in the morning. And then we will do our retreat work in the afternoon at the VPA conference. So a lot of good work plan for the summer. You know, I think the summer is when you can really lay down the roadmap for execution the following year. I mean, I really think to try to plan and execute a plan while the school year is going is that you find that you typically don't execute much of anything. So if we can get solid plans in place, along with some PD, come on and fill and then we'll turn right to you after I entertain questions over the summer. I think that's going to serve us well. And I'll take any questions folks have. I did the legislation. I said I would give an update tonight. And I did put a link in there. So we continue to follow closely, you know, the legislature can do an abrupt turn. We're kind of at the 11th hour. So we're following the waiting study closely and looking like they're going to go with the waiting part of the equalized pupils. That was the last information that we had at a committee. Anyways, that was gaining traction. I had shared that data with you back in January, how that would affect us in most districts. It's going to affect us positively in regards to tax rates. The other thing that we're monitoring closely right now is PCBs mitigation and whether or not the legislature is going to consider putting some funds toward assisting with that mitigation. And so there's been a little momentum there on that. I have reached out to some representatives today to try to let them know that if we're going to be doing testing, then we need to be thinking about how we're going to pay for mitigation efforts. Some of our schools we just found out today are going to be in the first round of testing. The results, we don't expect them back for about 12 weeks. But that is going to be happening in some of our buildings this spring. And so that's something I'm watching really closely. And then just a reminder that it does look like they're no longer going to be delaying the special ed funding law, which we budgeted for the block grant anyways, that that will move forward as a plant that had been delayed previously. That was supposed to take effect prior to even this year, and there was a movement that tried to delay it again. And so those are the things that we're following closely. The miscellaneous ed bill, that's something I always try to keep a really tight eye on. I just recommend to boards as you're getting the VSBA information because sometimes something can get put in that bill that hasn't really necessarily been discussed prior. And so that's something that we're watching closely as well. And I'll take any questions folks may have. Don, how are you doing, Jamie? Just a couple of questions. The attendance for the Killington thing, it looks like there's a few, most schools have got representation going. Is there any way to encourage some for everybody so that we can have some group efforts in that project that you're going to be working on, just so that it's abroad, all abroad the issue? And the next one would be the, I'll wait for that response and I'll think of the other one. I've just lost it. Yeah, thanks, Don. So the White River Unified District has gone in the past to the best the last two years. I think that they plan on doing some work socially emotionally just like Newton does, but it may not be through best. All of our schools are aligned to PBIS practices. Some are a little farther along than others and some are having more focused work right now on certain parts of the system. But I do feel good about that. We are all aligning ourselves to those practices like you're saying. And part of it too was I think just timing of when that was happening in late June and teams making certain, you know, schools really feel like they had a set of team that met really the criteria around having multiple stakeholders, right, to get by with the timing was difficult for a few districts as well. Hopefully they'll listen to the project total and buy in. If on that PCB some of the schools were tested in that project that went around, can't they use the results for those? The AOE is collecting their own, they want their own data, just like lead testing. Yeah, okay. And so they're going to come around and test every school just like they did with lead. All right. Thank you. Yeah, on the weighing, it seemed like the legislature was looking at two possibilities. One is to change the formula to eliminate the unfair, basically under-counting and under-supporting rural communities like our own. And the second one was speak about that but then kind of have a nest egg and that each year the legislature would have the freedom to. So are they actually going to change the formula so the legislature can't each year kind of? Correct. Yeah. So they're looking at changing what we know now. They still have equalized pupils. How that average daily membership is weighted, that formula would change. Okay. Which I think is, that's my preferred method right now based on their two. The two that they would, the other one was the cost equity model, right, where it was going to look more like a block plan. And you were going to be given chunks of money based on certain demographics of students, which I felt like was a little more convoluted, frankly, in regards to how that was going to work. And I was actually worried that it may require a lot more adjustment versus the waiting formula, of which I think now we've been using equalized pupils for quite a while in this state. That people are finally, like I feel like as I talk to constituents, they finally start to wrap their heads around it. I think if all of a sudden we just go and change that model, then now we're having to learn a whole new model of how that impacts our tax rate. And so I feel like at least this carries forward with the equalized pupils that folks have become more accustomed. The only thing is just an observation. Reading your report on this report, and that's the report, our staff are doing remarkable things in the team, the educational team, the SU team, and all our districts are not taking any time off. They're working through the summer, not every day, not necessarily Saturday, Saturday, working. And I just want to make an observation here that we as their elected leaders, you just might step up too and think about how we can spend some of our, I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about whatever it is. Because it really shows that summer is not a time to stop, summer is a time to reorganize, plan and get ready and become focused and prepared for the coming year. And we as the SU board and our individual boards have, I think, the same responsibilities and the summer can be seen in that way for us too, and we should think about that. Last meeting makes it easier for me. But I agree with you. All right, anybody else got questions for Jamie before we move on to our presentation? So how many people in the room and online just had to listen to me for an hour and a half or more? We were on. We were on. One, two, three, four, five, seven, quite a few of them. You didn't have to really spice it up. I know. Well, you know, the bad news is that the content for the conversation with you is so similar, right? Because I was asking to talk about board meetings, board meeting protocols and so forth. And we really got into a lot of that in the last hour and a half or two. And I was curious rather than go through, worst thing in the world would be this to be redundant for five or so people. So did I say anything or were there follow up things that you and others might have some questions to have a conversation about it rather than me just sit here and say the same thing? I think the interesting takeaway was for me is that we do a lot of the things that you were saying was for good practices. So what are those things? The public comment and keeping that to a minimum and by hearing the people. We do two public comments. So usually that works well for us. We don't have to put the content on tonight. But that's the one thing I think of. Okay. Probably a lot more of that. No, that's all right. Anybody else? Other things that were said? Dr. Gore. Yeah. Don Shaw from Sharon. I enjoyed your presentation earlier. But there was where are quite a unique configuration of SUs as a district or districts into SUs? And I just wondered if you had any words of wisdom that might help us to formulate a more cohesive structure? Maybe not much. How many districts are there in the SU? Six. Six. Okay. And because this is uncharted territory, our nation over the last 150 years has gone through all kinds of consolidation. We used to have thousands and thousands of school districts. I mean more than 100,000, maybe even more than 200,000. So the pain points that are here have been around for at least every cent school buses were invented. That was the big sort of move to efficiency was a lot of consolidated high schools in particular. So I appreciate the question, partly because I don't have a brilliant answer. And you're pushing me to think about where might there be some brilliant answers? I've seen the research in the last couple decades of the challenges, the problems, the pitfalls of consolidation. But I don't know that that would be helpful to even try to regurgitate. I think solutions are what needs to be in order. One of the things Don here that at least on paper seems like extremely commendable is your strategic plan. And I don't know exactly. I saw the document on the table here and referred to it in the webinar I was just doing. But when I saw the different, the roadmap of the goals and in particular how things are reported out on, I haven't seen anything of that level of quality in Vermont yet. I'm working with Champlain Valley School District on developing a strategic plan for them. I met with the board last week that they wanted a strategic plan just for their school or two schools. And it's more like a board governance work plan, not what we would call a strategic plan. But when I saw documents in advance of how you look at data over time, again, I probably can't highlight that that's outstanding practice, promising practice, best practice, that how you do both, how you perhaps capitalize on what should be efficiencies out of consolidation, and how you retain some kind of a local school identity, local district identity, and ensure participation at the local level. I think that's a challenge that I need to know more about, frankly. And others obviously around Vermont are having exact same questions. Everywhere we go, at 46, it might as well be the F word. I mean, it's, you know, it's a lot of heartburn for folks. Sarah, that's your hand up. Yeah, Sarah. Hi, thanks. I had some, I enjoyed your presentation. And I had some, some questions are just, just sort of wanted to dig deeper into some of the things that you were talking about. And the first thing was that you said effective governance is strategic. And I agree with that. I mean, I would agree with that. What I struggle with is that we have like two hour meetings, once a month, we have new board members coming on once a year, either one or two, and sometimes three new board members coming on at a time. And we have our retreat in July, say, or August, you know, in the summer. And so some of our board members are ready to, you know, in half a year, they're going to be getting off, new people are going to be coming on at that time. And so, other than just putting out fires or doing the basic superintendent's report, you know, everybody's report, and then the issue that we're dealing with at the time, I don't know how you get strategic. Well, so you know, those are the factors. I mean, if you were doing a SWOT analysis on what you just said, you know, here's the threats, we've got this turnover, we know the turnover is coming. How do you stay intentional throughout the year? And, you know, one of those resources I was mentioning this book in particular, the governance core where there's a whole chapter four that's dedicated to onboarding new members. This would be extremely worthwhile read. I'm not going to suggest because I don't know if the SU could buy these for all board members, but they're about 25 bucks on Amazon. It's an easy digestible read, but that emphasis they make in there on how you onboard new members. Let me back up and wrap some things around that. One of the opportunities most boards failed to do is build more community awareness of what the school board actually does. And so you might think about, particularly at the school district level where you've got maybe more proximity to more people, how might you build a five minute component in your meetings that is about what the school board does? How might that be a part of just the routine, whether you're, you know, you've taken the big topics, the big buckets first, policy and what you do or do not have to do with budget, what you do or do not have to do with personnel, how you do your work together, like those big buckets and kind of, again, not to overuse that word, but very strategically or intentionally have like a five minute explanation of that or a conversation at the dais about that. You could do it another way. You could do it as a five minute learning opportunity that rotate around so board members are actually taking turns doing a presentation on a topic which forces them to do a deeper dive on how do we govern through policy as an example. You could do that. You could take turns and have a different person lead the conversation. You could also take a book like this or the other one I mentioned I've got here too. I know half of you have seen them. Improving school board effectiveness. What if your board did a book study on that? I know I mentioned that earlier, but I bring it to this piece of it because part of it what you're doing is you're building capacity among the current board, but then you're building capacity among whoever else happens to hear, which might include staff members who are what's here. So more people understand the work of a board. One of the travesties really in school governance is that people working in the system rarely understand school governance and no offense to anyone in this meeting right now, but a lot of folks come from a background in education. Nationally 25% of people on school boards used to be an educator in some form or another. And we imagine that we know all about school governance because we've been in schools for 30 years, but governance is a whole other animal. It's not it's not teaching kids. It's not making things per se with our hands and doing things like that. It's a different it's a different role. So all you can do in the system, anything you can do in the system to build understanding of what good governance looks like, it just kind of expands capacity for all. And I think it addresses, Sarah, what you were getting at, you know, there with turnover, you always got some leaving, you obviously got some coming, you don't necessarily know who they are. But being and they emphasize that in Chapter 4 being very intentional about onboarding new members, assigning a mentor, making sure everyone has someone that they know who they can go to for some support. Do this on your mentor is a good idea to do board members. That's not something we've practiced in it. It sounds like a good idea. Yeah, you would think at each board, the chair could take that responsibility of assigning a veteran member, pairing them up. And I think a lot of board members, when they first start out figuring out what their worth and what their value is on the board, like I'm not making any difference. And then I think when you sign up to be on the board, you think, oh, kind of change and make all these changes. It's going to be great. And then you realize it really doesn't work that way. But that doesn't mean you're not valuable. And doing things is just not maybe exactly what we thought it would be. So maybe a mentor could help. Yes, show that and show how you can make a difference. Because I think, you know, if we're on a board for five to seven years, we're going to go through a period where we're like, man, am I making any difference, right? So then connecting those dots for people, here's how you make a difference. That's a similar story to what you're talking about. I had a child in elementary school, a child in middle school and one in high school, I got on a school board and I thought I was going to somehow make a difference for them. And we're talking about, you know, easements into perpetuity that we're assigning to, you know, fiber lines or whatever it was. And it's like, wait a minute, that's not more pencils for my son in second grade or third grade, you know, that disconnect. And I think, again, whether people come from PTA type involvement or even working in education, being on a school board is not what we thought it was. And so it can be frustrating. Am I making any difference? But the research is really conclusive that if, you know, if boards will focus, and they'll have the conversations about vision, have the conversations about why, and they'll lead through goals, and then monitoring goals. That's why I was excited when I saw the reports that you used. Very, very impressive the amount of information is there. The question always becomes, it can be a lot of information, but is it the right information the board needs to be able to say, are we making progress? Are we a to borrow adequate progress? But, you know, are we making progress on our goals that we have agreed to as a system? These are what's important. And then in meeting management, are our meetings tied to our goals? If you were to do an autopsy of your agendas over the last year or two, and sort of go through and do a qualitative analysis of, okay, what were we talking about? Like, does that match up with what you said were your priorities that you were going to be talking about? Or what the board has said is important? So does that line up? As you think about meeting management, I know we had a lot in the last couple hours on comments from the public and so forth and how do you manage that? I do want to go ahead and underscore, we don't need to see my slides at all. They're not worth anything. But that idea that, you know, just we're, these are public meetings, but they're not a meeting of the public. And the board can deteriorate really quickly. I told this story about somebody in the audience making a motion to buy a certain curriculum and then all to find out later that that was the superintendent's wife. And I mean, that one screams conflict of interest. I know she worked in education somewhere or something, but she from the audience raised her hand and made a motion. And I know that that happens in school districts all across the country, so that can't happen though. I mean, you know, it's just it just reeks with possible conflicts of interest. If somebody in the audience is seconding something or if the board is doing something simply persuaded by an audience member, right? There's just too much room for beyond gray. So what we've done, what we've been doing is that we do our public comments. And then if it's something where we know we have a lot of public commenting that night, like our anti-racism policy when we worked on that, we had two and a half hours of simple night that was public comment and we gave everybody a minute each. Were you really seeking input or were you just giving the allowance for public comment? Both. I think we were letting people give their opinion and talk about and then we would go back because it was one of the still inconvenient. I had a hard time hearing you, Kathy, sorry. I said our public comment when like anti-racism policy, for instance, he asked if we were seeking input or what was ahead of you. We're just having comment. We really didn't engage in conversation. We just let people make their comments and then we took notes and then talked about it as a board after. But we really limited the conversation because it can take over your but much better. Well, and when you're doing something that's that kind of magnitude or visibility, I mean, it is wise to have a very dedicated time that's more time than usual, right? So people can be involved. That was one of the things I underscored in the webinar earlier that the research shows that if a board is involving their community in governance level conversations, they're more likely to be leading a district that's improving in student learning and closing gaps, which is this elusive thing we've been talking about for at least three decades, maybe more about achievement gaps, achievement gaps, but they're no better than what they were 30 years ago. And so we have to figure out how to quit talking about achievement gaps and do something different, right? And I do think I was surprised to find a strong statistical evidence in the last state where I work between boards that are saying they're engaging and involving their community in governance work, and they're actually governing a system that's improving in achievement and closing gaps. That's been a hard one to show. But the I think too, on my back, this is more just, you know, researcher cap. I think it's about the culture. Do people feel included? And what is the board doing to make people feel welcome? And we want to hear from them. And I know I mentioned earlier how dissatisfying it is to go give your comments to anyone. I mean, the legislature, it's, you know, worse, right? Where you're there, you're given, you're given your comments and you thought they wanted your input, maybe then somebody said they wanted your input, but they'd say thank you for your input, and that's the end of it. How does the board follow up? So it's not just the try, thank you for your input, but is there a letter and email from board chairs or the superintendent that says, you know, we appreciate your comment at the board meeting? Is there a way to follow up? And then I don't know, you know, if you have 200 people making public comment, that's maybe too much coffee or too much something. Like how do you, how do you get one-on-one with those folks or leaders from those groups? You might think about. We literally, we usually do not have a comment like that. Yeah, that was enough. No. Like to me, I think we have one or two people on the public and that's pretty much what we get for public interviews. So you, at least here in an effort. What do you do in your annual retreat in July when people want to be on vacation? What do you, what do you do during that time? It varies for us. We do, we did some team building at one point. We did, we had some issues on the board. So we worked through some of the conflict issues we had. We also had a big vote coming and we wanted to make sure that we prepared for it. So we've strategized on that. It really, for me in the three years I've been on the board this time. It's been around really what we needed. So it changes depending upon what you need. But we just did our retreat. And we did a lot of, we went to one of the board members' houses and we had dinner and we just did a lot of brainstorming talking about what next year was going to look like. I mean, next year's a big step for us because we're actually changing the structure of our unified district now. So we did a lot of talk about, we just really just got together and talked and went through and did brainstorming. So we did ours now and I think it feels effective that this time of year is more important than July because we did it in July. Next year is really already started. I think we're not in school but what you're going to do is already started. And I would encourage you to really think multi-year too, right? That when you think about planning, I agree. If you're going to set an agenda for the year, for the next school year, and you do that in July, it's too late. But if you think about, like if the board collectively, they wanted to expand even outdoor education, but in particular like career and technical education, that's not something to start the conversation in July. And it's maybe even too late to start it now for next August, September. It's almost like you need to be thinking about 26, 27. If we were going to all of a sudden start offering a welding certification or something like that, then that may involve not just budget, but it might be personnel, it might be facilities, it could be any number of things as well as grants and engagement opportunities. So thinking about it, you're always, you know, administrators, they know this and the teachers to some extent, oh it's not the same, but you're executing this year, but you've got to be planning for next year, maybe even the following year. So as you think about like strategic, what does it mean? It is farther out and for parent school board members, sometimes not quite so satisfied. Right. Yeah. You had something to say? Yeah, a couple, one observation is that our administrative team is, our strategic plan that you looked at, that expires in 2021. And the leadership of our superintendent as management team, they're going to be weighing in and creating a successor document that will be coming back to the SU board in the districts early in the fall. So we've got that in motion. You've got that sense of strategic built into this system. And I agree it's important and that's moving. Sarah mentioned, you mentioned, Kathy mentioned, several mentioned about the power of retreats. With our agenda is they're packed of we're gathering information, we're assessing information, we're asking some, some questions, trying to get a better fix, but there isn't that much time to do that strategic. That's the power in my mind of retreats. And whether it's a retreat that we do before we go into serious budgeting, because as Jamie has said, the budget is a reflection of our goals, it's a reflection of our strategy, it's a reflection of what we want to do going forward. And so one question is that should we, as an SU or the district boards, spend some focused time either separately from our monthly meetings or as a retreat to focus them. I know under Ethan Bowen's leadership, we had a very good retreat in early in September. And we got acquainted, we did some team building, and then we talked about goals. Where do we want to go as a board? Where do we want to go? And those are the questions that are very powerful. And we need to ask in and listen to each other and then agree and move forward. And we did a number of those steps based on that retreat, which was very, very powerful. So I think we can do both, but it's pretty hard when we're all volunteers and we've got all sorts of things going on to spend the time with strategic thinking. And I think one of the best tools is retreat at the SU level or at the district level. And it sounds like we're doing that in a way. It sounds like we're frustrated because we don't have the time that we'd like to spend to do it as fulfilling as we can. But I happen to believe one reason why this SU is moving, accelerating forward. I mean, we're taking off, we're off the tarmac, we're fine, is that we're doing both, both the day-to-day and the accountability, but we're also doing the dreaming and the vision in the goal setting. If we can keep that, boy, who knows what we can do. Well, and back to Sarah's point earlier with turnover, how do you do it in a sustainable way? So I mean, because part of me says, well, if one retreat is good, wouldn't it be better? But I also am fully aware that everybody's time is tapped and maybe you'd want to do two, maybe you wouldn't, maybe you'd want to do three, maybe you wouldn't. But to Sarah's point, that idea of sustainability, how do you make sure these are in written public loans? That this is kind of like, this is why we do a retreat. We're trying to accomplish team building, socialization, and strategic thinking, whatever it is. These are the two, three things that we do in a retreat. And then as people come and go and they've got other ideas, maybe it fits in, maybe it doesn't. But at least there's something in writing, so it becomes more sustainable. Thank you. I just wanted to put another point into Sarah's position. One of the complex things that we have is each supervisory district has a different election cycle. So we're not all going at the same time. So it's a constant flow of new folks. So you don't have any group dynamics that you can build, unfortunately. Can that be changed? That's a town, that's a district decision. District by district. Yeah. Yeah, so well, normally we, there's two towns that do two districts that are made, I'm praying. We're made, F-Buds also made down in this year because we decided to push off with our town. So all of us go and then in the big two that don't go until the end of May, so then June is when we have board members coming on in March. And that's just basically what's on set. It's how it is, but yeah. So could it be changed? I'm not sure. Somebody have to request it. Right. Ethan? Yeah. Hi. Just, we're actually, our side's working on vision goals and well, let's say vision, mission statement and goals right now. With the specific purpose that are, that exactly this, when we're gone, there is something there that's a usable document that it literally tells, it's a statement of how we make decisions or why we make decisions and we're going to present it at our informational meeting next week. I'm not sure it's perfect yet, but it's a, certainly it's a first stab at having that context that then future boards or future members as they come on, they can look at that and it's like, oh, okay. That's a very clear statement of how we want to run this, this and maybe we want to tweak this. So that's something we're working on. I think, I feel positive about that. So it's a very valuable exercise to go through and create a strategic plan, but it becomes much more powerful when your board meeting agendas are tied to the plan. So tonight we're talking about goal number two, objective three, whatever your nomenclature is, and this is why we're having this conversation is because it's in the strategic plan. Very importantly related to that is the measurability, right? So it's great to have the statements and people may look at it and say, oh, okay, now I know, but how will you measure success? That that's a critical part of the conversation. Not just that we have a nice mission fishing and goals and we all agree to these goals, but we agree to how we're measuring success on these goals. Then you get powerful, that alignment and measurement. I've thought a lot the last several years, you know, that good governance could be organized into the acronym fast or faster, that it's focused, it's aligned, that it's stretching. So we're not simply settling for status quo and then that it's tracking. I actually had read in a book called measure what matters and they had it as facts. And I thought not only was fats a bad word, but it was not even in the right order. It's got to be focus aligned stretch and then track, right? But then realized at some point, oh, there needs to be a continuous improvement process here. So if we evaluate and revise or we make it faster, then we've got something to kind of hang on to. Not everything about good governance falls into that schema, but probably many of the most important things do. We know what we're focused on. We've got clear priorities. We've identified goals. We're aligning the work and the reporting of the board and the system based on those goals. They're stretch goals because as with any goal, if we could easily attain it, what would be the point? But it's the tracking progress. You know, it's whatever life goal somebody wants to have, if it's fitness, if it's financial, if it's whatever, it's really not until you're measuring on a regular basis. Am I making progress that you start to make progress? Somebody can say they're going to go somewhere and do something, but then when they start checking how close they're getting, they're much more likely to get there. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Losing weight. If you set a goal and then you track your progress, you still don't lose. No, not so much. Doctors on the call? I'm sorry? I was asking if there were any doctors on the call. All right, guys. Anything else, meeting management, meeting protocols, I could help you with. I mean, I have these slides and I think nearly all of them are repetitive of what I had before. Just kind of underscore this practice that you have in place of reporting out on the goals in your meetings that's extremely healthy. Again, being mindful of what's on your agenda, I shared with the folks in the webinar earlier kind of a rubric for assessing your board and chairs will get that by email. I could email it tomorrow to Jamie or something. And then you might look at that. It's five correlates of functional teams, trust, communication, commitment, accountability, and results. And then a look at where are we at as a team on this continuum could be helpful. Go ahead, Eric. First step, Will. Yeah, sorry. Borrowing my wife's computer tonight. Dave, Phil, thanks. I wasn't here earlier. So just wondering if we might be able to get those slides or something so we can just take a look and maybe I'm sure Don can fill us in at the next meeting. But I'm certainly interested and we're trying to look at developing kind of a written protocol, you know, proceed protocols for our board. I'm also interested to see if I know I think Jamie had shared a couple of other board documents like that or other boards developing like a formal protocol or is it more just kind of like informal? Yeah, no, they're formal written documents and we can supply you some templates or something Jamie probably already has. There's Stacy seconding that request. Yeah, I think it's important, you know, the first thing I did as a board chair was call a workshop for us to review a draft board operating protocol. And it seemed critical to me that we have a written document. This is how we do things. That board still has an almost identical operating protocol 17, 18 years later. So it's kind of stood the test of time. The protocol though, like your vision statement, it has to be reviewed every year. And new members need to be able to assimilate to it, put their finger on it. I've seen practices, I'll share a couple I've seen where people boards actually make it part of their policy. So that it's got the weight of district policy. And I've seen it also where boards will revisit and have folks sign it every year. Now every now and then you can get a roamed member and that's probably too harsh of a word. A person can for whatever reason not agree to sign it. There's nothing you can do about that. But it's a pretty cool thing if you've got a short written document that says this is how we're going to conduct our business and everybody's signed off on it on an annual basis. Again, if you don't revisit those things every year, they're not only stale, they're lost. They just don't like a strategic plan on a shelf. They don't help just because you wrote the document. They help because you actually refer back to it. Okay. Has anybody got anything else for Paul? Thank you for coming in for your guidance and your experience. This is a request to bring back to your organization. What we do, I don't know any other maybe in the city where you've got major crime and everything else, but I don't know what's more important than public education. And that said, every supervisory union and we're doing very well, but we need to do better and we need to figure out how to do better and work together better. And so that really speaks to the importance and I think the stretch of your organization. And one of the good signs is you're here. I was just taken by that. I just very, very, very, very pleased by that. So with your talent, everything else, how can you effectively communicate skills, ideas, concepts to the constituency? We're in a constituency here in SU and on the screen and we've got all our district chairs here. So we don't have to reinvent the wheel, but we can understand not only what, but the why and then the how as you mentioned. And I just, I think we all have a responsibility, but I want to just, Vermont School Board Association, I think can and should do better. And that's not a complaint. I'm just saying we need you. Well, and we have these piles of resources. So how do we get the most important ones like the just in time idea, right? How do you get it when you actually need it? Here are these three tips. And anyway, I've only been here a few weeks, we've talked about those kinds of things and adding something to newsletters or having distinct documents that, you know, here's the five ways to do this or the three, talk three things to know about that, responding to the media, dealing with equity or equity concerns or complaints or, you know, how do you bulletize that and then maybe have some substance underneath it. So the bullets are fresh in your mind when you need them, but you've got a resource to refer back to. Yeah, I was just thinking I'm just brainstorming with you and I'm sorry I've taken too much time, but maybe I think every organization needs to set their goals. Yeah. But wouldn't it be great if they shared those goals with your organization and you could look at those goals and say, gee, we could help you here, we could help you there. And so that would strengthen that connection point and because you'd have a clearer idea of what we're working on. And so that's just one suggestion. You do have some best practices happening in your review of data and monitoring that could become part of a repository. This similar, maybe it's my word, you didn't quite say it, but you know, maybe we could warehouse sort of exemplars here's the best practices from this SU, from that district, from this other corner of the state, for people that, in certain categories. It's good to meet many of you virtually. I look forward to meeting in person at some point. And please let me know how I can best be of help to any of you. Thank you for coming. Thank you. I really appreciate it. All right, guys. Yeah. Okay. Well, you all have my report in front of you. So I am happy to take any questions. I think there's not, there's more detailed around things that we've talked about all year in terms of professional learning that we're doing, how we're thinking about our curriculum and for the really tight links we want to see between proficiencies, instruction, formative and summative assessment. And a lot of that's going to guide that work over the summer as we sort of gather data all year and that data looks classroom observation data, that's academic data, that's conversations with teachers and principals and family data. So that's a lot of the work that we are, we're doing. Jamie already talked about the assessment calendar and what you'll see in June. I'll just note right now that we are, we extended the window on our local assessments a little bit heading into June. I think we'll still hopefully wrap them all up before your board meetings, but we're trying to relieve a little bit of the tension valve on both students and teachers as they looked at all the assessments happening in the spring. And so it is certainly something we are going to sort of tighten or better align for next year, but in the immediate term we are just trying to make sure that people are doing the assessments and also still doing instruction in between that. So we have extended that window a little bit. So I'm just giving you all that heads up. I think that's the bulk. I'm happy to talk about anything else that's in there. Oh, this is, I feel like it's maybe been all year, this heavy grant writing season. So we've got the opening of the Consolidated Federal Grants, that's the titles opening up right now as well as continuing to work on different Essar reporting. And so when we're not out in classrooms talking to teachers and principals, doing a lot of grant writing on the set. Questions on that? Take that as a good sign. Oh, sorry, last thing. Sorry, one thing that's not included. I do want to hit, we have one new hire, which is a new one planet director. And so a very hard role to fill after having Kerry, I think in the role for 16 years, it's something that runs very smoothly. And we feel really confident that our incoming director, who is a current classroom educator, but also has a lot of experience in kind of managing nonprofits and are in working in different nonprofits. And that sort of thing will do a great job in coming into that role. And that's Hailey Zuride. Yeah, so I had mentioned a couple months ago that Kerry was looking to go. And so Kerry, I think it was two meetings ago, I had said was considering moving on. She was pursuing her credentials to be an investment advisor, an upstart company in Burlington. And she did pass her test to do that. So she's doing complete career change. She is interested in possibly, I don't think she might be sharing this, in serving on the board at Rochester Stockbridge in the future. That's something that she has aspirations to do, which would be great. Kerry is committed to staying with us through the end of May and also continuing to do some work as we onboard our new director. And we do have an assistant director, of course, which is part-time Wendy, who plans to stay on. But Kerry's been here a long, long time. As I had said a couple months ago, she would laugh probably if she was here. I would actually hope that she didn't pass her test because I'm really miss working with her. Kerry and I actually worked together when she first started. I did summer programming in one planet. Back right, we were both kind of were doing after school stuff together at the same time in the old Orange Windsor SU. And so yeah, I'm going to miss seeing Kerry in the office and all the really good work she did. Summer, she's very detail oriented. Summer is well planned. It's going to carry off well. But we're certainly going to, I'm going to really greatly miss her. As a colleague, although she did, like I said, commit that she would stay on board to support us when we needed it. And I do think we'll be tapping into her throughout the upcoming year. And the grants not due for two years, which is good news. The 21st century grant is not due for two more years. Any other questions on that guys? So is that the one planet coordinators of full time position? Is that right? Yeah, you're around. Yeah. Okay. So we're losing a teacher. Sharon's going to lose a teacher. Yeah. She's going to resign her position. Yeah, with Sharon. Okay. She's great. My daughter's in her class right now. So she'll be great as that as that position as well. But thanks for that loser as a teacher. Yeah. One of the things that I was excited about, though, is this idea of how do we foster leadership from within the organization? I was excited to see one of our teachers look to step in into a leadership position. That's one of the things I think good organizations do is that we do try to cultivate that idea of growing our own. And I think that we've got some folks in our teaching ranks who are thirsty for that. And, you know, one of the things we're looking at is how do we cultivate that as teacher leaders, right? You know, I feel really good that our admin team is going to be is in a really solid place. And I'm not expecting really any turnover here for the next couple of years. But how do we look to give folks who are in organizations who want to pursue leadership opportunities through, you know, teacher leaders, so that we're not losing them. But we're really trying to build a bench. And so I'm feeling like we're, we're starting to get to a place where we can start to do some of that. All right. You also have my report. A lot of the work is the same as when I reported out last month just because it's ongoing and takes a lot of time. It's definitely our busy season right now as we're trying to wrap up this school year and also plan for extended school year services, ESY, and plan for the start of next year. So that's a lot of the work that we're doing. So our professional development is still continuing. Even our professional development in the summer is currently planned. ESY services were again working with Kerry and one planet to kind of align and that's looking really good. And then hiring is like, is busy, but it's a wonderful busy, especially after the last couple of years. Currently, I had this hiring season. I started with nine special educator openings that were just kind of carried over from last year's hiring season. So far, I have filled seven out of the nine. So we have two new hires to let you all know about. Matthew Velke will be coming to be a special educator at South Royalton Elementary in the fall. He comes originally from Massachusetts. He spent a year here in Vermont. So it's great to have him on board. And then also, I have Dana Deckard who will be coming on board. And she will be a special educator for Stockbridge Rochester. She will all should be doing that work will be some of her full-time position. Another section of her full-time position will be like a working with us at the SU and admin level around equity. But she also has background in training with that as well. So she's coming on, kind of helping us out in kind of dual purpose, which is super exciting. She's very passionate about that. A majority of her job is special ed. Yes. So yes, so things are looking great. And also our building principles put in their like bi-weekly newsletters, kind of our other openings that we had available, our para-educator openings, custodians, maintenance, those kind of openings. And I've got a huge boom of people who are inquiring about being para-educators. So it was great that just putting it in like our little parent newsletter has just caused like this nice kind of influx of people. So most of my morning was emailing people back who were emailing to inquires saying they saw it in the newsletter. So I started a bunch of conversations, set up a few interviews already. So that was really exciting to see it just in our newsletter. So things are going really well. And so just super excited about kind of wrapping up the year and also planning for next year. Yeah. Oh, that's great news. Yeah. Anybody got questions for Nat? Can I add something real quick? You just made me think of it. Sorry, I just wanted to add and you asked your questions. I am working to plan to have a booth at the Tumbridge Fair this fall that's dual-purposed. One, to talk about the work we're doing as a school system and to collect feedback on how we're doing and then also to use it as a job recruitment opportunity. And so I'll be talking more to the boards about that as we, as it's, you know, as those dates approach. But it would definitely be nice to have some board presence if board members were interested because, you know, I really would like us to try to have someone, they are visible throughout the entire four days. And it, you know, it does collect a lot of our local community. I think there's folks that could possibly work in our organization who just never thought they had the skill set to do that work. And actually they may be really skilled to be a substitute teacher or a paraprofessional or work in our cafeterias. And so as Annette was talking, I just, I wanted to start to talk about that. So folks, if you're a big fan of the Tumbridge Fair that you might consider being at that too. Nice. All right guys, Sarah. So you all have my report. I'll just give a brief update. We are on target for pre-audit. I'll be uploading all the materials to the auditors at the end of this week. And then they will be doing a pre-audit the week of May night. My world right now. And there's any questions? Well, you got up really easy, like two cents. I have a question. I'm just wondering from other conversations we've had how it's been working with them this year. They have been phenomenal. Anytime I've needed a question answered, Josh is right there for us. So he's been great. Good. A new team of auditors. We really have a great relationship with. Good. That's good to hear. Thanks. Anything else, Tara? Great. Thank you. You're joining us, Winston. Okay. As I bring up my report, I'd like to share that we got positive results from our e-rate filings, USAC, the United Service Access Corporation, whatever the name is, my apologies, confirmed that the things that we had filed for were in the right categories and will be funded. So as we're back to school, lots of assessment happening in our buildings where we now have new and improved Wi-Fi and then to support instruction and assessment at this window and using EssarMoney and then the new website and some herald coverage there at the end. I would also entertain any questions. They see. Hi, Ray. I wanted to know if there were any buildings left without modernized Wi-Fi or... Yeah, right. Bethel and Royalton were not anticipated as part of this. So our speaker before was talking about being strategic and the ability to use EssarMoney to pull ahead these projects that we're going to be a year from now, right? Bethel and Royalton were new three years ago, let's say. And so their cycle would not be for another two years. Got it. Requested money for that as part of Essar. I'm not sure how that will fall. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Policy committee. So we met again since the last full board meeting. Yeah, I don't know if I can hear you, Kathy. So policy committee, I was just trying to remember if we've set our next committee date. Yeah, it's the Monday before the next full board meeting, and we were going to have two policies for review by the full board. So Monday before the next board meeting, full board meeting, at five will be the next policy committee meeting, and give the two policies that we're working on that we'll have to present to the full board that night. Which is social media, just so folks remember, and this revised residency verification for tuition payments. So full board will have a reading on both of those next, this upcoming month, next month. Superintendents evaluation committee. We're working on goals. We need to change the date, send an email out to the group that's on that committee, but we need to change the date. We're looking at doing it at seven o'clock on the 12th, I believe. This one is actually going to be able to work, but I will send an email to the committee to discuss that. Does that mean Thursday's meeting is not happening? Correct. Thank you. Discussion items, proposed changes to meeting calendar reminders and tricks. So I put a draft of what it could possibly look like in August, based on all the conversations we've been having. I think all of our board chairs are on now. So I mean my sense is that it was fairly well received by member districts this concept, acknowledging like it may need to be tweaked and that we acknowledge it's a working plan that it could be tweaked. And so this would just give a little bit of a sense of what it could look like. And so the proposal would be that the district meetings and the SU meetings would all actually go to Tuesday nights so that it's predictable. And it would allow really Monday for folks to get kind of their sea legs under them potentially and get well prepared for meetings. And then what we would allow for, and you can kind of see as a placeholder there, I didn't name them. But like for negotiations, if we have a special meeting or we need a board to take action on something, we have finance committees, we have energy committee, which keeps getting bumped currently right now because we keep having it wind up over top of each other, that those could happen on Thursday nights and we could get like a set rotation down possibly. And so that's sort of what I was showing here is that essentially we'd be out Tuesday, Thursdays because I think we would have committees most Thursdays. And but that would get us to about an average of two meetings per week, which seems really doable compared to what we get sometimes. And the thought process around this was is that one board would actually start at 5.30 and then the other board would start at 6.30 so that the SU office staff would be with a board to do business that needed that attention and that we would build the agenda to align so that the first meeting, the central office staff would be done so that they could then move to the other district meeting would be the idea instead of bringing both districts together and then breaking off again. And so I don't know how folks feel about that, but I do think it may allow for a little more focused discussion. I don't mind you know speaking to my report twice because I think sometimes the report has a little different flavor at times based on the work of a certain district. And so that's that's sort of the proposal there. We have not set yet who would go early and who would go later. That's still information we need to discuss. Based on initial conversations, that's how I paired up boards for now and geographically around Jihad, Arsut, Effbud, Straford, Rudge, Sharon, and the policy would act committee I think would actually go at 5 and the full board would start at 6. It says 5.30, but yeah yeah and you know part of my thought with it says committee slash specials is if we did have two things happening on a Thursday there may be the opportunity to go at 5.30 and 6.30 or 5.30 and 7 based on business. Again I think that we may be more productive and able to do that based on the fact that we're just out the two nights a week versus you know sometimes four. Don had a question. Idea is the thought process still full boards every other month or are we going to do those monthly now? You know I think we should talk about that Don. I think we begin continuing to warn full boards because the board development series we've been doing and then budgeting but I think it's worthwhile for the board to talk about because I also feel like with this technology we've been getting better attendance. You know it seems so I do think that that is a really worthwhile conversation for the full board when we re-organized you to talk about how do we want to go about that process because you're right we really have been doing full boards monthly at this point. The executive board really served a purpose more when we were having such a hard time getting forums now that we haven't been in the struggle with that. Yeah? With the Tuesday meetings that were you know like Stratford and Effbud would they be hybrid meetings like they are now? Yeah I mean unless the board said otherwise I think for attendance purposes it's worked well. I also think for community my thought process is like if that if that meeting location was worn an example in Chelsea's era I I really think having a hybrid option for someone from Stratford to be able to attend the meeting still right not not feel like that's although Chelsea and Stratford are Chelsea temperature Stratford I don't know if it's it for some people Stratford Chelsea is probably closer than Stratford so it might not been a great example but I think you get what I'm trying to say yeah I think that's important for both both districts to have that option. Ethan? Just to first I really like this I certainly worth a try. You know it may there may be traffic jams especially on Thursday night possibly but I think the idea of organizing it like this just makes a lot of sense and I certainly want to try it. I'm just wondering if we run into any legalities of warning we'd have to warn two separate physical locations because two separate boards are meeting on that night is that correct? We would still want the same physical location we would just designate where that each board's actually meeting. Okay so okay so it's yeah so it would still be like let's say Rochester Rochester and Hancock or something like that as the as the spot even though there's it's not really one meeting it is two meetings yeah it would be two two agendas yeah okay thank you. Will? Yeah just I was just thinking about if you're going to do two hybrid meetings does that mean you're going to have to have two setups probably because we're not going to necessarily end yeah okay so we have the capacity to do that. Yep we do it now in negotiations. Cool. All right guys any other questions around the calendar? I didn't put it for any type of action I just was letting you discuss. That was my question. Wait you said what's the next step? Well I actually think in the board can correct me if I'm wrong I actually think what we need to do is bring this back to all your local districts because you set your you've designated your meeting times and locations so if folks right now are feeling good about this what I would actually do is we would bring it back to districts who have already set their meeting locations um and have them look to change that starting in August by emotion and then when you re-order those districts would um you know set this type of schedule now that you have it. Would that my thought process even? Well would it be worth um at least the board chairs of the two groups that are meeting talking together because you know we we may say hey 530 works for us and they may say 530 works for them but if we actually communicate it might actually save some negotiation time as far as who goes. That sounds like a good idea. Yes because that's the one thing I don't know yet of who was going to go first and who was okay with going later. I know example um the one that I do know is that Rudd was advocating to go later and Sharon was okay to go at 530 so that one I feel like and we've got um the other ones I you know F Bud Straford I think we need to talk and Jihad Arsut needs to talk. So Stacey if you and I chat at least a little bit maybe before our meeting. Let's talk. Yeah I've got my number. Okay I can get together. Yeah let's figure it out. Thank you. All right um so the next thing will be worth to go to um executive session. Yeah I think we should. So we're gonna go um I need a motion to go to executive session for labor relations. So moved. Second. Fighting the superintendent. Okay go Sarah. Next motion to come out of executive session. Second. All right so moved. We already talked about new hires. Yep we don't have any resignations. Our next meeting is Monday May 23rd at 6 p.m. and I'll take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Third. Thank you everybody. Good night everyone. Good night.