 prior to the next meeting. I imagine the parking lot's gonna be pretty full. First I wanna say thank you for coming back and doing this with me a second time. I recognize that that's rather inconvenient. I think the idea was I needed to put a bit more detail and the percentages and that kind of data right into the reports. So the essence of what I said last time is still very much the same. But the reality is now I've got the data in there in the document for you to produce and to see it. Did you all get this document via email? Yeah, yes. Okay, and if you need a copy, I actually could. And this is just an abbreviated version, by the way. So there's a lot more data that's actually not included here. But I thought maybe we could just kind of talk about some of the changes perhaps from last time. And I know Nathan had wanted me to address the staffing recruitment and retention piece. And I think that I would be happy to share that this time. But essentially I think what we got out of the last one is that the big question is, is the center offering programs in which students are choosing to enroll? And our answer is yes, that we offer 12 programs and if you look at our enrollments it has increased from 105 students in the fall of 2020 to 170 students in the fall of 2022. This can be attributed to direct communication and marketing that we've been doing over the last two years. All of our programs have fairly full capacity but I wanna just kinda outline more specifically for you that was not in the last report. Automotive, healthcare, electrical technology, criminal justice and cybersecurity and culinary arts and hospitality were the programs that had a pretty extensive wait list and that we could absolutely have more kids if we could have accepted them. So in those areas there's definitely opportunity to expand both space and professional staff but at this time that's not feasible. Construction trades, diesel, dental, education, digital film and diversified ag and advanced manufacturing are also showing a lot of growth. So although they are not necessarily, they may be at capacity but they haven't had extensive wait lists so they're right where we want them to be shows the need is met. And then there are two programs, there's one area that is not currently being met and I think we talked about this last time and that is an HVAC performing program and at this time there's just not space for that but I will talk about that again in a minute as we talk about facilities. So all of the programs are supported within our region and our local labor market data. There are only two programs that the state identified that were on the maybe list and that was culinary arts and hospitality and digital film. And through the process of the data we collected and the CLNA it's clear that we can confidently say that it's important for our local economy to maintain culinary and hospitality. There was an incredible amount of job opportunity out there right now. And then it is also our belief that given the understanding of technology and the ability to work remotely that we can support our digital film students with a digital economy that hopefully Central Vermont will be growing. So that was one thing that we didn't talk about last time. We have only two programs that have fairly low enrollment right now and those are education services and dental assisting. So they're somewhat an anomaly in our school at this point. Dental is obviously a fairly new program and its growth since this data is great. I think we have six in there now, no five in there, six in there now. So that grew from four last year and education grew from four last year to eight I think in there this year. So those programs are growing. I think the curriculum for education is changing in such a way that it's gonna be more broad and less focused on early childhood and early elementary and will be a little bit more broad including or being inclusive of the higher grades. So kids that maybe wanna be a high school art teacher like myself might see themselves in that program. So it's changing how we sell the program. I think that's gonna be important as we move into the new curriculum. I think the rest, we talked a bit last time. I just wanna kind of reiterate this in terms of size, scope and quality that every program should offer either an industry recognized credential or a dual enrollment opportunity. And we had three programs that did not have either. Advanced Manufacturing, Culinary Arts and Criminal Justice and Cyber Security. Of these advanced manufacturing this year we'll be working on collaboration with UTC and also getting certification for SolidWorks and Fusion 360 for the kiddos. That's under the direction of a new instructor. Criminal Justice and Cyber Security is kind of in a weird spot because the state hasn't recognized an industry credential for them. So we're waiting to kind of see what they do but in the meantime our instructor is working with colleagues around the state to try to identify that. So he's right there in the thick of it. And then Culinary Arts, the reason we didn't have a tier two is I think just confusion of what the tier one and tier two were. We always had offered Serve Safe but Serve Safe has multiple different certifications and the food handler one which we always offered is now considered a tier one and we need to move into the manager one in order for it to be considered a tier two. We have two programs that offer both tier two IRCs and college credit and those are education services and health careers. Currently all of our programs are working on the alignment to our agency of education proficiencies which I think I might have also mentioned last time. We're in the process of doing our scope and sequence which is helping us with that work. It's an expectation of this Perkins Fund and the AOE for that to happen and that work is underway. So that's an area that needs improvement but we've already started the work. Five of our 12 programs did not participate in CTSOs which is student organizations that are for leadership. And I think part of that number is skewed because of COVID. A lot of the student leadership organizations were either digital conferences and I think at that point kids had just had about enough of talking to people online. So I don't think they were all that interested in those opportunities. Now that we're going back to live conferences I think we'll see some growth in that. So I think one of the things to just point out and I sort of hinted at it earlier is that in order to improve program size for some of these programs that are with weightless we would need to think about additional infrastructure. Ideally that could be a new building but it also could be an addition. And I'll note later actually I'll just say it now. There is one area of the school that I believe belongs to the tech center that has been utilized by RU for many, many years back to when I was there. And I don't know if it's known but I think the PVL lab is actually technically part of the tech center when they built the buildings that stretch kind of connecting the two. There is a process that we could go through to acquire that space back. I'm not sure if that's a good solution just kind of depends where we end up with our building facilities review that we're gonna be going through and see where we are. But that's just something to make note of that that space is potentially available if we wanted to go through the process which does require a pretty extensive process through the AOE. Yes. Are you thinking you'd bring in a new program like slumming or would you expand on an already growing class? I think where we could really use space is to increase our academics. So I could see that space being a really lovely like two classrooms for academics with the idea that potentially we might be able to open up something down on the other end if we did that which could give us the room we need for HVAC and plumbing. But again, you know, we're just kind of on a holding pattern until we know where our building is at. All right. So it might be helpful just to kind of hear what some of the tier two credentials are that programs are earning. Six of our 11 programs earned tier two credentials and that was Automotive Technology with ASC and Vermont State Inspection Certifications, Construction Trades and Management which they earned the NCCER Core and Carpentry One, Diesel Technology which also passed the ASC testing, Diversified Ag which has the game of logging, Tractor Safety, Tree Climbing for Arborists, Electrical which they complete the Level One Apprenticeship Exam and Health Careers where they earn their LNA and actually Health Careers this year is adding a, what is the pathway? Medical Assisting Pathways so that kiddos will have a choice depending kind of on their interest area because a lot of the content is very similar. All right. Some of the, we talked about this last time and I don't think I need to really go into it. There are some barriers in programs being able to offer dual enrollment. One of the barriers is just academic readiness. We need to have students demonstrating that they can handle that academic lift. We also are having some challenges getting staff approved for fast forward because it typically requires a college degree and many of our industry folks may not have that. You know, does that mean that there are kids that can't earn college credit? No, I think we have to just think a little bit more creatively in talking with, for example, our Health Careers teacher today, it became apparent that there's a class that education, dental assisting and Health Careers all take for dual enrollment. So why not combine courses if not everybody's able to do that? To teach that course. So that just makes sense to collaborate across our programs in certain situations. And we can also develop college credit opportunities through our work-based learning program, which is an area that I have not seen in my time since I've been there, so I think that'd be great. Right, and just so you know, there are handy dandy little charts that in both the size, scope and quality section and the program of study, if you really just wanna sit there and kinda look at it in a comparison way, it makes it visually understandable which programs have some areas to work on and where we as a center have areas to work on. All of our programs, well, like I said earlier, 10 of our 12 programs actually meet our labor market requirements and then the two that were made these, we determined through the labor market analysis that they were needed in our region. And I don't think there's anything more, I really need to say on that, there's a lot of information within the document that you're welcome to peruse and ask questions if you have them. Any of that? No, that I don't remember making last time is that they ask the question which of our graduates are thriving in industry or in the labor market and why? And it seems like anecdotally, it appears that students that participated in CTSOs or completed a work-based learning placement or obtained one or more industry credentials or took college credit while with us seemed to move more confidently into their post-secondary plans. So it's hard to substantiate that with data but I think if you were to ask graduates a few years down the road, we would have that information to see what actually helped them to succeed in their post-secondary plans. And we do have a 96% placement rating just, which I think is really positive. That's a pretty high number. I really don't wanna go through all of the accountability data. I think it's there for you in the summary. I think if you wanna summarize in a very quick way, what are some areas that we need to work on? Because we are non-proficient in reading and language arts, we are at a 22.55% proficiency rate where the average for the state is 36.58. So that's clear that we need to do some interventions there. Similarly, if you look at our proficiency in math, we are at a 28.15% proficiency rate where the state is at 40.02. So significant discrepancy there. I do think some of this is related to COVID and the sort of lack of consistency. I'm hoping that it's a bubble that we'll work through but I think in the meantime, we've got some work to do. Similarly in science, although the data that we have did not represent everybody. And I'm not sure why that was, if it was a choice to take that year or not, or if our schools just didn't give us the data. But we had a 10.26% proficiency rate in science and the state average is 23.97. So clearly, academics are an area of concern for us and mentioned last time we have two epidemic teachers, one math, one English slash humanities, and they see all of our students. So that is 155, I think we're at at this point. It's a lot of kids for one teacher. Yeah, but that in perspective, English teachers you don't ever want to see a little bit more than 80 in other disciplines you don't ever want to see the more, yeah. Is it like that statewide or? No, I think you'll see that the other full day centers are in areas where they just, I'm not sure how the Perkins funding is allocated. I know there's a formula and it's based a lot on income sensitivity I think, I believe, and then population. So when you look at like a staffer in Rutland, I mean their Perkins grant is about $325,000, which would be amazing if we could ever get that. So it's hard because they have the numbers to support a regular budget, but they still get one funding because of the formula and the way it's set. We don't have the budget to support those positions unless we raise tuition. And I think that's something that we have to talk about at some point. So, any other questions on that? Is our tuition substantially lower than other centers? We're kind of in the middle. It's complicated. Our tuition is actually probably about average, but we're a full day program where most of the others are half. So they're getting more for the bottom. Right. Well actually though if they're a half day center they cut that tuition in half. Do they? Yeah. Yeah, because I had that conversation with Jason way back where I'm sitting. Well at least that's how it wasn't hard for it anyways. So it would be one student counts as half a FTE. Gotcha. If that makes sense. That actually, yeah, that makes sense. Yep. To bring up the kind of thinking outside the box is the high school at max capacity or English and math kid ratio to teacher? Their data is, they're probably sitting around 16 to 19 kids per class. That is unusually low in my experience but it is not inappropriate for what we have for students and what we're working on for trying to accomplish. So it's, they're about where they should be. The academic overflow of students that come from Randall to be taught over there to offset some of the. Yeah, they do and then what ends up happening is because we are not the same, we're like different cost centers, we charge them tuition for the students that come over. So if you look at that it might be cost effective depending upon how many kids that aren't sent over but if it requires us to purchase a whole new teacher then it's not gonna be. So yeah, there is a little leeway. The biggest problem that Felicia can probably talk about more openly than I can is that we have to change the master schedule of the high school to meet the needs because they've got their time in their RTCC program to do the work over there and it would be nice if we got to do this, let's make sure they all have it in the morning and let's make sure they all have it in the afternoon. Right, so we can have lots of disruptive. And that's back in our day kids that's where we got our academics from RTCC was to go over to RU and it was a, and even up until this year it was a constant pull out even in our school having two instructors. So this year one of the things that we've done to hopefully help with the academic discrepancy on proficiency but also to streamline our schedule was every kid takes the integrated math and every kid takes the integrated English which is related to their program about meeting those basic proficiencies and they're also through those two classes being engaged in the work piece curriculum which can be diagnostic, they'll take like a test and they can understand what areas they need to do more work and that helps the teacher understand what areas they need to focus on with individual students. So I think it's a more solid plan because it's not so all over the place. You're gonna, she's gonna have more resources in another year or two because the enrollments are up. When the enrollments are up, it's a economy of scale, you get more students, you get more money but the problem is is that the way the formula works from the state is that it's based on a six semester average, a three year average. So she's dealing with 160 some odd kids this year but she's only getting funding, I did the calculations for the budget last year, she's only getting funding for 124 because that's a caught up gap. And so she's in a tough spot trying to serve all those kids with a lot of that funding. And next year they'll come up a little bit more and by year three, if she stays right in the same number she's got, it'll catch up. And then either she keeps tuition the same and uses the extra resources to buy more staff or uses some of the money. Which is more likely. We just gotta get there. We just gotta get there. Yeah, it's a waiting time. And the other piece of it too is even, as we work our tails off to get to that magic number there's also discussion about changing the funding process for tech in at the state level. So who knows, one way or another I'm hopeful something will change. The big question is, is the state new and study committee yet? Because you know they won't make a decision until they've done their study. Yes, I think they finally sourced someone to do their study. It's probably about a year away now. Yeah. To do, is there anything specifically. Just a note that I think is important. Our economically disadvantaged students are at or above the average performance of our center in almost all accountability measures. So I think it's one of the Perkins things they want us to really look at is, disaggregated data and to see where we might have areas that are weak. But our four and six year graduation rates for our special populations are in line with the average for RTCC. So really, I think it's as a center, our need for academic proficiency is there. Right, I think what I'd like to move into next, let's see if it's the right section. I know Nathan, you wanted to talk a bit about faculty and staff. So I added a substantial amount to this section because at this point, RTCC has more than tripled the level of staff turnover than any other CTE center in the state. And that's not, I mean, it's a positive and it's not a positive. I think that it's brought new life to our programs and our school. But at the same time, it's a lot of inexperience that we're kind of learning and doing this together as a team. And licensure. And licensure, yes. So just to kind of give you though an idea because I think sometimes people say, wow, like, what's going wrong there? I wanna just outline why people got done. We had five folks retire. We had two that did not sign a contract by the deadline. We had three that moved to other vacancies within our own school. And we had two that moved into vacancies within the district. We had one that went to a higher paying tech center and we had one that got a job closer to home. So it's important, I think, to hear that so that it's, you know, the context is important. And I know you guys can read, but I wanna read this part too, because I think for me, it's personally important. I was hired after a director that the staff really loved decided to go to Burlington. And in that time, he didn't give the staff a whole lot of notice. They were remote. I don't feel like they thought, they got to say their goodbyes. And it was really kind of hard for them. I think they were hurting. And then the changes that I had to make in order to be COVID compliant meant like hybrid learning, modality, keeping groups of students self-contained, losing lunchtime, eating outside, electronic forms that they weren't used to and they weren't very technologically savvy. And then electronic meetings and communication systems. And so this was like challenging to implement those changes and the staff had kind of been used to doing it their way. So it was hard and created a little bit of challenge. In the fall of 2020, that was the lowest enrollment that RTC had had that I could see for quite some time. And a lot of this was due to COVID and the inability for RTC to recruit in that spring. And decision around the recruitment cycles and program closures were made by me to ensure that programs were of adequate size, scope and quality and had the necessary enrollments to be financially feasible prior to contracts being issued. There had been in the past couple of years two staff members who were issued contracts with zero students because the enrollment process had not concluded by the time contracts were issued. So this necessitated a change in our recruitment timeline, which again is another change that everybody had to adapt to. So we did have some staff members who did resign for various reasons and you can read that. And then we had one member take a leave of absence, which was well-deserved questions on any of that. There's not so much for why they chose to retire or move on. Just more morale. I mean, I know we have a lot of new teachers and educators. There's a lot going on in this town and in this district and you can definitely tell after last night, especially here for some of the students, there's a lot of attention there and I just wanna make sure that the staff know that we hear them and we understand but also that we want this to make an enjoyable experience for them as well. This is their career, they're teaching, right? And if they're happy and they're excited to teach then that energy passes on to the kids, hopefully, right? And then creates a positive environment in order for them to be in the workforce, right? I think we've all had jobs that have really had that morale and it's been really tough to work and I just can't imagine them learning, right? So just more of a morale and do they feel like they're backed up enough or do they have the resources available to become better teachers and that sort of thing? Yeah, so actually, that's gonna kind of lead into the next section too. So this is actually the perfect segue. This is the most positive beginning to a year that we've had since I've been here and I think part of that is due to the fact that it feels more normal, like we've started school in a normal way, like we used to and I think part of that is the energy and excitement of our new staff. So it's been really positive. And I think one of the things I note in here is that although we've had a lot of staff turnover, like we're looking at how do we maintain this staff? How do we retain them? And I think one is making the school great. So we're working on PD together. Currently we're working on our scope and sequence. We've also changed the leadership team so that it has more transparency and more participation so that they feel like their voice is part of the decision-making process. We've refocused our attention on being student-centered versus adult-centered and a lot of that's through revamping our MTSS system. We've also empowered students to have a voice through our ambassador program. We've been making strides in building the bridges with our local community through finally bringing this board into compliance, which is great. Having all of our partner school districts represented and our industry in the local area is tremendous. And we're working on our program advisory committees to do the same. But we also, one of the things that's helpful for morale, I think that's been big this year is the change of the master schedule. I think staff feel like the pace is better. Like they can actually breathe and have some solid time with their students. So get into something or go do something. Also, just one of the things I'm aware of is that the staff are in the process of negotiating their new contract. And one of the things that they are asking for, which I do support, is that the contract language be changed so that if you have teaching experience, that's on a one-to-one scale. Currently, the way it's written, you would get half of a year's of experience even if you taught before. So that's an area where they're looking at. And I think that will help us with retaining and also recruiting both. Yeah, I think it's, I don't know what age that language is from. Yeah. It is, it is arcane. Okay. So, you know, if I get somebody that comes in with 20 years of experience, it takes, I have to take four of those years away to put them on step two. And then they get one additional step on the salary scale for every two years of service that they do. Yeah. And that does not include. We're competing with other districts that have, you know, they do pretty much the same thing they do for the teachers, it's hard to compete. Yeah. So what's the process of amending that or changing that? It's a negotiations process. Which is this year, this year is a negotiation year. So I don't, I think we're doing a lot of good work. And it's important that we celebrate that even though it sounds really crazy when you think about all the turnover, so. Maybe you find that the new staff that's bringing the energy is also passing on to the students. Are they getting excited? Yeah. Do they feel like they just really want? I feel positive energy throughout the school. I've seen, I've seen more activity, especially with the students doing work outside of the school and out in the mountain. I've never seen four of you in there. That's just a good sign. I'm so excited to be doing things that they haven't done before. Good. That's great. Excellent. So yeah, I think, you know, if we're looking down the road, I think that there's some things that we can do to ensure that our staff don't leave. We'll be getting our CTE school counselor back after her leave of absence. Currently she's like Wonder Woman. I don't know how she does everything she does, but I think we need to look at potentially getting an outreach coordinator so that we can take that off her plate. I was able to add the Dean of Students this year through ESSER funds. I'm hoping in two years that that will roll into an assistant director position that our budget will support that. And then obviously we have the academic needs. And I think probably the most realistic solution with this Perkins Plan is going to be for us to look at hiring a curriculum integrationist or coordinator to help us with our alignment and moving into proficiency-based grading. And then potentially when our budget catches up adding in those additional staff members. Plus if we have building room assignment type stuff to go through, that's going to take a long time. Secure them. So yeah, so we came up with a creative solution because she was doing the work anyways of writing the curriculum for the days that she was not there. So she is full-time or will be. She's in the process of going through that. And she's with our kids on all of her full days, all their full days. And then on the days they have academics, she's writing curriculum and the kids are going to their academics and then we're going to get them out on placement so that they'll get some of the hours that they need. So really creative and good solution for everybody. And she is determined to get us co-toe approved this spring. Great job. Don't change the room. It's in great shape. Yes, it is. It is in great shape and. She has gone through that room and organized it. It's been nice to see hands-on work happening. That was a loading question because I couldn't answer it. I know it was. I didn't bite though. So I guess that's really it unless there's other questions that folks have for me. I don't think we really need to talk about professional development. But if you want to, you can see our professional development plan is in there for this year. You can also see that maybe we need to work a little bit on our recruitment of students in nontraditional programs. And that includes boys into nontraditional programs. We've done a great job with our female middle schoolers and we have not done that with the boys. Would it be helpful to have men in the field that are working to come in and talk? I mean, I know my brother-in-law is a good friend. He's a male nurse. He is in high demand. He can take his pick up a lot or he'd like to work at a whatever hospital in New England. Is that, you know, would that be someone that he'd be like, hey, if you like helping people in. Prior to COVID, they used to do that like a couple times a week. Yep. That was a piece of them. But I think a lot of it. I think that, yeah, we still do, but also what's happened a lot is now it's a virtual, like a virtual meeting. So we used to have people in a ton. But there's always, that's a great opportunity. I would love to do that. We do do that with like, for example, a female electrician we had through Vermont Works for Women. And, you know, she was presenting to all of the kids but it was great because the girls in the class were like, oh, I can see myself now. And that's half of it. Yeah. That's half of it. Well, with that, I know we don't have our chair here but I'd like to see if we have a motion to approve the new and updated CL&A. Awesome. Yeah. Is that correct? Is that correct? Is that correct? Yeah. Yes, I did. Okay. And there's one item on our consent agenda that I just want to, I don't have the document here but there is a form, I think it's 276 that is required, 267 maybe. It's a form that is required for us to pool funds from Perkins and it helps pay for our teacher prep program and our CTSOs. And so I just need board approval to sign a document and move forward with that. So if I had a motion for that, that would be amazing. I think it's form 267. I'll tell you it when we get back to school. I'll tell you it when we get back to school. All the CTSOs pool their money together in the one plot to support this work that's usually through Vermont tax. So all of it, yeah, all the CTSOs. And we actually, they've twisted our arms into actually managing the money for the real issues. Yeah, we should get some benefit for that, I think. Still haven't figured out why I asked, but that's okay. Well, I think what it was, is because we're now housing all of the other money. So Robin is managing every other state account there is that's related to technical education except for maybe the adult Ed. I don't think I have adult Ed yet. So, I have counselors, I have everything else. So since we're advisory, I'll make the motion. All right, thank you. Perfect, thank you. And with that, there's no need for executive sessions, so. I would do, I would call for actual votes though. Oh, sorry. So can I have all those in favor of the two motions on the table? Say hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Thank you. And I think that's what I've got for you. So if anybody has any questions, speak now. Not so much for this session, but I think down the road, we talked about what direction school is gonna go in building new facilities and all that. I'd like to bring up the subject down the road. Is that gonna expand our offerings to other towns besides the current ones that currently use our facilities for the tech school? If we increase our capacity of having students come in, could it reach farther than? That's state determined. That's a state question. We do get on students and other CTOs get on students. I don't mean odd with the students themselves, but if we offer a program that they can't get anywhere else. And they're allowed to come in. So that's why when we looked at programming, like dental assisting is a win for us because we can get kids from Svalding, U32, maybe White River, right? It's a magnet, yeah. So it's important as we look at programming that there's definitely a need and that was one that was definitely there. So, it's a big question though. Are you testing now? Yeah, to that. Say that again. The PCB testing is sometime in October. So, yeah, so the discussion, we had a really good open farm discussion like 30 to 50 people there. And we were talking about, we've got these conditions that are coming together to potentially be able to renovate the building. We've got the legislature looking at funds for building renewal and the PCB testing. And we've got two schools that are old enough that it is problem, right? That won't happen since. So we were scheduled for this month and we just got the piece from the state that they're moving at least to 2025. So I may go ahead and do the testing anyway. Okay. Because again, I would like to try, we've got a lot of pieces that when we, at the regular board meeting when we talk about facilities the next round, there are a lot of repairs and things that need to happen, things that need to be replaced. And the cost of some of those is so high it's like, you know what? If we're hitting these and getting things that are this big three or four times a year, it might be fine. Right. So plus we were the school that was found by the state to be the closest to the end of the useful life. Yeah. Okay. So those will be ongoing discussions. And I know, if all else, the shops in particular in our school need to be gutted and I think we're looking at starting with construction. Sometimes do, hopefully. And, but if we're gonna stay in the building that needs to happen because everything is just out of date and potentially out of OSHA compliance. Without it, I think I'll join you. Okay. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.