 At 5.32, I'm going to call the Berlin School Director's Meeting to order. And I'm going to skip the reception guests and agenda revisions and public comments and correspondence and future meetings because I want to skip right down to 2.1, which is elected chairperson. So are there any nominations for chair of the Berlin School? So somebody has to make a nomination for position. I nominate Vera Frazier, who's the chair. Is there a second? I'll second that. You're going to serve? Yes. Thank you, Vera. I'm assuming there aren't any other nominations. So without seeing none, all those in favor, Vera Frazier serving as chair for the Berlin School Board. Signified by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions. Thank you very much, Vera. I really appreciate your leadership. Thanks. All right. So I guess I'll jump right back up into 1.1 through 1.4. So reception guests, Dave Duncan, workbook, and today, thank you. Agenda review and revision. I don't have any. I have one. OK. Today we received a letter asking for a year of leave absence. So that would be under action agenda, probably 6-5, whether to approve a year leave of absence. And I'm sorry, we just got it today, but we thought it was pertinent to bring it to you. OK. Don't let me forget that. Have my nerve on itself to the side. I've got it down here, and we have the letter right in front of us. OK. All right. Is that it for? That's all for me. Public comments and correspondence. I do have a couple of things from Corinne. One of her questions is, is there a conversation going on with town regarding the school property doing something similar to Calis? And then she also had on here that Athens and Grafton are looking to do something, I'm assuming, where their school building. So that was one piece, and I have to pass it around if people look at it. And that's actually the warning for the Calis School for what they did last night. Yes, but there's some question of what we've got. OK. So to share that piece, the other one was she had a question on policies. So if the merger happened, will all the policies be adopted by the new board, or will the policies that we currently have carry over? The new board will have to adopt policies before July 1. That's on the work to be done. I was assuming that's what was actually in the works. A conversation started two weeks ago in my office between Kristina and I, since we're usually the policy folks, trying to hide everything that's the same first. And most, almost all, the mandatory policies are the same across all the books. I knew the role was to get them as close to being the same as possible. OK. So that's all I have. And future meetings, I'm not sure that we want to set that date yet or talk about it. And so we established the time and date when she said that. Can I see that? Yep. So 2.2, elect a vice chair. Would you want me to nominate someone else? I would nominate Nicole to be the vice chair. Are you willing? Yes. All those in favor of Nicole being the vice chair? Do you say aye? Aye. Aye. Elect a clerk. So the clerk, for the most part, would take minutes if we don't have somebody here to do that. We would typically always have somebody here to do that. And then there's usually a form of this. This is a couple of things that get signed. We're just the clerk signatures in a different place because the clerk's in charge of all paperwork for the school district, so like bonds. And it just means that the clerk is approving that this is an authorized note when we do a take-out and move taxes, which we probably won't be doing with this board. So I don't think there's really much activity to be done by the clerk. And as Vera said, we usually always have petitions with us. Can I make an nomination as the clerk? Yeah, you can. OK, so I'll nominate Julie. I'll keep doing the clerk. OK. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you, Julie. All right, establish the time and date of the regular monthly meeting, which it's typically, so it's actually changed a little bit because we do meetings for the full board sometimes in place of our local meeting here abroad. But I would still suggest to stay on the same schedule of our second Monday of the month at 5.30, here at Rowan, unless they're at U-32 for the full board meetings, of which they do the carousels after U-32. Unless anybody else has, if that doesn't work for people or have a different time date. I will say the Monday's, the second Monday of the month, I think, is on the calendar so somebody in the essential office can be here, which is why it works well to not change it. Yeah, we have them written in stack. It's just the same. Yeah, it's still like everybody's talking. I think there's, yeah. So we'll continue with the second Monday at 5.30 at Rowan. And the newspaper, is it still the Times Argus? We need the Times Argus, yeah, we used it first. And the official postings, I believe, are the Townships office and the school building. This goes right. We just need to. We'll put them in any other place you want, but for this motion, too lonely. Does anybody have any questions on that one? What is the standard you use every year? Listen to this. Yeah, yeah. OK. And it does go other places, just like, I know it's on our website, it's often on front porch form, and it's often on current news to know. And I believe it's also sometimes on the Berlin town for our regular schedule. And so for, I don't, sorry, but I don't know, do we take a vote for the second day and Monday, second Monday at 5.30? No. Can I do those as a slate, or do you want them separate? You could do them as a slate if you want. OK. And the Times Argus is, because we always use the Times Argus as a paper record, and it has to be two physical locations. We definitely do all the electronic stuff. And it does get posted at the central office and we should comply with our schools, not all schools. So I'll make a motion for the time and date of the regular monthly meetings to be the second Monday at 5.30, at Berlin. And the newspaper on record is the Times Argus and the locations for the official postings to the town clerk's office and the school. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. We left a representative and an alternate to the WCSU executive committee. So previously, when Chris Winters was the chair, he also was the executive committee person. I was his alternate. I have been going to the executive committee meetings since town meeting day so that Berlin had a representative there. There have been many meetings during the month of March and into April. So it's definitely a time commitment for sure. In the meetings, we've met all over the place with what we can make work for the most people to get to the meetings. So there's no set time, set date right now. The meetings are. They're sporadic because of a couple of issues. So I'm not sure what everybody's time commitments can be and flexibility to be there. I'm willing to still do it. I'm willing to carry on right now the main work that the executive committee is doing is the interim superintendent position. So I'm not sure what you guys are waiting to be the representative. Talk about all of these different things first to see. Sure, because that might be a little bit just because both of us are here. So the three voting members to the Supervisory Union Board. That's it. Yeah, right. I mean, that's where it has to hold for me. That's where it's where we're there. So negotiations will be very, there's not really anything to do right now because we just finished until the fall. Can I just help a little bit here, maybe? When you look at 2-8 and you see those three, those four committees, they are really school quality and policy could be going, but they have not been meeting. It was recommended back in January, February for the executive committee, for the SU committees to kind of pause. If merger happens, I'll see those committees coming together. If mergers stayed or put off a year, negotiations is going to probably be the one that's going to take almost time because there's only a one-year teacher's agreement that we're going to be presenting tonight at any point near ESP because there was a law established last year that stopped all teach all contracts in the state from going forward with health care. So I would just say that I think you could come back and look at that if the situation, the current situation right now legally is that we are emerging July 1. So I don't think there'll be much work there, but you could come back there and reappoint too. I agree with Vera. I think where the work is right now across the SU is at the executive committee, along with the transitional board and then the merge board. And the member to the transition board is one? Or is it an alternate to a one? It's just one because Chris Winters, from stepping down from the board, was appointed earlier automatically. And Vera was appointed. And so Vera is still on the board, is still a member of the transition board. So you have one more. You need to fill Chris's place. Okay, that's why I was, okay. Thank you. Yep, thank you for asking me to call the call short on that. And the truan officer's always the principal in our district. Okay. So I think for less confusion, we will do one at a time. So we can do the elect a representative and the ultimate to the WCSU executive committee. So if somebody wants to make that nomination for two people, one for the main representative and then the ultimate. Can there be two alternates? I've been on the board for 11 years. It's only been just the two people, the main and then the ultimate. Okay. Do you want to be the ultimate? But we need to elect the representative first. Right, correct? I think I was going to say, so I could say that we're going to nominate Vera to be the representative and equal to be the alternate. Okay. Any other questions at all? All those in favor, please say aye. I'd like three voting members to the Supervisory Union Board. As David said, that's great, too much for no brainer. So it will be the three of us. And I will make a motion for myself, Julie and Nicole to be the voting members to the Supervisory Union Board. All those in favor, please say aye. We still need to go through the process of electing for each committee. Is there anybody that wants to or is willing to do negotiation? Like Bill said, it's nothing current right now. And as of the way the law is, we're still set to merge as of July 1, but not knowing exactly where that's going to end up. Negotiations will pick up around October. Yes. Probably. So around that timeframe, this is when that committee would start meeting. Do I hear any interest? I will say I just served on it. And the meetings at the beginning half were, they were early morning meetings. They were not like huge time commitments, but towards the tail end of it, it was time consuming. Yes. And it all varies depending on, like this time we only had a one-year contract to deal with in healthcare. So we really didn't get into a lot of the nitty stuff, which I'm assuming will come up the following contract negotiations. So I do think if we don't merge, if that negotiations might be, again, I'll tell you when we're here, because we'll be. Who else? Yeah. Anyways, so is there any interest from either one of you on that? I also am on the school quality committee. So I definitely, I'm hoping that if the merger doesn't happen, that we can find two more people to rely on to spread out the workload. Because it is, when you're only looking at three of us to do the workload, it's a lot. I mean, I'm in my background. I'm more interested in transportation, like school quality as well. Okay. I'm willing to do negotiations if you want to take on school quality. Okay. Because I don't feel like I'm in a place where I can do chair work, executive committee negotiations and school quality. I gotta give something up. So, what did you just say? I was, I'm wanting to give up something. I'm willing to do negotiations. Nicole is going to, willing to do school quality. Would you be willing to do do transportation and policy? Transportation, they're not really doing anything right now. It only comes when the contract comes. That means I can do, I mean, yes, I have a background doing that. Yeah, okay. I can do that. So there's policy. So it can be policy. Okay. Transportation isn't allowed. It's not. It's not just when we do, just when we have to negotiate the contract or if we have an issue going, that gets really serious. We haven't had my luck lately. So you're going to stay with negotiations? So I'm going to make a motion right now unless you want to. No go for it. Okay. So I'm going to make a motion. To, so, my motion is for myself to be on the negotiations committee, Julie on the policy committee, Nicole on transportation and Nicole on school quality. Any other discussion about that? Now I'll in favor of the say aye. All right. Appoint a truant officer. Truant officer. And like Bill said, it's typically the principal. So I will make a motion for Aaron Boynton to be the truant officer. Do you guys have a question? I have a question. I have a question. I have a question. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Appoint member to the WCUSD transition board. So, there are several meetings coming up. It's definitely a time commitment. Do you want me to list them? Yes, if you know them. I know them right. I have them in my phone. I have them in my phone. They're next to there tomorrow. And that one's at Calis from 430 to six. So that's the 25th of April. The rest of them were trying to start at six o'clock and they're on Thursday. So it's the second night. And Wednesday. Wednesday the 15th at 6 p.m. And we're trying to admit central office for U32 to scale them or central office. And this is to do what? Exactly. So this is the transitional board. So the transitional board, and I'll try to do my best to explain the work that they're doing right now. Set the articles of agreement amongst all of the invested schools. And they will get the warnings out for all of the upcoming, like one board, one budget that will go out to the towns. Yeah, that's already gone out. And other than that- They have to prefer produce what's called by the articles agreement, the first draft of the budget for the Merge Board. They also without, and we'll be talking about this more tomorrow night, the transition board has all responsibilities and authorities without the new Merge Board seated. So if something comes up for the merger to happen, which because we're so close in time, there aren't things coming up. We talked about some transitional issues tomorrow night that need to be tapping by this board to get things set. So there's just some of the transitions all I've reached into the Merge System. So this is to represent for an elementary. Yep. And that board, and that. So there's, there will be, once Berlin 10 gets there. It's 12 members right now in the transition, the way they have articles of agreement. Once we get to a Merge Board, it's 10 is two from each town. Anyone that's different. Anybody's interested in it? There's definitely a lot of meetings coming up. The meetings that are coming up are actually the most important meetings because those are the ones that are for working on the articles of agreement. Now, with that said, there was an articles committee that did a lot of the work and worked through a lot of those pieces for the articles of agreement. But there's definitely some little nuances that still need to be worked out amongst the talents because there's definitely some difference in opinions on future representation, how many for each town. So there's definitely some pieces in there that that work, that will be done in the immediate couple of weeks is really important work. Because my hope would be once the articles are written and everybody agrees to them, that's... Maybe send them to a boat. They still have to go out to the water. Right, so they'll still go out to the towns for both. So we're either of you willing to, that's what I want to... Yeah, I mean, so I probably should know, but if George is already engaged in that discussion, it's... He's not engaged in that discussion. He's not engaged in that discussion. He's not, okay. He's not as a representative there, too. Okay. That would be tough, the time commitment for me right now. Okay. Do you want to make a... So I make a motion for Nicole to represent us on that board. Any other discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Thank you, Nicole. Aye. So like Bill said, we do have a meeting to turn it, which I understand is super last minute for... Yeah, I have something to make sure. It is a callus at 4.30, so you can't make it, I totally understand. Okay. Either Christa or myself, somebody can get you whatever was discussed. Yeah, did you get the packet for this one? I had asked Christa to... For this one I did, yes. Yes, okay, because I had asked her to make sure you were on the list, Nicole. So we'll make sure somebody gets you whatever information we get tomorrow night at the meeting, so you'll hot it for the following Thursday night's meeting. Yeah, there's only one piece that's coming as a handout right now, so I'm going to back it up. Okay. Yep. Perfect. What'd you build in the line? That's mine. Yeah, that will give you the same packet. There was another one before that I... That's good. I want to make sure tomorrow that you're on the group list of the transitional board meeting, but that is one that gives you the same thing, because I sent it to all board members just to make sure. I'm not sure about tomorrow, but I'll... Oh, here you are. Yeah. So moving on to the consent agenda, approve minutes of 2.13 and 3.4. So I'll make motion to approve the minutes of 2.13 and 3.4. I didn't have any questions on them, they looked fine to me. Did anybody else have any questions on the minutes? Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Discussion agenda, the driveway. It was so much better. That made me tired. So literally there was a... Oh, I think Chucky went and did most of the workforce in the air. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And got two to three people just to give us an idea. We said, let's keep it under 15,000. So what you see is what's going to get patched from what it is to now. It was really a wait for the frost to come out. They're coming. When are they coming? First full week of May, I think it's the, like the six or seven finishing coat on the top. They're gonna pitch it a little bit, so hopefully we won't build up too much water. Because in my opinion, the big part of the problem is just pools of water there. We've been told by people in the business that what we have underneath is really good. Really good, yeah. So that's good to know. So yeah, Chucky did a lot of the background work to get some costs. And we needed to wait for the frost to get out. Yeah, that was the big issue. Yeah. So they tore that up, obviously. They repurposed that and recycled it to use again. They put a fresh layer on there. The only question I do have is when Green Mountain Paving is here doing that stretch, do they have a patch that they can just patch those other two holes out there and still stay under $15,000? We'll find a way to make sure those holes are patched. I had talked to Chucky about it, and I just want to make sure that everybody was on the same page. The other thing I'll say is, this is a year or two fix. It's not a long-term fix. Yeah. Chucky and I have to do it. This is to get us through. We need conversation about this. We drill cores of that, of what's underneath there, and to really fix it for 10, 12 years. We need some serious digging. Right. But right now, it's a ton better than it was. I'd rather drive on state-man. Yeah, than to drive on the way it was. So yeah, let's just, on the next agenda, if we could get an update that doing something with the pot holes. Well, I think I'll be done by that. I hope it's done by that. Right, hopefully. If they're not, you should be saying, what did you do, guys? Well, we can always do that as a separate item. Just saying, so we can get some coal patch. Yeah. Take care of those. Okay. So we'll get it fixed up here. And it's a day's work to work, I'm assuming. Yes, for that, out there. For that, obviously. Yes. And they're not gonna, traffic won't be stopped, people can still come and go. So I don't have to worry about not getting in or out. So. I'm assuming they'll do half at a time. Roll it, put the step down, roll it, and then do the other half. So it's always accessible. Yeah, I don't know if they care about that. And do parents know updates on this? I would think they would love to know what's going on. I think I put something in the last, I did put a correspondence out about that we're gonna be working on fixing it. I think at that time, I wasn't that specific with this, but yeah. Perking on itself. Yeah, so the parking lot, we've looked at a couple of times in renovations here, and it can be done, but it's very. So it can be totally paved. Because of the wet advancement back sides, so you don't have to shorten it up some. I do know that. Yeah, there's some pieces on that. There, you also get the stormwater issues. That's what I do. And then, and then it's usually been a cost factor. We do have, I mean, the school loans, one of those DR graders, which usually keeps it pretty well during the summer. It's just, it's getting through. It's getting through our blood season right now. And Chuck just did it. It's a Monday, I think. He was working out in the middle of it. He did as much as he can, but no. I just, as new to the mind, I had no idea how he was supposed to do this. Yeah. Is it money that's really the issue? No, I mean, we'd have to go get a bunch of engineering done. We need to do it for the whole drive-up, but for that, we're probably gonna incur, what about two, Nicole, you're a civil engineer. So it's two or two times the driveway, square footage to pave all that. And we're gonna have to put in drainage. And we're gonna be in a waste, we're gonna be in a watershed permit and runoff area. We're dealing with that with other schools right now where the agency of natural resources is after us, because of our water runoff. We're working, we're on a phase two of the runway right now, and we're going into a phase something at U32, and it gets quite expensive. Yeah, it would be nice to, at least, maybe not necessarily paving it, but at a point where we could just put, stay bound down, have it packed down to a point where it doesn't get so muddy. I would like to see a page. It's gonna help to keep up this building inside. Oh, absolutely. You know, we keep the dirt coming in, so. Do we not, I thought that they looked at it when we did the bond for this, that we had got like a really good, general idea of what it would cost to include that. Just for the driveway. Just the round. Just the driveway, the driveway itself, at that point, was $185,000. I think we always suit a way for it to drive away, because of the water issues. Well, it's because the salt is permeated all the ground. I'm not sure, I don't know. And that's what's getting her responsible. I mean, we can definitely have a future agenda item to get. Well, it's gonna be a forever agenda item in its current state, right? Well, it costs about every year, as we already do, don't we? Well, the paving of that driveway has always been kind of separate from the roundabout. And I guess the parking lot versus the driveway. But if we're gonna get quotes and look at it for, I'm not sure exactly. I mean, the next step would be, we would be, you know, we have an idea from when we did the part of the, you know, what it's gonna cost for the driveway and the circle. We could probably just scale off the drawings, what that costs is per square footage cost and say what that kind of extrapolate that for the parking lot. But that's gonna be a, that's kind of back to the end of the pricing. If we're adding more, then we're gonna be engaging a civil engineer. Because, you know, John, Temmelberg from Black River Design has been our architect. He does this, but right away, he would sub it out to a civil. He's helped, we have a civil engineer on the track project up at U32 right now that's been really great to work with. I was actually thinking that yesterday as we were starting to kick off the track project of their knowledge. And what that would mean, we'd want to start spending money on. We'd have to start getting to a contractual relationship. John works by the hour for us right now to kind of give us advice and help us. But if we were gonna get into that, then we'd get into a contractual places to start getting an engineer. That's sort of the thing. Cause they're gonna start looking at what's the watershed and tell us about, you know, how close can we, what's the agency and natural resources gonna tell us whether they're gonna tell us about stormwater runoff and how do we, do we have them sowing pond or do we have just some sort of flip-trade? Cause that's what we're dealing with at U32. We're trying to build a small pond now by the fill-out you feel for stormwater runoff. I'm gonna try. That's so crazy. Sorry. You would think highway, Walmart, you know, a lot of paid areas around that. That, and it's just crazy. Yeah, I know, I just, I've been down this road for two or three other schools. So it's not, it's not impossible to not. Right, you're right, you're right, it goes right. It's very difficult, which I think is why all of us just stay dirt, get a graded, bring in a couple of us or whatever when it works. And, but, I mean, it definitely would, just hopefully get up keeping the maintenance in the school. Sure. I guess maybe we'll look at all of it. All right. 4.2 easement. So this is an item that, if you look back to the notes from February, we've been working with the town of Berlin for sewer easement. We replaced the sewer line coming out of this building. And if you remember from the meeting, well, I don't think Vera, you and I would remember Nicole, I don't think you were there. But it's gonna go out the back, go over, it's gonna bridge the valley. They won't be able to come above ground out here for a little bit and then go back in the ground because of the gradient. As a board, you asked for Tom, I think Tom's last name works over with Tom and myself to work on an easement. And we took care of that through our attorneys. So I have an easement here with me. That's the signature for the town of Berlin's easement. But if you can either appoint myself to sign it or one of you can sign it, but it needs to be done in front of a notary. So we can't actually sign it, so it's a bit of anyone around here who's a notary right now. So it's a land easement that we had talked about. We started back in January with, I think it was December January, so we'll go over Tom on this. And this is a good thing to do. I mean, we'll have a replacement sewer line and we'll have an easement to come on our property and put that in place. And we're trying to do it when the kids aren't here. And that's where it's our hope. It may happen in the fall, but I don't think that schedule's been, unless you've heard anything new Erin about what that schedule is. So this is a follow-up of work that's... So some of the history is under 3.2 minutes. Do either of you have any questions on this one? No. So being that nobody can notarize it tonight, I will make a motion to authorize Bill Kimball to sign the easement on behalf of the Villain School Board. Is that the clerk for you? That works. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Just make those. Bill, could you send a copy of that easement to the three of us? Yes. Yes. When you're back. Yep. And I'll have this. Definitely. Thank you. It's a pretty simple easement of ones I've seen asked as easy as it gets. I actually had a question mark and I actually meant to ask this earlier in the agenda review of revisions, appointing two members to board under 4.3. I'm not sure what that is. That's where you have three members of a five member board. We thought we'd give you a discussion. In case of two. Okay. The discussion I had to say, would you like to talk about that? It is all coming back to me now. And you and I talked at the beginning of the month and we kind of put this agenda together. So I can totally understand that that was just about. If there were two that wanted. If you knew of anybody or how you wanted to go looking for two more members because you're a five member board. So does anybody have any, anyone that you know of that would be willing to serve from now until possibly June 30th? Or in the event that we don't merge, it would be through a cabinet of anybody you can reach out to. I would just say put it on the website. Put it in my porch forum. The way I saw it was on the website. And then I mean, it was not once I kept having to see it. I'm just saying that is being real. You're being real. That's how we are. We have so many things going on right now. So, all right, this is not an idea. I think we have the word in so we can. Yeah. Everybody another. Can you take care of that? And people might like that. I'm trying. We need temporary, you know, just for a little bit. We can definitely do that. All right, reports to the board. So I don't know that, I mean a lot of the reports in here because we're still far off our regular schedule. Erin's pretty, you would, when I read your report, yours is pretty up to date. You wrote that right around. I added from. Yeah. You added to it. It goes back quite a way, but it's still more than that. I know. All right. So let's start with your report. If there's anything you want to highlight in it, I'll just leave all read it. Just so folks know, I provide a proposal to report each board meeting and try to highlight things that have been, you know, exciting different. Try to put some school-wide things, some student things, meeting some more staff, school-based logistical kinds of things just to, you guys can move about certain things that we might be doing as a system. Any kinds of maintenance things that might not be on the specific manager agenda. Try to highlight a few things around that. So try to give a big picture of number of different things on your board. So it is pretty long just because I had kept what would have been the March meeting stuff in there. So there's stuff going all the way back to Winter Wellness, which was in February. So, you know, I don't have to read every single piece of it. You've had some unique things happen these last couple of months. The gentleman whose name is William Harris. He's a Middlebury. He's a motivational speaker. He came to Berlin. Elementary spoke with grades three to six back in February. And I think everybody really enjoyed his message around importance of education and respect, just very motivating. And he came back for a classroom visit follow-up a couple weeks ago and the kids were happy to see him. So it was nice to have him here talking about and reinforcing those important messages. One thing that I've been working on with a committee here at the school that I'll talk about, it's under the MTSS EST part of my report. EST is Educational Support Team. MTSS is Multi-Tiered Assistance with Support. And when I came on board, we had a handful of different committees that overlapped with what we were doing around student support, around how we look at student progress and how our systems of support work. So I helped decide that we really can benefit with having one team or committee to do this work because it's really a bunch of different people doing almost the same thing. So we've done a lot of work this year in talking about what our future student support structure might look like. We have an action plan. We're happy to share that at an upcoming board meeting. It really looks a number of different things around support in the classroom, tier one classroom instruction, how we determine students for intervention, how it kind of flows with if teachers have concerns about a student, how we incorporate all of the behavioral work that we've been doing around PBIS and our systems of support around that. So it's kind of putting it all together, making it a little bit more understandable and cohesive across the whole school so all the pieces just fit a little bit better. So that's been a lot of the work that we've been doing this year and it's gonna be a long process until we get to a more solid ground but it's been underway. That's been good. I have some pieces about the facility in here. Things have been going well in regards to the facility over the breaks. We've had a lot of student sickness this year. It's just been happening at all the schools so they've done a really good job trying to go above and beyond with a little more of a deep cleaning type of process. And some painting over the vacations. Our PTNA, graciously, has been improving our staff room so we'd like to thank them for some of the work that they've been doing there, not done yet but it's really great that they've supported that. Some of the changes there. We have some things from the summer that we're gonna follow up on the front entrance. I'm sure you've seen that on a rainy day or on a catalog of the snowmelt it ironically just drips right in front of the walkway and the entrance. We had the gentleman from the company come and look at it in the fall and he said they definitely have to fix this. So the plan was that when the weather got better they're gonna come back and fix it. They seem to be maybe something to do with the pitch of the water flow, I mean obviously. So we'll be on top of that. And the driveway, obviously we've been tackling as well. Another piece that we've kept an eye on and actually have initiated a fix is I guess some of the air handlers and it sounds like this was maybe a more historical thing. Condensation would gather in them and some would leak. We had one in the conference room that was doing that this winter and tried to patch it for a short term fix didn't quite work so we've decided we need a specialist to come in and fix that right. So it's not doing that anymore. If you look on the roof we have this funny looking looks like a greenhouse up there but it's part of the air handling unit. So it will be fixed, we'll keep an eye on how that goes in the future with that stuff. So those are just some highlights I don't know if anybody has any questions about anything else that's going on. End of the year is coming and it's busy time. End of the year activities that are happening. Teachers working hard to think about all the things we got to do at the end of this year but also gearing up for some things for next year as well, so keep getting there. So speaking of next year, so the SU is implementing a new math program. The implementation will start right away with K through sixth grade and this will transition them to the middle school E32 for seventh, eighth grade. I'm hoping that there's, with this program, a closer link as to what they end with at the elementary schools and start with a E32 versus having that gap that currently exists. I know you remember this, we held off of getting a math program because we wanted to make sure the math curriculum was set. That was the standards that was used when looking at a math program, it's that they had to fit our curriculum progression that's pre-K through graduation. Rating math has a middle school version that we're debating whether we go with it or not at the middle school just because it's brand new. And then that we're looking at that. We were looking to implement new programs, elementary, middle, and high all next year and the math committee, which is all math teachers pretty much, our math specialist said, hey, let's slow this down a little bit and get it right. Okay, I guess that was the bottom line of our question. So, but the, I heard your bottom line as more as, do we have the continuum so we don't have gaps? Yes. And what I wanted to assure you is that we built, we built the, we haven't purchased where we're going. We might go with rating math for the middle school and that's still being talked about. That still may happen this year. That decision hasn't been finalized that authority to make that decision has been given to the committee of the teachers that are doing the work. They, but it's the math curriculum and the progressions that we've set up. Those are all the standards for what we're saying, which is all based on the common core. So it's still to be decided for the middle school, but it's been decided for K through six. Right. We think, and we think rating math. I mean, that was a big discussion in there. And, you know, we talked about a leadership team. Jen's kept us in the loop about, should we go to rating math all the way up to eighth grade? Which may happen. I don't think it has been said it won't happen. I just don't think there's been a conclusion of that because they said they built their elementary first. So that's already been out in schools for about a year and a half. And this is what usually happens in any curricular area when standards are set. It takes about five to eight years for the programs to move to meet the standards that have been set nationally. So we're four years, four to five years now with a common core. Other programs said they were common core line, but there was just tweaks to old programs that weren't there. And we're starting to see now the new programs come about that are truly aligned to the common core progression. We'd like it. You know, and it's a resource as a tool. It's probably 65 to 70% of what the curriculum is. There is a program out there that has everything. They just don't exist. Anybody else have any other questions in front of the school's report? I do. The MTSS EST, is that parents and teachers? Or is that just teachers? The team? This team? Is it just an announced team? It's an announced team. So I have a teacher, a special educator, a nurse. And then what's the Orton Yellenham? Yeah, so that is an approach to reading. A lot of, there are a number of actual programs that are based on the work that Orton Yellenham had done years ago. The best way to describe it is, it's more of understanding the English language at its core when it comes to how words are built. So it's more of a phonics-based look at, I wanna say instruction, but just an understanding of how our English language works. How the words are put together. I took the course a couple of years ago, and it was one of the best courses I'd ever taken. And it's really, this is meant to not say that I'm expecting teachers to, all of a sudden, we're not gonna necessarily say we're gonna move towards something that we're gonna get a program around phonics, but more of that they understand the core of teaching this language to the kids. So throughout the next few years, I want everyone to at least go to this introductory training course to just get a taste of what it is and what it's offered. They choose to go a little bit further because you can do more through this program in regards to training. So next year I do a number of folks that would like to go, and it will just help with their understanding of our reading. Thank you Erin. Bill, do you have any highlights of anything on the committee's, the me, or not, represent in this packet? I'm gonna talk about negotiations when we get to the action. Executive committee is in the packet. It's in the packet. School policy and policy haven't met, so I wouldn't have anything on that, and then I can do the finance when you're ready for that. Why don't we jump to page 12 for finance? So I'm gonna slow this down and explain this a little bit here. On page 12, you see what we look at, we call this our fun balance sheet, and it takes a look at where are we in relativiveness? At the top of the page, you will see the after audit beginning balance of $300,207. So for school year, 2017, 2018, so last July 1st, we ended after we went through our auditors of that fun balance left, and what the fun balance is, is the amount of money that's in the checking account, and loosely I'm saying checking account, but in the account for Berlin School that says this is the amount of money the cash we have right now. And we look at that and say, okay, for the next year, the voters in Berlin give authority to the school board through an item that's done every year at annual meeting that the school board has the authority to spend that audited fun balance. So it's on top of the budget as AC fit. That's actually a really generous thing the voters do. So it's not targeted towards a certain use the board can determine that. What you'll see after that is we start looking at the current year, and are there, these are all projections below this. Laura Bebo, her projections are usually about in the 98 percentile correctness, if not higher. So they're usually pretty accurate, but if we see changes in revenue, we'll see them in that first part, or changes in expenses. So for example, and we do big true ups three times a year, September, January, and right about now, April, May. We're getting ready to do it for May. If something happens that we don't foresee either a building expense or a student expense or a staffing expense, you might see those as other months. So the reason in September is because we usually have new staffing and we readjust all the payroll, but you'll see under revenue, interest income. We thought that it was actually, our revenue there would go down about $551. You'll see there's a balance to that for the expense. That's maybe a bad one, but reserve for healthcare insurance for recapture. That was done the previous year. The board action back in September 2017, this was responding to some state legislation. They set aside fund balance money to be expended so we didn't have to budget it for this current fiscal year. So you see a deduction of the overall fund balance out of that 303,000 of 9,760, okay? That's the revenue changes. The expense changes down below are I'm gonna go down to the second line, salary benefit update, school-wide primary health insurance. It's a negative because it wasn't as high as we thought it was gonna be. Because when we put it in for personnel, sometimes we have to make estimates because we might not know who we're hiring or we may not know their benefits. So it's actually saved us $6,900 there in health insurance. So you'll see that up and down through there and we can go back and talk about any of those. At the bottom, you get what is the current fund balance projected at the end of this year? And Julie, I heard earlier, the Bureau's gonna give you a quick tutorial on this. We're at $202,557, that's our projected. That's what we think it's gonna be June 30th, 2019. So this is a projected fund balance. We, and you see the net rate next, and that percentage of 5.8% is off the voter-approved budget, which is right above a $3.5 million, kind of above and to the right. We have a target that we usually try to keep about 4% of fund balance for a school this size. Sometimes those changes depend on size of school, either bigger or smaller. One of the things that we do, that the board took action on earlier in FY17 and 18, so we don't have peaks and valleys in the technology equipment funding around the building, we make it so it's one constant cost every year. And so we kind of made our own low reserve on there. So let's set aside, I actually know some of that's gonna get used for next year because just we have life cycles of technology. So the current fund balance, if you take that 22,000 out, is $179,787, which you see below it says it's $39,350 above the 4% target. I'm gonna stop for a minute. I just told you a lot really quickly, but just kind of how this reads. And usually each month when there's a new line added, we go over what those lines are for. So we're projecting that that's what will be that will be in the account at the end of this fiscal year. There's also on page 13 other special discretionary funds that have been set up by the voters or through grants. The biggest one is the capital fund. And this what you see above the new bond construction part. So all these boxes, if you look above these boxes right here is the current capital fund. We came in this year with a 335,000 in change. We transferred extra in. The board did action earlier on this year along with what came in. We had a little bit of expense. We had some transferring from the bond what was left over in the construction. So at the end of this year, we're projecting and currently right now we do have 292,111 dollars in the capital fund. So as we're talking about the drive way out there of 185,000 that's the area I'd be looking at because we don't have it in our budget right now to pay for something like that. What is down below and this will all go away after this fiscal year, but is the bond that we've used for the renovations here? So we had to track that a different way. And what we had left over at the end of the whole bond was $6,343 we didn't expand on the bond. That just went right up in the capital fund because that wouldn't really do anything to the payments that we're doing and we're allowed to do that. Questions on that capital fund? Because that's one to understand that's how we take care of what we don't keep. Outside the supplies maintenance, we have about 25,000 I think in repair maintenance every year, but when there's things that we did, they're larger, we have to go to that. Down below you start to see grants. Those are usually in and out. We have our food program which I'm going to talk about on another page. And then we have student activities from, which is anything from trips to book drives to you're gonna have to help me with what else. We run through student activities. Athletics. Athletics, yeah. So all that kind of runs in that. It's own little fund. These are, my analogy for this is these are different accounts that run through them. It's helpful, thank you. Too much, too little? No, it was helpful. Okay. If you go to the next page, you'll see the food service and it was very helpful, right? When I came aboard seven years ago to really say, hey, we need a better accounting and you helped us get to this page here. When you said, you know, we need to know more about the food service program. So we, in this next page, you'll see revenues at the top and we do multi-years of what's been happening to the projected for this year at the end of this year, FY18-19, which is all the way on the right. So you'll see revenue coming in and expenses going out. And you'll see that this year, right now we're projecting that we're gonna have, without any help from the school, we would have a 20, I'm down where it says profit loss operations A minus B is about $25,000 below. What we had made when we budgeted for this year we planned on $25,000 of support coming from the school budget. So right now we're right on target to meet that piece. This is, as you can see the past two years, we've had $13,000 and $18,000 of actual support. So it's actually increased the bottom line fund of the food fund, which you see down below, beginning fund balance and fund balance. We'll know more on true up at the end of this year. I think last thing we had a food audit a nutrition audit by the state, three weeks ago, four weeks ago, which was mainly fiscal, but it was our menu audit as well. And we were doing pretty well, but it just hasn't hit these projections because this projection hasn't been adjusted since January or February, I don't think. And they did that food audit too. They added in the popcorn program. Just FYI. They did, yeah, they did. I was actually here popping up part in May. Oh, good. They were not, they were like, I'm not sure that oil is really good, but it's actually, it's not that bad. The government might be thinking why don't you put it back? So if you look up in the revenues, you'll see federal revenue enrichment for lunch and for breakfast. It's part of the audit. And so that's the money we're going to get for the feds. Good to know. Good to know. So we're actually doing pretty well here, Berlin. When we look at it compared to other schools on meal served per day per FTE, the 76, like up at U32, we're at 59 or 60 per FTE then work. So we're running, we're serving quite a few meals for the FTEs. We're doing a good job. That's all the way down to the bottom. We try to track, we try that meal served per day per FTE. The bottom line of the second to the lowest box. And then we look at enrollment and percentage of kids eating lunch and breakfast. So Berlin's got a pretty high percentage compared to most of the schools that are eating lunch in the school. And you've got pretty good, so all in all the food programs really made a turn around since I've been here. So that's my fiscal report. We will, we're closing down right now. Laurie and Aaron have been going through when we talked about purchase orders earlier, Julie and I have explained the system. There, it's not that we can't get stuff right now, but we try to say, hey, we're getting to the end of the year. If there's an open purchase order for something we need to figure out if we need to pay any more bills toward, or let's get it shut down. Laurie is very efficient and she likes all the paperwork in by now. Yeah. And she gets pressure. So don't be spending any money after that. And she gets pressure from Laurie Bebo, who is the manager of my office, like let's get this thing done. It better be like a necessity to power after that. So that's my financial report. We're glad to take any questions, concerns. Looks good. Thank you, Bill. So we do have the action agenda, but I want to jump back up to 1.4 for future meetings because we went over that so that we don't do that. So I have our regular meeting meeting at the end of the 13th. Yep, that's why I have two. June is a full board meeting month? Yep. So I believe that that's happening the first Wednesday. Let me get to my calendar if you're... Okay. So we'd have May 13th, that's the Berlin, and then we would have June 5th. The carousel? It would be the carousel at U32. Yeah. Okay? And then typically don't meet in July. I'm sure things will come up. Yeah, I'm gonna say it's gonna, but we're gonna have to get further down the road in the past year. So just for those, those are the two that I have for now, but I mean definitely the other ones as we said on June 15th. June 5th. June 5th. Further carousel, but what about the Berlin? Usually with the carousel months, we'd just write it in here. It'll be at U32. Oh, great. Now back down to the action agenda. So I'll make the motion to authorize the Eastman Agreement with the town of Berlin. Actually, did I already? You did that already. I did that already. Great, Tiffany, we did that? Yes, we did, because I authorized you to sign it though. Approved teacher contract for academic year 2019-2020 as negotiated by the negotiations committee. You guys need some information about that, which the biggest piece was healthcare and the salary increase. I'm not sure exactly how much. I can go for it. Okay. So in the teacher's contract, there were members representing every board that were on that negotiating team and we ended a 3.1% increase for salaries. And for healthcare, we had something that was cost neutral to the teachers. I caught now cost neutral to the district and to the teachers. We have a, we base everything off of what's called the CDHP Gold Plan, which is our four plans by our healthcare provider, VI, which is Vermont Education Health Initiative. This plan has a high deductible of 2,500 for a single and 5,000 for a family or two person, but those are supported by healthcare and reimbursement accounts. Those accounts were split at 90% paid for by the district and 10% by the individual where the employees had the first dollars and they had to pay the first 10%. It was being hard, it was hard to manage and a hard transition for our teachers. And so it was agreed upon and that, and the premium split was 82% by the district and 18% by the teacher. It was agreed upon at the negotiations that the premiums would actually get to be 80-20 with the HRA fully funded by the district. That was seen as almost a cost, but zero shift in cost. I mean, there was some costs in there, but very low compared to the 11 million dollars with the teacher contract we were negotiating. So there was agreement to split it to become 80-20 and 100% of the HRA covered. And so that, and these are one-year contracts so there's nothing else done on the teacher's contract. That one has been ratified by all other, the other five, other six boards because we're right, we had to ratify it for teachers. That was a super pressure. It was actually, it was a pretty, when we got to the healthcare case now it was the biggest case. It was because it was almost a cost neutral on both ends. It was kind of a no-brainer because the old system was very, administrative heavy for both central office and the third party. So it was a benefit all the way around to do this. Yeah, so it was a good change for everybody. I think everybody benefited from it too. Which is good. I have a cost neutral and everybody benefited. Any other questions about negotiations, please? I do have... So yeah, so needs that. So I will make a motion to approve teacher contracts for the academic year 2019-2020 as negotiated by the negotiation committee. There's no further questions. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. And approve ESP contract for academic year 2019-2020 as negotiated by the negotiations committee. Let me go with that. Sure. Okay. So this was, we met with the ESP which stands for Education Support Personnel. So this covers in this building the paraeducators and food service workers. Chris in the office doesn't, Lori is not covered because it's some of the work she has to do for her and our custodians are not bargaining in this building as well. The, this contract has a 3.5% salary increase and the healthcare followed exactly what the teachers did. They actually joined for the healthcare negotiations as we were doing both contracts at the same time. We also did change a few working conditions in here. Some being we identified a new class of employee, not a new class, but a recognition of folks who are doing behavior intervention supports and personal care for kids, which is a little above what a paraeducator does. So there's some support money for that. There's some technology supports for personnel or paraeducators in school hard time getting to, you know, we're going as you guys know we're and you do too in your lives there are things that go on through technology. So it's only right for us to support them with a device, electronic device to do that. And those are the major pieces of variety for you. What else I'm missing from that contract, but it was a pretty good contract negotiations. We did it one night. Yeah, I just, I have the healthcare which they did with the initial negotiations they actually combined it when they, and then the salary increase in the technology with some type of Chromebook or something like that. So you do email and we have a bunch of applications for you to use for personal or like a sub finder and tracking people are out. Yeah, so you need it for the work. So I'll make the motion to accept, to approve the ESP contract for academic year 2019-2020 as negotiated by the negotiations committee. Do you know what the questions about that? All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any points? And I'm sorry, Floyd have passed this around to, Julie, did you sign it? I didn't sign it. I didn't know you were going to sign it. You can sign anywhere as long as you feel comfortable with signing it. We do get a chance to give any questions. It's 6.4 except retirement. So our dear colleague came to queue. He's retiring from an outstanding professional service in the Berlin community. I'm very sad to see her go. I totally understand. Kay McHugh. So I will make a motion to accept Kay McHugh's retirement with many thanks for her years of service to Berlin and to our community, well, school and community. Any other questions? All those in favor please say aye. And I wish her well in her retirement. Try to make sure you're, three of you are included. I'm sure there'll be something here in the building. She's out right now. She is. I saw her when she was coming in on her crutches, one of the nice dates when I was working on your book and I got a chance to see her. Yeah, we have to find a way of recognizing her. We'll do that. Okay, perfect. I'll put a board order. So we had a 6.5 that I asked you. Oh yes, yes. You won't forget. You won't forget. You want to talk to us? You ruined it. But it was all to the side. It blends in. No, no, I think you just say, no, it's an ask her leave of absence if they're running on to more recently. So I got a request from Kimberly Farone for a one-year unpaid leave of absence starting July this year to next year. It's her request. Do you have any questions? As you know, she was on the board of proof of sabbatical firm that she decided she needed to not use that sabbatical. This would have been the year she would have had sabbatical. So we can't really, so we can accept it, but we can't really ask any questions when it's a personnel issue like this without wanting to execute a session. So if you guys have questions, we can certainly make the motion to go into the session. My question is, would it be personal? It would be more about how do we cover that work with her absence? How do we talk about that, or do we? So we'd go out, we'd be in a hiring process for a one-year replacement. And it might be that someone from the school, and I've talked to Erin about this, so I have better knowledge than I. It might be someone in the school does that work for a year. And we hire for their position, or he says, let's go out and look and see what's out there. And the principal's always have that, they have that call, it's not my call. But we basically, somewhere there's gonna be a one-year contract for a teacher, some of the teacher licenses, we could use it as a one-year teacher license. So we're looking for something for a teacher. And so how does that go against, does she have a contract, so it clauses her contract for that year, because it's a leave of absence? It basically leaves her slot. By the board granting a one-year leave of absence to any personnel, you're saying, okay, you have a job to come back to, but for a year, you're not working here, you're not collecting any salary. In our contract, as I referenced a little bit earlier, so I might have done it too fast, we have provisions for a sabbatical leave, where for four years, you can put away a fifth-year salary, and your fifth year, or sorry, for four years, you put away a fourth-year salary, and for that fifth year, you get all that. You can go on sabbatical. And you go on sabbatical. That's something that's in our master agreement still today. Is that what Mrs. Yes. She took a leave like this. She took a leave. She took a leave like this. We have two teachers up at U32 right now that are on one- to two-year leave, and one- to one-year leave of something like this. Looking for salary that are looking to do something else for a year. So whatever qualifications she has, would you match that same thing? Yeah, that's what we'd be looking for, is she does our math teacher leader program, math interventionist. We've been looking for someone who's highly skilled in math instruction. Do you have somebody in mind that in the school that would like to transfer to that position for a year, or you haven't thought about it yet, or don't know? I have to reflect a little bit more. I mean, this is, yeah, I mean... I mean, you don't like things on the Action Agenda that haven't been approved. I mean, I haven't, yeah, I've been skiing today. No, sometimes, I mean, you know right away, okay? I have this person in mind. I know they can put less plot for here and higher for the other position, easier than a math specialist. I mean, it makes me think of what could possibly be so, and you said, have to think a little bit more. Especially with the implementing the new math program, I'm sure the support will need to be there for some of the classroom teachers. Yeah, and we're quite a bit as a district math coach, so that I'm confident with Ellen's support. She's a really valuable asset, that's my comment. So I'll make a motion to accept or approve the leave of absence, do you want a name on the list, or just as big as that? I think we're fine without the name. Okay. I think that helps. I always think that helps personnel, that's my quality, you know what I'm saying? So we'll leave it as, approve a one year leave of absence. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? I'll make a motion to approve the board orders in the amount of 39,702 dollars and 68 cents. Are there any questions on the board orders? Not all those in favor, please say aye. Future agenda items. You're prior to the parking lot, you'd like to know, literally I can be the one to do that, I know how to do it, to scale it off of the cost and give us work, which just kind of give you a ballparker. So yeah, I definitely think the parking lot should be on there. So May, we'll definitely have an act 46 update, because that will be, we'll have met multiple times. So we probably will even, we will be at a point where we can bring some of those articles of agreement so we can start having discussions as a board too. Two of us will be on the committee, but at least so that you can be in the loop, because they will go out to the town for a vote. So the more we understand them and the more we know what's going on and communicating with people, the better understanding they'll have, so. Mary, do you think we'll have the open positions on them? So we'll probably have a person to come for, I mean, we'll bring a candidate to you, not the Yashal person. Or a teacher for the three, four teaching position that's open right now. All right, is there any other piece that I'm missing for future agenda items? Is there any other things you'd normally do in May that's nothing to do with transition that we haven't done? We have a yearly calendar that we've been using for years that was developed when I first came in and so Krista Mateevir, my admin assistant, she always looks at that and what happens for Nicole and Julie to know we sit down, the chair, Vera, Aaron and I will sit down the week we had before and we actually, I usually have that calendar up on my laptop and say, okay, what have we always done in May? That's good to know. Yeah, it's not like we're making this up. No, no, I didn't think you did. And then we also take the agenda from the previous May and look at it and say, okay, what was on that? You know, and then- So you've been talking about the merger so much. Yeah, yeah. No, but no, it's a really fair question. How do you keep yourself organized? You don't miss that, so that's a really fair question. So I think I was a little, maybe too sarcastic in my response. So the other thing for future agenda item will be update on superintendent's search because we'll have met the second for executive committee. So we'll have an update on that and we should probably have a further discussion as to where Calis is at and you would have to come with that information if you would think as to this case. If we could put that on our May agenda as well. Definitely. Yep. What kind of wording do you want for that? Why don't you say building access, community building access and easements? Okay, perfect. Okay. That works? Thank you. Am I forgetting anything? I don't think that covers everything. All right. Board of communication. Obviously there's a lot of changes going on and we've never really had like, one person's gonna take care of front porch form consistently across the, and Bill definitely posed to front porch form so that those pieces come from central office but I don't know that we've ever really had a set designated board person that has taken on that role of communication piece. So this is something that we can think about until our May 13th meeting but if somebody is willing to take on that role as we are rolling out like in terms of superintendent, changes within our school, the merger, we'd be greatly appreciated if somebody wanted to take on that communications piece as to even if you type up something weekly and send it to Lori, she'll send it out through the, it's not Blackboard Connect anymore. What is it now? I'm gonna do the campus. So if that's something that interests you or that sparks, I would love to do that. I think it's a piece that we as a board, we have in flow with certain things like when it's bond time, we want to do renovations, we are great but then we kind of, so if there's, and maybe it's one of those we rotate through and once a month, one of us takes on the task or something. I'm just looking for ideas so just think about it for a month and if you can revisit that in May. And if there's nothing else, then I think we are ready to adjourn. Does anybody else have any? That was a really fast meeting considering we hadn't met for a really long time. So I'll make a motion to adjourn by no. That's a seven, six, 56. Thank you.