BOE Meeting

001you're all set thank you so much good evening we're going to call this meeting of the region 15 board of education order for monday june 14th may we all please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all the mission of region 15 a collaborative community committed to excellence is to educate every student to be productive ethical and engaged in a global society through proven and innovative learning experiences supported by its strong community whose decision making is based on the best interest of all students and we're going to start with our student representatives zoe and will uh good evening everyone right off the bat i just want

002to thank all of you for this opportunity this experience was extremely informative and will and i are both so appreciative that we were able to be a part of this as chaotic as this year was being able to have conversations and discussions with all of you a lot a lot more tranquility all the events we were able to have this year were fantastic and every student was able to experience normalcy through many adaptive gatherings overall in this year each student was more connected with each other and the staff and the community than ever before and although this year was significantly lesser than others there was some beauty within it good evening board and thank you zoe it's been a pleasure to work alongside you um as zoe discussed the end of your events have truly

003been quite successful from prom to awards nights to the amazing play it feels like a bit of normalcy is ascendant upon our community even in the midst of a still present pandemic i would also like to extend my thanks to the entire board and administration for allowing zoe and me to represent our school voice our opinions and communicate our findings to all of you it's truly been a pleasure despite the challenging circumstances we've all faced in this past year we the students have been given some amazing opportunities and guidance to get through it all and go above and beyond expectations so thank you so much will and zoe it's nice to have that positive message in in the light of uh all the difficulties you guys had uh this year in in the pandemic um

004did you wanna oh so i was just going to say to um both will and zoe we wish you all the best we thank you both for contributing your voice through all of this i think we've tried to keep students at the forefront of the work this year and i think both of you have done a really good job of kind of representing uh the student body and you both did a really nice job of really trying to reach out to the elementary middle schools i know that's something that was kind of new this year a little bit and to do that in the middle of covid um i just want to appreciate you both and wish you the best of luck and hope that region 15 uh follows wherever you go and you know

005maybe come back someday i did and and uh zoe and will do you want to let us know where you're going next year yeah i'm attending uh uconn at the stores campus congratulations sorry i'm having some in i could actually hear you even though it says you have difficulties yep i could hear you okay there we go sorry about that i lost my direct connection um i'll be attending fordham university next year at lincoln center so i'm very excited that's wonderful well thank you both for so so much for um coloring in what it's like for the students this year for the board of ed really appreciate your contributions i think you handled some very tough questions very well um so thank you have no doubt of your success um in the future and uh

006you know please come back and say hi let us know how everything's going okay thank you so much any other comments for uh zoe and will no all right congratulations thank you thank you all right um next we have employee recognition smith so as we navigate what i hope is the last covid driven meeting of the year we're going to ask mrs forrest to come up and stand next to me while she does that we wanted to start to more formally recognize people who are retiring after a career here in region 15. um so today dr chiappetta and myself and chairperson manzo visited our schools that have staff that have um announced their retirement this year uh and gave them all a token uh a little key chain with region 15's emblem so whenever they

007drive off they take us with them or they can throw the keys out the window whatever makes them feel good and just to thank you for people some of the folks that retire today have taught in this district for more than 40 years and i just think that that's an amazing tenure anywhere and to do that in one district is just super impressive so we're going to have a press release that'll come out with all of their names and just kind of thank them and then i'm going to stand up here and we're gonna navigate this all right you got it all right i'm gonna take this off yep so i think that one of the things that mrs forrest has done in her time has really dedicated her career and that's almost harder to

008find than to her replacement as an administrator is to find someone who's going to do as good of a job at deciding um or managing the decision process on our teacher of the year so i just want to say thank you there's many things that make this a great school system and one of them is that it's such a collaborative um community the teachers the staff um the parents the administration and this board work together in the best interest of children all the time you're so focused on what's good for kids and that just makes our job as administrators that much better but i i can't tell you how much especially in the last few years this board has been so supportive and um just focused on what's best for kids and i really appreciated

009it so thank you very much thank you good luck thank you okay i think we're navigating so in a normal year i wanted this room filled with you know 50 people to all um give mrs forrest and our retirees a round of applause and so i know there's thousands of you out there watching on youtube um and so i hope you all joined me in thanking those that uh committed their talents to the students here at region 15. um and i would just like to add mrs forrest that josh had mentioned that you probably would have retired a little bit sooner but you stuck with us because you knew covid was going to be hard so i appreciate that commitment to region 15. you always put kids first always and so thank you so much

010for being a model for us um on how to treat students so wish you all the best in your retirement and thank you so much for your influence and positive image for region 15. all right this has been a very emotional day saying so by all the retirees okay next new business requiring board of board action may have an approval of the superintendent's nominee for the lmes assistant principal oh you're trying to yeah we're all muted okay i can do it move that the uh board of education upon recommendation from the superintendent approve miss um milo thank you maria milo as assistant principal at lmes so the second second heather rogers second um any discussion all right all those in favor aye aye any nays any abstentions it is unanimous congratulations ms milo and welcome

011to region 15. yep it's nice to see you in the audience and we hope that things are going to get back to normal we'll be seeing a lot more of you as well and congratulations mr warmuth as well yeah and next may i have an approval of the technology lease move that the board of education approved approve the technology lease in the amount of 240 000 john cookson thank you john have a second second heather rogers second um joe or john do you want to speak to this yet so thank you joe this is the technology lease that is part of next year's budget this allows us to go out to procure leasing rates um so this is was approved as part of the 2021-22 budget 240 000 our lease with a four-year term thank

012you any questions for mr martino yep go ahead richard has anybody seen the actual copy of the list any board members we haven't procured it yet richard well you for four years four years and then we'll communicate back to the board thank you richard any other questions all right so um may we'll we'll call the vote all those in favor aye any nays any abstentions all right it passes unanimously thank you um may i have a motion for approval of the updated policies as listed in the agenda this is steve i move that the board of education upon recommendation of the policy and curriculum committee approve updated policies 9120 officers 9324 meeting contact and parliamentary procedures 9325.2 order of business 93.50 hearings 93 11 formulation adoption amendment of policies and bylaws 9313 revelation adoption amendment

013administrative regulations 9314 suspension of policies bylaws and regulations as presented have a second second thank you heather all right any discussion or questions for steve or no all right i'd like to thank pnc again for all the hard work um that went to um revising these policies so thank you very much the pnc meetings are so exciting these days i say that all the time yeah right so all those in favor aye aye aye okay any nays nay thank you richard any abstentions all right it passes thank you next may i have a motion for the approval of minutes we'll do them both on may 20th and may 24th uh the special meeting in the regular meeting minutes motion to approve the may 20 2021 special meeting minutes and approved the may 24 2021 regular

014meeting minutes thank you john do i have a second second thank you heather any revisions questions changes all those in favor aye aye any nays any abstentions all right we're all set next we have information and proposals board committee reports finance and facilities mr john cookson uh there is no report we gave it at the last meeting that we have and then we will have our the first meeting in august thank you john uh next we have policy and curriculum mr steve ciriani no report i'm sure thank you next we have pto advisory ms heather dwyer yes hi uh pto advisory last met on june 3rd thank you marion for stepping in um and new officers were elected for the new school year um christine kievation and amy reiskey are the new pro presidents and

015the commit council will meet again in september great thank you next we have a smart update mrs heather rogers i don't have a lot to say but i would like to thank sacred heart church and the mustard seed grant for granting smart um or for giving smart a grant this year and also if any students or community members are interested in joining smart they can reach out to us we are always looking for new members especially students who might want to get involved with smart all right thank you i finally have the superintendent's report superintendent smith good evening all thank you so in the last couple of meetings we've hired two administrators and said farewell to one i just want to appreciate everybody for the work that went into that process and for being a

016part of it and being supportive i think that we're moving in a really positive direction um i'd make sure to remind people that due to tomorrow's weather and really due to today's weather and the inability earlier today to get the 10 at roshambo set up that we had to move their promotion to wednesday so i apologize for the inconvenience i hope that it will be the last inconvenience for any roshambo parent for this year because of the size of the gym at memorial we're able to accommodate them with a move inside so please follow mrs murphy's guidelines on how that will run but we didn't have to change the date on that the high school graduation will run as scheduled if you have not uh reached out to me uh with uh and you plan

017to attend just please do so and we'll make sure to have um seating for you um it will be out on the old ventura property on benson road and i'll probably say this on friday but just in case you're not there it will be the second time in the history of the school district that we're actually graduating regional graduates or regional students on a piece of property that touches both towns so i just think that it's such a unique opportunity for a regional district to have both towns run nobody's turf literally because it's not contours turf either so it's up for sale if anybody's looking to purchase it [Music] probably at the end of this week i'll communicate out to the board just a review of all of the summer projects i think literally we

018have trucks rolling in on wednesday as soon as the last buses of our students leave there's a lot of things that we're trying to do before summer school starts and a lot of projects that are going to take some time so we want those to all start as soon as possible reopening for next year uh we are starting to piece together some plans i know people are anxious and the big questions that everybody else has um are the same questions we have around social distancing mask wearing those those are going to be really driven by the cdc and the state department of health so we're going to kind of continue to move forward with our planning but we're not going to go too far down a decision path for questions that we can't answer locally

019we're going to do everything that's in our control and then kind of have contingency for the things outside of our control i would say that i'm extremely confident in our ability to manage whatever direction the federal and state public health community wants us to move in because i would argue we've we've successfully managed the most restrictive public health guidelines that that we're going to have and that anything that we're going to have in september is going to be far less than we operated underneath um for the the entire school year and so we're ready to to end school and maybe the most complicated without taking anything away from any generation before us but perhaps the most complicated year of schooling that we've had from a public health standpoint in 100 years we've been open 170

020days to in-person learning i think our students um maybe didn't move as fast forward as we normally would but we all move forward and i think that the areas that we didn't move forward in or places where students struggled we have measures in place or will from the start of school to help those students and i really think that whatever cliche that people want to use now about bouncing forward um we're ready to do that and so i'm not worried about what the future holds i think that you find out how good you are when you're faced with a challenge and i think this year we were presented with a challenge that i don't want again but our staff and community and board as ms forrest said none of this would have happened without all

021of those pieces um and i was in a building today talking one of those teachers that's retiring and you know our families who were truly partners in this process and you know i just want to thank publicly all of them for following guidelines and being responsible um for each other and keeping our helping to keep our school safe and our staff did a good job and our parents did a good job and that's how we stayed in school as much as we did so um i might send out one more sunday update i know that some of you will miss them and others will feel you getting some time back in your lives um but uh we'll send one out this weekend kind of culminating some of these things but as the public forum that

022it is and maybe the last time that we have the brady bunch version of a board meeting um just thanks to everybody and i just truly appreciate all of the work that you did this year to get us where we are so thank you superintendent smith next we have our region 15 of education board self-reflection with mr nick caruso from cabe which is the connecticut association of boards of education mr crusoe has joined us before for our recent board member evaluation we had have had a new board member since joined us in september i think um so he missed that one but um so this is not in familiar territory for mr caruso i'm excited at the prospect of doing a board self-evaluation we tried doing this last year and had kept on getting kicked

023off because of kovid we had other very pressing matters to deal with so i'm glad that you are here to join us tonight mr caruso and um i i you know i find that you bring a very practical perspective um to uh board work because you used to be a board member for a long time yourself before you started training board members so i look forward to what we're going to be doing tonight i know we're trying to do a truncated version but for me it's a foot in the door and a step in the right direction and i don't think there's any particular work that the board desperately needs i think we are functioning very well but i think that this is exactly the time that we should be doing the self-reflection while things

024are good versus waiting for them to go down the tubes so um i look forward to hearing what you have to say and take it away thank you um pardon me this is kind of weird because i hear people talking and then i hear people talking again um it's a and i apologize that my camera's not on but i use a docking station at work and i had to shut this camera off see how it would work and i forgot how to reactivate it i think it's in the bio setting so we're not gonna you're gonna see my picture tonight um it's funny because it's been so long since i was a board member but i was ready to raise my hand tonight when you were voting because it's just something that you never forget

025um when uh chairman chairperson manzo and i spoke to plan this meeting we talked about the idea of not trying to delve deeply into everything because um you know you're already doing so much work and and we could spend an easy couple hours what we talked about was sort of talking about one section of this and that's the board operations piece um and i believe you all got a copy of the worksheet that we use um i don't know if any of you filled them out or not i don't know that we're going to collect them and look at them at this point but it'll give you some ideas in terms of conversations and what you think are probably the most important things to talk about in fact i would probably open it up by

026asking all of you if we focus on board operations specifically the work of the board which i sort of talk in my mind is what you talk about and how you talk about it um is how you improve the quality or the effectiveness of board meetings um but i don't want to talk a lot i want this is your self-reflection i want you to spend time sharing how you feel about the work you're doing perhaps some areas you might want to think about how can we do that better i mean i was very impressed with your pnc policy and curriculum committee um and the way you handled that um and i have seen some of your meetings and i like the way you do your work so um i i agree that it's probably the

027best time to reflect on how we're doing when we're doing well so that we don't lose that so let's throw that open to folks um if you want to comment and i also look forward to going back to real in person because this is bad of course this is bad too um but we're all trying to muddle through the best we can so um in terms of again as you look down using driving the district through policy um looking at data to make decisions i know if josh is your superintendent that's the only way he's going to work um and and you're lucky to have him i will say um but in terms of you know supporting through professional development all of those things in this category that as you looked at it did anything

028stand out as first of all let's talk about what you do right let's not talk about gee we don't do this well at all but what are some of the things you feel you're doing well here so when i first looked at this when i received it two things really struck me um one was related to the budget i feel that we did a really excellent and thorough job at josh's i mean under josh's leadership i mean he orchestrated coordinated all the presentations with his team but i felt that they were extremely thorough very transparent and it wasn't only the level of presentation but it was also the engagement of the staff that came and presented the engagement of the community from the two board of finance directors teams from the two communities i felt

029that it was almost too much in a way but in the best possible way because it allowed everybody an opportunity to have the perspective heard questions to kind of digest the information so for me that was absolutely a big positive that i felt going very positively into the referendum that we had done our due diligence sitting on this board to really evaluate anything that was you know a red flag or that we had questions about the second piece unrelated to policy i think that all the work that pnc is doing under steve's leadership i think that's been very eye-opening on multiple fronts um one related to just um how dated some of our policies were the analysis that was done and then how we as a team have been trying to really spend the due

030diligence and time to go through very meticulously and carefully to make sure that they are aligned and i think that that really sets a standard for how we want to update them moving forward so those were the first two things that jumped out when i read through that list and so i just wanted to share those that's exactly the question i asked what's up i have a comment i was actually really pleased with the fact that so many of us have taken advantage of the professional development as board members and i think it makes us more informed and more effective it certainly opened my eyes to a lot of different things but i was very pleased that a lot of us really have been taking advantage of that of the offerings so thank you i

031mean i i think there's a lot of good things to say about about the work we're doing and i'll echo you know a lot of what sharon said and how is that about um the budget and and that seems to be very tried and true process for us is going through those annual budgets i will say like as i was doing the self-evaluation i probably scored us a little bit harsher on on the policy book and on professional development because i think although we have you know although we definitely have um you know an interest in improving i still feel like like we have work to do like to really you know make these things um rote um you know we really should have like a professional development cycle that we um that we're all

032you know a part of um i i would think if i was gonna give us a five you know um but also with the um the policy book um now i would say like we're on the path to being right with the policy book um you know i think the reason we're in the midst of this work is because we needed some work with that policy book and but i think we're getting there i think we have a pretty good process and we i hope we um you know we uh we add a little bit more structure to that and and maybe it's not as um you know we started with the bylaws which in some ways was nice because that's a pretty discreet part of the policy book to start with but also it's

033uh you know some of the trickier questions to ask ourselves about how do we as a board operate so i'm proud of us that we did that thank you so much um but i i do um you know i feel like it's going well but i also like feel the amount of work that we still need to do as well you know one of the frustrating things about policy is maybe maybe you're hearing me oh okay this is hard to get used to yes yeah so now you're going to get an echo echo right but no one else no one else would hear me so what well anyway um talk about kova changing our lives a little bit uh this one's not so bad so in reference to the policy it's i i like the

034con the idea that you're saying you know systemically however systematically how are we looking at the process but that you are doing the work and that's important to acknowledge and it never ends just when you think you're done you start all over again anybody else yes if people are watching on tv they're going to need to hear you through the microphone anyway unfortunately um so now i lost the screen that i wanted to comment on which was dang it here we go uh so if we're talking you know operationally and we're talking about if like efficient effective and focused boards on achievement and priority and decision making on relevant data and fiscally responsible budgets and a lot of that to me um if we're talking about what we are doing right i think that um

035it's kind of like a catch-22 so when it's not working like when the communication is broken down or when we don't have good chair leadership and superintendent leadership that's kind of when people start you know talking to themselves or you know going outside the chain of command and then that's where things kind of start to break down i think now we have a trust in the system if you will that um if you raise an issue with the chair or you raise an issue with the superintendent through appropriate channels that you know that you can get an answer you can get something on the agenda that an item can be discussed and then that prevents the frustration it prevents the run around so i think that is has been very key in the improvement to

036date and and it touches on a lot of these different areas so that would be what i think we're doing well yes eric can you hear me yes okay all right nick thanks for running this tom marks over here and i wanted to pick it back off of uh something that stephen said um being a new board member here um and not having the benefit of a formal onboarding process um i've really been grateful and appreciative of the leadership uh coming you know starting with marion and josh who made themselves very available to me um and i've always felt supported you know in my entire time here but going down to our committee chairs as well and working with steve on pnc and just being very impressed with the level of professionalism you know that

037they've brought to that and then to all my colleagues here too you guys have all been like extremely supportive so um i'm very appreciative of the collegial environment i'm looking forward to the day i can meet peter and richard in person richard we haven't had a chance to actually shake hands yet but i'm looking forward to that day um but everyone else i've i've been very appreciative of your welcoming me and just very impressed with the leadership that i've you know walked into in my short time here on the board so i guess the other side of the question then it would be as you think about forward operations and such are there areas better or get in the way um right so you just have to say that again for richard's uh benefit i'm

038self-muting here for some reason but anyway i apologize for that um so are there areas that um people think we could do better or if we could do this a little differently we could even shiny and brighter um are there any areas like that i mean i would um agree hopefully i'm not muted i don't think i would agree um with heather i do think um professional development you know could could be useful um i think we're all in different stages so some professional development that one person may find beneficial that person might not and cape certainly offers um a lot i think it's just we've been it's just very busy i feel like it's busier now than it was the first chair was on the board um and it does take time to um

039you have to make time uh and in this case some you know the virtual stuff does does help uh because you can jump on but then um i'm not just saying this because nick's in the room but i mean what i still draw on and still can remember and um remembering how i appreciated the value i was attending some of the day-long workshops like the ones the the new board member orientation which you could go to several years in a row and if they'll do it the same way uh with they have different tracks and different so you could you could attend a couple years in a row and not have not have the same experience um i mean i remember the presentation about mistakes new board members make and it was like with the

040the jefferson memorial how it's sinking or not sinking so and that was like 10 years ago so it i mean that is something that you know we i think individually we can just just make the make the time for um uh so that was i guess what i want to say and before you go to i just want to remind you that we are always available to come to you there's two advantages one you don't have to go anywhere of course you don't online but again in person can be better but secondly um i'm gonna remember the second part of that later but um but we can come to you and provide you that in-service training right here and and model that for whatever you need so like we did with the joint session with

041um i'm sorry that was region seven with their red um park hampstead new hartford and uh goldbrook we met with all the boards and did some training together so you know we're willing to look at different needs and figure out how to help you with those so just want you to know that oh i remember what the other thing was the the new board member training which will be this december again because there are elections this year um what we do is we have two tracks we have a new board member in leadership and we have joint sessions a few times during the day where we'll have speakers that are relevant to everyone like usually the commissioner and miguel cardona was our speaker at the last one we won't get him this year i don't

042think um and then we break out into smaller group sessions and there's training specific for new board members and then other things that would help seasoned board members get better so um we do try to take that into account as we go along and there's lots of opportunities and and we've actually had a lot more members attending since we've gone online because you don't have to travel um but the other side of that is lost because it's the networking it isn't even that we get to talk to all of you which frankly we all enjoy but it's also that you get to meet other board members other board chairs um and start a network which really can i've got lifelong friends that i met 37 years ago when i went to my first cave convention

043because um well people who work and work like this tend to like each other and in general right and i yes one of the most difficult things this year as much as the technology has helped us to be together it's also kept us apart and i feel like we really lost a lot of that personal connection um you know we walk in together we walk out together how's your family i think that lends itself to you know things falling apart a little bit you can't you don't have that connection and i also feel like it's gotten a little bit more informal where we used to sit and face each other maybe you would be more apt to say something nicely if you're sitting looking at someone you have that personal connection and i think we've

044lost that with covid so it would be nice to get back to all of us in a room um and just have that again i would love to walk in and out with everybody again and just you know that's how everybody is and connect it's also hard when we're talking you know you're not getting those social cues you know that that back and forth is a lot harder online than it would be if we were just sitting in a room talking so i think we've lost a little bit of ground there i'd love to see us get that back i'm curious as because the other thing that beating online has done is changed the way you interact with the public at your meetings and um i have heard some boards say it's been a lot

045worse and other boards say we have more people participating in our meetings than we ever did what's the what's the reality here in your district how how is the public engagement part of your meetings going i would say we've had public engagement um i mean we still have people emailing in um you know particularly around budget season but i i and i have heard people say that you know it's a little bit more daunting to call in than it is to come to a board of ed meeting and they feel a disconnect um with the with the board of education but i also think that we've also have a superintendent who's doing some really good communication to the public um so i think that that's definitely helped in that regard too i suspect i'm sorry

046guys did somebody jump in uh i was just gonna say that might speak to the idea that many people approach the board or listen to the board when they're unhappy and if they're happy silence is golden sometimes i guess you want to still have the reactions from people when they're satisfied but um you know my recollection of of public comment was it often was not complimentary and so the fact that your gatekeeper is taking care of things before they have to come to the level of the board is probably good i think it's also another meeting it's another zoom it's another something and people are kind of tapped out with you know with the technology so i can understand that but it is different even the night that we had the um the principles when

047they would come in and they would do like the presentation it was like great to see faces um and you're just starting to see that now like even with prom like to actually like see people a group that was really just moving i can't wait to get back to that so very quickly i would add i think the idea that heather that you mentioned a professional development cycle is very intriguing to me um i'd love to see like what a cycle like that might be other than obviously an orientation and you know leadership track like you guys do in the um the conference which i went to the last year i thought i thought was very helpful and as a matter of fact i think it said at some other meetings but the reason why

048i did a mission statement i read that was because of something i learned at the conference because it sets the tone and reminds people why we're here so i got something to take away that i took from the conference and we did try to do i you know there was um this year you guys did disability and the relationships matter and we had people that attended that and we had some board members that reported on that and i thought that was great i'd love to see that be part of a regular cycle um it was you know i think board members were a little nervous to do it and i have to say that historically i don't know that professional development was necessarily encouraged um i remember when josh was like yeah they're like oh

049you know that was um you know new and definitely a new feeling so i i would definitely agree with that um and i i definitely think um that there's room to look into how board members can feel more comfortable bringing their concerns forward and having either an agenda item added or feeling comfortable having a discussion um so i think that sometimes it's a matter of that that people bring up things at the wrong time when it's not on the agenda and i do try to be a stickler about you know if it's not on the agenda we shouldn't be talking about it because i don't want to create a foia violation um but i think that that is something that we could work on as well how much of that gets back to what was

050said earlier about the superintendent and the chair working together um there are some districts where board members fight to get things on the agenda when in my mind it's really just talk to the chair and if it's a question about it might be something specific or a specific issue that either requires some reporting back you know i'm interested in um how the effective covet's been on our health health department you know our nurses and such well it's not much to just put it on the agency let's talk about it if you're going to have any value from that conversation josh is going to have to have his staff put together a report and speak to these this is how it influenced our work and then that means they've got to be prepared and there might

051be a more appropriate time to do that it might take a month it might take two or you know what we've had plans on doing that at two meetings down the road you know so that gets into um working with the chair i think specifically and then she working with the superintendent to not really filter necessarily but help pigeonhole it into the right the most appropriate way of dealing with it there are some things that maybe aren't appropriate for the board to have as a discussion item but maybe it goes to committee or maybe you know there might be something else or maybe it has to be done discussed as a potential policy but that a lot of that has to do with the i'm going to say the quality of the chair because there

052are boards where they literally we have workshops like this and everybody's like you can't get anything on the agenda no matter how hard i try um now it may be an inappropriate issue but that can be explained usually in a way that oh okay but i understand you're interested so let's figure out how you can get some information that will you know or or maybe the better question is so what is it what is it that's on your mind what do you perceive as the problem because it may not actually be directly related to the question and so being a thought partner and helping you kind of work through what is the issue you have and you know how did you hear about it because unfortunately i think the requests for agenda items rise when

053facebook is busy and reading something on facebook may not be the best way of learning about an issue that maybe the board might need to talk about or might not so i think having more conversations but getting to here's what i perceive as a problem help me understand what we do and again if it is a problem let's put it on the agenda but we'd also want our superintendent to have time to say i'm looking at the problem i heard your question this is what i perceive we might need to think about doing but then come back to you with sort of a recommendation of hearing your concern this may be a way of solving that but i it's a little hard to put them all in one basket because there are sometimes when i

054just heard something on facebook which i think is insane i want to put it on the agenda well it might not be the right thing so um i'm sorry i just wanted to add i think that um the the thoroughness of the presentations have been great if i do think there's an opportunity and i know this is a challenge because time is a fleeting resource and and information changes but as much as we can get that information as a pre-read i think that would be really very very beneficial going into the meetings um because i think for me personally it helps me to adjust the information and think a little bit more about the content and frame the content and along that same vein we talk a lot about and i know this is you

055know about what we're doing which is wonderful people want to say these are all the things we're doing we're doing such a great job and that's so important but i also want to make sure that we have the right balance in the presentations to talk about where is this going to take us what are we going to get what's the impact what's the return and i sometimes feel we spend so much time on maybe what we're doing like how where is it going to take us and i think tied into that is then how is that going to exemplify and enhance our district relative to the other schools in our dirt and i think that we've done a great job to try and certain presentations to benchmark some of that from a data perspective but

056i don't necessarily see that continually through some of the presentations when we start talking about curriculum or how other schools are perhaps like doing things and maybe that's on me that i need to go and do that behind the scenes but i i think it would be helpful to have as much information early on so that if we do want to kind of do that behind the scenes research it we can do that on our own just to to benchmark some of the information that we're being presented with it's kind of flipping the classroom you want the information presented before the meeting and then maybe a synthesis of it as or a synopsis of it as part of the the meeting but you know as you saw in the data these are the high points

057um and i and i agree that and and i think we look for or the more we ask the more we'll see it but um remind us where we're going or you know or you know okay this is directly related to the specific goal this was the outcome we're looking at the goal how are we getting there you know um i think one of the best questions you can ask when you're going to vote on something a new item is what's this going to look like if it's done well you know and so it's in our minds always that um we're on a continuum and we may be doing really really well but are we are we there yet and if if we are approaching there what comes next because we're never going to be

058done we if we had a goal to improve learning by x percent or implement a particular curriculum once we've done it now what not okay we're done but what's next how do we go to the next level and i just want to qualify some of my comments i think superintendent smith does an excellent job at communicating an excellent job as you said as i shared with the positive things in the amount of information and how it's done so it's it's just a slight ask for refinement that's it but i don't want to take anything away from all of your hard work especially given this year where it's been a whirlwind um and that's why i started this with it's really so hard because time is a leading resource that you never have enough i'm uh

059a um sometimes contributor to school administrator magazine i write a column for superintendents about school boards and i just got the newest edition a couple days ago and what really stuck in my mind was on toward the back of the magazine they have new hires you know these are people that were just hired as superintendents across the country um and these are people that retired and the retirement column is usually about the same as an entire cost you know one column strip in the magazine well it was a page and a half of retirements this year and i think there's probably a direct connection between covet and that that people i heard it from a number of superintendents who did retire this year i didn't sign up for this because they didn't get to be

060an educational leader like they want to be or as they planned on being so um you're absolutely right that through this past year it's been a crazy crazy place but um a lot of it just really shook me to see how many people said i'm done i'll just weigh in this is your reflection so you can say whatever um it's not evaluatory so i don't take any of that i do think that if we don't create space to talk about things um i think that we're pretty confident that we're putting out a lot of information i do think one of the struggles is how do we both provide you with the depth of information that you need to understand what we're talking about and facilitate a conversation about that and not go to 11 o'clock

061i mean i think even like with mr nelson's presentation tonight at pnc like there's a lot crammed in um and i like i appreciate the feedback we want to hear more because the other challenge is if we give you a hundred slide um presentation on um whatever the monday before and there's questions like then it becomes well how much information and you know where's that line we're a thousand percent open to that conversation where i don't know where that balance is and i do think that like maybe pre-covered we were airing on the side of kind of overload to try to create a baseline where people had um enough background with where like dr chiappetta and i are with a lot of this stuff but we felt that we just need the information out there

062so that like the following year which i laugh so our true cycle of board presentations has only happened once and i forget who i was talking to today but um we only and even then you know this is this is now my third graduation my third graduating class and we've been under different circumstances for the last three years so like i take um no offense doing anything differently i've done it different for every year that i've been here um and we've tried to create as much of an art so i'm open don't don't i appreciate that no but i actually think that you bring up a good point in that even the concept of a pre-read like i like that because i'm like oh it helps orient i get to read through it because sometimes

063i have to digest it but then putting the other spin on it i'm saying oh wow that can generate you know so many questions times so many board members to you guys and that's not really an effective necessarily an effective utilization of your time so i do think you know there has to be a balance and i do appreciate you know that because i would not given everything your team has done do not want to give you more work um so maybe there's a balance there like i said we talk about that all the time of like how much like we know that there's context to a lot of that slides that comes through an explanation we put it out there we try to build presentations that can stand on their own because they're going

064to go on our website afterwards so a lot of times it's like bad powerpoint um design um so anybody that's watching the slide or you know we know that because you know cut up context so we want those slides to stand alone but even within that there's a lot of things that we want to explain to people and if you read it without so that being said i kind of hear what you say it's a lot to digest in one night and then to ask questions i think multiple times oh i have questions on tuesday that i didn't think of monday night at 9 30 saturday at 6 30 and um you know and did carrie talk about this or did whoever so i do think we want to get to a place and and

065some of it is to get you comfortable with that cycle and again i laugh because i call a cycle but none of you had that you're going to get an enrollment report so when you have certain types of questions and like you're saying them tonight comparisons to other businesses the more we know the kinds of questions as board members you're interested in we can answer those questions and you don't have to think about them that night um which again was kind of lost on me until today when i was like oh um last year graduation was under covered and the year before it wasn't and this year it's not exactly covered and so uh you know i'm looking forward to next year when we can really go back to where we were you know two

066years ago which again was my first year here and all of this stuff that kind of i see as a board cycle was new and we didn't have the internal structures in place to do like an enrollment report um and so it was just it's you know it's kind of interesting this is an evolutionary process and so i don't want you to think anything you say tonight um you know be honest and open because that's how we're gonna get better well let's say it was helpful for steve to send like this is where all the pieces like i like when the stuff starts to come together but so we're going to put together that that cycle of presentation and i'm going to have like spoiler alert i'm going to tell you that you know october

067is a good month to do assessments even if um this year is kind of a little weird with state and national assistance that allows us to collect data over the summer and then present it out november is a good month for us to do enrollment because we take the october first snapshot and we present it so when we put that agenda cycle together of the presentations and kind of to nick's point that tells all the administrators this is when we're going to talk about the school lunch program or social emotional health so ahead of time like these are the questions that i hear in public these are the things that i might be reading on facebook so it's not always something that happened today but in general these three questions always come up i always

068answer that budget time but why is our enrollment going down and are stopping you know not going down the theme or why you know those questions we know because the community i kind of collect them throughout the year and so as we put that cycle together if there's a presentation like we didn't do um a lunch program and even this year i feel like it was kind of squished um but once a year we should have a conversation about our school lunch program where we can collect questions and that helps you as a board member because if you're getting questions in the grocery store or wherever you get them you can say oh every spring we usually do a presentation on that let me take your questions down and we'll make sure to answer them

069and then like our food service director can can come prepared with that so that doesn't mean we're going to get a cycle for everything and we do adjust in between there but if there's things that you think we can be transparent about we can ask questions about or that you want to make sure as a board member you're prepared for uh kind of to dr giapetta's point if you can tell us what they are we'll either create a whole presentation to address them um or um i forget where we were but i feel like someone said oh that presentation it's like you guys the answer oh you talked about the equity inclusion presentation you were like oh you answered a whole bunch of questions even though we didn't ask them but you have kind of

070been asking them or somebody has and so we embed it into the presentation and so i think that helps all of us because the community is watching too and those folks are asking you that question or it allows you as a board member to say oh we did talk about that that was the may 13th board meeting click on minute 26 and you know there's your answer and you're not like have to remember everything that we ever talked about at a board meeting if we can create some kind of um structure for you to refer to so like don't don't feel like we're going to take any um whatever malice ask the questions there was uh one point that i had wanted to make i i am of the same mind as sharon um i

071love asking questions and i could just marinate in presentations for a long time and i know that you and i are not the only one in this room who feel that way but there are other board members who want it shorter and who want less detail and feel that sometimes meetings go too long so how do you handle that nick like how do you handle situations where you have some board members saying we we need to like move this along and go faster and other board members who want to take the time to really think about things i ask you a question then you get muted um i'm going to answer that for two different ways because i think there's um if the board meeting if the outcome of the meeting is that you're going

072to vote on something then i think the um approach to that content in the meeting is a little different than it's if it's just for your information like josh was saying we'll do a report on the food service once a year you can kind of plan that he can work with his staff and say you've got 15 minutes you know keep it and there's nothing wrong in fact i encourage you to put time limits on agenda items right on the agenda and it doesn't mean you can't blow that right out of the water as a board you know you could just keep asking questions but you can start by limiting the professional staff time so that they can be more succinct and really focus on what you need to learn um so that's one thing

073that you start with right away um we don't want someone to get up and ramble and just keep going now if you ask questions and they want to answer them that's a little different but so that's probably more of the four-year information kind of stuff when it comes to deliberative items things that you're going to vote on you can't always control it but i say one of the things is you have to think about um is it time to put this on the agenda or not is the board prepared to have the final conversation or not maybe it has to be spent you spend a little more time in the curriculum committee for example or the policy committee flesh out the important concepts and the questions there so that when it comes to the board

074we're there to vote on it it doesn't mean we won't ask questions it doesn't mean that we won't even challenge things perhaps because that's our job but that we we treat it as this is the final it's like a second reading on the policy we've done all the work tonight we're codifying it and so if somebody is i won't say although at some point say deliberately wall let's say for a minute they're not deliberately doing it but it's coming across the same way maybe it's time to table it till the next meeting and have some of those questions answered offline because if i'm asking that many questions i don't understand now it may be you know um i think i've mentioned simon sinek before simon's a public speaker he does a ted talk on leadership

075that is really really good and he talks about as part of his conversation the part of the brain that makes decisions is not the same part of the brain that analyzes data those two parts of the brain don't actually talk to each other so a person using the ex the argument i need more data before i can make my decision not really i mean in their mind it might be i'm not convinced but it doesn't mean that they've reached a tipping point in data as much as there's a comfort level on that other part of the brain that now is satisfied so how do we balance that and i think that that's where the the motion to end debate to call the question comes up if it's one person that's keeping this from going forward

076i think you all have the opportunity and maybe even the obligation to say we've been at this for a half hour or 45 minutes i haven't heard a new question in all that time i'm going to move that we close debate and then there's a second it's one that's my robert's rules pet peeve by the way someone yells call the question and she says questions been called we've got a vote no it's a motion to end debate which is seconded voted on and if it's voted on then you end debate and you go to the main motion but you all have that tool available to you now if five of you have a lot of questions i say that's a pretty good and i suspect that i've seen superintendents when they see that much pushback

077they say you know what i'd like to withdraw that until another meeting so that we can start to get to answer some of your questions in fact feed your questions to me and i'll do my best to respond to them when we bring it back so we're taking the all this i can't call it busy work because you're doing work that's important and you need questions answered but you're taking it out of the board meeting and setting it aside where it's so it won't take as much time it's you will get your questions answered the questions will still be answered in public at the next meeting but it's not a you know back and forth and stretching it and stretching it so those are a couple tactics i think that can can be helpful um

078time limits on at least the presentation part of it you can by the way if you chose to say as a group that we all we are going to afford ourselves the same time limits that we do on the public community public comment typically is three minutes we can say as a board we want to limit our board comments to three minutes as well um that's a choice that the board can make i've seen boards do that when some people just go on and on i know i've seen effective chairs where you know look we've been at this for a half hour i'm really not hearing anything new does anybody have something new to offer or can we call the question or can i have the motion read in and so there's several strategies for

079doing that but i think that it starts with the board saying we don't want to meet till 11. if if we can and we don't want to be the impediment that keeps us there you know there are a lot of reasons why you might have a meeting that goes late it might be a big agenda can we cut that back you know we could spend an entire meeting talking about how to make your meetings i hate to use a word efficient because that doesn't mean effective i prefer to say you want to make your meetings effective you can spend an entire session talking about that and it might be something you want to think about doing sometime perhaps so it would be a professional development leadership training we did at one of the pre-conference workshops

080on effective meetings and we got into robert's rules and even just tricks aren't necessarily rules of procedure but are good practice for controlling a meeting and um we could come in and do something like that here too if you wanted i'm sorry i see mr cookson from home had a question so john if you want to unmute yourself and ask your question not even ask a question maybe just a little information and see what nick says about it a lot of the stuff that goes on with finance and being the finance chair most of our meetings um last anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours once in a while we've had a one-hour one but a lot of the motions that we bring to you have been discussed at the finance meeting

081in long duration and we go over a lot of things for us to bring you all the details when we put a motion for you sometimes it would take us maybe 15 minutes or everything so i just want everyone to know that the finance committee does function and spends a lot of time on what we're doing and a lot mr martino and josh has spent a lot of time giving us the information for where we're at and what's going on i know you don't see it an emotion comes before you but there is a lot of detailed information that we do have and a lot of it comes from joe martino in all his work and everything that goes on that he gives to josh and heather can attain to it marion can attain to

082it heather dwyer has been there richard spirito can attain to it we do a lot of discussing before these motions get to you uh just like the motion tonight that was done two meetings ago uh we did that and joe went looking for it uh the driveway also at mes was many many discussions before the finance committee before we got to it so there is a lot of work going on with the finance committee so just to let you know thank you for that it's important to acknowledge that subcommittees work best when they're trusted um you know on my board i finally disbanded our curriculum committee i know by law you have to have one now but um that's more staff driven anyway but we had a curriculum committee but i found that that would

083have hour and a half two hour presentations in the committee meeting and then would come back to the board and have an hour and a half presentation to the full board and that seemed to be too redundant so let's treat it as something that goes before the whole board we do it on the second meeting of the month which were more informative than business and um it in my mind that's the most important work we do as a as a district is instruction in curriculum so why not have everybody brought up to speed on it but that was because board members didn't trust the committee there and if you've got a committee structure like your finance committee where they're doing all this work and they bring a presentation proposal to you and you say okay

084we know they did their due diligence i'm all for it that's perfect because that's what that's how the system was designed and if you are second guessing or spending that much time then probably you need to sort of revisit the whole committee issue what why are we doing it how are we doing it et cetera but it sounds like you're doing it right so i just wanted to say um in regards to having the schedule the cycle i do think that's definitely helpful um because i even remember like i'm like okay now and i may have to click through every meeting but i'll find what it was and i will go and re-reinform myself so that'd be good i it might have been in one of your recycling i think we have to do like

085a safety like a school climate survey um and i don't know if i feel like at some point we would see results like it you know in the broad sense like you know do you feel safe at school or does your child feel like he has someone and that was always a great gauge and i think in past we have also done just sort of general surveys um at maybe the end of the year um which is nice to that that go from the district to the whole community and anyone can respond and they um where as a board member to be able to say you know if someone approaches you and has a complaint you know that the things we can say that they don't turn on a dime um you know there are

086opportunities throughout the year to give to give feedback um so that might be just something maybe we we consider because then there's there's another mechanism to get input that then we can then defer the community to we also um uh i think in the past as well now it's nice to say to people like you have to write the administrators you have to write you have to write the principal your mate you know the superintendent if you know you want to you're not you're not happy um and again knowing that that there's that that there is a thorough response that we can then say well that was just the response and then as board members you know if there's just continuous flow of people unhappy with responses which has happened in the past that's when

087his board members then we kind of all put the pieces together and decide to take take action or and that's a very drastic example but there have been other things that have come up where you know we where i think correctly if i'm wrong that we've kind of all come to you and sort of like said that we're all sort of getting the same feedback and then you take you take action so um i i do uh i just throw that throw that out there as well it's just um i just throw that out there and then i think with um just to get back to pnc and those questions so the questions i i don't know if you noticed but they were very very broad based like what does a board want to do

088what is it what is our role as pnc right and i have been on pnc for eight out of ten years they've definitely been pnc meetings years ago and even recently but where certainly years ago i was guilty because my kids were right in the middle of things changing like common core and all that and and i would see stuff and you know it'd be i'd be asking questions that were too specific or too too many times i began it with well i saw this in my own kids blah and so now i'm asking this to you here in this committee and that's not really appropriate and we've tried to get back on the tr on the schedule of here's our committee review cycle here's our high level here's what is a high level what

089are we supposed to be doing and it and it really is well what were the goals did you meet the goals if you didn't meet the goals why not what can we do if anything to help you meet the goals and that's why those questions were just meant to be just very very high level like if we're asking about details like in the fifth grade this or that or the third or the you know then maybe that's not that's that's to me is is a is a personal question that one could ask you know somebody so that's what i've definitely done in the past that i that i now kind of know is wrong and now in this role i try to just maybe try and steer the whole committee into that that um that

090direction right to try and you know keep the meetings you know short so anyway let's leave it down thank you for listening so i i know we had originally talked about 8 30 and we've blown right by that um i had said for you for like an hour an hour and a half so you're doing okay on time you're probably at the little bit back the hour and a half part but um i could you know i i'd personally have a couple like gosh i could keep on going all night see this is again um but you know i'd love to know from you how do other boards do this like in in terms like so there's a lot of stuff in the self-evaluation is it like a two-day retreat kind of thing and um

091that's my first question number two can you touch a little bit also on my vision they are going to be having a meeting on august 5th we have gone through this with josh before um refresher for us to think about um over the next couple months when we're relaxing and you know hopefully having some time off this summer so that you know when we come back to this on august 5th that we'll have been thinking about stuff um on the vision part i think well first of all i know josh has a really good process for sharing out what's been done which then help reflects on particularly in reference to where we said we were going to go where we are he can give you a good status update basically on the goals which would

092then help inform your conversations about where we go next um so i think in my mind the most important thing is to focus on the outcomes expected um there are some folks that do strategic planning for example i know when this one person in particular works with a board on strategic planning because all of the strategies are the creation of a program or the creation of a thing and so it's not about we want to see instruction improve or we want to see a more holistic approach to social wellness or you know some of the social emotional learning for example or equity that we want to see movement in those areas instead we're going to develop a program that does this and in my mind the goal should be we want to see an improvement

093in students in this area we want to see better classroom instruction and the process of visioning would help articulate what you mean by that and again leading heavily i think josh for his expertise on where you are now um i think boards should focus on fewer goals rather than more goals um i'm even one this is particularly with coven still in our sights um one goal and it might be we want to make sure that all those kids that had shortcomings this year are brought back up sounds like a simple goal right that might be enough i mean again that's why you have those conversations um and i i think that's a great way to spend the day together talking about the whys that's going back to simon sinek the key to his his talk

094is that successful organizations focus on why they exist not what they do not how they do it but the why and in fact he has a book about it too um but that if we focus on why we exist and then put all our energy into that that we are much more likely to be successful i mean in his speech he talks about the wright brothers who were very poorly funded they were out there on their own compared to a guy named langley who was a wealthy millionaire probably back then who wanted to have the first airplane and he had the best minds he hired all kinds of people but he wasn't successful because the wright brothers believed in it that was their why langley just wanted to be famous um he talked about martin

095luther king and why he was the person there were plenty of other folks like him ministers leading social justice issues why was he the one that was successful and part of it is he says he didn't have an eye of a plan speech he said i have a dream speech you know people buy into the dream more than the plan and so i think that if you can resolve your conversations more about the what ifs or the why and then it's josh's job to come back to you and say if this is what you believe we should be doing then this is the plan that we should put together or start to work on to get there um you don't have to solve the problems i think boards spend too much time fighting over solutions

096because they never agreed on what the problem was that we're trying to solve and so it's more important to have the concrete i use the term problem loosely because some of the things we want to talk about are not problems as much as the next step but those are the conversations you should be having rather than a new math program new writing program i worked with a district that literally fought for 10 years about whether they wanted all-day kindergarten or not i mean they every year they proposed to the budget time and it got voted down and the community was split very angrily about this issue for years and i was asked to come in and do a retreat first with the administrators and then with the board they were gonna do we did something

097a little different i worked with the administrators and i said the board wants to set goals and what i'd like from you is three four back then five i wouldn't do that today statements of need we're not going to call them goals that's going to be the board's job but identify five things that you need but here's the difference we're not going to give them solutions we're not going to talk about solutions we want to articulate what the issues are and again all-day kindergarten was a big thing so i said okay let's start who wants to go first what what issues are we dealing with somebody said we need all-day kindergarten that's a solution what's the problem we need more time that's a solution what's the problem we spent probably an hour and a half

098with a really rich detailed conversation and not of all of that came literacy and new mercy that was the number one issue facing the children in that district and so then they went to the board and they said these are the five actually it was four statements of what we believe am i okay um so these are the four issues we think need to come to the board they are taking they actually did a powerpoint here's the issue here's why we think it's important which i thought was great then unfortunately they gave them some solutions and it was like ignore them they're gonna hide that side um but then the board took what they said and they said well you know what we we buy all of that those are going to be four goals

099but we think there needs to be a fifth goal about community engagement and that was absolutely the right thing for the board to do because that was their job was to remember the community now the administrators actually resented that a little bit but then as we talked it through they started to acknowledge if these are going to be the board's goals the board has to be active in this conversation and so ultimately they had the five goals now what happened with all day kindergarten still took another five years but that year in the budget there were proposals for reading support and math math support so they started addressing the problem rather than fighting over a solution that they weren't ready for and so that's i guess a long way around talking about in in your

100conversations with josh to focus on what are we really trying to do what what do the kids need what does our community need we've seen now the public schools are a lot more important than just i hate to say just daycare we've never felt that way but this year has shown how integral public schools are to the fabric of our society what does that mean going forward do we just go back to business as usual because we can or do we start to integrate more community support through our schools where we have been doing that for the last year those are conversations you should be having and my two-part question was so how do other boards do this whole self evaluation process depending on what they're trying to do a lot of them um they

101fill out the thing and they we get i get them and we collect them we go back and share the results and then we have a conversation probably about all of the areas similar to we had that we had tonight but more focused on the questions um i thought we got into more depth doing it this way because we just picked one area and got to really talk about what you perceived rather than just going through a checklist i also depending on the board boards that are highly effective do it as just a reference check okay we want to just remind ourselves we're doing it right or if we're not we acknowledge it and we're working on it which is kind of what i heard here um and then there are boards that we have

102chaos and um either the chair or the superintendent convinced the board you really need a self-evaluation at which point it's kind of like marriage counseling where you're trying to go around helping people resolve problems those are harder because those are usually when personalities get into it and those are more of a case-by-case basis but for a formal process i would say probably a little more formalized than you did it tonight but i think you probably had a better conversation than they would typically have and that's an evening typically it's not a two-day thing it might be part of a longer retreat where you have some of the conversations about goals um or one thing i was impressed with when we did the orientation last year it was only half about the roles it was half

103about josh telling you here's how we do things in the district these are the people you need to know who they are what they do that's a critical in fact i presented to a group of trainers for the national school boards association last week about board training and i mentioned what you're doing here as part of it wasn't just me going up saying here's how to be a good board member but it was part of that orientation included this is how you nap is a board member how you navigate things here in region because it will be different than that might be somewhere else you could have been a 20-year board member in another town but come here and the work could be totally different so i liked that aspect of it that he brought

104it home to you and helped you with some real practical things about how could i be a good board member and still help people because my role would be if somebody calls you with a problem tell them to talk to someone else and what joshua's doing is if there's a problem here's how we can help them which i thought was very much better so i'd say in general you're doing it took it out right you were saying you want people to leave and be like that's what they're doing yeah that's what he did um and one other uh quick and i'm sorry i'm asking all these questions i just want everyone to know where i'm going um you know hopefully for the august 5th meeting but so we had an example someone suggested a professional

105development um what was the word that you used professional development um could be useful like uh an outline of what we should be doing so that would be something that we would discuss at a meeting where we're kind of setting goals for ourselves and then as a board we would talk about that issue and like someone might suggest okay we commit to doing three hours a year as each board member does that and we'll report back at periodic times is that an example that would work it does it on it i think whenever you talk i get muted um so don't talk no so um in terms of professional development well we have two programs at cave that you might think about approaching the first one board member recognition every time you go to one

106of those professional development activities like a workshop on budget or on policy or on legal matters we had one today on the legislative update where we went through all the laws that passed in this past session and applications and school boards every time you go to those online or in person you get credit and when you hit a certain level of credit you get a first mem first level certificate it's not certification but you're you're certificated as a level one board member and then there's another round that would get you to level two might be something some of you want to aspire to as a board to say we encourage two or three board members or all of you to seek it out if you want to the second thing is that we have boards

107of distinction awards as well um that's we give there's a checklist and we just did them for this year so you have time to set up for this coming year um but it's a series of criteria for example that that we just we are adding i think wednesday night at our board of directors meeting that the board has had uh has updated a policy on um diversity equity and inclusion um that would give you something to check off as being something that an exemplary board would do and there's a variety of things having someone participate in our board leadership program which is yet another program that we offer um having um sending copies of your agenda and our policy person typically reviews them to see if the agendas are um set up in a way

108that moves business along or if it's full of busy stuff so we have a there's a variety of things that you can check off you reach a certain number of those and you get awarded this distinguished service or distinguished board award which is given out at our convention every year so that's something the entire board could aspire to and it will have to build in a lot of the things um that you were talking about almost like it's a list of things we we should be doing some of them involve professional development some of them are activities that you can do having someone involved in our government relations activities for example um you're all invited but um you know usually on the boards one person likes to be sort of the legislative liaison and you

109attend our and they're all online now which is even easier but we have our government relations committee we have a state relations committee which focuses on state law we have one that focuses on federal law um we have a series of resolutions every year passed at our delegate assembly um getting involved in that process maybe even writing some of your own an item that you find is in state law typically but it doesn't have to be that interferes with your ability to do your work writing a resolution and having it past fire delegate assembly means that could very likely become part of our legislative agenda so there's a lot of things that you can do within that umbrella that get you some recognition and you're not doing it for that but it also helps you

110be a more effective board at the same time so i hope i answered that question anyone else have any other questions for mr caruso related on the board operations or anything i don't know it's 904 so we're doing okay i'm doing okay no no anyone at home my com my screen is all frozen i don't i hope people can hear me um but i think my my internet connection is unstable um so hopefully everyone can hear and see me okay so i think uh i think we can hear you ms menzer all right thank you thank you mr nelson so he's the one that sometimes mutes us so that we could hear each other better um all right so if we have no other anyone else had last chance no other questions thank you so

111much mr so for coming i found this to be very helpful and i love seeing how the board engages and goes back and forth and um i think you've given us most definitely something to think about and hopefully we'll we can have you come back again next year and when things are you know more back to normal and we're not so worried about tents and rain and in person and all that kind of stuff so um thank you very much you're welcome my pleasure um next we have board member comments anyone everyone's frozen you see is anyone asking no all right all right um i i have a couple board member comments or that i wanted to make um first i just wanted to say um how much i appreciate all the year-end activities that

112the schools are trying to get done um in particular at the high school that tent has been a wonderful addition to our school year i was able to attend a concert at the high school and it was better than tanglewood because the weather was wonderful and the sound was great and parents were there and it meant so much to the parents to like see their kids doing a concert again after so long and i know all the effort that it took to get to that and i've said to mr nelson a couple times i hope that that can be done again because i don't know if i ever want to attend an indoor concert after that and also particular mention to the proms that happened at the high school and all the parental involvement i

113don't think the kids have ever had such a nice prom and you know i know a lot of effort went into making that possible and i have a whole new respect for some of the parents on the board of ed in particular who helped out and made that possible so thank you so much for doing that for our kids they really benefited um and just wanted to say uh you know as our school year is ending um just again a note of gratitude to everyone that made the school year possible i know the and we all know the hard work that went into having in-person learning which seems across the board you know that's that's the best thing for students on a number of different levels and we worked really hard to make that happen

114and administrators worked many many hours and rolled up their sleeves and did jobs that they normally would not have done but we recognized that that's what helped make our school run this year so thank you so much particularly to super sent in superintendent smith um you know who's our part-time epidemiologist um as well and um just so patient asked answering questions and getting us through a very very very difficult year and a special thank you to our region 15 staff teachers paras everyone who helped us have such a successful year we could not have done it without all of you and also special shout out to mr nelson who helped us do these meetings this year um we could not have done it without you and would not have had such smooth running board meetings

115so thank you so much for all your effort next we have comments from citizens the board of education will recognize citizens of middlebury and southbury and citizens are asked to state their name their town of residence and to limit their comments to three minutes and mr nelson i don't see anyone who's on the line for comments right there is no there's no one on the line right now okay all right um so for announcement of future meetings we are canceling our meeting on june 28th and our next board of ed meeting is thursday august 5th it is a special meeting where we're doing a board retreat at central office right now scheduled from four to eight o'clock um we are going to be discussing goals for the upcoming year um hopefully going to be having

116some food i don't know if i'll make a lasagna i don't know if we're at that level but who knows it'll be something so um hopefully everyone can come and you know bring ideas and have a wonderful relaxing summer um so we could look at everything with fresh eyes um so may i have a motion to adjourn so move mary thank you richard do you have a second all right any discussion all those in favor all right it passes we