001Kelly won't be here and Jean is running late. Is Tara online? Yes, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, me too. I'm feeling very proud of myself. Yeah, so we're good, right? Okay, so let's, I'll call the meeting to order at 6.04 p.m. And this is our reorganization meeting. So I will get started and ask if anyone would like to nominate a chair for the Dresden board. Sorry, before we do that, I just want to double check again. Oh, Dresden is 11. Yeah. Yeah. That's where I was. Okay. Thank you. I was like, okay. All right. So would anyone like to make a nomination for a board chair? I would like to nominate Ben Keeney. Second. Any other nominations? Sorry, I'm going to chime in again. If I'm doing the math right, two-thirds of 11 is still 7.3.
002You can't have 0.3. We can't round down. I think quorum is 50%. It's greater than 50%. In New Hampshire as we speak. I know. Oh, is it deferred for the reorg? Is that why? Yeah. Yeah. Anytime you're electing new officers, which is typically annual, it's come on board. It's policy. Oh, please. Especially if the tech director didn't know the policy. No, Tara. I figured it was the thing I'm telling you. Yeah, me too. Gina's on her way. I'm texting her right now to find out her estimated time of arrival. All right. I'm not calling the meeting to order a tent. Yes, order. Thank you. Has anyone heard from Michael Little? I haven't heard from Michael. I'm assuming he's at baseball practice because I saw my neighbor who's on his team was headed to baseball practice
003at Crossroads. We know where he stands. Gina! Hey, we need you for quorum. Yay. Okay. Now I'll call the meeting order at 6. Oh, 6. You're okay over there for us to? Okay. And I still second Ben. Okay. And then any other nominations for board chair? No? Okay. All in favor of Ben being our president board chair? Do we have to go around because it's 15? Yes. Oh, yes. Okay. I caught a procedure thing. I'm so proud. Okay. Yeah. O'Dell? Yes. Russell? Yes. Renee? Sullivan, yes. Christy, yes. Melvin, yes. Yes. We skipped over you. I forgot. Is your chair already in? No, I was going to do Tara next. Hello, is there a yes? Do we have anyone else? Yes, I think we have everyone. All right. Thank you all for your continued support. It
004is much appreciated. And now we move on to the appointment of a vice chair. Would anyone like to nominate themselves or someone else to be vice chair of the Dresden School Board? I nominate Neil. And remember, we do not need a second for appointments. Anyone else for vice chair? If not, then I'll hear a motion for Neil O'Dell as vice chair of the Dresden School Board. I'm sorry, Bob. We'll call a vote starting with Neil. Neil, would you like to go or not go? O'Dell, yes. Russell, yes. Sullivan, yes. Eni, yes. Christie, yes. DeBasse, yes. Nelson, yes. Concero? Veloso, yes. And Gina, thank you. DeGonia, yes. I'm sorry. We're all easing into the new year. Jan, can you add me to the panel? Or give me a privilege, please. Now we'll take a motion for
005an appointment of a secretary. I note that there are no new members of the board this year. So thank you all for continuing to run as able. Previously, it was Carrie. Just to keep track of things. So much work. I nominate Carrie. Nominations for Dresden secretary. We'll take a motion to make Carrie Russell the secretary of the Dresden school board again, starting with Neil. Yes. Russell, yes. Sullivan, yes. Christie, yes. Yablas, yes. Nelson, yes. Degangye, yes. Terry, yes. All right. And Keeney, yes. That is unanimous. Welcome Neil and Terry to the Dresden School Board once more. And now in terms of moving right along to... committee stuff. Typically, as we all know, we do the committees either at the SAU or at a four chairs meeting after the chairs are confirmed because it is kind
006of a bottleneck to figure out all the logistics and scheduling. And if we do it by individual boards, certain members may be too committed or not committed enough on their respective committees because we're not really aware of what all of the other boards are doing in terms of committee membership. So with the board's permission, I'd like to table or sorry move that along for a future four chairs meeting does anyone have any concerns with that process Robin um for our non-public we have the appointment of the the approved hiring of the rms principal we are not at that point yet we're getting close but so I'll just do an update on that okay all right and is there anything else besides the nominations for non-public no okay i know there are no attachments for that
007are we expecting attachment or oh that's an that's i'm sorry different obsession yeah yeah okay and remember we are not obligated to go into non-public if it is purely the nomination list so at that point i will ask if anyone would like to go into non-public to discuss the nomination list And I'll need to go into non-public for the update. Yes. Fair enough. We're going to have to go anyway. Sorry. This is what happens when you arrive three minutes late. I'm all off my game. I apologize. Okay. So then we'll move on to the annual policy reminder for board members. This is a standing policy. We have edited it within the last couple of years for both BBAA and BCB. That said, this should be somewhat old news to all members of this board. So
008if anyone would like to discuss it now or review the policies or how it matters to themselves, please do so now. Otherwise, we will move on. Anyone would like to discuss it? Neil. Are you going to, so it typically is signed by board members? Yes. Is it here? I'll go grab it. Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you for that reminder, Neil. So at some point, Robin or someone else will step out to grab a physical signature and we will do that for those folks who are here. Moving along to the regular portions of the meeting for the agenda review. In addition to what we've already talked about, does anyone want to add, subtract, or edit anything on the existing agenda? Seeing none, we'll move on to a chance for public comment. I'm not seeing
009any atypical posts here or online. That said, if anyone who's a member of the public who is typically here would like to speak, they may do so in any way. I'm not just looking at Linda. And yet you are because you're named her name. You want to chime in on anything? I'm talking to Karen. She's right behind you. Anyone? There's another chance at the end of the meeting. Moving along to reports. Ian, what is going on at the high school? In the past few weeks, council has had multiple motions, including the motion per year requirement, which would require council members to present motions each year, but it ultimately did not pass. Also, last week, we reviewed the call to environmental action motion, which acknowledges the climate action plan. And we also briefly reviewed a motion
010to remove all plastic bottles from the cafeteria. looking at the motion tomorrow too the plastic bottles one do you have a sense of why the motion to require a an annual thing by the council member failed um i think the punishment the punishment was that you couldn't run like if you didn't present a motion uh you couldn't run the following year i believe okay yeah any questions for ian or his punishments thank you for that you appreciate it Moving on to the RMS principals report. I hear there's some things going on there. Anissa, you want to tell us all about it? There are lots of things that are always happening at the school. As you can see in the report that I had the opportunity to upload this afternoon. We're continuing to progress on our
011MTSS. We have two different teams going to a Tier 1 and Tier 2 workshop on MTSS. We are beginning to transition middle school to middle school. So one of the advantages of RMS or disadvantages is we had about 170 new kids a year. Now that's an exaggeration. Not that quite that many. It feels like a lot. So MCS will bring in, we'll get to meet with those parents the last couple of weeks of March. For preschool parents, we meet with them. We just do an evening Zoom and then later in May. We do parent tours and the chance for parents to come in. Part of that, the transition process as well, is the eighth graders transitioning to the high school. Monday of this week, high school counselors came in and met with students. They'll come
012back next week and have further conversations about course selection forms. You'll see linked in my report a letter that maybe I'll get sent this evening to incoming parents about our math placement process for seventh grade students. We've had a number of conversations with our RMF and MCS math educators. Today, Kelsey, Lauren, and I sat down and looked at that communication. another time as a way to make sure that we are being as transparent as possible with families about the process and as consistent as possible. And this is this year's plan for placement using really both the same set of metrics in both schools, the Iowa standards test scores that are available and IXL. So those are components that will go into some grade students whether they place into math or advanced math. Well, I appreciate
013the extra detail in this letter, especially compared to previous years. I think the metrics are more solidified than they have been at least publicly in the past. So as a parent, I appreciate that. Any other comments for Anissa on this or math or the math letter? Gina. Can I make a comment about athletics? Yes, please. That's at the bottom of it. I shared a New York Times article with Julie and Megan about the FIFA 11, which is a ACL prevention protocol that has great data that shows how it's helping kids prevent ACL injuries, which are rampant with girls in particular, but also boys. And when I see girls and boys across starting in the spring. I think it would be great for them. You to also make sure you're doing that protocol. Like I think
014we as a school or district have an opportunity to be at the front line with this. It's I have a child who's had a knee injury, so I'm sensitive and I've seen so many girls go down with ACL injuries and it takes them out of sports for nine months. And there's social implications. There's other ones. And the data shows if you do this protocol as a warmup. really prevent the injuries. So I would love to see us using it. How are the participation counts so far looking for spring? We have not heard. I know the registrations are open. We're progressing on hiring coaches. I believe we've hired... Yeah, but I don't know about student signups. I haven't seen Brandon else share that data. Lisa? Yeah, following up on Gina's comment, you might want to have
015Brandon talk to the coaches of the football team here at the high school because they have a partnership, a pretty strong partnership with DHMC regarding concussion protocols, and there might be a way to... partner with DHMC for this as well and just put a little less strain on the staff at RMS and take advantage of the local resource because having had a son who had a couple of concussions, DHMC was really great and they had a good baseline and everybody gets tested and it works really, really well. So just a kind of a shout out to Julie and the high school for that protocol and maybe we can learn from that. And then my only other question is, is baseball not on here because there is a league that the boys can play in somewhere?
016My understanding that there's a current operating 7-8 baseball program. And this year, what we are offering as a school are those sports that were previously offered by Hanover Parks and Rec. Okay. My only caution for that would be that the 78 baseball league that is currently in existence, at least used to, I don't know if that's still the case, was it's kind of exclusive and had tryouts, which is not really a middle school model. So I just kind of wanted to make sure that the kids who might not. be good enough yet at the age of 12, but might be great at the age of 16, would have a place to play. And I don't know whether that's the middle school's job, but I just would kind of want to investigate how the current league
017is operating. Maybe not for this year, but for future years. Yeah. And as an FYI to that, privately, there are no tryouts. There are simply pre-season meetings to ascertain ability to equalize the teams. So there are no cuts. And also there are several girls in that league. including the daughters of two board members historically. Again. What's that? Again. Again. Okay. Great. Any other comments for Anissa? Thank you, Anissa. Julie, there is happening at the high school. Would you like to share on those? I'll pass. I think it's still. I mean, when I question. I also wanted to just mention, I did a little research after the last meeting and put, you know, some schools down that do trips, international trips. But I didn't want you to read that as like being defensive. It was more
018like me trying to check my own assumptions. Because we have had members of our world language department raise the question of should we budget for every... student to have one or should we have a fund where every student would one time have a pay for international trip as a public school so I think there are definitely equity issues I just wanted I don't really want to go down the road of public school no trips anywhere and private schools have them it would be sad if only 10 percent of America's schools I had to get their kids out of the classroom and out into the world. Right. So that's that's more of that piece. But I do think and I at some point I'd love to think about it with all of you or to try
019to figure out a way to either have a massive fund that would would allow every student need blind or like everyone would get. This is part of their being a Hanover Norwich resident or whether it's just something we build into the budget. So anyway, so that's why I put that there. But we have, I don't know if you want us to do it with questions. Any questions for Julie specifically to this issue before we get into the presentation? Yes. Thank you for the research here. Did you, was there a question to those same schools of, is there? Like money in their budget? I didn't ask that. Okay. So a number of them said not, right? They have scholarships. But I never asked the question about money. They're like very supportive, but not monetarily. But then
020some didn't say anything at all. They just sent it along. So the next, I could, I didn't want to just like keep peppering with a survey. Just one question. But I could ask that question, you know, if somebody, if there's a town that funds it for all of their students. I would be shocked, which is why I asked. It does seem like that's probably not the case, even if it is offered. But if you had asked, I would be curious. It's all good. I'm not asking you to ask. And if we go back to the survey results, as usual, there is some support, but not as much as you'd think for school subsidization of trips. So any other topics for Julie and questions for Julie on this? Thank you. And then on to the presentation.
021Okay, so Jess is here to help. Yeah, Jess. Also, there's a large committee that is doing this. It is not a given, but we just wanted to show you something we're working on in this school. There's been support from our staff to continue on this path, and we most recently did a staff. So that which was like a 93 I don't even I was almost passed out. Like continue on the path from our staff, which is never the case. But we want to show you a project we're working on. A number of people in the school that have been working on it like weekly are listed below there. It's just a set up. But it was kind of our way of. Thinking about the strategic plan, thinking about the portrait of a graduate, and trying
022to take that seriously and think of a way to, when we say student pathways, like what does that really mean? And there's a way we can reimagine things to. to do that. We're going to try to be fast because we did this at a staff meeting. We were not fast. We did it at a leadership meeting, but that was that. We were definitely not fast there. And so we'll try. We're going to probably get through this. You can. Yeah. So that's what started the thought. I'm going to start you off. Okay. So I was on the strategic plan committee as well. And one of the things that is in our strategic plan is this statement about curriculum, that our schools are going to engage all students by aligning our curricula, the rigorous standards, ensuring equity,
023and providing multiple pathways to success. And that multiple pathways to success really resonated with a few of us in the building. And so that is kind of where we're starting is addressing that, that a high percentage of our students, they leave Hanover High School, they attend college, and that seems to be the one path. that everyone is taking. And so, and that's one measuring stick. If you've ever been around and hear kids, they're always asking, where did you get into, right, this time of year? And we were wondering, well, what if there were multiple pathways to success? What if we think about how we're defining success differently? And would that give our students who are on that college path the ability to maybe not take every single honors class? Would it give our students who
024are not on a path to college? that have a different way of defining their success. So that's kind of where all of these conversations came out of. And just to be clear, there will be graduation, their normal graduation requirements, and this doesn't necessarily mess with the graduation requirements. All students would make those, you know, 20 credits in that graduation requirement. This is just more of a way of documenting their story, right, and being proud of it and being seen for it and being able to demonstrate it to the community when they're done. I think that was traditionally my slide. So how this started, as I said, there were a number of us in the building who were having these conversations kind of independently. And Julie brought us all together. So originally it was Pam Custer
025who sees this at KUA, myself, Tina Clay, Dave, Julie, and Liz. Lisa Cowdery. And so we were just kind of exploring this idea of what would look like with these different pathways with this goal of like having students take ownership of their learning experience. And so at the end of that year, we went and presented a staff and a high percentage of staff said, yeah, keep going and explore this. So then we expanded our committee. And so we had representation from every department, except for math, who felt like they were represented by other people on the committee. And we met weekly. And so at the end of it, we kind of really shifted our thinking as we were going along. And so we presented this new proposal about which is now originally we'd really connected
026it to courses. And at the end, we came to it really thinking about how can we link it to competencies around the portrait of a learner? Not a portfolio and more of a portfolio style. So it's been an evolution. So one, we wanted to reimagine the high school experience, develop strategies to shift school culture, you know, in terms of here's my checkboxes. We all took the same honor class and I got an A and you got an A minus and there's our yardstick. We wanted people to have a little bit more, you know, different yardsticks, right? Define student success, valuing their interest. And then we wanted to still keep it rigorous, but. add a little piece more independently driven. We started out and we were like, okay, here's a global citizen pathway, another, and we
027had all these check boxes, like you said, for all the different classes. And then we felt like we were just kind of doing the same thing and repackaging it. And so what you see now is not what we started with. I actually am really proud of it and think it's pretty cool, but we still have a long way to go. But we really wanted to celebrate their learning, their story, them making sense of how they fit into the portrait of a learner, graduate, whichever one it is. Yeah. So, for example, if a student was on like a STEM pathway, instead of telling them you have to take these core science courses to meet the requirement, they can take whichever courses they want and they'd be gathering evidence from the courses they're taking. So we came
028up with that. You'd have to have a minimum of your evidence coming from four different courses. But you could be an American government and write your policy brief about genetics. And then that could be part of your evidence because that's what you're focusing on in your path. And also there was a requirement, which I'll probably come up with, of trying to, you have maybe noticed, Washington School, there's more ELO posters and things like that. I'm trying to get students to do two ELOs as part of their pathway to not only encourage that program, which is growing on its own, but also to get them to think about creating their own course right in there. So to put themselves, you know, a side note is, you know, taking this class that talks a lot about student
029agency and, you know, how much more. motivation there is, how much their work is better when they feel like they have ownership of it and it's a choice. And so this is trying to get at that. Like the hope is it would elevate our student work. Yeah. So when we came at the end, this is really kind of where we got to that kind of sums up our whole goal for our committee. And I have to say, like every time we struggled to make a decision, we would just come back to that goal statement and we'd say, well, is it meeting that goal statement? That's helpful. Okay, what pathways are, as you can see, it's not a separate diploma. We're trying to get away from like, I just got the, you know, gold star for
030diploma X, and that's the better diploma to get when you're at Hanover High School. It is not that. It's a designation. We're hoping that it would be available to everyone starting with the class of 2029. It has ELOs in it. There's other requirements, too, where you would have to pick a club or an activity at the high school or in the community that's related to your pathway. So try to get them to join some version of a community service or. If you're in the Global Citizen, maybe you might join in Amnesty International and be involved in our clubs. You could get evidence from your March intensives. There's an advising program that would help them try to figure it out. You'll see in a minute how we're linking it to the Portrait of a Graduate. And
031it's very student driven. What they're not, not a new diploma, not a track system, not new coursework. So in terms of our teachers thinking like, oh, no, pathways, I have to rework everything I'm doing. It's more that the students are finding their evidence from what they're doing with these teachers and making sense of it, not our teachers necessarily having to rework all their courses. The hope might be that a student might be like, hey, Miss Eakin, can we? I can this project that you wanted us to research this like if I research this instead it would fit into my pathway. Can I do that instead that that students might reach out to me and maybe courses might change to be a little bit more independently driven for that reason, but you know, nobody has to
032redo everything they're doing tomorrow. Did I say anything else? If that's not correct. So is this intended to be declared by the student almost like a major? In a way. So the idea is they would have maybe their sophomore meeting. So for those of us who've had sophomores at the high school, everyone goes to a sophomore meeting with their counselor. And the counselor will say, what are your interests? What classes have you liked taking? What are you thinking about? What do you want to do next? All of that. And in that meeting, The person might say, the counselor might say, have you ever, you know, do you know that we have this pathway program? And they may have heard about it in advisory before too. And would you ever be interested in it? If you're
033interested in it, it means you have to do this little bit of extra to go to study flex. It means you have to decide to make sense of what you're doing. It means that, you know, and explain it to them and they could sign on or not, or think about it. And then junior year decide, I would really like to be involved in this pathway program. And then. Yes, it would sort of be like a major, but there's no course requirements. Like you have to do these five things. It's you need to find things in the courses you're taking. that help you tell your pathway story. So because the hope was, and what we were a little worried about, is you don't want, students might suddenly take economics and suddenly be inspired, and you don't
034want to set them on a path where economics is not allowed because it's the creative world pathway, right? So, but they may, they might take economics and create some new. something or other, and then use evidence from economics in their creative work pathway. So we didn't want to box students. They're too young to come. I mean, different countries feel differently about this, right? But here they're too young, right, to box them out of certain courses too early. And if a student was doing this and it wasn't working out, there's no penalty. or dropping it, everyone would still meet their graduation requirements. There's no like, oh no, this is like, it's not working out. It's not working out type thing. Yeah. And so one of the other things that like, it's not a rigid path. The
035other thing is, but it might influence how students think about the next courses they take. You know, for example, Someone might say, oh, I was going to take Russian literature honors because that's the honors class offered this semester in English. And instead they might say, you know, actually, I think it's really important I have public speaking skills. I think I should take that because this pathway would allow me to do that. Or I was going to take chem honors, but I'm really busy because I'm doing an ELO. And so it might actually make them make choices based on their interest and what they're doing to fit into that pathway instead of just being like, because colleges want us to take. this, this, this, this, or I think colleges want me to take this, this probably
036more accurate. So in terms of, and we can go through this pretty quickly, but what we are asking is to gather evidence with credit for portrait of a learner as part of their rubric, right? And you'll see it a little bit better on, I think, the next slide maybe, or no. No, you'll do well, it's fine. Yeah, so we need... So we're starting with, we made four pilot ones to kind of fit big themes. So mind and body, global perspectives, creative world, and like a STEAM, STEM, innovation, and design. And so then each pathway has the same rubric with these categories with slightly different information, which you'll see in a moment. But just to go over the common requirements. There would be an application, right? You would have an advisor in your 11th and 12th
037grade year. that, you know, for instance, I might take a study flex where normally 11th and 12th graders, they have free choice during that time. They would be with me, the global pathway, and they might choose. you know, they would choose that pathway. They would have people come in. Like I might say, Hey, I want to have someone come in and you can interview them. And that could be part of your evidence. So, or we just, I help them. And I say, if you're looking for critical thinking, can you all talk to each other about what you think you might use from your courses? There'd be week, that's a weekly check-in. There would be two ELOs, portfolio evidence and all of them, community connection and all of them. And the end would be a capstone
038presentation. And we haven't sorted all of that out yet in terms of who the panel might be. Is the whole community invited for those, but where they would show the evidence that they met the right ones. Yeah. So the whole idea is that students might be on this in the same classes, but have very different experiences being in those classes. So if you think about it, you have like, you know, Sam, who's like a traditionally really strong student who thinks I'm college bound. I got to take all these honors courses. But then it's like, oh, I'm going to do the creative world pathway because I'm really into videography. And that's what I want to do. And then says, you know, I'm going to take horror lit because that's a genre and I want to write
039a script in there. And then says, and now I'm going to do an ELO with Junction Arts Media. So I'm not going to take that chem age because that's going to take a lot of time. And the same thing is true if you have a student who maybe is not like school is something they do and they're really into, say, horses. And they're like, at the end of this, I just want to go and work with horses. And they might be like, I don't know, do I do a STEM pathway? Do I do a mind and body pathway? And they're like, well, no, I'm into horses and horse relationships with people. So I'm going to do mind and body. And then they go and work at the barn they're at as their ELO. And then
040they decide, you know, I'm going to take entrepreneurship because I realize a real gap in the market is when people forget stuff at horse shows, which actually is a true story from entrepreneurship. And then I'm going to build this whole business plan around that. And so it's really the idea is it's open to. any kid and we thought a lot about all of our students like could a student who's at Hereford do this? Could a student anywhere else that moves an arm soon a student who school is not their happy place do this? And so that's kind of the idea. So there are a couple of our pathways. You have this in front of you, and so you can read about them. But global perspectives is a lot of what you think it might be
041in terms of that. But understanding nuances, geopolitical relationships, the shared human experience. But we want to show you this. So for each pathway. this is the, there's a rubric, but what's written in the rubric is very different, right? And so if I'm a student and I'm doing the critical thinking part, how do I get evidence? I have to find evidence in the classes I've taken that I've developed the ability to use global lens to think critically about how nations histories. and power structures shape relationships and civic life, right? And so I'd go and I'd say, okay, well, I took this in ninth grade. Is there something I did in ninth grade that I could use and put into my portfolio? Oh, I don't have anything. I really want to take this course or do this
042project in this class to fill this piece. And so they would be working with their advisor and study flex to think about what they could put in their portfolio. And then if you notice in just different ones, right, like explore how diverse cultures and empathy, identities and perspectives shape one's worldview and shared human experience. So they would either have to go through their community service, through a class they took, to demonstrate that they understand and know that. And we did the same for each of these. So go ahead, Jessica. Sure. I mean, they're very self-explanatory. So for a student who is into different arts and digital arts, and if we look at the critical thinking empathy again, you can see that it changes just based on our rubric. So this one is more about the
043artistic and innovative discipline. And again, yes, it's diverse cultures and identities, but it's about artistic expression. Mind and body is similar thing, right? And then if you look at the... rubric it's a little bit different in terms of like explore how humans across cultures experience express and apply practices related to mind body and wellness as an empathy so they're just a different you know someday if we were really thinking about it you might just have a generic rubric and you could kids could have 100 pathways right like we wanted to start with four and see and you eventually someday could have every student do this so everyone makes sense of their story through high school but right now we're you want to start here so but don't let me go there keep going just i'm
044going to keep you on the rails and the last one of us love the steam so innovation design and again um now this is about areas of steam fields and math and critical thinking and science. So, oh yeah, so our goals and why we think this will benefit students, they have a sense of ownership over their education. Some might ask, like, well, why would they do this, right? It's a little bit of extra work, potentially, but we feel confident enough that for all of our students, we could present this, and it could be something that they would really want to do, even ones that are not as linked into school, that with some mentorship, They would have that sense that someone saw them and then really want to do this to make sense of their
045story, to be celebrated for their story, not for their, we want them all to do really well in every one of their classes, but that they also are celebrated for their unique story. Relationship with a mentor and creating that connection. We haven't quite figured out what the... prize is because we don't really want a prize because we think that doing it is the prize. And that sounds really interesting. But we really do believe that. But we have talked about, you know, maybe it's the global perspectives pathway, stand up on class night. Yeah, they might have different color cords that they would wear at graduation if they did the pathway. But we also don't want to we don't want to create an arms race and have everyone want to do this for the recognition. We have
046been told for our. our college-bound students, which is most of them, that this is kind of in a way helps because it is writing their story that they would write for their essay for college, right? Like, what is it that makes you tick, right? Like, what is it about you that's unique? What is it that just the doing this for those kids, and then we're told they have their own story, and that could write their essay. And then we were told by a few teachers, and we did run by some students, and we want to run it by more students, that they have kids who This is a good story. They are in the classes, the way this teacher said it, that count. They have C's. But in their classes, which happens to be in
047the arts, they're hitting it out of the park. And for those kids, you know, you want them to obviously do as well as they can in all those other classes, but also that they would be recognized for hitting it out of the park when they create their own pathway around the creative world and really feel like they're seen by our community. You can do it. We did our final presentation. It was longer than this. This is a cut, pared down version for you, but you have the real one. And we were, I was a little nervous because we had a meeting after and it was, where are we going to come here and present to you based on the staff vote after? And we just asked four questions. You know, does this align with the
048district mission and the school goals? Is this something that would benefit students? Is this something that the people who are actually committed to working on on this committee should keep going with and would you like to be interested are you interested in joining us and uh i don't think we better have a survey like that because over 93 of people said yes to all the questions not everyone volunteered but you know until the first week um and i think that might be a first um ever and so kind of where we're headed is they also had any questions and they gave us a lot of questions and we went back to our committee after being like, oh, flabbergasted. And then we said, why don't we divide up all these questions that we have and make
049subcommittees, invite more people in, invite students in, and start looking at that to have a vote in June to say, like, is the staff on board? So that's kind of where we're headed. That's it. I mean, I mean, it's, yeah, right. Just wanted to let you know some of the stuff we're working on. But yeah, go ahead. I have a comment and a question. The comment is, we did something like this, we started to when I left Tuck, where we were doing this idea of a portfolio to tell the story of your education. And I think we, I also saw it at Stanford in the design school. I was a guest in a class and the students showed me their website, which was their portfolio. I think, I think about in our life and in
050the world and how you tell your story for your career, even though even if you're going to college or not, this is a way of helping you learn to take. data about yourself and tell a great story. So I love that. The question I have is, the research is definitely awesome about agency. When I hear this, I have to take these classes. What I hear is my parents are making me take these classes. And so the question I would pose to all of us is, how do you get parents to see this as a benefit and a way to support it as a way of someone having agency over there? education. But I think it's really cool. So yeah, we had a few staff members. And so I think we're going to work on that
051too. There's a number of, I mean, our staff are very. they're very good about critiquing things. Yeah. And so, yeah, we have that, that very comment of how do you, like, are we, do, are we deluding ourselves? Do things like, will parents allow their students to do this? You know, even though we think you can do it at any level you want to do it at, you know. Marcela and then Robin. So that's really helpful, I think, too, for me in understanding this, because I see it as something that any student could do as a way of kind of reflecting back on their education and finding a narrative there. And I feel like that's one kind of project. And so I guess I have two questions. One is, like, could you... Like, do you feel
052like this is responding to a problem or are you trying, or is this like an enrichment? Like, I'm just wondering like what, like, where are you coming to this from? I think it's really exciting, but I'm trying to just like understand better, like what its role is. And then what seems a little bit different to me, and I'm curious about how your like middies are approaching this with your very. excellent critically engaged staff is the value the relative value of being able to sort of peel away to alter existing assignments or not And I feel like this is really just my own question for my own pedagogy right now. And so maybe this is like unfair of me to ask, but I feel like I started teaching and I encouraged a lot of independent choice
053and it worked for a little while and then something shifted and continues to shift. And I feel that my students more and more need help working within forms with confidence and they don't have that. And I don't know why exactly, like you could blame a lot of things that are like buzzwords. But I guess I'm wondering about, like, they seem like two kind of distinct projects to me. Like, one is, like, recasting what you've done and understanding what motivated you and where it's sending you. And the other is, like, changing fundamentally, like, your own curriculum as it goes. So how are you thinking about that? I'll go to the first one, which is more. That in terms of a problem. So one, it was responding to the strategic plan, talking about different pathways and how
054do we respond to that? And historically in the number of schools, the different pathways, just the alternative pathway to not doing all the graduating requirements. And we didn't feel like we were there. Right. But also I think a number of us have our own children in the schools and have had our own children in the schools for a while. And, and even watching. the college process and the sort of when there's a student, like we have a student who's going off to do like golf management, for instance, when that person's like, hey, this is what I'm doing. Everyone's like, whoa, right, because it's so different. And they have their own story almost compared to the Hanover story. And suddenly it's not about what, where are you on the yardstick? And so, and I think I've
055noticed that with my own kids of just like. where are you in this yardstick? But if you have like, oh, I want to do nursing, suddenly everyone's like, oh, that's really cool, right? It's a different yardstick that most students don't do. And so when you sort of see that, you then see how it changes the conversation amongst the students. And they really are jazzed by each other's interests that they don't ever hear about until. they're applying to school later. And they get in. And I would say it's like also a small pocket who really follow that thing, right? We're chasing that, I feel like. And it doesn't mean it changes where they go, but when kids hear about it, they're like, oh, wow, you kind of know yourself, right? And as one of our counselors
056said, they're like, well, we have these conversations at our 11th and 12th grade meetings and we hear all this, but it's not public. like there's a very private thing that happens it's not shared with the community other people don't know like that's our job is to do this story to write these um recs but like it's very close it's not they're not seen they're not seen in the community necessarily and so it's trying to have more of our kids be seen and recognize they're unique and and i think it really comes from like obviously some research and but also from our own our own very different children and all of us have very different children which we all do right and trying to try to figure out a way for them to understand themselves better
057and to be seen there in this community see what we have yeah the second question Jesse can you rephrase it for me that was it I was like I used to say like children need guardrails versus like creating their own is that kind of well I'm wondering about like Yes, I think that's what I think about it, like the relative value and the changing relative values of like. agency and independence and like students who are having more and more trouble writing essays. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't think it would change the curriculum in terms of the assignment. It would be more like sometimes the assignments have choice on your office. Sometimes they don't. And it would be more like this idea of like, how do I work within this framework of a structured assignment
058to do it on something I'm really interested in that might shift it slightly. It may not. shifted at all it might just be like oh you said we could only write about you know Japan but I actually I'm studying whatever can I do this and they'd be like oh okay you know perhaps it doesn't have to be about that so more about like perhaps shifting within the parameters than necessarily like something that they have it's not something they have to create per se I also think just the number of students doing ELOs and watching them pursue that has been really I don't know, it's been really great to see and seeing how much they want to go and pursue it. I also work with students on econ honors projects where they get to choose it.
059And I think there's a perception from staff that there's like a certain student who does that. And I'm very surprised by the kids who show up to do this research with me. They're just kids. And I say, well, why this? Because I'm like, just as it doesn't seem like it would be your jam. They're like, oh, I just really want to dive deep into something and do this. And I think it's really, that's provided an interesting place. So I just see the places where we've provided this. how they like are growing and how our students are gravitating towards it. I would say like we started with two or four econ honors and we are 12 now and it's only semester three of doing this and getting things in and it's optional. Rob and then Gina
060again. I just want to commend Julie and Jess and the committee for doing this work because I know it's really difficult work. I've been in other school districts where we've done this many years ago, but it is happening across the country. And I think it's really positive change that's happening in schools. And there are so many things that I love about this. One is. that you are relying on having students drive a lot of this work. And I think this goes to your question, Marcella, about the agency. One of the things that I think is very beneficial about this is that Students are able to explore in a variety of areas, but they also have people that are helping them do that exploration and helping them to be successful and sometimes allowing them to fail
061too. So I think there are valuable lessons to be learned from a process like this. I also love that it's connected to the mission and vision and to our portrait of learner. I think that's really important and that it's connected to the strategic plan. So it's really fulfilling so many of those areas. So I am super supportive of this. And the fact that you have so many faculty supporting it is incredible as well. So it's a testament to the work that you've done thus far. So well done. And thank you. I'm just going to give a quick example where I think this is happening almost and it's like you are pushing the sand away so you can see what's underneath. Like my daughter loves neuroscience. She's done two March Intensive that relate to brains. She
062wrote her big English paper on dementia. And so it would give her a way of shaping her path. Yeah. I'm really interested. And to have a way to feel proud of it without being like, I took 10 honors classes. Right. That's what I'm hearing. And it can be different, all different paths. I would love to see the fifth path, which is the undefined path. Yeah. Yeah. Barry, then I'd be curious to hear Ian's perspective on this. Give him a heads up. I think I also just looks awesome. Love it. I think you alluded to this, Robin, when you were speaking, but just the fact that it isn't actually, there's not a different certificate that comes with it. And then there is the opportunity to fail that if you, if it doesn't work out, it's not
063a. It's not yet another pressure point. And I can't remember, you know, Marcella, the Heron piece. I couldn't emphasize that enough because I think the other flip side of that, then that pressure isn't there is the concern around the reason in Hanover, we have this challenge at times with kids and how do we support parents in, you know, what are, what are the ways to. really encourage parents to be able to see that, you know, nursing is great and, you know, tech work, you know, that sort of piece. And I think that's really hard. And like, what are the ways that they get brought in? And I don't know if there's ways to think creatively about that, if that's the next step. But we have a lot of work to do and we're planning on
064doing weekly. We've only done, was it two? student meetings with a group of, a focus group, but they're thinking of doing weekly lunch meetings with students next to get their perspectives. And I'm sure they'll let us know some pitfalls too. Lisa, was your hand up briefly? One of my questions was I'd like to hear from Ian. Okay. Garrett and then Ian. Oh, I mean, as I'm thinking through this, right, it's actually kind of interesting that it's not really, it comes across sometimes as like, you know, achievement or an academic excellence and another path. But in some ways, this is pretty similar to like an open curriculum at some of the leagues. Right. I mean, so it actually is similar in that way, because that doesn't mean just because you're going to a college with an
065open curriculum where you're basically changing, you can choose your entire. Yeah, true. I mean, and you do have core requirements because you have to still stay within the graduation requirements and then also creating your own. I guess the only thing, again, these are just, I think the only concern I would have is that it just requires some really good advisors to help create these. And are the pathways going to be like limited or are they kind of unlimited and you create your own pathway? Like within it? Well, I saw some like sample pathways. Right now we're just, we decided that we'd have like sample pathways and as a, well, like a pilot, a place to start. But within that, like if you think about the STEAM one, like that's just huge, right? So like you
066can have the kid who's doing engineering and the kid who wants to be a doctor and the kid who wants to do coding and they're all in the same pathway. And I feel like all of them, we tried to make them broad enough so then. there's a lot underneath, which is also why we when we started doing courses, you're like, well, it could be this and this and this. And we were like, oh, this is not the right path. We are on a committee. Right. So do I think one. Well, we'll see how the pilot goes, I guess. Beyond that, then it becomes kind of a challenge. I would see like how to explain this to students and teachers. But again, maybe my suggestion is, is like you look at something like Brown, Joe and
067Curt Hillman. It's very like it's pretty simple. Like it's very basic and it's very different experience than going to someplace like Dartmouth, where it's like you come in as a freshman. As I understand it, you're taking all these courses like you can go down there and it's like. I mean, you can take dance your entire thing as long as you make your career through it, right? Like you don't have to take a math class ever if you don't want to. Now, this is different here, but it would be interesting to kind of like at the end of the day, explaining it to someone might be easier done in an open curriculum type fashion. And a couple of the staff comments were. you know, it'd be nice to have other pathways, right? Like just an open
068one. That's more like this. Yeah. And then another is, you know, we heard from a group that said, what about the whole school? Like, if this is good for 20 kids, 30 kids, 40 kids, and that we could get there, right? But I don't think we'll get there if we don't start here, right? Where every advisory is about this, right? How you... gathering your evidence for your own journey through this high school times 700 kids right but i don't think we're there yet and i would just say at the very beginning now that you have to go down this kind of kind of coaching it that listen this is for folks that may not be on that path or whatever it's back to saying that if you were at one of these like a brown
069university open curriculum means you aren't on a path that you are when you're here at Dartmouth when you come in and you're going to do like a major right still as successful right I think the diploma pathways would be great, really beneficial to the student body. Like I have a friend who's very interested in restaurant managing, but he's still striving for academic excellence. So he's taking all of the honor classes, but what he's really interested in is restaurant managing. And he's just really interested in restaurants. So I think like the diploma pathways would provide him like this, like said path that he can take to like. to achieve his goals of like running a restaurant. Instead of like being on that path where like a lot of students I know, they're on the path to
070just take all the honor classes to impress the colleges and it would leave room for students to, you know, like achieve like what they want to like study, what they want to do in life. Thank you for that, Ian. Renee. Just a point of clarification, how many kids and when? Yeah, we're still like pretty open. Like we feel there's a timeline. I saw the time. Yeah, because it sounds awesome for everyone. And I was heard you say. So we think if we're going to be overwhelmed, we'll see it coming. Yeah. So we haven't put a cap on it because you kind of have to think about a sophomore, junior year. And then if we suddenly see all these juniors, then we're going to be like. the train is coming, we've got to reallocate stuff, right?
071So we didn't want to limit it necessarily right away, and we are not scared because we have time to absorb if that's the case and figure out how, or we have time to say, this is great that you all want to do this, but we only have room for... Yeah, for this. And we're, we're toy, the committee is toying with an idea of like, do we find four students who are willing to be guinea pigs next year to create a portfolio? So then we can say, this is what a portfolio looks like, you know, as a sample and have those conversations. Even if they do it backwards, even if it's Alfredo, who's like, I'm going to grab stuff from before and put this together and help us. That's one of the ideas we currently have.
072So then when we develop a committee, we can say, let's have our evaluation criteria. a little less on the fly. Yeah. Neil? This is, I really liked what you put together. Thank you. The one thing I would, there's a lot of overlap here, I think, between this and Vermont's Flexible Pathways Program. To the extent that you have availability of those resources and even colleagues on the other side of the river that might help you with implementation, I would encourage you to leverage it if you can. Lisa, I would recommend speaking with Ken Cotto about it because that's what he was in charge of when he was at Randolph. So I have a couple of questions that we probably shouldn't move on for the sake of time. But there are a number of things coming up
073in policy kind of around alternative pathways. Is this directly tied into that or is that a separate concurrent issue? working on the graduation requirements, which they'll be the same no matter what the pathway program is. And we're almost there, but we keep hitting snags, I'll tell you. I thought we were going to be done, but I walked out of a meeting five minutes too early. So policy is going to get that in the next week, we hope, or two. Or two. Or two. I know. I know. Yeah, yeah. So we should have it. And then. I don't know where you're at. And then I said I would bring this at some point to tell you what we're doing. I don't know with this if there's really anything we would need to do in policy or
074board because it's not changing graduation requirement. It's just kind of an operationalizing of working for a graduate, I guess. Robin will tell me otherwise. So I don't know if there's anything. We are sending an ELO thing to you too, a programming policy that we worked on. Actually, do we finish that, Deb? I had to learn that too. We didn't vote on that. We didn't vote on that. We're a slow-moving system. We know well too well. Let's just watch a grin sometime. And then in terms of what all the board members comments have said, I think everyone's spot on with both the opportunities and the concerns. The ones I would echo in both directions would be that this sounds very cool, but could also be very overwhelming to the student who does not know what they
075want to do. There are many students at high school, many at college, many as postdocs who don't know what they want to do. how to sort of put some pressure on them to help hone slightly, but not knowing is still a totally valid option. And then getting back to Garrett's point about the power of the specific mentors that could also help students with how specific to go. Like to your example, is it they want to do this X specific thing with horses or someone wants to do. animals or someone wants to do biology or someone wants to do science you know all those could be the same thing depending on how granular you go and that'd be something that where the the mentor's power could be helping hone the specificity of what you want to
076do there so they're going to be really key to this and then i would also look at the points made about the parents where this could be alternative pathway or it could be yes another way to make my kids stand out with x issue about hardcore science or hardcore AI or whatever other buzzword of the day. And this will make the academic superstars stand out even more, which may not be what you're intending, but could be an unintended consequence, which is necessarily a bad thing, but maybe not what you were trying to do. Well, we're hoping like when they introduce in those 10th grade meetings with the counselors that are, you know, just you and your kid and the counselors that hopefully it will get framed in a way that. maybe we want to, I
077mean, I don't think we can avoid everything. And hopefully those conversations will be helpful. Yeah. I think that that is an argument for this body to consider policy around this, right? I mean, we can certainly. You know, and maybe you want to let this develop a little bit first and see how things pull out. But if you're trying to signal to the community what this body is, the liaison between the community and the school values, right, and connecting the two, policy is our vehicle to do that. And so if we have concerns about, you know, how this might be perceived or what its real intentions are, those can certainly be outlined in policy and gives everybody some direction. Any other questions from the public or board members on this? Yes, Linda. Hi. Linda Donpey. I
078work at the school. I'm from Norwich, Vermont. One thing I heard that was really fascinating to me and wasn't mentioned tonight is the groups of students who work together for the Yale programs and how much that builds a connection and they learn from each other. So it's not just sort of mentorship to student, it's student-to-student discussions and learning as well. And so I think you have those opportunities. They may not even be in the same, you know, they'll be in the same pathway, but they may have very different versions of that pathway. And that sounds really exciting. So I just wanted you to know that. Yeah, that's a great call out. And I think we collectively missed that. So is it intended to be that groups in the same pathway that they would get together?
079Like the mind and body would be in it. I'm so excited we'd go together with their advisor and then they'd all be together so then they're going to have similarly themed perhaps. I totally missed that. If it explodes beyond our control. Yeah. Okay. Other independent consequences. We'll have it under control. Don't worry. Great. I think that was a very productive discussion that we probably don't have as much at the board level as we should. So thank you for that. Thanks, guys. Now to more prosaic things. Draft school board meeting schedule. So we go through this every year. Here's the template of both the monthly topic templates as well as the actual meeting schedule. Sometimes we catch things as, oh, that's Thanksgiving and things of that nature. So if everyone wants to give a quick breeze
080through this, see if anything looks like we should discuss a specific date or shifting it, now would be the time to do it. Note that this is going to be different for every board, obviously, because it's our meetings. Does anyone have anything that immediately jumps out of concern? Deb, your hand shot up. Well, because I made the list. So I thought it might be helpful. Sorry, I need to get this open again. Sure. But I thought that we might want to be a little bit more deliberate about the audit and knowing and talking about. audits given what happened in Claremont that we have something about that on our calendar and I don't know where to quote it and I don't know anything really about all of this but I just and it may be included
081in the sign approved DOE annual financial report but I'm just thinking it might be smart to get out ahead of that and show yep we're paying attention to this and this is when we do it so that was one thing a second one was a generic discussion in the fall that would vary In terms of when it was appropriate, but about any upcoming negotiations. So it wouldn't be something we have every year, but if we have, say, we're approaching a support staff that we just planned as a board, we will have a non-public conversation or however that's managed. But it seems to me we should be more deliberate about that. And the third thing was. We do, it's a terrible time of year, but in January, the staff development committee has enrichment grants that are,
082or proposals for enrichment grants. And we don't really, as a board, talk about those. those grants. And it's right now about $36,000 that we are giving out to faculty. And as Lauren knows, I have a particular ax to grind because very few, well, very few of the grants were what I would consider fun things like let's go to Costa Rica and, you know, be in the rainforest. Those all come from the middle school and the high school. Year after year that I've been on SDC, they do not come from the Ray School. The Ray School teachers are all, let me become a better reader, reading teacher. Let me go to this thing about phonics. And I just feel like, go to Finland and look at childcare. Do this. And this year we came very close
083because there's a high school and a middle school teacher both doing the same science program. Only they just grabbed somebody from the reasonable. But anyway, I really think we should talk about that at a meeting. And unfortunately, January, when we do it, is kind of the month of death. Maybe we could put it in February because I think we give money, but we don't, you guys don't know what it's going to. Particularly when someone literally did just come back from the rainforest a few days ago. Yes. Duly noted on all those. I was just writing a note to Ryan on some of these things. Those were my three. Okay. I would point out that with negotiations, we've tried to structure where there usually is a negotiation each year. We just kind of vary by the
084calendar which one it is. Yeah, right, right, right. There have been some side conversations about things we should discuss before negotiations open. So I think that is a standing item we should address sooner rather than later. I know folks are working on that as we speak. With my thanks. So I hear you on that one. And the other ones we can discuss further. Robin? I can talk a little bit about the audit piece. And I don't know if you've been reading about this, but audits are really difficult to come by right now. There just are not enough auditors out there. And Teresa can speak to this as well. And our audit is still occurring, actually. They had to take a break. Teresa and her people have been sending so many documents to them. And now
085they've... return to the SAU. So it's been a long process, but I don't know if you want to say anything about that, Teresa. It's definitely been a long turnout this fall. Yeah. Some documents and uploading to a secured folder back in September and everything else. And then when Janice came on, I kind of tasked her with uploading all the information and stuff like that. But they are, this is their fourth visit back. And they started out where they were going to tackle one district at a time because it's kind of overwhelming when they're coming at you asking for different information. So last year we kind of tried to target rolling one at a time. So they did it again this year, but I don't know what really happened, but they're so overwhelmed again this fall
086themselves. And more and more school districts, when they go to the meetings, they're talking about, again, a lack of auditors. And there's just not enough. So, yeah, they're so they're falling behind getting audits done themselves and sort of a timely. And I do know that one of the last NASBO meeting there was discussion from the state that because of some of the things that's happening that they're looking at possibly. And I don't know if I mentioned this before, extending like usually you're supposed to have them done hopefully by the end of March. But they're looking at extending the time just because auditors cannot get them done. any amount of time and extending it to the end of June and stuff. So it might be hard to have as a standing meeting, a specific meeting. And
087to your further point, the chairs are involved in the auditing process as well. Lisa, I did stuff yesterday and this morning related to audits. So we definitely pay attention and go through them. We don't often go through them with a fine-tooth comb at the board level. Oh, I don't want to. Tara has a question. Go ahead when you're ready, Tara. Yeah, the fact that Deb brought up the negotiations bit, I'd like to add on to that, that I not only agree that we as a board should coordinate in advance of the negotiation kickoff, whichever one it might be in that given year. But I'd also suggest that we really need a different process as the negotiation rolls out, including non-public to keep the balance of the board updated as the negotiation progresses so that we
088can all provide feedback that might be helpful. for a better end result and my understanding just from an anecdotal conversation that this is how norwich conducts their negotiations um status quo so i would like to adopt that model if possible or at least consideration for the board to adopt that model um moving forward um so that bit and then one other bit not to sort of take away from committee updates, but I think that we should potentially consider putting a date, a placeholder on this topic template for budget prep after the current year budget wraps up, maybe May, June, just while the momentum and the connection is still there from the budget process to look forward to the next budget year to say hey we weren't able to do xyz in this budget what are
089our high level goals um you know across enterprise you know all of the schools for the budget process for next year so that we all can coordinate on that Great comment, Tara. I'm adding notes to that as well. And you're not here or not here, but there were several nods from Norwich members in the room when you were talking about how Norwich does it. So hopefully they'll teach us a thing or two and not for the first time. I will also point out that as several of you know, I've had one-on-one conversations with many of you that have approached me with questions about negotiation, which is as someone who's involved both in a chair role and in a negotiations role. And we hear you loud and clear on that. And I suspect a more a
090stronger approach before negotiations even begin. So look to a non-public for that in the not too distant future. Perhaps, Robin, I need to talk further. My ballpark would be maybe May or so. So we will get back to you all on that, and we do hear you loud and clear. Any other suggestions specific to the template or the calendar? Renee? This does cross over into the committee thing, but just because Tara brought it up. Sure. I think that there's, if we're going to put that budget conversation in place, I would, without talking to the committee, I would advocate for a June because I think the vision is that folks that have been part of the budgeting process would have a conversation ahead of time and that we could bring that to the board rather than
091having. a very open-ended conversation with the board because we do want to have school leaders and you know other members of the budgeting committees weigh in to that too which i think would happen in may so then the board conversation could be part of doing so more a presentation to the board from a committee or similar with feedback welcome for her right because it should it should also rely on like the strategic plan and our overall goals and vision um But I think we need to figure out what order makes sense, whether it's board and then committees or committees and then board. Sure. But that part has not been teased out yet from the business. So what I'm sort of hearing is maybe a committee led discussion in June. That's a review of the previous
092year budget with ideas for the next year's budget process. Or is that no? Yeah, I mean, kind of. TBD. Yeah. I think we can have a placeholder that's of that ilk and we can refine it later. Okay. Yeah. That'd be great. Just like, yeah. Process review or something. Yeah. Okay. I would also look to the principles for the specific calendar because I don't know what this, for the last couple of years, it seems there's been a lot of sort of concerts and major like school-wide events that often happen on Dresden board meeting nights. which I know irk certain board members and their ilk. So if that could be noted maybe a few months in advance rather than the night before, oh darn type of things, that would be also if you could alert us if
093things are big enough that we should know and we move or you guys move or some sort of discussion about those dates would be much appreciated. Anything else on the calendar or the templates? In that case, we shall move on. Thank you all for that productive feedback. We appreciate it. sidebar discussions Kerry yeah sorry this may just be that I need the clarification because I did end up I've had two conversations regarding the annual meeting and the date of it can somebody remind me why it can never be moved and how we could discuss to move that I've had two people in the last couple weeks annual meeting yeah yeah go to Neil for that we can fill us in on the details It probably, it can be changed. It's outlined in the articles agreement
094with Dresden as to when that date falls. And last year, this year, and next year, because it's break. So it is possible to change. It's just a little bit more onerous than just passing a new policy. Okay. Two people who wanted to be there and could say like, it's going to happen again next year. Is that something that can be changed? It's just one of those things that I'd be curious. How onerous are we talking? And if it's happening this year and next year, maybe it won't happen the year after that. Maybe like with this move of that vacation being later, is this the trend that this is always going to conflict? And do we need to change that? because that vacation has changed to align with Vermont. I see Robin taking some notes. Yeah.
095That's fair enough. Gina. From her perspective, there were some of us who did it this year, and then we made sure that we get to go on vacation. I'll be here. All fairly noted. Thank you all for that. Everyone, can we move on? All right, we'll move on to 6B, the voting results. You guys all saw my email with the notes. We saw the general news write-ups on these things. Any further comments on the results or our to-do list as a result of these results or anything similar? Lisa. Two things. Congratulations to everyone. And secondly, not for tonight, but wondering how we are going to discuss or handle the JV hockey question. Great question. I would also give you the same answer that you have is not for tonight. Yes. But just I think it's
096sooner rather than later helps for all sorts of reasons. I agree. And that will be some some conversations that I personally will have, as we're all welcome to have with the relevant folks, Robin, Megan, etc. And we'll have an answer, presumably, hopefully by next month, but we'll discuss. Thank you for that. We have not forgotten it, nor will we ignore it. It just felt like something to say publicly. Anything else besides that one from folks, again, specific to Dresden? Otherwise, congrats to everyone involved. Congrats on passing the budget and all that kind of stuff. We know that there is so much effort behind the scenes, and we thank each and every one of you for your contributions to that collective effort. And moving on to business requiring action, note that there are no policies. It's
097kind of our usual bread and butter stuff. You saw the signing of the MS-22 report has been around for signatures. I think that was one of them. So we've all signed that, or we all will. So I'll take a motion for B through D. Renee? I move to approve items B through D by consent. Seconded by Deb. All those in the room, starting with Neil and then Tara. With that, yes. Russell, yes. Sullivan, yes. Christy, yes. Lussie, yes. Nelson, yes. Nathan, yes. Tara. Beloso, yes. And Keeney, yes. Thank you, everyone, for that. Moving on to reports and communications. As the chair, I've already set some lists, so thank you all for your efforts on the things up for voting, as well as those who decided to join the board again, whether they wanted to or
098not. And we appreciate all of that. Our next meeting is on April 28th, and I am thrilled to be your chair again. So thank you for that combined support. That is all I have for this particular meeting. And I'll move on to committee updates in general. We've had a few. This one's not on here yet, but I know the budget process committee met yesterday or this morning. How did that go? The Budget Process Committee, Tara, Garrett, Michael, Robin, and myself, we met last week and this week. And we're going to meet again next Tuesday at 8 a.m. in case you really want to... join us. We're trying to hit this hard and fast, given all the conversations that have happened. At this point, though, we are very much in the early stages of trying to
099identify what are the specific challenges that we've all encountered? What are some commonalities? How do we want to approach this? What are the ways that we want to set up the budget process next cycle and in future years to be? better at making more strategic decisions, enabling trade-off discussions, and within that, enabling comfort within the discomfort of making trade-off discussions or making trade-offs in the budget process. We talked about having a process that I know efficiency is certainly something that was elevated as part of our committee's charge, but also durable. So regardless of people on the board or in the SAU office, there is much more clarity and transparency for the public, for us, for administration, what the process. should be. And that is inclusive of like key questions that should be asked along the
100way. And then corresponding data. So part of the efficiency conversation was around what kind of data do we actually need to make decisions? We haven't gotten to that level of decision making yet, but. That is something that we want to be more clear on and that way can we have, you know, the same kind of materials across all the districts at specific points in time. So those are some of the themes. I'm hesitant to go into much more specific details because we haven't actually gotten to concrete dates and things yet. But next week, we're going to look at some sort of draft of a timeline based on committee feedback I am drafting and we'll... require lots of feedback and evolution along the way. But I think we're optimistic about the progress we're making and where
101we'll end up. But I welcome other committee members that are virtual and in person to chime in. Renee, are you chair of them? Yes. Okay. I'm sorry. What do you think of that feedback? Anything else from that committee? Garrett? Renee made it sound a little scary. It's not actually. I can see Neil over here like, what are we doing? We're totally transforming everything. It's more just kind of taking best practices, trying to streamline things, making sure the calendar and whatnot. But also, I think that point, I'm not sure if it's next week, maybe, but one of these meetings, we were at least going to just kind of road test a few things with folks as far as like, so we're not just going to come through with the final thing, but actually. So maybe next
102meeting. Yeah, that's a good point. We don't have to have everything fully baked, but we could at least kind of come back and road test a few ideas and get some things off that people are like, absolutely not. That's ridiculous. Or, you know, that sounds like a good idea. Or have we thought of something else? And that's a great call that all of our committees, of course, go up to the board for all of these things. Great call out, Garrett. I appreciate that. Yes, we and even before Dresden, because so in our mind, we can do this. Well, I think we actually need to go to Neil's point last time about we as a committee can recommend, but eventually every district is going to have to adopt the recommendations because it's for unique budget. So
103with that in mind, and given that the Dresden meeting is April 28th, and we're gunning for a May 4th presentation to the board as like our official proposal for this body, or no, not this is Dresden, the SAU body. The other one. April 1st, April 1st is Norwich and April 8th is Hanover. Our goal is that in those meetings, you'll, and in the Dresden one, you'll see the initial versions of something to react to, to, you know, invite comment on. So yeah, thanks for Garrett. So yeah, for mentioning that, because you guys will see it much sooner than May for input. Thanks for that collective heads up. Yeah. Neil. Sorry, I guess I would add to that. So if your work doesn't scare me. What does scare me is what possibly could be happening in
104Montpelier. And that's one of the points I raised at the last Norwich meeting. was, I think, somehow tied to this. There's also a discussion about the governance structure and how that could potentially impact in either a good or a bad way the budgeting process, right? Because there's some stuff, depending on what happens in my failure, we could be looking at a significant reduction in education revenue. And one of the things that I pitched at the last Norwich meeting was, would it make sense for us to do a tabletop exercise of what would happen if we lost $4 million? And I think the work that you guys are doing is great. my concern is what happens when what we presented with is not the normal budgeting anymore, right? And what's the, and so I think it's
105this budgeting piece combined with governance, like what would things look like if there really was only one budget? There was a Dresden budget and it covered Norwich, covered Hanover, covered both elementary schools, middle and high schools, one budget. Right? Would that change how we do things? What would it look like from a prioritization perspective? But these are all tied to governance, which I always sort of imagined was part of the strategic plan piece that was the governance bucket, which we never really, we haven't done anything with to that. Yeah, to this point. In part, not just some board member personnel. The person who headed that is now gone. And that, for better or worse, was largely two separate people, Jay and... Rick, both of whom are now gone. I volunteered to do work on that
106since we first introduced it. It's just nothing ever. And I mean, I appreciate assistance from a superintendent, but this is a board level discussion. I mean, this is governance. So now maybe you can also provide us an update, but what Neil's talking about, just so everyone's, especially some people in Panama, maybe squishing their eyebrows a bit. So unless things have changed since last Tuesday, I haven't really paid attention too much, unfortunately, but we understand that there's a vote that's up that's going to tie potentially. a non-resident tax rate, which would be a great thing. It's what we had proposed for years now to try to raise more revenue. But it sounds like that is also tied to the vote that would be a redistricting vote. That would be, so basically you have to vote both.
107And that redistricting vote may or may not leave us with an out, but then the nuclear option would be the the funding for the foundation, the foundation formula, which is what Neil would say that if we were, it basically mean that we're spending about 15,000 per student. And if you put that into our budget, it means that in order to have to cut 4 million for our budget. And that's non-negotiable. That's like literally if that passes. we will be getting 15,000 potentially per student with the option to maybe spend more at like with that special caps on top of that. But yeah, I don't know how we do from having served on this committee, I guess, and I'll maybe jump on down at the same time last time, like this kind of now, this is
108going to basically, if we're going to be talking about how we're going to change and basically look at a one budget for Dresden and one budget committee for Dresden. Like our work that we at least have set down in the past two meetings would pretty much be completely upended and we would be changing the entire focus of like our. No. I'm just looking for like, yeah. So just to be clear, if we were going to change so that you would end up with what you're talking about, an act of Congress in order to make that happen. So the work that you guys are doing now is valuable and will be valuable for the near term. So I would not stop or, you know, slow down any of the work that you're doing for this, because
109what we're what I'm. talking about in a potential governance change literally it means it's an act of congress in order for something like that to pass to modify the justin school district and that's going to take time so i would not change your trajectory on what you're doing with this budget review committee at all i'm just saying in addition to that i think there's another conversation that's tied to it that we should probably be beginning okay got it And I think we hear both of the separate but related points that you're making. I'll also add that later on this agenda item, we do now have, based on the conversations from the February meeting, a standing item for legislative updates. Deb has graciously taken charge on the New Hampshire side of things and has much to
110talk about already in the next couple of minutes. And I would ask again, probably the pair of you, Neil and Garrett, depending on the issue, to help us out on the Vermont side of the river legislative updates as well. um deb we're not quite there yet but we're we're there soon in the past three weeks since dresden has last met anything of note from council harvard area career tech center tuition committee anything else specific to dresden next week okay yeah do you have anything from council or hsxt and also uh tara's her hand up too when deb's done i just wanted to mention the staff development committee met today okay and a conversation we had about moving to track seven, which is our highest step or track. The language of the master, what's it called?
111The master plan. Yeah, I was going to say contract. Talks about rigor, but then leaves it up to the committee of us to agree to what is rigor. And we think that, and there's no... There's nothing. We don't really talk about rigor. We just talk about the submissions. So one of the things that came up today was what was the board's thinking about how people move to track seven. And something I'm interested in looking at and have shared this with the committee is how quickly people move to track seven. And also how quickly once they... initiate moving to track seven, they get there. In other words, one would be you come into the district, say, and you're at track three, how quickly do you move to the top of our line? But the second one
112is when you submit an application to be a track seven, how quickly are you able to finish it? And I think the board needs to have a conversation about that. And I am looking at pulling together some of that information, but it really isn't something we can do as a committee because we're limited to what the master plan says. So anyway, that's just a conversation I think we need to have at some point. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Oh, I can go for Tara. Okay. Tara, you had your hand up earlier on. Is it still valid? No, no, I'm done hyperventilating now that Neil chimed in. That's all. Thank you. That data that you're asking for is also very relevant to understanding fiscal implications, as I think you're implying, which relates to negotiations, relates to budget forecasts,
113relates to so many different things. So I do feel like there is a need for that data on a few different levels. And also chiming on that, that should happen. I think comments and requests made from multiple board members about requesting data in one way, shape, or form, and I'm including myself in there, from the administration. And I don't believe we have a standing process on how to do that. Besides noting that if it's an individual request to the administration, just to clarify, as we all know, the administration does not have to go jump and do that promptly. It is not a voted on item by the relevant board. That said, if we waited. for a relevant board vote on some of these things, which has negotiations or budget or some level of urgency, that
114is not helpful either. So I think something that I would put to the policy committee, Cy, is to craft a- That was a greatly timed call. I just thought the best way to do that, that's adhering to both the urgency as well as respecting that we are all parties of one when we're not at this collective body. So perhaps we can add that to the policy queue, I say to myself. And I'll mention it to Ryan as well. Policy queue. Yeah, so that is coming. All right, so we're all ready. Oh, and then, sorry, the legislative update by Deb. Deb Wong, yeah. Which, who was at Concord yesterday on our behalf? No, this morning. Oh, this morning, I'm sorry. Yep, I went down to testify against, if you click on that little link about March
11510th, school board, it's live. And so I actually. attached my comments to um the document they're in the document house bill 1792 it has an acronym i tried to share it out with you guys yesterday the acronym is the charlie act we all know why um and i in I only learned yesterday by attending a meeting, a Zoom meeting at one, that it was a hearing today. So I thought, oh, God, I've got to pull together what I'm going to say. But fortunately, I have a file and I had our resolution on the HR resolution, HR 544 resolution that the board unanimously passed a few years ago. This particular bill is a twin of that one, which is still in litigation. It's on appeal. It's cost a significant amount of money. But anyway, I grabbed
116some of those comments and I added on some. But I did indicate that in many places in my comments, I was speaking on behalf of the board because the 544 I was, and there's the sentence that we... crafted you crafted at the last well we did it for hanover and then you guys signed off on it dresden's meeting last month so anyway i wanted you to know about that it does it's not clear they didn't vote on it today it still has to go it's past the house Here it is in the Senate. I'm quite convinced it will be litigated because someone from the Attorney General's office followed me, not immediately, but said my comments when this came before the House, they were wrong. And we've since looked into this and this would really have
117to be litigated. And there are all these problems. So just to let you know about that on. The other thing that is down at the bottom is more serious, which is the Senate Education Finance hearing on Friday. And the little live link at the bottom shows a comparison between two bills, one before the Senate and one before the House. And I only found out about these yesterday. And frankly, I haven't had the time to become an authority on what their implications are for us, but I did. Someone did say at the Zoom meeting yesterday that if these bills are instated, it would not reduce property taxes. It would just shift the language so the state isn't on the hook to provide funding. that they are suggesting that districts are indivisible from the state, and so
118they can make decisions about finances. There's quite a lot on this link, and there's commentary on this slide. So have at it. And it even removes adequate, the term adequate. There's a lot going on. Tomorrow, there's a bill that's being heard by the Senate. that would prohibit flying flags that aren't the U.S. flag or let's say you have an AFS you couldn't fly any other flag like a pride flag that's really the one they're going after yeah so there's a lot happening and it's very unlikely that The worst of the worst is going to be defeated. So it's either a matter of calling the governor and imploring her to veto some of these bills or elect new representatives in the event. But not us, because our representatives vote on the right, on the side of
119public education, I should say, and on the side of. fairness and equity and meeting the needs for all students in the schools. Robin? Also, just so you know, I am supposed to go to that Senate finance hearing on Friday. Oh, good. Yeah. Oh, and I did, there was not related to this, but I noticed that last month when Kelly was talking about the open enrollment and the signatures on the document, and she made reference to 300 signatures, it was 610. It's a live document, and I checked last night. So. Have there been any recent updates in open enrollment in the past couple of weeks? Yeah. Well, thank you for collective service as well as the folks on the Vermont side of the river for all these updates. So reminds me of some of the survey
120results of folks who don't understand why we talk politics and just keep politics out of our schools and how we, even if we try not to, we don't really have a choice. Well, one thing I haven't done it yet, but one thing that I do want to create is a like a PowerPoint presentation that can be linked on the SAU school websites, but that is just a generic, if you want to share your opinion, either in support or opposition, these are the steps to take. And so I'm going to do that, but I don't have any promises of how fast I can get it done. Right. Okay. Well, thank you for your efforts on that. Anything else on legislation or committee reports? Thank you for that great discussion. We'll move on to the superintendent's report.
121Would you like me to hold on and present my report at the SAU meeting? I always want to return to that. Anyone have any concerns with that? Or same thing with Lawrence reports? I'll address him and defer my essay to Mr. Fix. There was a theme earlier that we talked about that Anissa highlighted in our conversations about moving forward with math at RMS. So I would invite you to take a look at that and further delineate some of the conversations that we've been having collaboratively based on. listening and learning opportunities that I've had this year with various district stakeholders, parents, teachers in the school system, as well as administrators at RMS and the high school. Some really good thought and work is going into making progress here and responding to concerns from the past and
122trying to rewrite this narrative that we've been experiencing. And so I just wanted to highlight those shifts and thought processes that we're working through right now, with a nod to stating that this is a first step towards as we continue these conversations, understand the impact of some of these changes in transparency and narrative writing and storytelling that we're doing now. and what that impact will be in the future and any other changes that we might need to be discussing in the high school and high school in terms of alignment for our students and our families. And then just a quick update about technology. We're moving forward with interviews to happen hopefully on March 27th, so moving that process along. And I'm happy to answer any other questions about any other parts of my report as
123well. Well, thank you for your efforts on these things, particularly with the art of problem solving and the integrity and the pathways. It is much appreciated and not unnoticed. So thank you for that, as well as working with the RMS on these things together. For the hiring of the technology department. Yes. Is it a strong looking group of candidates as far as you can tell? Yeah. At this point, 10 or 11 candidates in the pool. Several of them look really quite interesting. A couple of them are applicants that would require visas, which is not something that we do. So we are unable to process at this moment, but of the ones that we really can consider, got some good candidates in the pool it looks like. Any other questions for Lauren specific to Dresden? Thank
124you for that, Warren. We appreciate it. You're welcome. As much as I'm being a director of technology. I'm really excited to pass that right along. You should beg me to say. Teresa, anything specific to Dresden? I uploaded the report and everything else. I'm just kind of reiterating like I did at Norwich. We're now fully staffed again in the business office. So we've had a payroll person, Kim DeGrasse, who started on the 23rd. Wendy is chemistically doing payroll at this time. We've split these positions and so they're dedicated to becoming specialists and moving the programs forward and stuff. And then Wendy French is back full-time and she is doing a payable. We have been conducting interviews for the HR director position. So that's been really great, promising. With maintenance. Again, now it's been a couple weeks
125or so that I've met with Tony and Matt on going through each of the districts and projects that were scheduled for this year and everything else and also looking at forward now that the budget's passed. We'll be looking at what projects are going to be done this next year and what we can start in the fall and, excuse me, in the spring and set up for the things that will happen this summer and fall and everything else. And then the... I was to coin another term by somebody, herding cats, to get the CIP committee, really schedules and everything else. March intensive is going on next week too and a few other things, but we've got three days that I've been for two weeks trying to get people. I don't know exactly which day next week
126that we're having our meeting and stuff. Transportation on the side of the river. Other than it's been going pretty smoothly. We had some cold days where we had bus troubles and stuff, but it pretty much worked our way through that. And then the food service has been hot-topping non-stop. I won't go through the whole thing, but you'll be able to read kind of what the update on. what's been happening with that. So we're continuing to have conversations with staff, students, the food service company, and everything trying to just enhance the program. And I will tell you one tidbit again that keeps coming up, the open campus concept. And I know that with the cell phones not being able to be used here, we've got even more going off campus. And so it may be something
127that I know it's... It might go down that road of the democratic way, but it might be something that you have to consider at some point because of your losing revenue and we cannot keep the program going without supporting it, you know, 100,000 at a time or something. We're going to have to do something, you know, do so much if everybody can go off campus to spend the money elsewhere. And I think it was enlightening for a couple of students to find out that. The revenues that we take in, they don't belong to the food service company like a lot of people believe. Those revenues come to us. And so if we can profit, we can enhance even more. But if the money is leaving the campus, it's not helping us. Right. Okay. Thank you
128for that. I will first back to the business ops rather than the bigger lunch question for now. Previously, efforts have been made to cross train all the business office staff so they can help each other, especially if someone's out for a long time. With what you're saying right now with specialization, is that still happening or is cross training done as a concept? No, it's definitely not done. It's never done. Cross training still happens and everything else. But right now at this point. like Wendy has been doing AP and payroll, but there was parts of payroll that she wasn't doing 100% of it and everything else. So if we were in a crunch or whatever, she could do a lot of it anyhow. But no, once, once. And the payroll person gets settled in, then they're
129going to start doing more of definitely Kim knowing what AP and how that works. And then Wendy really knowing more so about how the payroll finishing start to finish and stuff like that. And so that's definitely the cross training is definitely happening. Okay. Any other comments for Teresa on this or other matters, Garrett? HAB-Jacques Juilland- On the food service thing I mean it sounds like it might be something we need to fix sooner than later, because. HAB-Jacques Juilland- The budget committees 100,000 I mean money starts out really fast right and shortfalls that we are going to start back really fast so with me how how like off is this, I mean we talking like. Eight dollars or is this just like a little canary in a coal mine? Well, it's like this next year. We've
130already budgeted, you know, almost $100,000 for the supplemental. Because we also, we automatically, any student that qualified, whether they're free or reduced, we automatically pay and they're all eating free and everything else. But then the program itself is not really supporting itself at this point. So we have been supplementing just like we did with the other, even RMS, who's not under the food service company, has gotten, like we still supplemented that this last year. great deal. So we do, but at the high school level where, I mean, because they do leave campus, that really takes away a lot. I mean, there's always going to be a level that we're going to supplement, but 200,000. I think that's really, that's the most I've ever, I haven't never, never worked anywhere where you supplemented that amount, not
131even at a history level. We brought this up at the policy committee meeting. Remember we were talking about it. I was calling it. Maybe we end up creating a smoking area for cell phones or something. And everyone's like, well, it doesn't need for. state law but I mean this might be something where we end up allowing kids to have cell phones in the cafeteria or something while they can and again you're saying no but like if all of a sudden like every I'm not like people all the kids just leave campus and get on their phone so this whole idea that like no no we're going to strict fire rules and phones are bad like every single kid is leaving campus in using their cell phones so like there is something also that's not working
132as much as we all want to basically say like let's keep them and then or we just end up getting rid of food which then becomes an equity issue it's like i mean i don't know if you know i'll be pretty sure at least talking in my case that the food here is a lot cheaper than going over to the co-op but it's very expensive here yeah yeah okay so unfortunately like yeah then we also have another issue i guess to figure out from a food service perspective or we just end up like Maybe we end up just doing drinks or something and changing our food service here and everyone just goes across the street and uses their cell phones. Sorry. It's definitely one of those things that I said. I mean, at what point
133do we continue? to have it and the time frame that it's open too because it's not just like in the grade schools where you have this little window they're open quite a bit from the morning right up so we're paying those we're paying for those wages to be here for those hours and all that time because somebody's going to trickle in and trickle out and stuff like that so these are all things that we're kind of looking at and everything else and and yeah the prices i mean i did go over the co-op and I did a comparison and I didn't think it was everything. I didn't think that the prices were that different and stuff, but we could get the prices down too if there's a way to encourage more purchases. You can get
134the prices down. Well, then there's a number of hands are going to go up here and obviously a can of worms has been opened, which is not wrong to open it. And I hear Garrett's points as well, but there are also legal things that they do in terms of offering food, following state law for the phones. But I know it makes me wonder if we need to do more of an ad campaign to the parents. Or if it's a surprise to the students, I'm guessing it'd be a surprise to the parents as well that we have our obligations as a school for what we need to offer. We're told we want to offer healthy things and all that other stuff from the parents, but they're not following through on getting our students to buy stuff
135here. But they may also not be aware that we get that revenue. And so maybe there's ways we can hype that up to the parents from the superintendent or principal, some sort of special email. Gina. We have a discussion about food at almost every meeting. Which is a fairly new development, by the way. So I think my question to Robin is, what support do you need from the board? Do you need us to be having a discussion at this level? Or do you need a committee? Or what do you need so we can figure out what it is that we need to do to support and make a decision? Or not? Because we go around and around on it every single time. And I don't think we're helping anybody. And I appreciate that you're raising
136what you're raising and they're all questions, but what role do we play as a board in this I am? Yeah. I mean, and Teresa's working with a variety of stakeholders to really try to figure this out, but it's complicated. So it's not going to happen overnight, honestly. It's going to take some time. And in terms of board member involvement, the only involvement I've seen in my eight-ish years on the board is hiring the food vendor itself. which some of us did several years ago, but I'm up until an ICU, Lauren. But not really on the day-to-day level. Tara has a question, and then Teresa. Go ahead, Tara, when you're ready. So I have two thoughts and I'll just throw them out there. I hope they're helpful. The first thought is if there's a food service
137contract, somebody wants to send it to me, I'm glad to read it because the first thing that you do, if you can't control your revenue, you control your expenses. So if we can statutorily meet the requirements of the program and dial it back so it does not cost us nearly so much, that is something that. might be worth investigating and I'm glad to help. Secondly, my other thought is probably the high school is the first time that the kids have free choice in how they spend their meal dollars because I seem to recall being the person who passed the money along directly to the... the schools in middle school and in elementary school. So we could potentially, although it would not be popular, I imagine, with the students, go back to the parents to get
138them to sign up in advance and write a check for their children to eat at school, imagining that they are doing the right thing nutritionally and otherwise for their children, rather than have the kids be the transactors of the meal purchase, we could go right to the parents. And that would probably change the financials a bit as well without an ad campaign, which I'm not especially excited about. Teresa, any response to Tara or Ron? I do want to respond to the contract thing. So we did, the contract was looked at and was reviewed because the cost of the program and everything else, when we're given, like I should be, hopefully, I talked to Kara from the food service company today and she's finishing putting touches on the budgets that they're putting together for next year
139on what it would cost and everything else for the operation of the program. Strangely enough, it's one of those unfortunate things that some of those budget things don't get determined until after we've already voted on our school budget. So when they're trying to determine the needs and stuff like that, even though we're doing as much as we can ahead of time, it's unforeseen. But the contract's definitely being held to its point. I'm not questioning that, Teresa. And I don't really mean to open up the next can of worms and to have you have to talk about all that here. I'm just saying I'm available out of this meeting to talk about it and to read things over if that could possibly be helpful. That's all. Just another set of eyes. Okay. Anything to chime in
140on from a student perspective? I don't think the student body will be appreciative of having their parents force them to eat at the cafe every day. Okay. Thank you for that. Linda. Hi. I'm Linda. I have to say, I have been hearing more about the food. I've been a part of this because I'm in the Council of Sex, so I know the committee, the council committee has been working on it now for a couple of years. And I guess I have a couple comments to make. It feels... And I think he would agree, like the conversations in the school, and I even approached Teresa when she came in tonight, it's rising in tenor. I mean, I think more and more people are getting involved in this conversation about what's happening in the cafe, about the
141frustration that it does. I think people are experiencing it as more costly and less quality. And this is no commentary on the staff who are serving our students. They are wonderful people. But I think that whole idea of why is our district stuck with something that's offering a product that our students are not using and choosing to use. Because why? I hate to compare. Prior to this current arrangement, I felt like what we were experiencing collectively as a school was a place that felt very welcoming. It smelled great all the time. It felt like they had a real tie to what they were getting to choose and pick from. And I don't know how decisions were made. I think I've seen this over the years across all the schools. From time to time, we have
142a great food service, and then it doesn't work, and it probably comes down to the bottom line. My point is, this is such a complex topic. that I'm wondering if there isn't, I feel like there is a request almost for some sort of board acknowledgement of the level of seriousness. Now, I don't know what that looks like from all of you, but personally, I worry about people like Teresa who are there trying to build all these questions, bring people up to date, educate the public on what the real, you know, difficulties are. And I think that's really a lot for one person or even for just a committee on council. I think there needs to be more maybe education in the public, understanding of the contract. What do our students really want? What can they
143really get? What will this community support? Is this the biggest problem we have to deal with? It sounds like budgetarily it does come at a big cost. So I'm just saying maybe it is at that board level concerning them in some capacity. So what I'm hearing from, thank you for your comments. Oh, Ian, go ahead. Like, I was reading your report of, like, adding the coffee machines. Like, maybe a possibility of, like, increasing, like, student, like, participation of, like, purchasing, like, coffees in the school. Maybe, like, raising awareness about that. I'm not sure if, like... like maybe an advisor or something or in other like areas where students could like tell other students that there's like a coffee station there, like raising awareness about like a new product that's in the cafeteria. And that was
144one. Lisa, then Teresa. Yeah, I don't want to. I hope you can hold your thought for a second. One thing that occurs to me in all of this is from having. my kids and their friends and my husband talking about the food at the high school, one of the things that they always said, kind of no matter what the quality of the food was, was that the staff, the CAF staff were delightful to talk to. And they really, you know, they had a relationship with the people that were serving the food. And I worry a little bit that if this is, if this is rising to the level of people complaining about staff morale, and I just, I think we need to be careful about. where these conversations take place, how they take place, and
145maybe take advantage of the fact that it seems like the CAP workers have good rapport with the students. And perhaps that is a marketing tool that could be used. So just a thought in this process that hasn't come up. Thank you for that, Teresa. For my answers here, my original was about the discussions that we were talking about is like, in Vermont because they participate in the National School of Medicine. They're technically required to have a committee. It's a wellness committee. So I recommended that we had one on this side because... Because we don't participate in the National School Lunch Program at any of the New Hampshire schools, we are not restricted by anything. They can serve what they want. They can do what they want. Basically, we don't follow those state regulations that Vermont's
146following. But I still recommend that having, and that's part of trying to pull everybody together and have these meetings and everything else is to try and pull together. I still think we should have a wellness committee. And it's just not, it's not about just looking at it from the perspective of the students for eating what they're eating, but students and staff in that respect too, of overall. So I think that that there's some. Students like Ian, who definitely, like he came down for a visit with another. So they're asking really good questions and everything else. So this was prompted a lot. But, you know, they have boards up even in the cafeteria. The signage was supposed to get going. It's been there for a while. using those as just marquee things or putting up and
147even just the menu out there, but trying to get the word out. And we did talk about flyers and everything else. So some of that was supposed to be put out in the school stuff to get the awareness out on some of it. So those were, those are the different things. And I think that having that wellness committee and call it whatever you want it, but having that committee would. field a bunch of the questions and get some of the answers and then same as any other you bring it to the board level saying okay now we need somebody to make help make this decision in the direction so it sounds julie did you want to chime in on something I don't want everyone to think that our campus empties out at lunch for kids
148to use their cell phones. They're loud. I see them walk to the co-op to get their food, and then sometimes they don't throw it in the trash can, and it's all, like, it's co-op food. They're eating it here. They're not hanging out on the bench over there to get their cell phones. I think the cell phone thing is an easy scapegoat that our students are leaving for that. And I just, I don't know if you feel the same, Aian, but I just don't feel like our hallways are empty and everyone's like evacuating to use their cell phones. I don't get that sense at all. It would make our lives easier, but we wouldn't love that at all. That's not the feeling I'm getting. And you're in the hallways of all teachers. They're not here. They
149might leave to go get their food. but they're leaving to get food and coming back and eating it here. So it's not because they want to use their cell phone. Maybe for one second they do, but that fear of ours didn't really come to pass. Right. I mean, we all report our family anecdotes of wanting stuff like that, but it is great to hear. Dana, do you have data, like you actually collect numbers of students that are leaving the campus, like a little clicker from the person at the front desk? That's an idea. There's this really fun thing. I used to do that in music. I always have to make people laugh. Neil, then Deb, and then I'll chime in. No, I don't have anything to say. Oh, sorry. Just Neil. Sure. I have seen
150these comments before as to sort of what level does this rise for board concerns. If I look at it with my board hat on, I've got a concern about the finances. I've got a concern that we're providing meals to folks that are on free or reduced lunch, right? Those are my two concerns. I have zero concern. zero desire to have the board insert itself in conversations that involve looking over contracts or trying to figure out whether or not we want to charge parents. That to me is something that if I was a board member, I would work with my fellow colleague, direct the superintendent to look into it and come back to us with a proposal on how to fix this. But I would caution the chair. as to the level of board involvement in
151this issue and make sure that it stays at board. And if anyone has things to add, I will chime in. So I would echo Neil's point as to how far we get or do not get in as a board. I had heard kind of two separate conversations that seemed to be coalescing to either a presentation from the administration, whether it's Robin or Julie, on how much we have identified this as a problem. specifically of data if we have it available and propose suggestions and steps to alleviate this concern. That is one approach which I am partial to individually. The other concern is whether we want to make this a committee thing that may not necessarily be a board committee, but something of ways to appreciate this problem. It could be contractual, it could be student
152driven, it could be SAU or HHS. principal administration driven as to how best to handle that. There was a wellness committee, as you may or may not know, Teresa, it met once and died. That was seven years ago. That was my first meeting as a board member. I was the committee member and it did not go anywhere. And that the reasons for that are multiple and go back several years. This sounds like it's more specific than that. And I agree with Neil's point that it's not a board level discussion as to food quality. It is a concern, I think, for board members who also happen to be parents, but it was more of an administration thing. That said, I see Garrett has his hand up and others may as well. Any further thoughts of whether
153this is a administration directed answer for us at a future board meetings they can put other ducks in a row and come at us with problem solutions and data, or if we want to do something else? Garrett? I brought this up, I guess, and now it's kind of turned into this. I think, not to go against you, Ben, but I think at this point, like... I thank Teresa for bringing up this. She's probably regretting actually mentioning this, but I think it's important. That's why she has a report so that we can see, okay, problem. I think there is a problem. I would actually suggest that we just leave it to the administration and to the high school to kind of figure out at the next board meeting or at a couple of board meetings, we
154just make sure that things are moving along. I think having Teresa spend time even doing a presentation on our food service or a committee just seems like. everything else going on right now like just overwhelming so i think it's like fix the figure out how we can fix the problem and because my concern is what neil says is that we end up with a budget issue here and then the secondary concern is obviously if they're a foodish quality issue like okay let's figure that out too then if we do you agree with okay any other comments on The last one based on just, again, the players in the game, staff, students. you know, administration just in food service company, just kind of us pulling together again, not having an official NSA committee, but doesn't have
155to be an official, you know, we have to warrant anything, but being able to meet and hear everybody out in the discussions and knowing from the student side in the comment about the cell phone, this one I said came from a student. So it wasn't something I kind of thought of, but so it came from. You know, it came from feedback from other students that have come and visited and asked questions, which, like I said, they're all asking great questions because it all has everything to do with not just the food quality or attending, but other aspects of the program running. So I do think that having the input from everybody can build it. Any further thoughts from anyone? Maybe I'm wrong and maybe Teresa wants to make a thing. I don't really want. Or
156maybe this is a student. Maybe this is more like a school thing where we need to know what the students want rather than the board. Which if there was some sort of connection, it doesn't need to be a board thing. I would welcome student input on this. Terry, your hand jumped up and then I think it went down. Did you want to chime in on anything? If help is needed, if part of this presentation is we are struggling with this program and help might be what we need to move forward, then I am hearing that if that's the message. And as a board member, as not a board member, I'm just willing to help if anybody wants me to, that's fine. But if our administration is struggling with something, It's come up repeatedly. We as
157a board need to decide, do we address that or do we let the problem linger? That's all. One more time. One more time. I was thinking back, I'm trying to remember exactly what the topic was, but I remember I was on the board at the time and the board actually said, we would like to empower or invite the students to address this and form a committee and work on it. And that's all they said. And that was pretty magical for the students to say that the board trusted them to take that step and do the work. And I'm thinking about all the conversations are going, maybe I'm just looking for some way. as trees is to consolidate it and get the power to have a conversation in one room. And maybe if they were invited
158to come back and present, of course, Julie needs to weigh in on this, obviously, as our fearless leader here. Nothing would happen without administration's knowledge, too. But I guess we really do need students involved and we need staff. And it is our problem here. And I just want to get to the meat of it so we can move forward because there is abundant implication. You guys are working hard to figure that out ahead of time. So maybe we can get working on that before the end of the year. Student power. Well, actually, a lot of this came about last year at the end of the school year through some public speaking. speeches from several students who, you know, I sit in on those at the end of the year, and we had several students who
159spoke about the quality of food. And so as a result of that, we asked them to meet with Teresa and talk about the food service program. So a lot of that work has been happening because of students, honestly. And then continuing this year with Ian. And with some of the other issues that we've been dealing with in terms of the, you know, the costs. So any further thoughts on the administration taking point on this in one way, shape or form or whether it becomes board stuff specific to budgetary concerns? I mean, I think we continue to take a look at it and we'll bring back what we find out to you. Linda's asking us to say we would move for there to be a student committee that's dedicated to working on this and if that
160is what she needs and that will help. I don't think it's within our purview when we get directly. No, we can't. We'll definitely involve students. I mean, we've been involving students anyway. When we say they have our blessing, we're not directing them, but we can go with the other thing and we would find it really inspirational for them to create a solution to help them and everyone have a better, you know, if that's what they need, like, let's just say that. I think that would be cool. A great way to present data and a story and a rationale and a proposal and then. they can talk about it in their portfolio nice segue i think that it's fair to say that the board would welcome any sort of public presentation by some collaboration of the
161administration the seo and the students on a data-driven report on food as particularly as it pertains to the budget ce and taking good notes everyone okay to move on okay thank you for that kind of worms we appreciate it teresa All right. Next up is the non-public. So we do need to move to non-public on a hiring issue, as we have already mentioned. That is item B for those who want to read out the motion. We'd be happy to do that. We have to do that with roll call. Someone's ready. Anyone care to make a motion? I move to enter into non-public session at 8.15 p.m. under RSA 91.8. Going three to be hiring. Yep. Seconded by Deb starting individually, starting with Tara. Belosa, yes. Neil? Rodo, yes. Russell, yes. Selden, yes. Christy, yes. DeBlessie,
162yes. Nelson, yes. Gina Dignan, yes. And Tina, yes. We'll be back in a few minutes, everyone. Thank you. Peace is on. All right, everyone, I'm going to return us to public session. We have a second opportunity for the public to address the board. Anything from our public tonight? Seeing nothing, we will move on to the approval of the nomination lists. Does someone like to make a motion? Deb? I move to approve the Hanover High School and Richmond Middle School Certified Staff nomination lists. as presented. Thank you for that impression. Seconded by Lisa. Going around the horn, starting with Neil. Russell, yes. Sullivan, yes. Christy, yes. Sorry. Nelson, yes. I lost my internet connection. Tara? And Keeney, yes, that is unanimous. Thank you all. If you have any agenda topics for the next meeting, please let
163me know. Our next meeting is not for a while, actually, not until Tuesday, April 28th. Although I'm hearing stirrings, there might be a special add-on meeting within the next week or so. And so look for an update from either myself or the superintendent. If that comes, we will try to give you as much notice as possible. And if we're able to, tack it on to a pre-existing meeting to make it a little easier logistically. Other than that, I will take a motion to adjourn. Deb. 8.42 p.m. Seconded by Lisa, going around the horn again, starting with Gina this time, just to mix things up. Dave Cognac, yes. Nelson, yes. Christy, yes. Sullivan, yes. And Tara? Pelosi, yes. And Keeney, yes, that is unanimous. Thank you, everyone. Have a good night. We'll probably take a couple
164minutes to change over to SAU, so bathroom break, et cetera, if you need it. And thank you very much. We'll see you shortly. Thank you. Renee, these are the pay attention seats. You got it. up there next time right everyone you gotta give me this if you want it yeah it doesn't have any yeah i need it everyone you find me at this board matter on here like some interest no couple interesting can i sign them i can sign in like a different color it's not a big deal are they yeah there's not enough lines it's the same one yeah they're really like a different line yeah I agree with the ethics policy.