Stratham School Board Meeting 03/18/26

001All right. Well, it is six o'clock and I'm going to call this meeting to order. So good evening, everyone. Thank you for your attendance. And I'm going to call the Stratum School Board meeting to order at six o'clock p.m. My first order of business is to get this mic out of my hand. So I'm going to look for a nomination for chair of the school board. Do I have a nomination for chair? I would like to nominate Jennifer for chair. Thank you, Cameron. Second. Thank you, Sophie. Any discussion? Okay, well, I was going to suggest maybe someone else wanted to take it over just because it's my final year. I'm willing to be vice chair, but if someone else wants to be chair. I nominate Kathleen to be the chair. So since we have a

002motion on the table, we'd have to repeat that, and then we can have a new motion. That is brutal. I don't know what you're doing. So we can still have discussion. So you can definitely ask that question if you want, Cameron. And then we'd have to take a motion on the Jennifer first. And then if we defeat that, then we can have a new motion. I very much appreciate it. Would be willing to if Kathleen's not interested in in being the chair of the board Oh being the chair. Yeah, you're walking into a fun con. Okay, can we I'm just tried to Like sneakily nominate you because you were walking. Oh god. I don't know if that's just what that move was or Yeah, so Jennifer said she wanted for But she was transition Sure,

003I'd be interested. All right, so we need to vote on that motion, correct? So is there any further discussion about the motion for Jennifer to be chair? I think she made her stance, and we've heard from Sophie and Kathleen. All right, so I'm going to ask for a roll call vote. Shane, so this would be if we want to keep Jennifer, it would be a yes. I'm hearing she would like you to vote no on this, but no pressure either way. I will vote no. No. No. So you want me to vote no? Yeah. Okay, no. So that motion is defeated. Thank you. Tell me what you want. Cameron, I'll take another motion if you have another motion on the table. I wanted to nominate Sophie. I think she said she was willing to do

004it. I'm also willing to do it. Oh, okay. Or did you? I don't know. You guys figure it out. You can't? We can do a co-chair and a vice chair? Jetten said she would be the vice chair, which I think would be helpful because she's... To have your experience. Yeah. I can transition you through. Well, I would defer to Sophie because you have seniority over me. This is your second term, so I would be totally okay with that. You sure? Yeah, totally. Cool. All right, so I have a motion from Cameron for Sophie Saltonstall as chair of the board. Do I have a second? I will second that. Thank you, Kathleen. Any more discussion about that? Okay, I'm going to take a roll call vote. Sophie Saltonstall as chair of the board. Jane? Yes. Aye.

005Don't you love these wins? Easy wins for you. Aye. All right. We are 5-0. That was unexpected. Sophie, I'm going to turn this over to you. You will be the new chair of the Stratum School Board. Okay. I'm completely prepared. And I can help you walk through this agenda since I usually do it with Jennifer. So just kick me under the table if you need anything. Maybe the vice chair could lead this meeting. So you'd need to make a motion if we want to do vice chair. We can do that now or we can do that. I'd like to make a motion to have the vice chair lead this meeting. You need a vice chair. I nominate Jennifer Scrapper to be vice chair. A second. Any further discussion about Jennifer being vice chair? Okay, roll

006call vote, please. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right, thank you very much. So Sophie Stoltensoll will be the chair of the school board for this next year, and Jennifer will be the vice chair, so thank you very much. Sophie and Jennifer, I'll turn the meeting over to you, where we are ready for our student council report if they are here. They should be here. Okay. Yeah, they're out in the hallway. I'll text Ashley. Okay. Who's talking out there? I think it's them. So we can move past that and come back to that if we want. Do I need to make a motion to nominate Jen to run the meeting? No, you guys can just run it together. I guess just moving ahead then, why don't we take approval of the minutes? We have a

007different orientation of the board, so we'll just do it one by one. So 2-16-26 public meeting. Any edits on those? No, looked good to me. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes of 2? 1626? Kathleen? A motion. Okay. Do I have a second? I have a second. Thanks, Cam. Any discussion on that? All right. So now we'll vote just considering whether you are on the board on 216.26. So I'll approve. Aye. Okay. So 401. Thank you. I guess just one, right? Even Eric can't abstain. Okay. The minutes of 3, 4, 26. Do you have a motion to move those minutes, approve those minutes? I will motion to approve. Thanks, Cam. I'll second that. Any discussion on those? Any edits? All right. Seeing none. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Anybody opposed and abstain?

008I say 4-0-1. All right. And then the non-public minutes of 3-4-26. I'll move to approve those. Do I have a second? I'll second. All right. Any discussion? That was the non-public. Yeah. Very brief. All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anybody abstaining? I will abstain. Okay, so 4-0-1. I'll get better at this. You're doing great. All right, moving it over to the superintendent. Great, thank you. Molly, you want to go over and manifest some financials? Sure. Okay. Thank you for signing the manifest and also the MS-22. So what the MS-22 does is after the vote happens, it zips up all the warrant articles that passed together to make your new budget. And so that is what everyone has signed this evening. So thank you. And included in your board pack is a current

009year financial. We really did just have two larger changes this month, one up, one down. And I did note what those were related to. When positions are vacated, the encumbrance is released with it. And so then when we find someone to refill positions, then the encumbrance goes back in. That's where you see it. So did anyone have any questions? Feel free to ask questions, too. This sheet is. an awesome cheat sheet molly started a few years for us ago for us yeah and i can quickly go through it since i i forgot we have a new member with us so i guess going back to the manifesto let me explain those first um so every month i come with manifest for payroll and accounts payable so anytime we make a payment and we have two

010types of payment payroll to pay our staff and accounts payable to pay our bills we print a cover page which is called the manifest cover page that lists all the bills that we paid and it lists the vendor or the employee and the amount and so then and what you do is you sign off on the cover sheet. And so in our office at the SAU, we have every time there's a pay run that happens, we put them in where Michelle and I sit, and if you happen to be there, you can swing by and sign. And if you're not there, I bring them to the school board meeting the following month. And so that's what. the stack pile here that you signed. And then every month I bring the current year financial to say

011how we're doing against the budget. So the budget we voted last spring for the current school year is what we monitor here. In this upper corner over here, I say, what are the changes in expense from the prior month? That way we're not reviewing the entire financial over and over again. It's really what has changed from the prior month. And then below that is additional revenue. So when you vote a budget, you have to stay within the budget, even if you have extra sources of revenue. But your expenses less than plan and the revenue more than plan end up being the fund balance at the end of the year to offset taxation, which is over here in the top right. And then in the middle, we have our trust fund balances. And then I do

012put in the lower corner what we gave back. We don't give back a check. It just offsets the amount needed to be raised in taxation the following year. And the reason we have the past five years is because if you give a lot back one year and then you don't give a lot back the next. That makes spikes in your tax rate. So when we get closer to year end, if there's funds available, unfortunately this year is not a year for that, we would think about what decisions do we want to make to stabilize that tax rate. And so with that being said, I just want to remind the board we do have a very, very tight budget this year. we do not typically ask to go into a trust fund until we absolutely have

013to because once you take it out you cannot put it back so if all of a sudden we find we have some savings then we can't put that money back so um as we close out the year the last few months we might need to make some decisions in the next few meetings depending on what expenses we might see at the school if we have to dip into those trust funds but right now since we're still in the positive i would not recommend making that motion tonight i would wait until we absolutely have to So did anyone have any questions? I had a question about Birch Tree. Can you explain what service Birch Tree is? So, Kate, there was a purchase order that was opened for Birch Tree. They're one of our special ed contracted

014service providers. Okay. And for those contracted services, do you get bids from different places? Are there even options to get bids from? Like, how do you? So you don't typically get. bids part of that is that there's very few organizations that provide the contracted services we're talking about and they also have limited staff because it's so sought after by all schools and so we're fortunate to have a couple that we work with but most schools in this area have two or three that we always sort of reach out to first and there's very few that are available because they're all fully booked really you have to like think years in advance and if you end up in like an emergency situation they're really once you have a relationship they can be really helpful but it

015is really hard yeah yeah And they're comparable across, like in terms of like the cost for the type of service is pretty comparable across organizations. There isn't a significant discrepancy. Okay. And do we use First Student for transportation for those service, for the transportation of special ed services too, or just for? No, we do not use First Student. We use SLC. So different organization for students that might require specialized transportation. Cool. And I guess same question for that. Are there options or not really? No. That's a monopoly, actually. I mean, I don't think it legally is, but it feels that way. We've signed a multi-year contract with Seacoast Learning Collaborative because there is not specialized transportation. There's one called Any Events that we use when they cannot provide it for us. But First Student has

016not really had a more mobilized special education transportation fleet. They're starting to introduce that. So I think we could have some competitive bids in the meantime. But Dr. Bennett, who oversees all special education, SAU 16, has worked with Seacoast Learning Collaborative. They're our main provider. They're the biggest provider in this area. much competition so we would look if we had it um but you'd be tipping into uh much further areas of where they'd be coming to transport cool thank you Molly can I ask a quick question? So this is a new contract. That's why it's showing a difference month to month. It's not necessarily, it could be new or it could be a change in the incumbents for what a student already had. So it's either a change in a student's needs or it would

017be a new contract. I'm not sure. Oh, okay. But it's. We have a student that we, sorry, we have a staff member that is not here and we have to replace that staff member while they're not here. And so it is new. In this case, it's new, but sometimes it is. an IEP might make a team decision that the services are going to change so you might see that a change in that way that's kind of what Molly's talking about but you also um just like you replace the classroom teacher if they're out on FMLA you would do the same thing for someone in special special education as well is that related to the like the line above there's like a minus nope totally separate okay thank you yep all right I would love to

018just interrupt the superintendent report and go back to our student council report James and Luna come on up Thank you guys so much for coming. Hi, I'm Luna. And I'm James. We are the representatives from Ms. DiLello's fourth grade class. We're here to tell you what has been happening at SMS. The Friday before February break, to celebrate an amazing Read Across America week, we had our third annual Literary Idol, which is where teachers dress up as book characters and the kids will vote on who will be the school's 2026 Literary Idol. And the winner was, we were definitely human. And the people who dressed up as them were the fifth grade team. Last week, all the student council members took a field trip to Gather, which is a food pantry for all the people who

019need food. A lot of people donated from here by SMS. We donated 664 pounds of food, which equals $1,334 worth of food. Great job, SMS. SMS honored the Olympics with a whole school assembly. Preschool and kindergarteners lit the torch. Our own Ms. Fitzsimmons talked about participating in the 1980 Olympic opening ceremony as a member of the color guard. Our class had the honor of kicking off the games by performing Eye of the Tiger from their quarters. Great job, 40. Our school started the SMS Olympics by recreating the Olympics in a safer way for our school. The events are team toboggan, cross-country skiing, curling, speed skating, and hockey. I'm participating in hockey. And I'm participating in curling. We have an assembly every Friday for these events. The events that already happened were team toboggan, cross-country skiing.

020Everyone had a blast. Thank you to Ms. Locke and Mr. Dever for coordinating the SMS Olympics. Thank you for listening on our update on the last month. The updates are making this school a better place. Nice job, SMS. If you have any questions, email Ms. Lucas. Thank you. That's really wonderful. Can I ask a question? Is any any updates on the boat or do you know what's going on with the boat? Okay, so it hasn't been released to the water yet. Okay. Oh, sorry. Yeah, we just talked to the microphone just so the people that are watching can hear that. Thank you. James, you want to repeat your answer so the people listening can hear. We're kind of like halfway through it. Okay. I don't really know the launch date. Okay. How big is the

021boat? Can you get in it? No, it's kind of like maybe three feet long. We had some exciting news about it. We have an ESP who works here who has some dear friends that live and have a fishing business off Myrtle Beach. So one of the parts of trying to launch from New England is really, really hard because of the tide. So it often gets stuck in the Gulf Coast of Maine and doesn't go as far as you would hope, right? So it gets stuck there. the company's often looking for places that can partner with schools to launch not out of this area. And actually, she has a very dear friend, family friend, and so we're going to be able to launch potentially the boat out of Myrtle. I mean, we'll video it and all

022that stuff, but it would be able to be taken down there and launched out, which means it has a much further-reaching potential, which is exciting. So cool. Thank you guys so much. We really appreciate you coming tonight. Thank you, you guys. You were great. Thank you, guys. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Okay, so maybe now we open, let's open public comment. I just wanted to wait for a student council report. So we'll open up public comment. And Mr. Drinkwater is here today and he's hoping to talk for three minutes. He has been emailing some members of the board if you guys have gotten them. And he is not a citizen of Stratum and so he needs special permission to talk to us tonight. So I'm happy to hear what he has to say. And so

023I'll make a motion to approve it. Do I need a second? Yep. So you want to suspend policy BEDH, which is our public comment. Okay. Allowing for Mr. Drinkwater, who is not a resident per the policy, to be able to speak for three minutes. Okay. And I'm going to start my 30-second timer. So do I have a second? I will second. Thank you, Kim. All right. Any discussion on that? Any concerns? And I know Mr. Drinkwater's been communicated with about the three minutes, so it sounds great. Okay, all in favor? Aye. All right, 5-0-0. Thank you. Okay, forgive me. I'll try and stay calm. Thank you for, because it takes me three minutes to tell you who I am. I'm George Drinkwater, 46 years. Taught math for 46 years in Dover. I can go on

024and on and on, and people get upset with me because I use that as an example of why I'm here. I hope you got the documents about the building across the street on 33. Duh. For six years, I and my retired schoolteacher friends have been driving by it. Then I saw a for sale sign on it. So we went into the town clerk, and when he finished laughing, he gave me the document you should have. It was sold 10 years ago for $2.75 million on a loan from the state. Interest, low interest. Wait a minute. 91 acres in Stratum, and I know what you're paying for taxes, and a school built in 1973 for $10 million. It's for sale. Okay, so I researched the documents. I have all the documentation everything else for senator Altshuler

025She won't get back to me because I'm not a board member, I guess But the school is for I heard asbestos and mold. I have a report done by a person who's very good at that. It is asbestos free. It never had asbestos. It has no mold. It is up to standard, beyond standard by the town. Go to AI. Beautiful. New world for me. I never knew about that. Just like water and bottles. Nobody's going to buy that. Go on AI. Guess what? Three years ago, in a court case here in Stratum, it was proven to be absolutely habitable. Buy it move in the other thing that's happening is SST in Exeter Fabulous, I have grandchildren there. I have two sons and daughters went there My grandson is graduating this year from SST not bragging

026about him But he's going to work for the shipyard at 80,000 a year plus all the benefits. He says grandpa. That's not enough I've been offered a hundred thousand the kids I'm going out of that trade school are doing fabulous the kids last night Kids from SST got in touch with me because they know I'm whacked because my grandson's a little upset with me being here and doing these things. And they said, Mr. Drinkwater, Mr. Drinkwater, we get on the honor roll as soon as we get into SST. The kids are competing to get into SST in the regular high school. They're all on the honor roll. They're doing fabulous. But we need to expand the program. And I know what it costs. This building, even for me, $12 million to renovate. Wait a minute.

027The building across the street is $9 million. Asking price. $9 million? I couldn't believe it. It was a freak. Yeah. I'll just ask you to wrap up. Pardon? Wrap up? Wrap up, yeah. See, okay. Here's what all I want from you people is to get together with the SAU-16, form a group, and humor me. Get together. Let's talk about it. Let's investigate it. You can get it from the state. I have the ability. The state. Governor Ayotte will transfer the mortgage. that it's now on the building to SAU 16 as a nonprofit. Let's investigate what you can buy for it. I think you're going to be absolutely amazing. At least look on it. Or if not, call Senator Altshuler and have her meet with me. I have all the documentation I can provide for you.

028Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Chris, do you have a little more background? I met with George last week. He's very passionate about this. I appreciate his passion. I don't disagree with what... Can you just explain the issue a little bit? Yeah. Okay. So I'd be glad to, you know, again, I talked with Mr. Drinkwater and let him know that this would definitely be a cooperative decision. So definitely something that the co-op would heard last night because that's where that budget and that money would have to come from. So again, the co-op is money from everyone, as we know with the assessment piece, but that is where that budget would go from. So they heard the same presentation last night from... Mr. Drinkwater, so they are very well aware and he sent them

029the document. So I appreciate him sending this along and we will take whatever guidance we get from that co-op board on the next steps to move forward. So just to understand, it's a property across the street from SMS? No, yeah, it's the old Great Bay Community College. So as you're heading towards Portsmouth, right on Portsmouth Ave, it's off the road. When they have a lot of events, people will park there. So it was an old school used for the Great Bay Community College. There's fields in the back. It goes down to the water, as Mr. Drinkwater said, 91 acres of land right there. Okay. And he's hoping to buy it and use it to expand SST? That has been his recommendation. Okay. Yep. Okay. Got it. Okay. So we're educating the board so that when

030we go to the co-op? No, the co-op heard the same meeting last night. I know Mr. Drinkwater was at Newfields on Monday informing that board, so I know he's just really passionate and wants to get every board out there. And I've worked through it where that decision would have to be made. So that's where we're at. Okay. Any other follow-up? Go ahead. So the building's owned by the state? I don't know who it's owned by right now. That's again, I'd have to dig into that research. So, yeah. I know you're on the agenda, so no other public comment, but we'll keep the clock open. Thank you, Mr. Gingonda, for being here tonight. we'll let the superintendent report continue yeah great thank you um in your packet you had a update from our owner's rep mark

031jobin on the facilities project um thanks to kate and sophie for being able to attend meetings and give input um we've really been you know looking at different things kate's been super accommodating with renovations and giving up some space in the cafeteria that we weren't fully aware of but again it's needed to happen to be able to get there you know fencing uh to get kids out safely out to the playground but that's what happens in a site like this right so now we're getting to see the reality of a construction project while you have students in session. And again, Carino's been amazing to work with. Kate's been really great at working with them and getting to deadlines. So we're in pretty good shape. The one thing we are working through is just the boiler.

032This year, thank God it's been a really cold winter because it's posed some problems for the boiler and how changing over from oil to propane has exacerbated some of those problems that we weren't away with. But I think we're going to talk about that more. and look at other solutions so that our boilers are not going down because of the cold or because of condensation that they're not drawing up. So we're learning more and more every meeting about facilities and the different parts to it and what makes it tick. I have my second career picked out. Can I ask a question about that? Were the boilers selected by the construction? Yeah, they got some input from when we started off with our building committee of what we were looking at, and then those were put

033in, and again, they work. One of the issues is that when you bury the oil tanks underground, with the ground being so cold this year, it's actually acting as a freezer, and so it's pushing more propane up to the tank, which is then causing it to spurt, and then the boiler's not running efficiently, which then, when it's not running efficiently, it will cause itself to turn itself off, so it doesn't have... more issues. So they're looking at other alternatives so that when it is really cold, they're sort of talking about a condensation pump that will do that. So when the propane comes up, it won't have spurts. It will continue to flow normally. They're talking about possibly could it be raised? So there's a lot of different things that they're looking at because part of

034our question that both Kate and I asked in the last two meetings is these are brand new. This can't happen. Why is this happening? Because in two years when you're not here, we want to be able to, we can go grab them tomorrow and say, hey, can you fix this? But two years when they're not here, we don't want to be dealing with it. So that's part of the process. It's pretty normal that you find some issues. And so they've been great and they're looking at solutions. But it's a solution that we want to be long term. So we'll continue to get that guidance on what's the best plan. Thanks. Yeah. What do you think about the brick, Kate? I'm so glad I made that decision. It's perfect. It does matter. The brick came out

035great because they looked at a variety of different bricks to try to match it as close as possible, which is hard because this brick is old, but it actually is really seamless. The funniest part is I went out to the meeting on Tuesday and I was very picky about the brick. They're like, what do you think of the brick? I'm like, I haven't even seen it yet. It's been up for like a week, but I had surgery last week, so I just missed it. oh my gosh so I left the meeting and I go to the walkie I'm like I love it it's so great yeah it looks really good okay can I ask a design question I saw the like one white panel is that like the Is it one missing or something, or

036is that the new edging for the building or something? No, I think there's some vents and stuff that they have to make room for, other things like that, but it will be a flat brick. It won't have, like, a white design in it. No, I mean the, like, rooftop. I thought you had mentioned that that's being replaced, the, like, thing that's right off the... Yes, so you did see that. Sorry, I misunderstood what you were talking about. That's the fascia, fascia, fascia, fascia, something. I think fascia is also like here. Anyway, it doesn't matter. So the roof comes to like a metal overhang that's about two feet long. We had put up a variety of different colors that we were looking at. So you saw one that's white. It ends up kind of being like

037a soft tannish color. It's beautiful. It matches the brick really well and pulls in the black roof. It's going to look so good. But we had a bunch of samples put up so we could see what it would look like rather than just a little sample. It looks so different on the building versus like here. Those will all be done at the end. It's just not something they're doing right now. Oh, okay. Yeah. I got to ask one more question. Yeah, ask away. I was looking at this thing, right? Mm-hmm. Is there anything like, I know there's roof work being done. Is this thing like... So I love this beautiful skylight above us. Yes. And... It is part of the building renovation. And what exactly will be there is still to be determined, but that

038has to be replaced. Originally, they were hoping they could replace just the panes. because you can tell it's not exactly clean. However, when they looked at the structural capacity of the steel that's already up there and the degrading of the steel that's up there, they did not feel comfortable putting in new panes. They thought the steel is just not structurally sound. So the entire thing needs replacing. What it will be replaced with is still... Has yet to be decided they're looking at different materials whether it's class or some sort of you know composite or plastic is still up for debate and then Their engineers because of the weight of glass also is something to do with it. So it hasn't been decided yet. Okay It's not gonna be like sealed No, it will be it

039will still be the light source for the natural light source for this space. Okay. Yeah Thank you. Yeah. Okay next item. I'm gonna pass out to you if you take one This is our certified staff list. So each year we have to make a nomination for anybody that's on a certified Contract which would be our teachers OTS special education anybody that is that falls under the teacher CBA so this would not be principal Lucas or Special ed director Thompson that their contracts come out a little bit later But we have to by law let them know and get their contract to him by April 15th. So here you have the list Everybody on this list is returning except for one position we didn't list and that's because they were on a one-year position anyway. So

040two, excuse me, sorry Kate, thanks for that correction. So we have two people that are currently employed here that are not on this list because their position was only one year. So we're not offering that contract because people will be coming back into those positions. So what I would ask, if you have any questions about any on this list, we'd go into non-public. Under letter C, we can talk about it further. If there is no issues, what I would ask is to a motion to accept the certified list that has been presented for the 26-27 school year. Anyone have anything? I'll make a motion to accept the list of certified staff. Thank you, Sophie. Yeah, I'll second. Any discussion? Anybody we should be asking about? Yeah. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Okay, so that's 5-0-0.

041And then I'll collect those back. Thank you. And then the last one, Mr. Monaco gives his apologies. He had to get out of town unexpectedly. So thank you. Mr. Pickett is here to talk about, as you know, Mr. Monaco came back early in the fall to talk about cash management and different strategies. He's done some analysis. We've had some meetings with him. So I know, Luke, everyone has gotten a chance to look at that. But I don't know if you want to hide anything, Luke, and see if there's any questions or next steps. uh luke pickett's uh smith farm road i'm just here to answer any questions you may have you all received that in advance so um as chris said you know hopefully you guys have been able to read through it and i'm

042here for the discussion if you need it but i think there's probably enough uh here so i'm here for questions if you need it do you have any questions we've kind of been kicking around this for a bit or do you feel comfortable with the issue should we have given you some background It's it's basically moving the cash holdings that we have Okay, I Guess it the one piece that I would have is The entire school district participates in that bank today Are there negative repercussions that we would see by moving the portion controlled by the school budget here out of the TD Bank fund? And could that result? And penalties or I guess losing preferred rate to things of that nature. Mm-hmm. Yeah that's a great question so i did meet with our representative

043from td bank you know thanks to molly for setting that up we just had that initial tertiary discussion and since it is all pooled because it is all of sau 16 we get a different we get a better interest rate with having all that money in there if stratum did pull out it would affect our overall interest rate for the rest so the fee structure would be different because they take in the total account of the money that's there and mr monaco and i talked about that he said is their ability for this board to to look at maybe other institutions to move our checking account and our cash management. Is there a different banking system to go through? So we talked a little bit about that. Really, in New Hampshire, there's three major ones

044that are used by... school facilities for their banking. That is TD Bank, which we currently have. Citizens, which we moved away from because of some of the insecurities and the fraud liability that they did not protect us from, especially with cybersecurity and cyber attacks being on the forefront. So that was a major concern. And Molly led us through that three years ago now, Molly, about that? Maybe three to four. And then it's People's Bank. which was people's bank is now m t and again there could be others but those are the three big in new hampshire that serve the majority of of your your school so we can look we can ask questions um is it really of where the board is comfortable with um and other thoughts you know i i really appreciate um

045mr monaco's thoroughness and looking at it and looking at other ways that we can generate you know revenue from cash we already have um so those are some of the things that we talked about and so again i really appreciate the work that he did and Luke coming in for some meetings as well. Just to comment on that, it's a... Just use the mic if you don't mind. It's a... Sharon, thanks. As you look at that, if TD Bank were to change your rate and say, well, gee, you know, it's going to be different. Let's say it's 1%. They're going to give you instead of 2%. It's really just subtraction, right? So if you go to PDIP, they're giving you, say, 4%. THE YOU WOULD JUST GET THAT MUCH MORE IN TERMS OF THE DIFFERENCE,

046RIGHT? SO IT'S 4 MINUS 2 OR 4 MINUS 1. IT, YOU KNOW, IT'S TURNS OUT TO BE THE SAME. ALL RIGHT. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? IS THAT CLEAR? MM-HMM. OKAY. SO IS THERE SOMETHING YOU JUST SAID, IS THERE different protections that we get from TD Bank that we would not if the money was invested with the PDI? Correct. We'd still have to use TD Bank as our checking account to be able to pay the bills and things. PDIP would just hold it and then be able to have a better interest rate to generate more money while it's sitting there. um so the larger the pot of money that's sitting there the larger money you get and you make on interest on it but we would have to make uh probably weekly withdrawals to pay for bills

047pay for purchase orders so uh that would be the difference of what we're doing right now so you're transferring funds for it in um td bank you're not transferring you're just paying it out of that account well and i because i was i was reading up on the pdip because i'm assuming it's like there was something about liquidity which would be less than The TD Bank, right? I'm assuming that there's still some liquidity to move stuff out of there, but it's not as easy as the bank account? It's a quick movement, but it still requires a transfer. THE INVESTMENTS OF PDIP ARE TREASURY BILLS. IT IS AS LIQUID AS ANY BANK INSTRUMENT. BUT TO MOLLY'S POINT, SHE WOULD ACTUALLY HAVE TO MAKE THE ACH REQUEST FROM PDIP DOWN TO HER TD BANK ACCOUNT. IT IS

048A SINGLE STROKE FOR HER. WE DO UTILIZE IT FOR THE BOND. proceeds for the renovation project. So knowing we were not going to spend all of those bond proceeds in one day when we received the bond proceeds, because with a bond, you get all the money up front. So when we received it last summer, yes, last summer, they were deposited directly into PDEP. And so what happens is we spend all of. the money, we cut the checks out of TD and we keep track of how much we spent every month. And the accountant once a month does a request from PDIP to draw down on those funds. So we're keeping all of those bond proceeds at PDIP to earn that interest rate because we know we're spending it on the bond project. We know there's

049not any unanticipated special education expenses, not salary obligations we have to meet. And so what we do is every month we look to see how much did we spend on the project and we do one transfer from PDIP back. So like the operating budget that that TD Bank is used to like the day-to-day Yes, we use TD for every time we cut a check. Okay. Mm-hmm and Bob also introduced this to the town and the town is now adopted this so the town of stratum is now doing the P dip Down to and they use TD TD Bank as well. So it's the it's the same program and there's I think it's in the memo is what he said Thank you. Can I ask one more question for Molly? So you mentioned in the response

050here that the trust funds are managed by the town. So does that mean it's the town's decision as to how those get invested or they don't get invested, we don't get a return on that? Correct. So the town has a trustee of trust funds and it's their elected position that is for the management of the trust funds. So what happens is, so in our budget this year, we did, I think it was $10,000 to one of the trust funds. So pending we have $10,000 at the end of the year, we cut a check from our TD account to the town of Stratum, and they deposit it in the trust funds, and they manage the trust funds. They own the bank accounts that the trust funds are in. The town side. So we don't get a

051return on the trust fund? So it does earn interest, so it's available there for us, but we're not... So when we have to make requests to utilize the trust funds, it is gaining interest there, but they're the ones managing it. Our name's not on the bank account, but you are the agents to expend that trust, so what would happen is... if let's just say special education, if we need to dip into the special education trust before the end of the year, what we would do is we would identify qualifying expenses. I'd work with principal Lucas on that. We would come to the board and the board would make a motion documented in meeting minutes. And then I would take the receipts that I identify with principal Lucas and your documented meeting minutes, um, stating your

052approval. And I would send those to the trustee of trust funds to say how much you would like to withdraw out of the trust. They then cut a check. that we deposit into our TD account. Okay, and I don't get like super in the weeds, but is it just like a legal like for most of these things the school district and town obviously are like separate entities so I'm surprised that like this one the town handles the Financial portion is it just like a legal thing with state of New Hampshire's? It's like that in all of our districts the the town the town is the person that elects the trustee of trust funds and they oversee all the trust funds whether it's school town cemetery library Molly, can you tell the board how often we

053get money transferred from the town into our account? Oh, sure. Yeah. So at the beginning of every year, we set up what's called an assessment schedule. So we tell the town, so our budget minus our sources of revenue, which are our earnings and investment, food service sales, just a tiny bit. the delta between those two is the amount that needs to be raised in taxation and what we do is we spread that across the whole year so the town does not give us a boatload of money up front on july 1. we actually get equal pretty much equal installments we do front load the front of the year because we know we have more spending to get the classrooms up and running but for the most part they pay us equal monthly assessments throughout the

054year so we're not sitting on a large pot of cash we're getting it monthly from the town okay so this is very it's very different than when we got the bond money correct correct absolutely correct and so one thing that we can talk about um is what other districts are doing in some of this research so this has been great bob's been awesome you know educating me as well as td some districts put aside a percentage you can do up to five percent of your uh unreserved fund balance where you can take it and you can put it aside and you don't have to use it you can use it for any type of spending say we took five percent and we had a hundred thousand dollars left over an unreserved fund balance that pot

055of money would go there and then that would be something that you could put into in the pdip and not have to touch at all and so it's going to continuously be making making money for you um whereas our day-to-day your it so can be unbalanced so that is something else so as as you have options i think we can we can dive into more of where the board is so i think you all need some time to digest it look at it you know ask some more questions and then give us kind of a directive of what more you WANT US TO DO, WHETHER YOU WANT US TO LOOK AT OTHER RFPs WITH OTHER BANKING INSTITUTIONS FOR STRATUM, WHAT THAT WOULD MEAN IF THEY DID PULL OUT FROM TD BANK, HOW THAT COST COULD

056BE MADE UP THROUGH PDIP AND OTHER THINGS THAT WOULD GO IN THERE SO YOU HAVE ALL THE INFORMATION THAT YOU NEED. BUT I THINK YOU HAVE A REALLY GOOD STARTING POINT WITH WHAT MR. MONACO HAS PUT TOGETHER. I KNOW LUKE HAS BEEN THERE AT MULTIPLE MEETINGS. THANK YOU, LUKE, FOR YOUR TIME. And just to add one thing about the 5% that Dr. Andruski was talking about, that would have to go on the ballot to authorize that to happen. So we would want to think about that for next year's ballot. So would that be at, are you saying that's at the end of the year? We had any unreserved funds, so we funded our trust funds to the... What we wanted to and then whatever we had left we could say to the taxpayers We would

057like to take 5% of this and put it into this savings account correct and you can do up to 5% So you can do less if that year you want to do less But you just have to have it on the warrant and approved by the voters to do up to 5% What would that fund be used for? so any unanticipated expenditures, so what it essentially is Essentially, it creates it. So instead of giving your entire fund balance back in the tax rate, it allows you to retain some. And in order to spend it, there is an approval process. I don't know exactly what the approval process is, but it essentially gives you a little buffer in returning everything to the tax rate. I met with Bob last Friday. Yeah, just wanted to be transparent

058about that. So is this $45,000 to $50,000 additional dollars, or is this instead of the revenue that we're already getting from TD? DOES THAT MAKE SENSE WHAT'S THE 40 THOUSAND I THINK IN HIS ANALYSIS HE SAW THAT AS ADDITIONAL MONEY ADDITIONAL IN HIS ANALYSIS BUT THAT DOESN'T TAKE IT IF THERE'S MORE FEES OR STRUCTURES THAT WOULD BE PULLING APART FROM THAT OKAY SO HE'S JUST HAVE YOU DONE THAT MATH I HAVE NOT BECAUSE I WAS NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING FURTHER UM JUST WITH WHERE WE WERE AT THIS TIME OF THE YEAR WITH MULTIPLE BUDGETS UNTIL I GOT DIRECTION OF WHAT THIS BOARD WANTED TO DO IT'S A IT'S FAIRLY SIMPLE MATH ROUNDED IT'S ABOUT TWO PERCENT AND THEIR AVERAGE 2.7 MILLION FOR THE DISTRICT. SO IT'S 2% TIMES 2.7 IS THE $50,000. SO IT'S

059NOT QUITE 2% BUT IT'S ABOUT THAT. SO THAT'S AS YOU LOOK AT THAT, YOU LOOK AT THE AVERAGE DAILY BALANCE AND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT YOU WOULD EARN AT PDIP AND WHAT TD IS CHARGING. I'm fairly sure TD Bank did not change what the town's structure was when they went to the PDIP to TD structure. But you can inquire with the town administrator as to how they did it. But I think the numbers are in there for what they're enjoying. So basically, the district gets $50,000 instead of TD Bank because they're investing it, right? They're getting... They're investing it in T-bills or loaning money out or what have you. So it's a net benefit to the district. Yeah, I mean to me $50,000 is nothing to like turn my nose up at so I would

060love to explore it further and see like what What the options are what what it would mean to do that? I also think it's worth looking at the I guess I can call the trustee the trust funds But it seems like that's the same sort of like long-term thing right as far as So I guess I just don't, it seems strange that if we have like those long-term year-over-year things, like that seems like a perfect opportunity to invest that. Like, it seems like, I don't. I think that would just be, we would make less than if we did it for the whole yearly budget. Is that right? Well, I was saying it sounds like the trust funds, which are being used for certain purposes, have to be invested at the discretion of the trustee for

061the town. And I'm just wondering if there's an option for us to put it into this other PDIP fund to earn additional. I don't know what the legal is. Here you have to do it this way. I'd have to, I guess, talk to the trustee of the trust funds and find out what that is. I've never heard a trustee of the trust funds candidate questioned on this issue. Right? I mean, you've never seen them drilled. It's a great role to play. What's your chugging account percentage? Yeah. What are the cons? Why have we not done this before? Is there like the history behind it? Are there extra fees that we're missing? I mean, tell us why we do it the way we do it right now so that we're all on the same page. I

062can answer that. So we actually met with a... current business administrator in a seacoast area school a little bit smaller than ours but has actually going to pdip at the end of this year so she'll be taking over that role as part of their executive director it will it will be a little bit more work so that would be work that would become in the office you know whether it's a one-time fee the concern is if you're running low you know and those transfers don't come over in a day in a timely fashion you're not paying your bills so that's the concern by having it in your checking account you can pay your bills without the transfer So I think that's the biggest thing is that you know Friday comes in, you know your staff

063walks in and be like I didn't get my deposit for my payment today. And that's because we either didn't make the transfer or there was concerns about the transfer. I think there is also the fee structure and different banks as those three that I talked about have different things that they offer. So it's finding the right one and having protection. Biggest one is the cybersecurity. And that's been part of the fee. So we can investigate that more of why others haven't done that. But I also think that wasn't something that was looked at. And I think. the other structure that i talked about with the up to five percent they're using that because they knowing that that's the money that they're having to do unless it's a unforeseen circumstance and it's just continuously generating money

064without transfers having to happen so like part of its manpower part of its concern about making your bills and making it on a timely fashion um and so those are the two big things um one of the other things we talked about and this was a big thing from bob he's like ask the town to get all your money up front And then you have a bigger pot sitting there because that's the other thing is you're not getting as much. Even though he listed at 2.7, it's much higher at the beginning of the year, but we're spending more. And so what would happen if we get it all at one time? So a lot of different factors. And again, I've learned so much and there's so much more to learn that I would. want to

065surround myself with people and even a board member to if we wanted to to investigate this further as a subcommittee so that we could uh we could you know dive into this and I know Molly and I know Luke and and Bob would be willing to to stay on that but I think it might bring you know do we bring in the banking institution yeah bring in other representatives of PDIP and say what would this look like I also think it's really important that we understand how the pool is collateralized. So if you remember in the financial crisis several years ago when some banks failed, some people had some really difficult time getting their money. So we would really need to understand how PDIP is collateralized because TD is fully collateralized with our money. So

066we need to understand what risk that brings us as well. I would be interested to see... Is it high risk? Is it low risk? The type of funds it's invested in, that sort of information. What type of insurance they have and you're required under the state regs to only invest in US Treasuries and things like that So I think you should absolutely do that research But I think what you'll find is that that's that's what they're investing in and to be fair and it's a great question Why haven't we been doing it? It's a fairly recent phenomenon. I mean rates rose right in 22 and 23 So this has only been around for a couple of years before the difference was negligible, right? We had basically 0% interest rates. So to be fair, this is

067just now coming on over the last couple of years. And Bob was smart enough to see it. So the gap is fairly substantial. The banks are not passing along market rates. And there's an opportunity there, that gap. But you should definitely do that research that they're investing in US government treasuries. Yeah, and just as part of the rate with TD it is what's called a managed rate meaning it is a combination of all of our services to determine our rate of return so one of the largest benefits of them is a positive pay that we have which has Actually, we haven't I haven't seen any fraudulent checks for stratum district But in some of our other districts we have had fraudulent checks come through that that has caught and saved the district a lot of

068money So that's also something to keep in mind If you were transfer, so you had to still use the TD, would you lose those protections if you're not holding the same amount of money? Is that the problem? So the reason we have the rate we have with TD is because we have the deposits at TD. And so we receive positive pay as part of the fee structure or the interest rate managed rate. If we do not keep all of our deposits there, we would have a different. fee structure from TD. So that's exactly why we moved away from Citizens because they wanted to charge us for the fraud protection whereas TD built it into a managed rate that we were able to do. But they consider, like, you can't just use that as the intermediary.

069So we've used economies of scale, meaning the entire SAU, so stratum being one piece of the puzzle. So stratum doesn't get the rate that we have because of a standalone stratum issue. It's because you, I always say go to BJ's rather than the corner store, just like we do with the buses, whereas we would be pulling out of that agreement. So we'd really have to do some careful analysis because we're pulling out and would also possibly impact the other districts in the SAU. So we also need to understand. that and there's just a lot of pieces that we need to understand. Two points on that one and again I think the subcommittee is a great idea we've had great success on the building committee so I think that's a great you know pull some people

070in from the town I'm sure there are bankers in town that can work with Molly and Chris and you guys about about doing that. Quite frankly, I think if you go toward this, I think it's actually going to create a fantastic opportunity for the SAU overall, because if this is right, according to Bob. THIS COULD BE ABOUT $400,000 FOR THE OVERALL SAU. SO YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT $400,000, 50,000 IS A LOT OF MONEY. SO IT MIGHT BE A GOOD PROBLEM TO HAVE, BUT IT'S A, IT WILL BE A CHALLENGE FOR THE OVERALL SAU. BUT I MEAN, GOODNESS GRACIOUS, 400,000, THAT'S A LOT OF MONEY. YEAH. SO JUST CHECKING OUR TIME, I'M WONDERING, So if you were gonna be talking about committees And I'm just wondering if maybe we bring this up then because I'm thinking there's

071gonna be a bit of a reshuffle. Um Okay, and do you want to kind of table it and talk about it and after the SMS report sure Okay, we'll talk about committees at that point. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks Luke Thank you. Thanks, Luke. Do we need to make any motion, like, for now that we'll move this committee and then talk about committees later? No, I think so. If we were going to do a subcommittee, it forms under here. Yeah. Because we have a policy on it. So we just say we're forming a committee, decide who we want. There is a list of how you do it. Yeah. I can put that all together. But we can do it in the next section of the agenda. Correct. Yeah. Because

072it'll, yeah. I'M NOT SURE IF THERE'S ANYTHING THAT'S BEEN SAID. THAT'S BEEN SAID. THAT'S BEEN SAID. MAYBE PEOPLE HAVE IDEAS ABOUT MAYBE PEOPLE HAVE IDEAS ABOUT MAYBE PEOPLE HAVE IDEAS ABOUT WHAT COMMITTEES THEY WANT TO WHAT COMMITTEES THEY WANT TO WHAT COMMITTEES THEY WANT TO SHUFFLE TO OR IF THEY'RE SHUFFLE TO OR IF THEY'RE SHUFFLE TO OR IF THEY'RE INTERESTED IN THAT FINANCE ISSUE. INTERESTED IN THAT FINANCE ISSUE. INTERESTED IN THAT FINANCE ISSUE. ALL RIGHT. ALL RIGHT. ALL RIGHT. SO MOVING ON, LOOKING AT THE SO MOVING ON, LOOKING AT THE SO MOVING ON, LOOKING AT THE SMS. SMS. SMS. DO YOU WANT TO HAND THOSE? DO YOU WANT TO HAND THOSE? DO YOU WANT TO HAND THOSE? SURE. SURE. So as we talked about at the beginning of the year, we do our screening and

073benchmarking with standardized testing three times a year. And we did our winter benchmark assessments in late December into January. The time, the windows for these are dictated by some of the assessments that you use, making a certain amount of time prior to the previous administration of it. Other parts are you have SAU-wide, we sort of have a larger window that we fit within that we do. And then as a school, we sort of were intentional this year in adjusting our window a little bit. We had typically done all of our winter benchmarks in January. And one of the things that we were finding that made it really hard for us is to come back from the December break and then basically sit down and assess kids for two and a half weeks. It was just...

074a lot. It's a lot to ask of our kids. It's a lot to ask. You want to get back in the rhythm of school and you're really hard. It's hard when you're doing a lot of assessments. But also it's the time when progress reports are coming out. So it's really important to get them done before progress reports because they inform what goes on a progress report in some capacity. And so we had actually moved some of our math assessments to late December for the first time. We typically always done them. And two things that came out of that were really good. It felt really good for our kids to have it like not so dense. at the time. However, one of the things that we are calibrating around that is there's also about three weeks

075of instruction that they're not doing before we're taking our mid-year assessments, right? And that's like the heart of math. They're still getting it. They're just getting it in January, but the assessment results are a little bit different, right? We still did really well. We were super thrilled about mid-year growth, but it was something we hadn't really thought about it like, oh, they are looking for this mid-year target, which is three weeks later of instruction. And when you think about that, that's a lot of learning for kids. So again, there's just... Newfields did the same thing, so we've had really great conversations about, it works better for kids, is it giving us the data we're looking for, and if not, how do we better, not better, how do we ensure when we're looking at the data,

076we're not looking for the units we haven't tested, or we haven't taught yet, right? So there's just some really cool ways to think about it. Anyway, I just want to share that as I was starting so This is that these are the same assessments that you saw in the fall. So it should be Jane unfortunately not for you as much But in terms of what you're looking at so the first thing you're gonna be looking at we're gonna talk about We're gonna go just through literacy rather than break it up by grade level So the first thing you're looking at is kindergarten literacy and this is the Acadians assessment So the green is actually on grade level blue is above grade level So if you're looking at the Acadians, 79% of our kids were where

077we would expect them to be mid-year or above, which is fantastic. And then the following page is their iReady literacy assessment. So then what's great about, and we'll talk about as we go through here. Kindergarten, as you remember, it's really hard to provide beginning of year expectations for kindergarten because they haven't been to school yet. And the varying experiences kids have prior to kindergarten is pretty significant for a variety of reasons. And so what you're looking at here for kindergarten is a very small percentage of yellow, which is actually okay middle of year because in I-Ready they're being measured against end of year outcomes. So you are looking at that large green section that is already meeting end-of-year kindergarten outcomes in January, which is great. I'll take that. First grade, Cadence, again, 65%. So it

078is either grade level or beyond. So the green is grade level, blue is beyond. And again, you're kind of looking at this barometer. There is a scale of beyond, right? Like when I say beyond, I'm not like, oh, fourth grade. It's beyond, like within reason. I think that's important to note. Again, when you look at first grade, it's a little bit different than kindergarten, but if you look right below, it's much lighter. It's because it's representative of what the fall results were. So in the fall, the vast majority of our students in first grade in literacy were yellow because it was the beginning of the year measured against end of year outcomes. But if you look at that yellow, it's gotten significantly smaller, which is exactly what you would want to be seeing. Second grade,

07970%. at or above for literacy. And then when you flip over to the back side, when you're looking at that, again, our yellow and red in this case is the first time you would see in red because that would be two grades below, right? So the first time you see it, the first time there's an opportunity for that because it's second grade. Okay. Yep. But you'll notice, again, beginning of the year where we were with our yellow and red, and both the yellow and red are shrinking significantly. So that's what we would hope for, right? Like our job, when we think about it, is a year's worth of growth for every student. And so you may not see a student that was two years below at the beginning being. on grade level, but your hope

080would be to see them make a full year's worth of growth. That's our goal every year for every one of our students. It's wonderful when they make more than that, but when we think about the typical structure of a school and the factors that influence a student's learning, our ultimate goal is to see every student make a year's worth of growth. Can I ask a question now? Sure. Okay. And maybe this is a question for Brittany too, but how do special education students fit into this? Are they taking the same tests? All of our students. Yep. Every student takes this test. Every single student? What if they have... TROUBLE LIKE PHYSICALLY TAKING A TEST OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. SO OUR CURRENT CASELOAD OF STUDENTS, THERE HAVE BEEN STUDENTS THAT ARE UNABLE TO FOR A VARIETY

081OF REASONS BUT OUR CURRENT CASELOAD OF STUDENTS, ALL STUDENTS, MEANING ALL 502 I THINK TODAY ARE TAKING THIS ASSESSMENT. THERE ARE SOME THAT MAY LIKE BE IN THE RED BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T FINISH THE ASSESSMENT. because they started it and part of iReady is it adjusts based on how you're doing and so they may not have finished it so they may be in red but they are attempting to take the assessment. And we have accommodations we put in place like some of the assessments might be in math we might read it to them or there may be scribe for writing like there are things that we do for our students to make it accessible but it's still assessing the skills that the assessment is asking them to perform in. And it's all the same assessment? Yeah.

082Yeah. Thank you. Family, just important to note, there are IEP team decisions where families with the team, sometimes for SAS in particular, choose not to have their children take SAS. That would be the one that's, I think we have some families that choose not to do that for their children. But for most of these, most of the kids, try them. Yeah. Can I ask you a quick question about that? So I know with the state testing, there was a big thing about... If somebody doesn't take it, how many until it's a zero, blah, blah, blah. So is that like- No, that's not this. No, I know it's not this, but if you have a student that opts out, is that just excluded from this data or is it- 100%. Yep. They're just not included in

083this data. Okay. Yep. Thanks. And right now we don't currently have any family that has asked us to do that. Okay. Yep. Third grade 71% at or above proficiency and again, I mean you have it in front of you so you can examine it more closely. I guess the overarching message of all of this is that if you think if you're looking at the yellow and red is where like the beginning of the year where that percentage is those got smaller across the board for all of our students and we have a significant number of our students who are already on grade level or above grade level by mid-year which is like a great feeling to see that success for our students. The staff as you know over the last couple of years has worked

084incredibly hard at like vertical and horizontal coherence and really sound instructional practices and curriculum alignment and you can see it being you know paying off with our students performance I also want to caveat that, I'm talking a lot. I also want to caveat that with this is just like one of the data points of all the data points we use. I think we have showed you in a lot of our presentations over the past couple of years, like we pull up the spreadsheets with dozens and dozens of daily data points of in-class learning that corroborates this, that aligns with this. And the value truly is placed in both places, right? Like this can help us think globally. Like if we were to look at this, maybe third grade and we were to look at... Word

085study we're like oh across the entire third grade the students are struggling in this area Maybe we need to make a curriculum change. That's what this really does for us or You know we're seeing in Fifth grade in math they're really really doing well when it comes to algebraic thinking But fourth grade seems to not do like what's the what is our curriculum alignment that we're missing here Or do we need to rearrange the order of which the units are presented in order to better support our students That's really helpful with this kind of information because it really gives us a global look. It is really the day-to-day assessments that we do with our kids, our comprehension checks or things that give us the more personalized data that allows us to engage with our students

086in a really clear way that's aligned with their learning. So again, I did literacy in a row, right? And then I went to math after that. So if you flip the next page. So again, fifth grade, 66% at or above grade level. And then their iReady aligns pretty closely, not exact. So then in math, which you'll see, the kids again are... Kindergarten does not take math in the fall. That's why you don't have a comparison below that. They're just not, that's not an appropriate measure. But they are. This feels really good because this is also a computerized test and for our kindergarten kids are not often on devices, really they're not on devices much at all unless they're being assessed and to see this is a really nice opportunity to see a different data presented

087and they're demonstrating their learning in a different way. So it's really helpful in terms of painting an accurate picture. Quick question, are we on kindergarten math? Yep. How are their red? So this is taken mid-year and in mid-year you they are assessing against the idea of like some of the more like subitizing which is like just one-to-one correspondence things like that which you would expect kids to have by mid-year kindergarten and so they're like they're significantly they're not there yet at all so they're assuming they're more like a three four year four year old math understanding. Okay. across the board. Same thing that we were just talking about first grade is a great example. Huge, huge yellow and then much, much smaller, right, by mid-year. I don't want to go over all this because this

088is the same, I'm saying the exact same thing about all of our grade levels right now. One of the things I do think is worth celebrating and I may have mentioned it at our last board meeting, we were able to bring all the elementary school principals together with Jill Lazier, who's our curriculum, chief curriculum officer. Thank you, Chief Academic Officer. I know it was close, thank you. She's fantastic and she brought us all together and we were able to look at grade levels across all of SIU 16 elementary schools and that's both in literacy and math. We looked at individual schools, we looked at growth. So again, we talk about the importance is not necessarily where they start and where they end, it's that they grow a year in the time that we have them

089over the course of a year. And all of our schools, and this actually included CMS actually, Schools are broken into like four quadrants and we are high achieving high growth Which is like what you want what you would want for your students, right? Like they're starting out hard high achieving and they're growing at a great rate That is where we want to be all of our elementary schools in both literacy and math were there And that's the first time that's been true for for us collectively as all schools that there's been pockets where like a year Stroud was there or a couple schools and then we weren't another year, but this is collectively like the concerted efforts I think that the SAU is making For all of us to really have some rich learning experiences,

090but also collaborate across the schools, which is only the kids So you have any questions? I'm happy to answer them. I'm just not gonna say and the yellow got smaller every time One question I have I believe it's I ready that there's the program, right? Yeah Similar to the exercise you just mentioned with getting together with the other elementary schools and looking at where they are, do they publish any sort of benchmarks in terms of all of the schools that participate and where they see growth and trajectory and where you would compare against those? Yes, they do. The actual organization, Ready Classroom, I Ready, does a ton of that, and they do presentations for us, actually. They come and share it with all of us as administrators, and we do phenomenally well. nationally and within

091New Hampshire. Yeah. I could ask Jill maybe for some of the slides. We could ask Jill to bring them for you, Shane. I don't have them with me right now. Yeah, of course. Yeah, we usually get that in June because they do at the end of the year because these are assessed at the end of the year. But that's a great question. We'll get national and we'll get state for those schools in New Hampshire that are using it. Then we'll get it by school for districts. So it's pretty eye-opening to see where we are at the national, but at the state, we're significantly higher in both of those areas. But that's typically June. We can bring that to you. Great. It's um that there's just really rich good conversations going on and this is when

092I said the Principals come together. We do internally all the time like this is something we do internally all the time We do it three times a year And we have child study teams that we look at we have data team meeting days We have weekly PLC is like this kind of data is looked at all the time within our building It's also really nice to be able to look at it within the other schools and to What works really well like hey tell me what works really well maybe we should be thinking about it at our school or oh We're all struggling in this like let's talk about that way How do we sort of rectify that and it's been really an enriching conversation for I feel enriching for us of course sharing best

093practice What date is used to you were talking about the quadrant that's showing like high growth? Is it from this sort of assessment? Yeah, it's from the I readies I ready provides that for us and it's basically like where your students start the year at like are they coming in doing really well and Well, where are the all students? Where are they doing? And then you start using their mid years were like oh they came in and they are growing at a really great rate because they give us like charts like here's what your child's typical growth rate would look like and that's what you're achieving and then they give us like their stretch growth, which is what it would look like progression-wise throughout the year to see if students are reaching their stretch growth.

094Because we have a number of students that also meet their stretch growth, but just beyond a year's growth. OK. So the vendor takes what you're doing here and then gives you the analysis? Does it for you. So great. Spits it right out. That's amazing. Great job. Any other questions? Thanks, Kate. Bye, Molly. Thanks, Molly. Thanks, Molly. All right. Any other questions or comments on the SMS report? Kate or any board members? I just got all the dates for fifth graders. Very exciting. It was exciting. Good dates for fifth graders? Because the fifth graders do, the fifth grade committee is super active, and they do a ton of events, particularly like the last month or so in Boston. Fifth grade schedule. Yeah. Clap out, all that kind of stuff. It's wildly intense. Yeah. It's very intense.

095It's so intense. And it like starts soon. Yeah. That's great. One thing I would add, Jennifer, just from the update, I had mentioned the March 10th in-service day, which is SAU-wide. We have a couple of them throughout the year where the whole SAU has to come together. This one in particular is sort of like an EdCamp style where educators across the SAU... Sort of submit proposals to present to the any any educator across the SAU for a variety of topics And then you can sign up ahead of time for like what you're gonna go to and there's a variety of sessions that you get to choose with in the morning It's always awesome. But the feedback this year has been outstanding like I actually started up I do a weekly memo for the staff, and

096one of the things we started was like, what are the resources that you took away from the tent that you want the rest of the staff? Because we all go to different ones. Just the feedback has been really positive. I implemented it the next day. I was so excited. It's cool to be able to network within. I say it's a larger organization, and we don't get enough time with each other. We know that. And so this is a really important time for us, and it was really cool. That's great. We also had a lot of staff members that ran workshops for our colleagues as well. Love that. Yeah, that's great. All right. Sounds great. So I guess moving ahead to board reports and committees, you know, obviously for your information, we kind of all are

097on committees that meet at different times, and then we report out at the board meeting in addition to, you know, going to the joint board meetings. Don't know You know if Sophie wants to run this part but just in terms of who is interested in moving or changing committees And you know, obviously we talked about looking at finances Is there anybody interested in changing committees or giving up a committee maybe we start there Go down the row. I would like to stay on the superintendent. Okay evaluation Committee for now since it's my first year and I started about halfway. Okay through So I would love to stay on that. I'm also interested in the finance committee to take. I would not want to do it by myself, but I would like to be on it

098with an additional school board member to bounce ideas off of somebody. And then I can stay as a second to the safety committee because I'm just a fill-in if one of our members can't attend. Yeah, one of the things we always have to think about is If you have three board members together, you have to call a meeting. You have to publicize it. So it's one of the things we always think about. That includes emails and texts. Yeah. So you cannot email two other members of the board at the same time. So we don't have a shared text thread. No, we do not. And if Chris or Kate emails the whole board, do not reply all. You have to reply only to... Chris, or Kate, or whoever. It's really hard not to do that. I'll

099BCC. If you just want to do an information blast, you can BCC everybody, and you can call people one-on-one. Those are the workarounds. Okay. Good to know. Yeah. Okay, so Kathleen's like in superintendent. Sophie, what do you think? Yeah, I'm good. I mean, building committee is really chill because of Mark, so I attend one meeting a month, and that's it. Communications? And communications is also very easy and simple and comes naturally to me, so I would be happy to keep doing that. Sounds good. Cam, how are you feeling? I have been to one policy committee meeting, so I'd like to stay with that. Okay. Nobody ever says that to you. I would be willing to give up the safety and security task force meeting if we need to assign things. I did have interest in

100being part of the finance thing as well, only because I just have interest in it. I don't know why I started saying it in a different sentence, but yeah. It seems like you already have a base of knowledge there. Okay, sounds good. Shane, do any of these interest you? I mean if cam is coming off the safety and security task force, I would be happy to okay I think that's the one that they meet during the day. Yep, three meetings a year So you'll just have one bit the end of the year. So be a good introduction We'll give that to you a week in advance, but it's usually 9 to 11 at the Exeter High School Okay, I will also invite you to ask if we have three or four SMS ones on you

101invited You don't have to come. Okay. I've had in this morning. So I typically try to have three or four a year here. Okay. And once the additions end, we'll have room for him to be in the office. I mean, we're literally sitting on top of each other in the office right now. There was like 20 of us. It was like, I'll be in the back row. I'll sit in the back row back here. We're working on it. Shane, if you do that and, for instance, you're traveling for work or what have you, I've just been available to fill in as necessary so that we have a representative because my schedule is a little bit more flexible. I don't travel for work. Excellent. Sounds great. Thank you for email this for that there was me

102today. Oh, it's okay my bad We didn't know space for you Okay, so I am currently committee list But yeah now You could also stay chair for the next year. And then I could be vice chair and we could swap season here. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I guess I'm flexible if you want to take, I mean. I only attended one meeting as a superintendent's evaluation. So if you would like that back, I can give it back to you. I'm flexible. I know. I feel the same way. I don't feel really indebted. I am kind of ancillary interested in finance, but I'm also wondering, maybe I take policy from Cam, even though I know you said you were interested, but then you do finance? Wait, what'd you say again? I said I was waiting for Eric

103to give it to me. You were really psyched for it. Okay, you're psyched for it. But I would defer to you because I know you have, if you haven't done policy, I would rather you. Well, I guess I'm just thinking if you do finance, because that's going to be a big one. And then if you're also doing it, does it take it off your plate? Because which are you more interested in, finance or policy? And I'll do the opposite. I'm good with you if you want to do the policy okay but I get dibs next year I have never seen no one ever yeah ever and I've been in education for a long time I can also state committee less that's like a figure you can have all the policies you want it is so

104awesome meeting tomorrow by the way yeah you can attend virtually though what time is that six o'clock PM mm-hmm They're all six o'clock on Thursdays, I know she's changing her mind, okay, it typically happens the Thursday after our board meeting so yeah Okay, okay So can I just read them off make sure I've got they got it all cuz then we'll put it there and then Sharon knows who to email as well so building committee Sophie you're gonna stay with that Superintendent evaluation Kathleen staying with that Safety and security we Shane and Kathleen you'll back about Communications and community engagement, Sophie, on that? Mm-hmm. Sophie, you get the chair update, so that can be kind of wrapped in. I think you can do some of that with your communication. Wait, what did you... So you're

105not into the proposal of me being vice and you being chair for the next year? Then I could... I'm just putting it out there. You could mentor her. You could mentor me, coach me, and then I could take over. I mean, I do like the power. It's true. Do you want us to get you a sash? It might be a smoother transition. Yeah. Is there any propriety in that? You just go back and redo your motions. Do you want to work with me for another year? Jennifer, you're amazing to work with. Where are you like, oh, thank God. Okay. You know, like the policy meeting was tomorrow, but you don't have to like. I guess I am worried about you doing building and communications and chair. Well, communicate. Neither of those are big lifts right

106now. They have been in the past. Okay. Now they're really not. But yeah, I mean, if you, if we did my plan. Yeah. The building committee would be pretty much wrapped up in a year. Okay. So that would be then take that off my plate and then I can take over as chair from there. Okay. That's my proposal. Wow. This was fascinating. Who's the lawyer? Yes. My game's over here. You just said yes at the beginning of the meeting. Right. I know. I'm sorry. I know. One of my things is trying to keep the meeting going. Okay. So... Yeah, I guess I'm okay with your proposal. I mean, if the board members are, though, because you're getting suckered in. I think that'd be, yeah, we'll just do a lovely transition. So if we did this.

107I'll leave you on the policy committee. I'll give it to you. Back on policy. Everybody gets kind of what they. Okay, sounds good. All right. So, Cameron, would you make a proposal for Jennifer to be the chair and Sophie to be the vice chair as a. NEW MOTION. SORRY, CHAIR. EITHER SHANE OR KATHLEEN SECONDING THAT AND THEN WE CAN MOVE FORWARD WITH THE VOTE. OKAY. I'D LIKE TO MAKE A MOTION TO NOMINATE JENNIFER AS THE CHAIR AND SOPHIA AS THE VICE CHAIR OF THE STRATTON SCHOOL BOARD. OKAY. I second. Nice job, Shane. Do we vote on ourselves? You can. Okay. All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. So 5-0-0. Okay. All right. So then, so thank you, you guys, all for taking on those big committees. And then I guess... Do we

108want to, let's form a finance committee or what do we call that? So it would be an advisory committee to the board, right? Per your policy BDF. So that policy, it is made up of community members as deemed appropriate. I think we have three community members that have already been part of that. So my recommendation would be Bob Monaco, Luke Pickett, and I think it's Mr. Trammell as the three board members, community members, staff and board members. So obviously myself and Molly would be there. And then I heard Kathleen and Cameron would be interested in that. I don't think we have to do that like we do with the building committee. where it's a large scale. This has already been kind of doing in facto. In there, what we would need to do, and I

109can come back to the next board meeting, we can meet in the meantime, but we just want to talk about the length of time that they're being asked to serve, what we're trying to render. I think this is a pretty easy one. We're trying to get more money, interest out of our money. So some of these are self-explanatory. So why don't I take a stab of answering these questions based on our policy. I can bring it to you, and then we have that set. But in the meantime, we could meet if the so wishes of the board. I also like the idea. I thought that was kind of persuasive about the town. I would love to have like Tim or somebody. I think we could have them come back and forth. Town finances are very

110different than school finances. So I think we could invite anybody in at any time. I think to have them as a standing member can be conflicting at times. Okay. Because I'm just curious, like they made that move. Yeah. how they did that. Well, when you get a big pot of money sitting there at all time. Yeah. Because they get money twice a year. Yeah. So their money is sitting there much differently of how they get interest. Yeah. That's why I wanted Molly to explain that it's monthly. It's a little bit different. Yep. I understand that. Okay. Okay. I mentioned you'd have to have a brokerage account to do that, right? In order to buy TDAPs? YOU JUST ACTUALLY TRANSITION YOUR MONEY INTO THEIR, IT'S LIKE A HOLDING ACCOUNT FOR YOU. GOT IT. SO YOU WOULDN'T

111NEED ANOTHER BROKERAGE ACCOUNT. YOU WOULD NEED SOMETHING TO BE ABLE TO PAY YOUR BILLS. YEAH, THEY REALLY JUST, THEIR INTEREST GENERATING, THEY'RE NOT YOUR CHECKING OR ACCOUNT. SO THAT'S WHY I THINK THE TOWN STILL HAS TD BANK TO DO THEIR CHECKING AS WELL. BUT TO BUY THE TREASURY BONDS? that I don't know and I'm not gonna even pretend like I do. Yeah, I was gonna say that PDIP website has a whole information thing about the pool. I'm not a finance person, but it had about like how to, I don't know, it's like some sort of pooled fund thing. I don't know what the mechanism is to purchase them. They had a lot of like info about how it works on their website. Well, and I think, too, one of the other things, I would love

112to meet with you maybe in the next few weeks just to kind of go over some things, but one of the things we want to think about is board goals, right? And I think this could play really nicely if we think about, you know, what is the legacy of this board, this iteration of the board? And, you know, that'd be nice. One of the things I would offer, which I'm not even being asked to offer, so sorry if I'm speaking on a turn. I was just thinking a little bit, and I know nothing about what you're talking about, the financial part of this. What I do feel like, and this is, there's 700 of us in this building, right, between adults and children. And when any one of us in that office are trying to

113work multiple systems, it is a lot. So I guess like having two information systems, having two bank accounts, well, I understand like it's easy to transfer and do that stuff. But if you're the people that are already doing it and they're wildly busy at central office, like insane what they're trying to manage, right, with the number of students and the number of employees. And I don't know that you can actually quantify what that is in like hourly fees or what you're. paying for the people that are doing that. But I do think that that's an element of it. Because I think about when we have to transition between softwares, we have two going, it's so taxing because it's like you have to go two different places and you double check everything five times because if

114you miss something, someone doesn't get paid, right? And so I do think that's a piece of this equation. I don't think it's heavily weighted. I'm just thinking about the well-being of what we're trying to ask people to do if we're not adding additional people to do the work, if it is an extra load on people. Just something I think a lot about. And I think it's because I'm working with educators all day. Like, what can I take off their plate before I put something else on their plate? And I just want to be as conscious. I think it's important to be as conscious about people that are doing finances. That is one thing I think I've learned about Dr. Andruski is he reports everything in a very calm manner, even though, you know, the world

115is on fire. It's that meme. The fire is all around. This is fine. This is fine. We don't use the word fine here. We know what it really means. And if that small extra task could mean we get an extra 50 grand in our budget, like, could we hire? I guess that's my point. Like, if you're thinking about it, like, if you're saying it's $50,000, but we'd have to hire someone to the tune of, like, $12,000, because it wouldn't be a full-time job. I get that. Or it's, like, that's something to be thinking about. Put something on we take something off. Mm-hmm I feel like I'd so I definitely get your concern I think one of the things we should say when we form the committee is to say like we need to evaluate both

116sides of it Not just like hey, here's maybe make it extra money But I also just wanted to say I should have mentioned with here but like I really did appreciate that Bob's approach because I feel like since I've been here all the Things I've heard is like how can we get rid of this? How do we get rid of that? And it was like how do we use what we have to make more money? And I feel like that is a good thing to show the town and i feel like it's worth you know exploring and i get the the management aspect i think we just need to make that like a charter of that committee is to say like we need to evaluate what overhead that creates and over time you're talking about

117a substantial amount of money i just don't want that to be lost in the easy to lose human when we're talking about money right absolutely Yeah, I think what you just said is the board is a board goal right like to evaluate both sides It's not like we're going full steam ahead. It's evaluation Can I ask you one clarifying question something you said earlier though? So I guess it's like maybe delicate issue. But so is it the case that the town? Has the money that is being? set aside for the tax revenue for the school and they're holding it and disperse it to us monthly? Yep. So yeah, Molly asks each towns and that's what disperses your check. So whatever your budget is, passes that. that's the money that's appropriated that's what the town will

118get based on tax rate so it comes in and they disperse it to molly and as she said we know we do a lot of spending at the beginning of the year so like your august september october that that money's going to be a little bit higher than it's proportionate throughout the rest of the year we get at the beginning of each month um based on what molly works with each town it's a little bit differently so if they get the revenue like in june or whatever it is right Are we, we're not earning anything off of that? They're just dispersing? You are still, you're still earning throughout TD Bank because remember TD Bank, we have it all collected together. So we're earning interest in all the money that's in there from all six towns.

119So as it comes in. But I mean, as far as like the town's holding it and there's money potentially they're not going to give us for several months, right? Yeah, again, I defer. Yeah, I'm just curious. It seems like a strange, like, hey, we'll give it to you, but we're going to hang on to it for a little bit longer. That's how they have to pay their bills too, right? So that's what I'm interested to learn. That's so fascinating. Yeah, it is interesting how the town makes money off the school a little bit. Okay, thank you. I think I have my mission, and we'll get you on those email lists, so appreciate it. So let's go through quickly, does anybody have any board reports? I know other than policy. Yeah. Oh, I have policy. Yeah,

120we'll go to policy. I am. Don't worry. I was able to get access to the shared folder for the evaluation committee. And so I'm starting to work on that. Okay. And I will report back and make sure we're all in agreement. And then we can send it forward to the chair of the committee. Okay. Which is who now? Tim Reed. Okay. The only thing for building committee that we didn't talk about was the contingency is looking two thumbs up right now. Very good. Under budget. Who's heard of construction project being under budget? Even with this? Good communication. What? Even with this? Well, so that wasn't part of the original scope, but we are looking at that with a contingency. So now, I was at a meeting yesterday with the whole... crew and Kate, and we're

121starting to look at what will happen with the contingency. So we're getting quotes on replacing all of the windows, seeing what that is, seeing if it will do it all in one or if we'll phase it or just do some of them. And then just kind of coming up with a wish list and a priority list that I kind of asked that committee, like, can you guys put together kind of the wish list for the board to look at? and prioritize those. So we'll look at that. I don't know when that will happen, but within the next few months, I think we'll have that. And yeah, check out what else we can get for our money, which was very exciting. Anything Kate or Chris for building that you wanted to add to that? Great. We

122did talk about contingency funds. And Sophie, I said I would follow up about. So In the conversation we've been having since the beginning with them is like safety and security measures first like if there's contingency funds like those would be the top priority things and those aren't necessarily even things that necessarily have to come back here but anything beyond that the board would then like Sophie said here are the three or four things we're thinking about here's the dollars associated rough dollars we'll get three or so quotes for most of them that's what they're working on actually right now and then the board would have that sort of decision making but some of the stuff they would they have to do right now anyway because it came up and you can't not do it you

123can't move forward without it for example the propane tax or something like that. Okay. And can we, can you remind me if there is no, if there's like $500,000 at the end, we've exhausted all of the like renovations type stuff that we want, what happens to that money exactly? You know, we can get the full definition from Molly, but I believe it goes back to taxpayers because you've already. I'm just wondering about the mechanism, how and when and all of that. I'll get that answer for you for. OK, I don't know if anybody knew that. I'm pretty sure Molly said it goes back just like it would in a normal cycle and offset. I DON'T KNOW. THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT, TOO. SHE INDICATED IT. I DON'T KNOW HOW THAT WORKS. I DON'T KNOW. IT OFFSETS

124THE TAXES AT SOME POINT. RIGHT. I WAS JUST WONDERING MORE DETAILS AND I SHOULD HAVE ASKED MOLLY. OKAY. THERE WERE SOME ITEMS THAT WE TOOK OUT OF THE BUDGET PRE THE VOTE THAT WE WANTED TO LOOK AT THE CONTINGENCY TO ADDRESS LIKE SOME OF THE FURNITURE AND THINGS OF THAT NATURE. that's been included they understand that part of it yeah yeah i reminded mark of that yesterday too i don't i don't know if he was aware of that or not yeah yeah maybe he was uh it should have been in the full thing when we started with carino and then we actually cut it down so he should have access to that if not well i'll make sure tuesday when i'm there that he gets that from todd when we when we built it out

125yeah if you could just communicate with mark exactly which items we took off so that he knows that would be great thanks A lot of the items that we took off are not things we're working on yet. They're further down in the process. Furniture. Yeah. And then maybe each of the board members could just reach out to Shane sometime in the next few weeks and just update on what your committee's doing, especially joint board stuff, superintendent evaluation stuff. One at a time. Everybody choose dating. Okay, not in a group text. Not in a group text. All right. So I got to, okay, I wanted to ask a safety and security question. I'm sure this was answered at the meeting, but do you know if there was an answer on the grants? We did not get

126any of the grants. Zero. No. No essay use of our grants. Womp womp. That's not great. All right. Isn't that such great news? Yeah, it's great. And despite having not gone to that meeting, I was the new safety and security director. Yeah, the bio looks two thumbs up. Yeah, Steve has been there. He's been great. He's been digging in. He reached out to all the principals. He's starting to... come to our buildings. He's reaching out. I know we've met with Chief Kane yesterday, Chief King yesterday, yesterday to talk about Stratum. So he's really getting immersed into our communities and our schools. And I think he's going to be a true asset. And the one nice thing is we were able to shift his hours so that he is here in our office Monday to Friday.

127Previous director couldn't fit those hours in. So he was Monday to Thursday. And as safety and security, we just take Friday off. It didn't sit well. So it is that's one nice thing that we were able to build out. So I'm really happy with the work he's doing. And I think he's going to keep pushing us. Cool. It's all over us already in a great way. He updated some forms already. It's like I'd appreciate if you use these forms It's just great right like we let's evolve and grow. It sounds great So I attended my first policy meeting. I would say the most discussion was around this one about pupil transportation. And I know there was changes made because it previously referred to buses. And there was a lot of discussion about using vans and

128things like that that are used throughout the district. But I see there's a bunch of these February holdover ones. I'm going to ask. Guess you the question about yeah, those are ones that we've yet to vote on is that yeah we just did a first read of those because we needed to keep that meeting short because board members remember we Set it for a different day. And anyway, we had to keep that meeting short. So we did a first read Okay Okay, I'm just still getting the lay of the land. Yeah, so those ones so normally like I mean as far as this I don't know when the Final draft I guess I'll ask you a question the one that's in the packet like this is what we went over During this month's meeting. So

129is the packet like the adjusted version of this? It's whatever you would have had From the meeting so if there was changes that the policy committee made that should be in that packet. Okay. Okay. I just want to get all right So I would recommend that we leave these ones on the agenda so that I can better understand because I'm having the meeting tomorrow. Okay. So I'm just trying to understand. Because I'm wondering too if maybe Shane needs another month. Yeah. I just, like I said, I've been to the one meeting and I really had like questions after because I didn't understand the flow of the meeting. So I think it would be easier if I can like clarify on those and then vote on it. And plus these other ones that were the holdovers,

130I don't. I don't know. I have it wasn't there for those meetings. So I'd like to go through them and ask some questions. Can we do that again? Oh, you can hold them. The longer you hold them, the more you're going to have to do at the next meeting. You know? Yeah. They all seemed pretty straightforward to me. Um, was there any, but I think you're saying you had questions. Oh. yeah i just wanted to ask some questions at the policy meeting tomorrow only on that if that's okay for the february ones or for the yeah for the because i was like really focused on these other the ones that we discussed this month i would be fine with that the ones under pupil starting on 6.8.6 and coming down those are all just minor

131revisions in there there's not major changes so i'd make a recommendation that you would approve those today as written because those did go through the policy committee and then give cam the time for february if he has more questions to come back so i don't think we got into great depth unless i've heard you wrong and you need more time with the student ones um no that's fine like i said the biggest thing that came out of that was the concern about the liability on the um the way it was written into the transportation because there was a portion that said something about the the district assumes like liability at the Bus stop and there was some question about like so I didn't know what the language that you just clarified for me that what

132I have the one that we were working on which is not the current one so I Just didn't see how that ended the language on that because that was like the big concern was yes So just a reminder your school bus stops our school property. So that's why anything that happens there. That's the liability that happens so accident fights Bullying all those natures fall under our policy. So that's how it's written Okay, because the I mean the way that ended it was like school related You know I mean those sort of things because we're somebody brought up like well What if somebody gets hit by a car at a bus stop like is a school district liable for that again the due diligence? We'd work with primex or agent But it just covers you that

133again your your school bus stop is part of school property when you when you put it out So you have to list it your policy to cover cover everything. Okay I'm fine if you're good with approving those ones. The February ones, I just don't really. I don't want to rush you. We just can acknowledge we have a big policy next month. If you guys are okay with that, I would do that. Okay. Hit him. Okay. Is that okay? Is that going to slow anyone else down? If we just wait on all of them? I think Cam. Just slowing this board down. Everyone else is working through it. Which is fine. We just know. I feel more comfortable with these. All my questions answered. Yeah. I would just make the recommendation that if there's any questions

134about certain ones that maybe you individually have Cameron, email Cameron. And if not, if there's no questions, you're comfortable with that. We can do them en masse. Yeah. So that way we can. move forward just a little quickly and then Cameron can bring any concerns that he has after he gets some guidance, which I think is also smart. Well, we're reviewing new ones tomorrow, but I'm thinking I'll just make sure I go through each of these so that I'm ready to present. And if you don't get that answer, I would say reach out to Dr. Bryant and she can walk through all of those since she goes through. That's when I figure I'd talk with her. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Sounds good. All right. Any old business? Any new business or non-public? Nope.

135No? Just a reminder to do our shadows. And Shane, one of the board goals that I put forth, which is why I'm reminding people, is to shadow a class. And if you have a kid here, it's helpful, I think, to go in a totally different classroom. So you can just be kind of a fly on the wall for a class or something like that. Who do we reach out to for it? Okay, excellent. So two things I do want to bring up on new business I'm gonna have two articles written by our Publication firm our PR firm one will be the work that the school boards have done to get our budgets passed since it's a margin major role So Jennifer they may reach out to you as the chair just to talk about the

136process I want to do a collective whole about when you have 150 million dollars in budgets how that gets past the work it gets in there I don't think people understand that and I'd like to write A little bit, and to get seven out of your eight budgets passed is really positive. The other part is I want to do a... publication of all of our new board members so this is something i want to continue as we move forward so shane you and the other new members to the sau 16 boards will be contacted through um and i'll do a virtual introduction but they're going to want to just get a little bio and just do a release of who our new board members are so those will be two articles that will be coming

137up through um it'd be john guilfoyle public relations who we work with but i just think getting the message out this is who you are this is what you do and some people get to know you Is there any PR training? Just be yourself. Just be yourself. Is everyone on three-year terms? I'm only on a one-year term. You're one year, okay. But you guys are both on three-year. Okay. All right, great. You might want to yell me out just a bit. School board material. Okay, wonderful. Can I ask you a question about this thing here? We talked about this last time, this Stratum school board class size recommendation. I know you're probably sick of hearing me talk about that, but is there a reason why this is here? Yeah. Okay, people constantly email me and

138ask me this question. I would say, as chair, this is the question I most get. This is only a recommendation, right? This isn't even guidance or anything. before the last budget meeting a bunch of people had emailed me and asked me about these numbers so i just asked chris if we could put it in the agenda and i feel like it does come up repeatedly it bothers you that it's there well i think yeah if we're going to put it in there we need to create a policy because my big thing on that was always that this these numbers are not a policy yeah it's like right the email thing right it's not even any of us right and that's why like we had this discussion about 20 the board decided this like well yeah

139that's six years ago and so i feel like it just doesn't seem representative of what we or i don't it doesn't represent okay i just make us say something yeah i'm really talking a lot and i should yeah yeah um please do keep saying the things you're saying it's very helpful used to be on the enrollment report on the bottom it was just like literally this big on the enrollment report yeah so that it was in the packet every month but it wasn't big in the minutes it but the enrollment report uh is in here every year every month sorry yeah um and it was literally I don't have the enrollment part. Yeah. It's on the last page right now. And it was like literal and small just at the bottom. Yeah. It just kind

140of had like a little grid and it just said school board recommendations or something. It didn't draw quite the attention, but it was available every single month in the packet. I don't know when it went away. I don't know why. I think it just happened. But I wonder if that's so that if people can find it, you can always say it's in the board packet, but it's not this giant last page of your agenda. Because I think that that can be something now the budgets over people aren't asking us for it Well, I'm almost wondering so like we talked about this a year ago. Is that I guess something I talked to dr Brian about to say like Can we propose a policy or something to either take it off or go I would have

141a discussion here because there's plus and minuses of if you create a policy you got to follow that policy so if you say 17 kids in a classroom and you've got you know, 18 19. Are you hiring a new teacher? So I would have this board talk about their thoughts on it before you create a policy. Right. Well, we couldn't we just do a different recommendation does it have to be a policy apparently you can send email Just whatever I think we should have a discussion and then do an updated recommendation just so we're all the same thing Kim I would love to task you with a proposal for new classroom size recommendations, but you can all Definitely need to work with I think we've had this discussion before that the recommendations are incredibly tricky

142based on... the makeups of the different grades. And so one year maybe it's okay to have 15 kids in a kindergarten classroom and the next year due to needs of the students, we'd have to have only 12. So I think that's what principal Lucas has stated in the past that they spend a lot of time trying to figure out. Based on the needs of the student in each grade what appropriate class sizes would be so it makes me as a non member of the faculty here it makes me a little hesitant to say I Think you should have 16 students in this classroom. Oh I agree. I'm saying if these numbers are wildly incorrect as a recommend. Yeah Like when you look at this Kate, are you like? Oh, well, it really should be So

14314 students or something like that. I How should we approach but then should we put this on the agenda for next I think that would be great I think we should all Think about this And then we can come back to it We just kind of blindside I'm very passionate about this, okay. Well, that's great. So Is it something we would just ask you about next month? Do you want to meet with some board members in the meantime? Whatever feels comfortable for you. Cam, you want to sit and talk about it a little bit? Or two, no more than two of you want to sit and talk about it? I'm happy to talk about it. I think it's a really complicated, complex issue right now because so much has changed since those were set years

144and years ago. And even before that, the research that every state based their numbers on, because every state is kind of similar, is based on antiquated data. So at this point, there really isn't new, updated, longitudinal studies that say this is like the ideal by grade span that it doesn't exist right now based on it's been a really long time since that's been a really profound study so it's really hard it's based more on like what we experience day to day in our schools and as we know states education varies tremendously across the state and across state borders so it's really hard to find like national recommendations to that used to be based on research i think the last study i could find that was like a The gold star was from the 90s The

145star study at the gold it's literally a star study and it's from Tennessee in the 90s and With yeah with a very limited sample and that's what all I could find when I did a quick literature review. It's been really I think it would be worth like having a discussion to say like let's formalize what you just said like hey This is based on best practices. You know, I think we just should have a discussion about it I'm happy to because I don't like this thing. I just don't know what it is. You know, I mean, I don't think The rationale behind it, right? Yeah, what it also like says to the public, you know Yeah, if it's not this I'm totally what I don't care about this I just feel like we need to

146replace it with whatever works Yeah, okay. Well from a PR thing I think you're saying well if we set a policy I go this to me is doing like what you just said the public's gonna go well look you have guidelines and you're not following them and say well that's really not policy. You know what I mean? Like we're kind of doing both things. Yeah, that's a good point. And I have one more thing to tag on to Sophie's thing about shadow the plug for the Career fair career fair. Yes Yeah, it's really fun for the career fair. I know I saw Kathleen there last year. We're bringing the robot back, so hopefully it's worth it. It is a highlight. All right, great. Anything else, guys? Okay. I look forward to working with all of

147you for the next year. Yes, that's great. Okay. Do you have a motion to adjourn? Would you want to take the honors? Sure. All right. I motion to adjourn the meeting. Yay. All in favor? Aye. 5-0. Okay, great.