May 4, 2021 - Grantham School District Board Meeting - Part 1

001know about his presence and what he could help you with but um i mean the chances of you like seeing him in the hallways are fairly low and i don't think um he's just kind of there in his office if you would need him thank you i mean it's better to hear hear this directly from you than reading in the valley news um i just have a comment for our students and i just want to thank all three of you for being the voices that are bringing the news from lebanon back to us and i'm really proud of your commitment and involvement to stay connected to the grantham community i'm especially proud of your safe practices and i think when this is all over and there is a new normal you're going to have many

002stories to tell any other questions for the from the for the from the board tonight okay all right thank you both we appreciate it thank you good to see you see or hear you um all right so our next agenda item will be uh the special ed special education and food service state reports um and so those are in the board packet and anything else to sydney that you want to mention to the board just very quickly um for the people who are listening in these are just um reports that we get every year from the state it's our food inspection report as well as two different special education reports so of course uh gvs passed with flying colors we had some very minor things to do in the kitchen we threw out two cutting

003boards and we bought a new thermometer for the dishwasher but other than that we're looking great and then in terms of special education i i think you'll all share the pride that i have that we are 100 in compliance um with all of our timelines for eligibility and identification and then the other report is um the disparity report in case we have any um any racial ethnic gender disparity in terms of special education and we are well below the threshold we are at the in the one percent range and anything three percent above is considered a disparity and we don't come anyplace close to that so once again we're doing a great job many thanks to madeleine crudo burke and our case managers um for all the hard work that they're doing it really really

004come even though this is a two-page report there's you know years of work and minutes and parent contact that go behind us and so the only thing that i'll need you to do as a board is to accept each report individually any questions or discussion points from the board i would just echo and say thank you on behalf of the board to the food service folks and to the special ed folks for their work on this okay so we would need a motion to accept the um special education state report so all right so we have a motion from denise and a second from leslie and we'll do a roll call if you're in favor of accepting the um special education state report please say aye if you're opposed to say nay christine aye denise

005hi ed i leslie hi and brittany i all right and next we would need a motion to accept the food service state report second all right i have a motion from leslie in a second from christine and so if you're in favor of accepting the food service state report report please say i if you're opposed say nay um christine i denise we'll see if we can get denise um ed hi leslie hi brittany hi up denise i'm back hi all right thank you sorry if my words get a little mixed up tonight are the espresso machine was down at work which meant that all day long i got to say our espresso machine is broken so we don't have any espresso drinks or steamed milk drinks and i said it 900 times and i think

006my mouth is worn out so i apologize if my words get a little tumbly tonight all right our next item on the agenda is the discussion of our instructional model so in keeping with um as we have been what we've been doing for the last um 13 14 months now we're just going to check in and get a a report on how the instructional model is doing especially now that we're in our second week of the five day model i'm sorry to interrupt but did we have to approve the special ed report because i don't think that was the that was the we did that first and then we did the food service i thought we did two food service he definitely said special ed that was the one that i vote i said i

007first and i think we have just checking and um brenda if if you don't have a motion for us for special ed please feel free to stick that in the chat but i think i think we have that one okay all right whenever you're ready for me to go i will start presenting all right brenda says we're all set so go for it great so um i'm just gonna go through this the same way that we have gone through it um every month uh to this point just need to get rid of the chat so i can see there we go so um yeah so we're talking about um our first sorry my computer's acting up um so we had the four decision of five day in person our first five day week of april

00826 to 30th went really well things are going really well this week as well we did have two days with difficult coverage just to let you know but um we have two additional staff members who have been taking on several hours each day that was something that the board approved last time and those have actually been a huge help we increased our custodian by 10 hours a week to keep up with cleaning so with the new schedule we do have to increase cleaning in terms of getting um classrooms cleaned after snack and after lunch and during recess so those 10 hours a week are also helping a lot and then um just some updated cdc guidance um we started talking about this in the march meeting and then april may so what i've done is

009i've only added new information in red which is what i also did in april so we've continued to have these five layers of mitigation components i'm not going to read through everything that doesn't have red we're just going to go to the things that are different so there is a surveillance testing i think last time what i had was there's a lot of talk and no action but now there is action with surveillance testing there's a program being implemented through the new hampshire doe and it we're working through the requirements to see if it'll be a possibility for gbs there are some layers that we're working through in terms of needing to their requirements to hire somebody there are requirements to work with a lab there are different reporting procedures so we're still sort of

010navigating that to see if it's something that we can do we're at an advantage because we're already clia certified to be able to do the testing on site so we've got the first hoop finished which we did way back when and if this works for us we will get the binax cards where we would be able to do some on-site rapid testing and that could be there are two different layers we could do symptomatic and asymptomatic testing so we're exploring both of those in terms of vaccination um the vaccination is moving along and pfizer is a proof for teens i read this week that that 12 to 15 group is going to be moving forward and there are also several trials for kids under 12. as of yesterday 59 percent of new hampshire adults have

011had the first dose and i believe 26 are now fully vaccinated so again i'm just going to go to what's new then where everything's the same in terms of masks distancing hand washing cleaning contact tracing with isolation and quarantine there is a change that i'm going to request the board make a change which has to do with um elizabeth strobridge's public comment in terms of the quarantine requirements and question regarding travel guidance there was a statewide superintendence meeting with the commissioner yesterday and he said that the official word from the state is that all schools must be in compliance with the dhhs guidelines and from what we saw after april break in terms of testing and safety and the information that we have from our progress monitoring committee we will i'll be asking you to

012move forward with a vote to change our new england guidance to the dhhs guidance and i do want to say uh since we're talking about this with um with ms strowbridge's comment family travel is still something different so i we're going to be reviewing our attendance policy later and there is a five-day family travel form that would need to be filled out so there are two different things so there is family travel that would happen at any time covered or not and then here we're talking about the difference in the quarantine requirements so uh just to do a quick review in march um i'm sorry this should read april i didn't change that in the april meeting we're at 78.8 percent and substantial currently we are at 99.6 and which is still in the substantial

013category and that's the total number of cases per 100 000. our test positivity rate in april was 3.65 which was in the low range and current is 4.95 percent and that is still in the low range we would kick into moderate if we go above 4.99 so if we hit 5 or above we would go into moderate and this is for sullivan county obviously so this is where we are still in terms of the substantial transmission for orange elementary schools physical distancing of three feet distance between students and classrooms cohorting recommended when possible so just some other things to do a quick update we do have two tents up we've had some trouble initially with some high winds they did do new poles and ropes and they've been reinstalled so we're hoping that they are

014good to go we do know that classes and kids love being outside uh the plans are proceeding really well with civil war day and sixth grade graduation that we talked about last meeting so those are going on as planned our safe return to school committee will have at least four sessions to prepare to propose plans for the 21 22 school year i've had a really great response from the staff interested in looking at our operational procedures and things that we can improve on for next year so i'm excited to get that going in june the progress monitoring committee continues to meet at least once per month to stay on top of our current information we will be releasing a parent garden in surveys very similar to the ones that we did last summer but obviously

015looking at reflecting on this year and thinking about needs going into 21 to 22 school year so that we can have that information for the planning process i hope to have that going out in the next two to three weeks one of the things that's been a big topic around the state is it's really unclear as to whether or not schools will be required to offer a remote option and it depends on what the governor does with the emergency orders that did require schools to provide a remote option to families so the governor has lately been letting the expiration dates on the emergency orders go and they've been expiring we don't know for sure if that will happen with this part of the emergency order but we need to stay aware of the fact that

016there could continue a requirement to do some kind of remote option next year although i have to tell you that most school districts that i've been in touch with are not planning on a remote option they're planning on everybody coming back five days so we're just going to have to see what the state's going to do about that and that is our quick update what kind of questions do you have for me cindy i have a quick question about um the remote option would this be allowing a district to request a remote option if if situations change or are we talking about allowing a remote option to exist requiring our so we're going to be looking over the summer at a policy of what the board wants to do long term in terms of a

017remote option as of right now we only have 11 students who continue to be fully remote everybody else has returned to gvs so initially we haven't thought that we would need one if the governor requires us to have one and if families still want that option based on the pandemic next year then that might be something we have to explore if if it is not required then families will most likely choose to home school and use vlax or another program that's available to them for free through the state other questions or comments from the board just a quick thank you that was really helpful sydney very thorough thanks i think that's the fastest one so far unfortunately we're getting used to this sydney have you heard any just anecdotal stuff of of the that that

018first kind of week and two days that we've had of the five days either from teachers or from students or from families well the common theme there were a few common themes so one of them was i can't believe how fast the days are going by with the new schedule you know when you're looking at a new schedule and we're going and we have different specials everybody felt like the days were really flying by um and then the second thing that i very consistently heard was the level of exhaustion on friday on that first friday when the kids made it through the first full week there were a lot of tired kids and and teachers on friday night and through saturday i heard a lot about like several families who needed some saturday recovery time

019but no wonder right all right thank you i appreciate the update and all of the work that you guys are continuing to do so um the next item on our agenda is another just presentation looking forward the summer programming um for this coming summer yeah i'm just going to pinch it for kristen a little bit because um she's listening in she will do a little bit more thorough explanation in june but she has done a fantastic job with staff designing a summer program that is looking at a nature based and outdoor education program so definitely along the philosophy of having summer school really not look like school so still getting in all the skills that we need still making sure that we address any learning gaps that might be there that we don't let kids

020slide over the summer but with a real outdoor environmental focus to it so the may pd day will be used primarily to plan for kids and what they need and what kind of skills we need to work into those programs it is as we discussed going to be a more costly summer program but i know that that's what we all intended because we want to catch more kids so we um we have budgeted 15 000 usually for the summer program our estimate right now is that this year's summer program will cost about 30 000 so our plan will be to supplement with the esser funds you know because this is really coveted related in terms of making sure that we keep everybody on the good track that they're on prescott farm is also going to

021be coming to plan on that may pd day too and they've been wonderful so i think it's going to be a really incredible program for kids so thank you to mrs reed um is this separate from um title one programs it is so we're not doing anything specific with title one but we are doing you know students who have for example iep summer programming will still be part of this programming and then we're going to start readdressing title one when we come back in the fall so no title one funds are being used for this program not for summer no the other thing that we're looking at that is also exciting is um a design for speech services over the summer to be run as speech clinics so you'll be hearing more about that and

022it's just a really wonderful way to go and from what i've heard it sounds like a lot of districts are going to use some of their sr monies for summer programs so that sounds like it's pretty common yeah i think you know as everybody's getting you know we've been pretty consistent since november but not all districts have and i think just making sure that you don't lose any progress that you've made with the kids and that you can just keep going into what next year i think everybody's looking at as a as a real recovery year is making sure that we can stay on this trajectory um i'm not sure if my microphone's on or not um sydney i just pulled up kristen's um principles letter and when she was talking about the invitations for

023students to participate i think she said they were in 66 inviting invited to participate a few have declined the invitation and they're still waiting to hear from others so i guess my question would be i got to phrase this properly how can we entice families who have declined to let them know that this is a really good and beneficial thing and help to target the needs of these kids over the summer well i think we're still working on it and again it was only a few who declined but i know we're still working on it in terms of classroom teacher outreach and and mrs reed outreach and mrs crudo burke outreach all of those kind of you know individual personal contacts are being made i think that the the theme of the outdoor and camp

024and nature is really enticing and getting everybody there there really are just some families who are declining because they have different summer needs or they might be traveling or it just doesn't work in with their schedule so we certainly understand that as well but i know that we are trying to as we said catch as many kids as we can and we're doing pretty well i mean that's that's the that will be the biggest summer program we've ever had okay all right we'll look forward to hearing more about it in june so our next agenda item is the general assurances for 2021 2022 and we do need to move to accept those any other information or questions on that these are the same program assurances that you see every year in order to accept federal

025funds and with the new guidelines the board needs to officially a vote to adopt the assurances before we accept any 2122 federal grant money i thought it was very interesting that on page four uh item 26 says the sub recipient will comply with requirements of the gun free schools act any other comments or questions on that okay so we would need a motion to adopt the general assurances for 2021 2022. so moved hello so we have a motion from ed and we'll need a second okay second from leslie and so we'll do a roll call if you're in favor please say aye if you're opposed say nay christine hi denise hi ed i leslie hi and brittany i all right and our next item is the legislative review and so i'm going to hand it

026over to sydney and um we'll see how she was able to to summarize and truncate a very large legislative review well first i'm going to i'm going to take you through the sr2 funding and so we're just going to oh perfect you want to do that first oh yeah that's next on my list sorry i skipped right over that i apologize next on our item is or on our agenda is the sr2 funding presentation for that okay so i just have a different slide to bring up never skip funding brittany what was i thinking okay so i just wanted to say we did apply for the sr2 funds so we have sr 1 s or 2 s or 3. so sr2 is where we are right now and for those of you who love acronyms

027i can just tell you that esser is the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds so we have received sixty seven thousand five hundred ten dollars and 40 cents for this and this is after a lot of meetings with um with staff and hearing feedback and admin team this is what we felt we really needed the most so in terms of instruction in special education just over almost 18 000 these are additional resources for early literacy which we have targeted as an area of need for us right now including additional personnel through june 11th and our summer workbooks that will be going home at the end of the year school counseling and social emotional learning has been a big area of need that we've talked a lot about in here this in this 13 000

028is counseling for students and families and social emotional curriculum software licensing transportation we actually put in a request for almost seven thousand dollars this is the additional cleaning fee and since there were wednesday runs that we didn't do for gvs according to uh this fund we may be able to reimburse the district which would just help offset the tax rate for next year in terms of technology um almost 8 000 for online documents and signatures there are new wi-fi spots inside and outside because we are spending more time outside and it does help the car line to have that wi-fi out there website integration we will be working more and more on integrating our website making it more parent guardian and community friendly and integrating our other systems with our website and the my spot

029hot spots that we've sent home with families in terms of buildings and grounds almost nineteen thousand for additional custodial hours the two tents the rental the five new walkie-talkies that we need to make sure we have the communication that we need for everybody outside folding tables um the storage unit that we had because we had to clear so much out of gvs we still have a storage unit and then moving everything back and forth from that storage unit and again those kind of costs will help offset this year's tax rate for next year food service we had some about thirteen hundred dollars additional supplies for packing food for classroom delivery and then we requested reimbursement for the mailing expense that was above our budgeted cost for the annual meeting so we're looking ahead at sr3

030it should be coming out this month so we need to be ready to start writing that grant grantham is estimated to get our biggest amount yet at 157 300 so again we're looking at our current priority areas for the initial allocations and for us those are some of our struggling families and their ability to um access the resources and sometimes resources are hard to access and grant them just because of our location to begin with staffing is always a need technology early literacy summer programming and our overall kind of looking at recovery for next year so what we're looking at and i'd love to hear some of your input is uh these are the five main things we do need to maintain additional personnel throughout next year for supervision and coverage i would be interested

031very much in bringing on just for next year a half-time 0.5 fte social worker which would just be this one-year position but i really think that having that and having that kind of half-time position working in coordination with mrs widman will really help to help our families recover and help them reconnect with the resources that they need and i think a lot of our families don't even know yet what resources they've been missing and what they're going to need as we all get back on our feet um we will need additional para educators to address specific student needs the summer speech clinic plus the additional summer personnel will be in here and we're exploring um a real big overhaul of our fm systems and our mics for classrooms so those are the systems that we

032already have but they are old getting obsolete where it's hard to replace things and what we found is that having students talking with masks and trying to listen with masks is much harder and there could be a real greater need for kids to really be able to focus and pay attention and hear that kind of articulation in class if we look at um at redoing that system so i would love your feedback on our thoughts for s or three or s or two sydney do you think we'd be able to attract a halftime social worker i do think we'd be able to yep um it's definitely an area of need and i do know that there's a pretty decent pool out there i was just going to ask that if you could it's easy to

033find people who have school experience um it's not always people who have school experience but i do think that um it's not always about the school experience that's beneficial but somebody who can really dive into our community and work with families when we were sort of playing around with this idea we'd like to explore the idea of this person being responsible for monthly parent education nights small parenting groups doing all those kind of things in addition to just connecting with resources and connecting with kids sydney had had mentioned this idea to me when when we met and so i sort of casually floated it to uh the question to somebody that i know in that field and said how easy would it be to to attract at part-time and they said probably pretty easy either

034for somebody who's looking for a little less or someone who has a an additional private practice so there's a lot of folks in the area that do you know private practice work that might be interested in partnering with um you know to have a additional part-time work that's with an organization yeah i really feel like we have a handle on learning and what we need to do for learning and looking at the gaps we've done a great job with social emotional learning this year that's going to be moving forward i think the next step is to really look at the community-wide aspect and i think a social worker working with mrs reed and mrs widman um could be a huge boon to the district would the the would there still be a role for that

035social emotional piece that um mrs buckman has had this year would we still have a teacher sort of take a lead on that or would that role fill more of that need so we do have somebody taking over for mrs buckman in social emotional learning next year and i don't know how much that's been decided so i won't say who it is yet but we do know somebody's going to be taking that over but but the big work that mrs buckman spearheaded for us this year with social emotional learning was to really look at how this can be a comprehensive curriculum um for gvs so we have three grades who are piloting the program that we think will work well for us which is called the paths program and then that in conjunction with um

036the online software that you just briefly mentioned in the sr2 which is called panorama which is going to be able to give us some data and assessments that we can use with students and with families to be able to move forward so there's absolutely no stop to that it's just going to become part of the fabric of what we do every day it will be another curriculum that we offer i have another question with the sr3 i didn't see anything well i suppose it could be indirect but i'm just wondering are there any needs that the staff members have that we can meet those through the yes or three funds yeah i think we should look at that and um there was an article that came out from ucla this week that that was one

037of the five main areas that sr funds are being targeted in terms in terms of supporting staff so we'll be talking to the staff a little bit more about what they think they need do those those five things that you just listed do those eat up the entire 157 or no no the only way that they so you know we can still have room to explore for the staff etc for what the staff needs we still have room to explore if we do another year of tents those kind of things the only way that we would eat them up quickly um is that these go through 2024 so if there's any like positions that we think we would need for multiple years then it's going to be eaten up pretty quickly um you know for

038example if we decided to stretch the social worker over two years that's going to eat up that 157 000 quickly in addition to the other things that we have there sydney i was going to you sort of touched on one of my questions which was going to be are there things from either the first or the second s or rounds that are going to need to move forward to another year that would need to then be funded so like tents or additional cleaning or transportation yeah yeah we're trying to keep track of that very carefully and looking at our supplies to see what we need to move forward and right now we're okay and and lo and behold a surprise to everybody yesterday was that we actually are getting fema money for more ppe so

039if we need masks or cleaning supplies no as far as i know that was a big surprise to everybody around the state yesterday because they had originally said no um so we're doing constant shifting of what we need and where the funding source is but we're trying always to make sure that we are you know using the funding sources you know to the best benefit of the district and that means that we might take some ppe out of one grant and have fema cover them but um karen lazard is just on a daily basis keeping track of everything and where it's coming from if we did something if we did something like that the social worker position do is there a chance do you feel at all like concerned that we would be putting any

040risk at any of those other things that we might need like would we wind up in a position where we would need tents and you know not be able to do that or we might you know would need a technology upgrade and not be able to do that like would that type of position put any of those other things at risk or do you think there's enough either funding there or enough alternate sources for funding i think right now there's no risk if we're looking at the social worker as a one-year position and then we reassess and see if there's more funding allocation after that again it's going to be if we continue right now we have additional paris um we might be adding the half-time social worker and then and then the bigger summer

041program if we continue all of those things for another year that's going to start to heat up that grant so right now what we're doing is we are looking at the priorities for next year with a little bit of wiggle room are we rolling any funds over from the first two funding source have we pretty much exhausted those we've exhausted them and that's part of the process too is that we're trying to make sure that we exhaust them before that we move to the next which is just a better way to keep on top of all of our counting here i know and i don't know if this was the s or money if this was a different pool of money um there was some i know for some districts there was a question of

042when they were using it for personnel there was a question of how was it getting counted as having been distributed like if they you know if those funds hadn't been paid out to an individual yet but they were going to be used for a salary then it wasn't you weren't able to say that those funds had been used even you know even though they were earmarked that they were gonna they were going to be used for someone's salary um is there any concern with this and i don't i don't think that that applies as much to this pool of money but is there any concern with you know tying potentially time like salary or anything like that to this funding no so the way that all of the they all go through the same grants

043management system so the way that they work is that you put in the grant you get your approval to start spending and then you do a monthly report so basically what we would do is we would say in september this is the salary benefits that we paid out for these positions and then you know we know that we have the backup in terms of our payroll and accounting software and then it's all those checks and balances out there and then you just go on to the next month so i don't see any concerns with that at all it's it's the way that we already pay for people out of the idea grant or out of the title one grant so it's it's the way that we're already used to doing things and did i understand

044you correctly you said that what we have until what 2024 to use it september 2024. and so as part of that do you have to in the next month outline what we will be using that for until 2024. yeah yeah so uh the clock is gonna start ticking pretty quickly because once it's out you know we we need to start doing things in terms of writing it and getting it approved and one of the things that is a topic is that the sr3 grant requires your reopening a school reopening plan but every new hampshire school except for three are now fully reopened so you know the question is why do we have to do that but basically we already have our continuity of learning plan that was updated after our last board meeting so my

045feeling is that we submit that and that's our current reopening plan with the understanding that things may change with the virus or what we need to do until september but that's one of the requirements i'm interested of course i mentioned the survey a few minutes ago we'll be sending out the survey to parents and guardians to look at needs so that will become part of the grant and seeing if with that wiggle room money if we start to readdress some of those funds and reallocate someplace else we also have you know we've we've got a master spreadsheet because we've also got since you just approved the federal program assurances we've got a whole new rollout for idea and title 1 and title 2a and title 4. so we spend a lot of time looking at

046the best use of all of these grants and how to leverage them for the district well where it is something additional that we need or where it's something we can cover that helps to offset the tax rate for the next year so we're just constantly balancing all of those things and we will most likely be giving back more money i can tell you we will be giving back more money than we originally thought when we were at an annual meeting time so i don't know how much the tax rate will be lowered but it'll be lowered a little bit because there were things we could specifically use the grant for to start to offset those rates has there been any discussion with the the half-time social worker of actually just contracting that out uh instead

047of bringing out a half-time position and just using those funds to you know pay someone in private practice for to come in as on an ad needed basis we did look at that and um we looked at a few districts that contract out for a social worker and the average rate is about 100 to 120 an hour and that's in the upper valley and for what we would be looking at that would be cost prohibitive for us so even with benefits we would be saving money if we have this person as an employee instead of contract service i think we calculated that at that rate we'd be paying somebody a salary of 130 a year i like the idea of um bringing in you know having that move to the reading and math interventionist you

048know in terms of like academics and filling that gap and then also potential having the potential to fill a gap for some of those social or family needs you know more of the kind of re-entry because we we are going to potentially have like you said was it we have 11 students right now that are have been fully remote so we're gonna have a group of of students that we're working with you know that is that's a situation we've never been in before that i could see a position like that really helping that transition um so i like the idea of both this feels like a good pairing with some of the academic moves and plans that you guys have launched us towards for next year it feels like that a social that part-time social

049worker position would give equal importance to some of those other factors that you know folks are are already sort of raising flags to say hey this is something that schools are going to really need to be aware of and put time and attention towards next year yeah you know and we know areas every school is different right we know that we have the devices that we need um we know we have the the internet that we need and and those kind of things and i believe that this is where we need to reallocate you know money and start to focus and it i can tell you that i know that um we feel like a lot of puzzle pieces are fitting together which feels really good in terms of the social emotional learning the mtss

050programming coming in next year the reading and math interventionist um some changes in primary um special education that will be accompanying mtss and um it's it's feeling like it's really good planning again any other questions or comments there okay all right thank you so now we will actually do a legislative review okay so i have to tell you that i it's it's the wild west okay in the legislature so i i think in previous years i've probably taken too long going through all the bills that are in play so i tried to narrow it down to our top ten um not our top 10 but the top 10 that i think that people on the board in the community would be interested in hearing about the most so um if we're looking at and i

051put top 10 question because i have to tell you i snuck more than 10 in here but i didn't know if you would count so some that have already passed is 401 criminal records checks by superintendents so now criminal records checks have always had to be done by superintendents alone and the research following them so this isn't a big deal in grantham however if you're in a big district and you're hiring 50 people until this year until this bill passed you weren't allowed to appoint a designee to do it so now a superintendent is allowed to have a designee to work with the criminal records checks um along those lines 432 adds human trafficking to the list that will prevent employment in a school i think and hope that one was a no-brainer schools will

052have for 500 i'm i think this is great schools will have the ability to freeze leftover foods and send them home to families with food security concerns so that one is great and then we do have a 320 which passed which is um a graduation certificate is now conditioned upon a 70 or higher score in the u.s citizenship test so i didn't want to i wanted to know if you wanted to talk about any of these before i go to the next set we're good okay i'll go to the next one so we're looking these are the ones that are in there in between house and senate and they're in the in between land so these are some that i thought would be pertinent to um to grant them and to things that are happening

053in the upper valley with local districts so hb 140 is a bill that it would grant the private rate of action for bullying or cyber bullying which would include the recovery of attorney's fees and court costs this has passed the house and is now in the senate committee hb 388 um which comes up i think every single year it's manifest education hardship which is another bill allowing private school contracts um and then also a right of a hearing if denial is based upon child's disability this has passed the house and its report's been filed in the senate hb 282 is private schools as tuition programs which removes the religious exception from a law allowing school districts to create tuition agreements with private schools and it just generally further loosens the language in terms of requirements

054of those other other schools private or religious schools in terms of requirements for reporting back to the um public school of the home district this has passed the house and a report is filed in the senate uh hb69 is a bill saying uh granting displaying the national motto in schools this has passed the house and is in senate committee this one also has in its language that if anybody sues the school for separation of church and state issues that the board and state doe will back them in any kind of legal action hb 108 allows full disclosure of non-public minutes in detail unless the information itself is otherwise protected for confidentiality this has passed the house and is now in senate committee and hb 581 requiring the burden of proof for special education disputes to

055be on the school district so school district responsibility and the state doe establishing a committee to review disputes and review materials this has passed the house and a report has been filed in the senate so i'm going to stop share again because that's slide two of three just to see if you have any questions about those um i don't understand the legal term was it private right of action in the first one right so right now if somebody has an issue with bullying or cyber bullying it's under it's held at the school level and things may go through the doe or there could be a hearing at the doe or before the state board or for such things a private right of action would mean that somebody could go get an attorney and sue the

056school district for negligence in failing to protect their child from bullying or cyber bullying does that include somebody wanting to sue the bullyer no they would be only suing the school district so it would be a private rate of action that anybody could go out and find an attorney to sue the school district saying that they were negligent and failed to protect their child from bullying or cyber bullying and seek damages attorneys fees and court costs through that lawsuit cindy about the national motto is that in god we trust and so can you just did you say that they're requiring it to be no if if it's in present in the school and someone sues for separation of church and state the state will basically back up the school's right to have in god we

057trust on the wall right and that you as a board it specifically states you as a board can have a permanent sign made and put up in the school and if somebody sues you for that for separation of church and state laws that in this bill it says that the doe and the state board will back you in it is i understand all right denise try again am i on yeah um kind of to tap on to leslie's i guess my question is would we be required to display this motto no no this is just if the board chooses to put this up someplace you can you have the permission to do that and you will have support if you're sued okay there's just a lot of things i'm not going to say should i

058move on to round three okay so round three is the biggie and this is where there's actually a hearing taking place right now as we speak and these are the major bills so there's an omnibus bill which was under hb1558 i'm going to a workshop on this i think it's on may 13th because there's a lot of intricacies to this but this is stricter requirements for school suspensions and expulsions requirements for school safety programs to contain a plan for responding for violent acts and references the importance of having multi-tiered systems of support for behavior so this will really be um intricate in terms of specifically 504 in special education discipline so there was one workshop that was titled you're going to need a bigger boat which is sort of the the message that they're trying

059to send is that this bill is going to require a lot of changes in terms of discipline for any students especially who are identified the other big major bills that are happening right now is where we're talking about hb one or two it doesn't really matter which one you're talking about which is the major budget and that's the discussion that's happening currently so what's happened is that several key bills have actually been rolled into the main budget so i'm sure that you've all been reading about hb 544 which is banning the discussion of divisive top concepts such as systemic racism or gender discrimination and you also may have there's been a lot about this in the press um so that would there's also been a huge um open letter that's been signed by over 200

060businesses in new hampshire institutions saying that we don't believe that this is good for new hampshire so an interesting turn of events is taking place where instead of trying to remove 544 from the bill they might try to also make a public private division saying that well private businesses and private um industries can you know not sign on to this and but all public institutions which would be k-12 public schools in our university system would have to adhere to the ban on discussion of divisive concepts so basically this is saying that you cannot have any instruction on systemic racism or gender discrimination what's also rolled into there is the what is being called the education property tax relief um what this really does is it isn't relief what it is doing is it's basically downshifting

061the tax burden back to the local district um and this is i think the first estimate was that if we look at the numbers that were skewed greatly because of kovid because of students you know entering districts moving from districts homeschooling remote instruction when they were in school when they weren't in school for example a free and reduced lunch the enrollment differentiated aids school districts are going to lose a lot of money if this property tax relief goes through there's also the debate in here about the swept tax which is um the the legislature added 100 million dollars to the swept um tax to offset the sub tax which means that that actually becomes a lower number for districts but if you're a district that's really property poor that actually takes significant funds away from

062you so you if you're a property poor district you might normally get a million dollars and because of this property tax relief you could wind up with you know 150 000 like it really will hit districts really hard the other thing that has been rolled into hb one and two are the education freedom accounts which again are the voucher bills that we continue to hear about there's one for the senate which is sb 130 and one from the house which is hb 20 and those are basically they would make new hampshire if they pass they would make new hampshire the largest voucher program in the united states there's great concern on the side of finances in terms of these vouchers and there's great concern in terms of equity um with these voucher programs another thing

063that's a concern is that these voucher programs we would be basically sending money our adequacy money to the scholarship agency in new york in new york city and they would be taking a fee for everyone process so they get a lot of our tax dollars and then they would be providing these vouchers and scholarships to people so it's also that funneling of money that i think a lot of people are feeling uncomfortable with one bill that is sb 3135 that's trying to counter especially the 90 million cut is for school funding there's a bill moving forward that is hoping that each district will have the ability to look at the adequacy money they would get over the past two years and be awarded the higher of the two amounts so that districts aren't punished basically

064because of coveted changes in enrollment because of people who everybody's eligible for free and reduced lunch so do you get that free and reduced lunch aid and all of those other kind of things maybe special ed differentiated aid that you might not get because people have decided to do different programs this year so sb 135 is a way to try and help districts not be punished for covet and still get the adequacy money that we would need to move forward next year and that last third slide is a an earful i know but those are the big ones that are that are really being debated right now and they're wrestling with some tough things um what is your sense i mean obviously i listen to what's going on specifically about i won't get the one

065right but the you know divisive concepts conversation do you have any sense of what i mean there's a difference between what we can do as individual citizens and what we can do as a board but i would i'm just curious if you could get say a little bit about what we might be able to do other than the individual responsibility of letting our representatives know how we feel yeah i mean that's the big thing is letting your representatives know how you feel you can go online and look at that open letter as a board you can write you can ask me to write something and submit it um about any of these things about anything from the devices concepts to the motto to the if you if you want your statement going forward as a

066board i can submit that as you know as we've done in the past there are pretty easy online ways where you can go on and type in the number of a bill and just say that you are in favor or you oppose you can check a box if you'd like to speak and you put your name and you submit so they they've provided some um some pretty straightforward accessible avenues for people to voice their opinions about these and there's also like 200 other bills that are coming through so these are the major ones that i think grantham would want to know about right now um is there any sense on whether that um divisive concepts bill is likely to pass so it's interesting because sununu has said that he's not in favor of the divisive

067concepts part but to do that he has to you know amend change not past the budget you know it gets really complicated because it's rolled into the whole budget and then there's also this move where they might try and change the language or amend the language to say well private things can do this and public institutions have to do this so it's still very much in flux but i i am i'm in the the signatures on that open letter are still coming in terms of you know i know that i know that the governor is very interested in being able to bring business to new hampshire and there are a lot of businesses who are saying this isn't good for new hampshire this doesn't help us attract businesses and employees and that's what we need

068right now so i think he's really taken that to heart the um school board and i don't know if folks saw this but the school board association is having a workshop on that omnibus bill too to sort of help break that down at the school board level because there is so much in that one yeah there's a lot britney was that a webinar do you remember yes okay it is yep yep and the um senate finance hearing that sydney mentioned that's going on right now for the budget the hb1 and two they had 220 people sign up to speak so lots of folks were speaking on that one so i think in the next couple of weeks we'll see and hear more about either changes that are coming down the road or sort of what

069the the mood of the room is in terms of that one yeah the public private debate is strong um you know that as it is in every legislative season too so you know even earlier when i was talking about whether or not we are required to have a remote option the state has already signed a contract with a company called prenda i don't know if any of you have heard prenda um the state has the commissioners already signed a contract that these could be individual learning pods private learning pods um that take adequacy money and with a little bit of research at our meeting yesterday we've the superintendents have learned that prenda is under investigation in arizona for fraud um because there's no certified teachers um there's a two companies and one takes half the

070money and then prenda takes the other half for the curriculum but it's just done in people's houses so it's a real concern in terms of oversight of new hampshire taxpayer dollars okay any other questions or thoughts on this and i'm you know i'm sure you guys see it we do get the sort of weekly legislative update from the school board association but those are getting big and um lengthy and full right now so i think it is good to have sort of the um thank you sydney for doing the work of sort of picking out some of the ones that are either more likely to have an impact or will have a greater impact because there are there are quite a few out there that i think you know are working their way through but

071aren't going to wind up going too far so we don't need to spend too much time and effort on any of those there are already 70 that were in expedia legislate yeah but i do want to tell you that you know i have this this big chart and then see we see what moves forward and i have them color coded so i decided today that this is like my march madness so that's when it starts and like this is my bracket so i'm not a basketball person but this is the bracket that i follow at this time of the year you are not alone in the state of people who do that with new hampshire politics all right any other questions or thoughts on that for the legislative review i'll just say it sounds like

072when you all do what we're already doing which is paying attention and keeping informed and as things i think as certain parts of what you shared with us and you move forward we probably will have more conversation about if we want to write letters and that sort of thing because i have a feeling some of us have strong feelings but we're it's a little early to maybe weigh in just yet yeah there's still a lot in flux and there's still a lot in that in between stage and you can like sydney mentioned you can and the the school board association usually does send out a link for being able to log in to do the um you know support or oppose on bills and you know please do you can check that you are an

073elected official because we all are elected officials and then it does ask you who you're representing so you can just say that you're representing yourself so you can put both of those things in there um and and then say if you know if you did want to um you know speak or not so okay our next agenda item is a discussion for the playground committee all right so as we um it's we haven't yet sort of recapped our vote from the playground so as we move into next year you know to hit the ground running we did have a majority vote in favor of the playground bond it just wasn't enough to meet the 60 but we're very close i think we're only 21 votes short so we need to start mobilizing and thinking about

074what will happen for next year so the two things that i'd like to ask you is if you're alright with reinstating fundraising or if you'd like to continue to hold off that would be the first question and the second one in terms of planning and moving forward there are basically two paths we can move forward with one would be we move forward with the bond issue as it was this year for the 2223 budget um probably doing you know a little bit of a harder sell than we did this year this year i know that the sentiment was we should put it out there and and and have the taxpayers weigh in but i think if we're moving into next year we know that this is something that probably can't wait much longer and then

075the other option would be we do have money in the playground account we could put out an rfp or an rfq for a landscape architect to complete comprehensive plans and by that i really mean plans and specs that we could actually put out to bid to a contractor so really complete you know site plans every single last detail the plans from the estimate that i've gotten from people would cost about somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 40 000 for that total complete set of plans because that's also going to include all the surveying all of the where is the septic what do we need to move the design everything it could you know the the con is that it could overall potentially cost more to do it this way since it's not one comprehensive

076project we might you know wind up paying one person for this and then contracting it out and having that other person working with somebody else's plans there's always the danger that that will cost more in the long run um the pro would be it could give more accurate cost information and design information to the community um which we know that's a lot of people have asked about this year so those are kind of the two things on the table with looking forward to that next strategic plan step of getting a better playground for gvs so if we could start addressing maybe fundraising first and then we can move on to what you might like to do about plans or no plans uncomfortable with us i think reinstating fundraising within our community i think given that

077the vote was close and a lot of parents spoke on in support and and of the need for it sooner rather than later i think there's an appetite and people can do as little or as much as they're comfortable with think i would agree i mean if if we're going to go back for the bond next year um i think at the very least we should you know focus on some fundraising before then just to you know help with that help with that effort yeah i agree so the money that we have in the fund now could be used for some of these proposals for costs is that what i'm hearing yeah we do have enough to cover the cost of really uh comprehensive plans and then we could take those plans and get a

078more accurate cost estimate for the bond prior to next february which is when you would be approving that warrant article it seemed like a lot of the feedback and the questions we got during that process was um would be answered by that um you know and i think part of that sort of you know community relationship and and showing that we really took that to heart and heard folks you know concern about sort of going into the project um without a true sense of how much it was going to cost just having based it on um you know similar projects in the area on numbers that we had been given specifically i think it would be a really nice even if it does wind up costing more long term i think there's a will get

079farther in terms of creating that community relationship and answering some of those questions for people um that would be really positive and i mean frankly it'll give us more information to work on too and maybe some more something to use to sort of drum up some more fundraising and some support like to say here's what it could be you know here's what we're we're looking at like here's you know if you think of some of that fundraising when they show you the picture of what the fancy building is going to look like you know if you can see what you're actually helping to to raise money for or to fund it makes it a little bit more real yeah i mean in my opinion this work has to be done regardless whether it's done after

080the bonds issued or before the bond um the only way you're going to get contractors to provide accurate estimates is if you provide them full plans up front the more gray area you provide them the higher their bids are going to be because they they need to compensate for that um so i i mean i i think there's a a better chance of spending the money now may save us down the road um then end up costing us more um i i agree with ed and that's what i was thinking as well that it's going to be more expensive the longer we wait um and i don't know if this would be useful information or not but i wonder if there's a way of kind of estimating how many days we can't use the playground

081for the kids in a typical year i'm sure we could because there we could do emails for indoor recess again and and right now it's all of the days for part of the playground there's part of it that is roped off and they can't use it all because there's a climbing structure that's not safe anymore so for part of the playground it's all of the days yeah i would be comfortable with starting to to put our toes back in the water fundraising and moving forward with getting some plans in place okay any other questions or thoughts on that would just be two different votes one would be to reinstate fundraising and one would be about the plans okay so we would need a motion to um reinstate fundraising for the playground project moving forward okay

082i have a motion from leslie and a second from denise and so if you're in favor please say i and if you're opposed say nay christine bye denise hi ed hi leslie hi and brittany i all right and then we would need a motion to move forward to um get a it will will it be an our it'll be an rfp correct it'll be an rfp because we're not just doing qualifications we're actually requesting a product yep so um move forward with an rfp for uh the design for the playground project second i have a motion from leslie in a second from christine so if you're in favor please say i if you're opposed say nay christine i denise hi ed hi leslie hi and brittany i all right and just i see a bunch

083of people on the playground committee who are here with us tonight so get ready we're going to be meeting again thank you playground committee all right um our next uh agenda item are nominations so we are taking action on at least two nominations that have come forward to the board so sydney i'll let you introduce and nominate those folks i'm very excited to um nominate a new special education case manager teacher this is um for pat canning's retirement who were sad to see go but happy to see her off into retirement and this person is kelly o'reilly who will be joining us from the plainfield school district so we're very excited to have kelly come on board in addition she has also agreed to work with our summer program so that she can get on

084board and get to know the kids and get to know gvs even before the year starts so we're additionally excited about that in addition um i have a nomination for a reading math interventionist this is for lynn wallace's position that is now reading and math and i am happy to nominate samantha hutchins our grade one teacher to the reading math interventionist position she is going to bring not just a wealth of knowledge about reading and math but she's been doing a lot of work on being an interventionist and certainly her history at gvs is stellar and we know that she's going to be the perfect person to move into this role um just this is not an official nomination but i'm also really excited that fran sheller has agreed to be our part-time secretary next

085year so i'm sure everybody knows fran and we're so excited that she's going to be back with us on a more permanent basis so good news all around there i feel like she keeps trying to tiptoe away from us and then we just like we're not lying sneaker back in all right so we need a motion to accept the nomination of kelly o'reilly for special education teacher and case manager second all right so i have a motion from leslie in a second from denise and so if you're in favor please say aye and if you're opposed say nay christine i denise hi ed hi leslie hi brittany i all right welcome aboard kelly and um we need a motion to uh accept the nomination for samantha hutchins for reading and math interventionist so moved emphatically

086second all right so leslie uh made a motion emphatically and was seconded by christine and so if you're in favor please say aye and if you're opposed say nay christine i denise hi ed i leslie i was barrett's favorite teacher and brittany i all right i would say welcome aboard mrs hutchins but you're already here so we are still in terms of hiring we are still pending final um decisions for library media specialists so we're working in the final stages of that and then also because mrs hutchins is moving into this new position we will be advertising tomorrow after tonight's meeting for another classroom teacher and i would just like to say thank you to the um committees to the folks who who did this work and a lot of it was happening uh while

087also reopening for five days so thank you to the teachers and the staff and um you know community volunteers and everybody who helped on this commit these committees and the ones that are still out there so we really appreciate that and thanks for bringing forward some really good candidates for us we love that we're excited okay so our next agenda item is um discussing if we would like to have a retreat this coming summer and um if we're ready to sort of think about what what kind of work we'd like to do with that and um what shape that would like to take i will just float it out there first to say that i think we should have one this year we're in one of still in that situation where things are changing fast

088and often and i think um you know in previous years which it feels silly to say because i feel like it's been so many previous years we've been able to take that sort of time off over the summer but i think we're still in a position that being able having touching base once a month is really important as things change and shift so i would be in favor of us having a summer retreat and i'm open to what other folks think about that and if anyone has any topics they think it would be good for us to look at during that time what came to mind my mind is um is to understand more about the social emotional learning program um i've also been thinking of almost like a combo platter if you will of

089what we had talked about before covent of sort of like the community climate you know we've kind of been going down that road and then sydney some of what you propose it's almost like a combo of um the pre-existing issue and then i mean or not issue but just like the climate conversation and then moving into like the new normal encompasses so many things um i was as you were talking about hiring the part-time social worker i was just thinking so much to myself of how your comments about supporting families you know the kids and their parents is going to be important we're moving into this next stage where it's almost harder because it's coming down to like value judgments and safety feelings and um it's everything is so politicized that i just i'm very

090conscious of moving into this next coming summer and school year with our families and us trying to come together as a community and respect each other's feelings and try to have conversations around what's best for kids how to support it's just like a big swirl so it's i guess you could say it's a climate community climate conversation that i'd like to us to kind of think about both back like in hindsight and then projecting forward because i think we're gonna have other hard conversations um even probably before july but you know there are only so many things that are resolved so i'll just put it out there there's like a bunch of things in that comment but the only thing that i i would request is that if we're looking at that climate culture discussion

091we need some kind of a backbone for it so we need to do where we are all you know looking at a podcast or doing a book like a read together or or even video anything like that but i think um we need to really focus it so if you all want to provide suggestions we can have something that we all um get together and can share as the as the catalyst for that discussion if i floated that out there i'll give it some pride and look around what what are folks thoughts about when this would happen in july just trying to look at my calendar my calendar doesn't go to july on the wall well we usually try and avoid the week of the fourth and the fourth is a sunday so we could

092do the sixth the 13th the 20th if you want to keep it on a tuesday it doesn't have to be on a tuesday but our usual board meeting if we were staying on schedule would be the sixth in that monday before the fifth is a holiday so would this be separate from a board meeting i assume no usually we just replace the july board meeting with a retreat i'm in support of the retreat i just feel like we're in such a nebulous time with re-entering travel and like you said your calendar doesn't go to july i feel like my brain doesn't go past today um it sounds like folks are in favor of doing this why don't we plan for at our june meeting to unless folks need more lead time than that but at

093our june meeting we could have some suggestions for that sort of like focal or anchoring document or point and um folks can bring their calendars and have some dates that could work for them for july and this would be in place of the board meeting i think what we have right now on on our on our the website says that we were going to have our board retreat on july 7th which is interesting because that's a wednesday um but we certainly don't have to stick to that so i'm going to up a newbie question here what uh what kind of time length are we talking about for the retreat is that we is it an all day thing or we've we've traditionally i mean it can be anything that you want it to be but

094we've traditionally kept it to about three hours so not longer than a regular board meeting gotcha and in the past we've done you know like maybe we've done it a little bit earlier and had a meal together or something like that so you know had a little bit more flexibility in terms of like kind of the structure of it okay all right so back all right so regrouping media will finalize yep okay all right so our next agenda item is um the second reading and adoption of policies j h i m g and i-m-g-a so these are the these are the second readings we've had feedback on them it's the revision of the attendance policy i do want to say that i've been in contact with a parent in the community about the animals in

095schools who asked for a suggestion which i think makes a lot of sense which is that the you know the classroom experience for a child with owlbees isn't just the classroom it extends to other areas so the request is that the if there are animals in schools or if there are um therapy dogs that they are not in carpeted areas so that we can keep kind of that kind of dander and fur out of any carpeted areas and that we have the ability to clean with the preference of course in nice weather being outside or maybe in the outdoor classroom or at least in classroom or office spaces where we have the hard floor we can make sure that it's safe for everybody so i would i would be in favor of adding that language

096that sounds great and thank you to that parent for bringing that forward any other questions or thoughts on any of those policies okay and sydney that one so which uh which policy would that be amending would that be for the img or is that would be that be an imgn and imga so it wouldn't have so when we're looking at the service animal policy we can't make any changes to that because that's an adb requirement so we would only i'm just trying to get to the right page in case you want me to put it up um we would only be amending [Music] img okay so imga would stay as is and that language is all um disability law anyway so img is we would just add language that um we stay away from carpeted

097areas and that whenever possible it's outside or in the outdoor classroom or on a floor that can be easily cleaned okay so we would need a motion to for the second reading and adoption of policy img as amended removed second all right we have a motion from leslie in a second from christine so if you're in favor please say aye if you're opposed say nay christine i denise hi ed hi leslie and brittany i and then we would need a motion for the second reading and adoption of policies j-h and i-m-g-a second all right so i have a motion from leslie in a second from denise so if you're in favor please say aye if you're opposed say nay christine i denise hi ed leslie hi i was letting the dog in speaking of good

098timing did we have any input on the policy and brittany i all right perfect all right so our last item for the discussion and action part of the agenda will be um the area meeting so the area meeting is next tuesday and we just need to know who's going to attend from grantham and it is um it's your basic agenda we're back to the basic area meeting agenda which is a check-in to see how votes are going in the different districts on the new area agreement and plans for next year is it a zoom meeting it's a zoom meeting so six o'clock next tuesday i already had it on my calendar so i can be there i can be there as well we don't need a quorum for this one um but if you if

099anybody else would like to join please feel free i think that's a concord day for brian so i'd rather not try to do that um anything that the board in particular would like us to bring to that meeting or you know uh get from folks for from that meeting we'll just do a general report back at the at our next board meeting okay sounds good all right so our next we do have one more vote that we need to take uh just i just want to do it while we're still in the discussion and accent action session section um you do need to officially vote to adopt the dhhs travel guidance because of change from our continuity of learning plan so i don't know if you want to have any discussion on that but it

100is my recommendation that we adopt it thank you i meant to do that after we talked about the instructional model it's okay i made a note and brenda didn't even have to tell me what's the change in the travel guidance so we had stuck with the original travel guidance which was a quarantine period outside of new england um and that was a lot to do with people going a lot of different places over april break the variance um the case per hundred thousand rising our positivity rising those kind of things but the the commissioner has said that there will be no distinction between the public school guidance and dhhs there's a legal ruling on that that officially came out and my recommendation would be that we go ahead and adopt the dhhs guidance which is

101just we follow um domestic and international quarantine guidance as put forward by the basically they're aligned with the cdc so they're still quarantined for international travel there are no quarantine requirements for domestic travel i know any other questions or discussions on that i know it feels like another big change and it feels like another move forward we did discuss this quite a bit at our progress monitoring committee and you know we talked about how there are definitely certain areas that are hot you know and that that can be a concern but those might not neces those could be in new england um and we talked about needing to rely on personal responsibility and everybody taking the care that they need to take i i am hoping i have to tell you that this surveillance testing

102works out for us because we might at least help families have some peace of mind if they went someplace that we could do some surveillance testing for them before they come back and not have to have them go through the the full pcr test but um again we're still researching how we can make that happen i think we have to recognize too that we aren't always going to know when some families are traveling and where they're going i'm in support of the change in language all right so then we'll need a motion to um what would we be doing we would be following the dhhs guidelines uh regarding travel regarding travel second okay so we have a motion from leslie and a second from ed to follow the dhhs guidelines regarding travel so if you

103are in favor please say aye if you're opposed say nay christine aye denise hi ed leslie i and brittany i all right so now we will move to the principles report and we have a principles report in our board packet and sydney i don't know if um kristen wanted to add anything else to that or join us for that or if she's going to submit it as submitted as written perfect all right any comments from the the board on the principal's report and he just comments for for um kristen who is joining us by listening only tonight i i have to ask tell me about the gong oh it was great so kristen installed a gong in the main office so after people came back to school after getting their vaccination they got to hit

104the gong i love that did ask her like it apparently is something she just had around the house and like who doesn't have a gong at home and you could just bring it in but yeah it was really fun for people so it was a nice way to to celebrate our vaccinations um they do they do something like that at norris cotton when people finish their cancer treatment i think you ring a bell i still love seeing the pictures of the kids out in the woods and we hear a lot at um our house about how the woods at gvs are full of kindergartners i like the artwork the faces all right well thank you it was a great look you could tell how much is happening at the school by the length of the

105principal's report there was so much to take in and so it was very uh thorough and and good to see in here all right so our next item is the superintendent's report um i will basically submit my report as written and i think we have gone over most of it in different areas of tonight's meeting anyway unless you have any questions for me oh do you know about cases in grantham i haven't checked we had a two-week stretch where you know we were staying steady and then i think this last week we have three new cases um just over i think in this last seven week period but we did have a nice stretch of steadiness there um i do know just from the notices that i get that lebanon is still a concern and

106lebanon schools are still a concern with cases it seems to be more in their elementary and middle level right now though i wonder if we're starting to see some of those high schoolers that have been able to get vaccinated all right any other questions or comments for sydney okay thank you all right our next agenda item is the consent agenda any changes or um amendments to the consent agenda i just had a question on the expenditures report on page two this was oh private school tuition and residential costs do we have an out out-of-district placement a residential placement we do so it's it's only private just because it's not a public uh special education institution it's technically private so that's place there just to be in the right accounting line but it is uh we

107do have out of district so are those funds coming from the trust fund no no this is something that we budgeted for last year um but what you'll see is that it's budgeted in a different line i believe it was originally budgeted under secondary tuition under 1200 and then for accounting since it's technically a private institution for the audit we wound up moving it into the private tuition line but the money is there it was budgeted for just because under budget the amount budgeted it says zero and then there are these big numbers so yeah no i think if you um i'm looking sideways on mine if you look at um secondary tuition you'll see that there was 280 000 budgeted and zero spent so that's where it was actually budgeted with nothing spent so

108then in the next line you'll see that there's zero budgeted in the money spent so they cancel each other out it was putting that in the correct line okay got it thanks sure any other questions for the consent agenda okay then we would need a motion to approve the consent agenda moved second all right so we have a motion from leslie in a second from christine and if you're in favor of approving the consent agenda please say aye and if you're opposed say nay christine i ed hi denise hi leslie hi and brittany i all right and we do have a non-public session tonight um so what that means is the board will go into non-public and then we will come out of non-public to adjourn the meeting and as always i promise we won't

109do anything interesting when we come back to adjourn it but if you would like to come and join us back here to watch us say goodnight you can um our next meeting is june 1st um and let's see sydney how much i'm trying to see what time it is and we have a few things to talk about tonight and non-public correct we do although i do want to say that there is a potential for a vote after we come out of nonpublic just oh okay there is we don't we don't know it depends on nonpublic but i just don't want anybody to think that it's only adjournment there is a the potential of a vote thank you and i did know that i should have said that um yeah so um prop do you think

110nine yep would that be so so we will come back to the public meeting at nine potentially for um one vote and then adjournment and uh cindy what are we going into non-public under tonight okay so we have to go under several different things yep so we are going in under rsa 91 a 3 and then it's going to be 2 a and e okay um so the board will leave the um public session we'll come back at nine and for the board we do have another link for the non-public in our email so you should follow the link that sydney sent us for the non-public meeting to get into that one it will be a different meeting than this so um we'll need a vote to go into non-public sec session under rsa 91a

1113 2a and rsa 2 91a32b all right so i have a i'm going to say i have a motion from leslie in a second from ed and if you're in favor of entering non-public please say aye if you're opposed say nay christine hi ed hi denise leslie hi and brittany i all right so we will adjourn this meeting we'll come back here at nine and uh we will go into non-public now we'll come back here at nine and before we sign off happy teacher appreciation week yes thank you you