001Okay. Call the um call the school district northwest board directors meeting August 18th to order. So it's 6 o'clock. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? discussion changes. Second. All >> in favor? >> I Okay, agenda. Um Asha had something else come up tonight that she had to attend. So, we are skipping our board education for right now and we'll slot her in at a later date. So, we'll move on to superintendent report. Well, I first wanted um I didn't know if you had anything you wanted to share. Um or you want to wait for your first student report? Um yeah, I can talk a little bit about it. >> Um over the summer I spent July in working Washington DC in the US Senate, which is super exciting. Um and I was working
002I was sponsored by Bernie Sanders. I was a Senate page with um 30 other resident pages and we have some commuter pages. So, kids from all across the country come to do the program. Um, and we work on the Senate for assisting senators and working with the Democratic or Republican courtrooms. Um, and I had the opportunity to meet so many incredible people and um, got to, yeah, really have some great connections with people I never thought I'd be able to meet. Um, and I did all sorts of different tasks and got to attend amazing events and and watch some really incredible speeches. So, it was just a great time and I was really grateful for the experience. Um, >> yeah, >> sounds like fun. >> Yeah, she's ready for school to start. >> Yes. >>
003Yeah. And she has access to her phone and computers again. >> Yes. Yes. I was really cut off. >> You weren't even allowed to check in at night or >> No. No. Like there's you don't have any access to Wi-Fi or or cell phone. There's a landline phone in the room that used. >> That must have been an interesting experience in and of itself. >> Yeah, definitely. >> Oh, good. Healthy. >> Yeah. >> Awesome. Well, thank you. Um my report is short. Um we start uh back to school this week. Um in fact, if you're interested, you're all welcome to attend the um convocation which is Wednesday morning at 8:20. need to actually start from 8. Coffee from 8 to 8:20 and then kickoff starts at at 8:20. I won't be there. I'm actually headed
004to California. My son is getting married this weekend, so I'm very excited about that. Um, but I won't be back until Monday, so I won't be there or on vacation this time around. But Gabe um, and Laura have it well planned and I think it will go really smoothly. Among the many things we'll do that day, we'll welcome new staff and I've listed them all here. you approve all the licensed hires. You don't um approve there are educator hires generally speaking or other administration. Um so this is kind of the complete list for your reference. You've seen many of these names but not all of them. Um and they kind of trickled through on the agendas and so forth. So I've also included if it's someone that was in a different school and just transferred
005to a new location, that's included on there as well. So we have a a nice big group. Um there were about 20 folks in this room today who are our new teacher mentor training. Um so our mentor our mentees our new teachers and their mentors for the most part um were here in attendance and then our new teachers tomorrow we'll have a full day of orientation um mostly with Gabe, Laura and the principal um and our mentors will continue day two of the mentor training here with um uh the teacher trainer from Vermont NEA who does a lot of these types of trainings statewide. So, um, it was a good day for them. I'm looking forward to having them back tomorrow. So, you know, it's already kind of started, but officially starts on Wednesday. And
006if you're available, please do stop by. A nice event. So, um, Mark included in his and I included in mine information about the upcoming VSA, VSA annual conference, which is held this year on October 30th at the Double Tree in Burlington. Um it's a really great um event that's a mix of um really high quality and interesting keynote presenters each year that they fall nationally um and then more locally relevant um interactive workshops um from our peers across the state. So Mark and I in fact have presented before um or we're on a panel I guess um and um so it's usually people that are grappling with many of the same issues that you may might be as well or presenting something that you know really interesting and innovative that they've done in their district
007and give you ideas about something you know maybe we would do here. Um so it's it's a worthwhile event. In the past it's been two full days and this year they're doing it a little bit differently. It's like an evening uh followed by a full day. And being that it's in Burlington, it's often in Lake Mory, which is, you know, it's a hall and a commitment to get over there and be there. But being that it's closer, it might make it more accessible for folks who attend even just the one day or just evening. Um so just something to think about. I do highly re recommend it at least once if you can make yourself available. Um, and then I just wanted to share um, schoolboard resources and general information. This is the same set
008of resources that Glory put together last year, but you may have lost your, you know, link to it or whatever. Um, so, uh, just wanted to include that again. It's a good place to just if you're looking for something, chances are it lives in one of these two places. And then lastly, we had one um, video security camera request in at the end of June. Um, we assisted Virginia PD with an investigation that uh they were doing. But that's it. Any any questions for me about charter school or new staff or No, but thank you for marking the staff that are transferring from a different role. >> Sure. >> The competition is kind of enjoyable to watch. I usually show up for the first hour and then they go off and do real work and
009I leave. But it's nice to think who's been here for five years, 10 years. >> And who's our longest standing employee now with Northwest? Do you know? >> No. >> Lorie Martin. >> Oh gosh. >> Who's the keynote? >> We don't have a keynote here. Um it's hard to find someone. And with our grant funding being in jeopardy for a good some time, um we didn't even know that we would have money for anything. So, and I will say I I don't probably um give you much insight into what it takes to really plan these, you know, inservice days. And Gabe does a tremendous amount of work um including pulling off having um refreshments in the morning, coffee um for, you know, 200 hungry people and then lunch. Um that's a lot and um it
010goes off without a hitch every year. So, um, shout out to >> um, business manager report. >> Yeah, I think Stephanie's online. Steph, thanks for joining us. >> Of course. I'm really sorry that I'm not there. I'm feeling under the weather. Um, my report is short and sweet. Um, right now we are wrapping up our stat book and uh, getting ready for our audit. We're also very close to closing FY25. We just have a little bit to go. Um, we've had a lot of transitions in the business office as you guys know. Um, we have a new fiscal analyst, Michael Cardinal. He's doing really well. Uh, our tenative date right now for our audit is September 9th through the 11th and we actually just got our checklist um on late Friday. So, I'll update my
011um little board report. Uh we have one donation to be approved um from the New York Life Insurance from a walk-athon for $5,000 for Virginia's Union Elementary. Um and unfortunately I don't have any financial reports to end FY25 because we are very very close of closing it. We're just not there yet and I didn't want to share them when they're not final. Um, but everything else is doing well and all of our um, reports and everything were to the finance committee on time. But if anyone has questions, I'm completely open. >> Any question for Stephanie? >> Sounds like you're free to go. >> Yeah. Good luck with the audit. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Thank you. Hopefully it goes swell. It will be fine. >> Thank you. >> All right. So, to me, apologize. At
012least I got a reporting this didn't finish writing until this morning linked. So, it's there now. You can read it at your leisure. But essentially welcoming a new school year, reiterating the fact that we're sort of in stage two of our general ideas of how we get through our year. So we sort of did generate our idea generations back in May and June. Now we're sort of got focused on what we think is going to be important as we start to develop budget and then we'll get to budget time in December and January. Um I also said that there's the BSBA. The annual conference is the 29th and 30th at the Burlington. There's also the regional meeting which will be on Zoom which is on September 30th. Uh it's where we just kind of talk
013about Addison in general. And there'll probably also be an open seat. So, if anyone is considering being on the VSBA board, um Susanna Buck, who's in AdSense Central, probably not going to step up again. I reached out and talked to the chair over at Mount A. Suz's going to talk to the chair at Lincoln, see if anybody there has interest, anybody here has interest. I don't know whether or not two people from the same school is the best, but >> um it is an interesting board. I I do enjoy working with that group. So, it's something to consider. Um there's also a BSBA webinar on September 11th about the proposal or the resolutions that have been proposed. So, if any of you are interested in there were 11 resolutions that made it through to be
014considered and those will be voted on at the annual meeting. Um the super evaluation committee is doing its work. Um and we should probably have our reports ready for the full board to discuss at our next regular meeting during the retreat. And then finally the redistricting task force at the state level has already had its first meeting. It has its second meeting tomorrow. I've listed the other dates. You click on the August 19th link. It'll take you to the the main web page. Even if you don't have time to watch these six hour meetings, u you might want to key in on the minutes as they come through, see what happens there. So, it is it's going to be a big impact on what we do. And it may be that nothing comes of it,
015but it's still fascinating to watch the machinations of legislative action. >> Are the minutes posted that? >> Yeah. down in those like on second page there's that their main web page you can get to the minutes or the video and there's all sorts of stuff you know it is the state of Vermont's web page so it's really clunky and awkward to find anything but there is stuff there >> they um just as a reminder they have to deliver their report to them first and it must contain three options um >> I think it's no more No, no more than three, >> but one of them has to have S is use >> um which is to help accommodate the interstate and uh the private whatever we call historicmies. >> Um so the meetings are you
016know they're purposeful and that that's not very many meetings if you consider >> that charge. Um they have a lot of work to do in my opinion. So >> they don't have a facilitator yet. >> They were they were going to try to go up. >> They did and it closed last Thursday. >> So we'll see if anybody rises to the surface. One of the fun tools here. We have time to feel like you have nothing else to do. You go into the lab their first meeting has the resources and the state map has created a tool where you can go in. It's got the state and create your own districts. click on all the different towns or cities and it'll tell you how many students would be in there, what total amount of money
017would be there to try and match the 4,000 8,000 how many per student. So, if you wanted to develop your own let's have 14 districts, what would it be? Can you play with it? One of the things that occurred to me today because someone on the committee actually reached out to me and was asking some questions about capacity and I went back to our 2020 report from Nestec where they gave us um some school reconsideration options um because they had done a lot of work on capacity at that time and I was reminded that capacity can really be considered in two ways. You can base it on the current configuration of the school. So for example, Ferrisburg has eight interchangeable classrooms and three classrooms that are being used as alter, you know, alternatively from classrooms.
018So you can take that footprint and then consider your class size policy and say this is the capacity of the building. But if you look at the fire marshall code for the square footage of the building, it's it's a number quite a bit larger. So that's that is to say that if we did some redesign inside the building, we could fit more people into the building. So even a question as simple as what is the capacity of your high school or your middle school or your elementary school could be being answered differently is my concern by people who are self-reporting to these committee members that are working at a really quick pace. So you know it just it concerns me. It's it's not unlike when they want to give teacher student ratio and some people
019are counting you know interventionists within that count and others aren't and you know we need um more guidelines for how to answer these questions um the same so that they actually have good data to work from. So that's just something that occurred to me today and I did say that to the committee. I gave the two different the fire marshall capacity and the sort of base and current footprint. Um I didn't give them the current the current um enrollment, but I have that for you and I'll share that with you at the retreat like all of that data. And then the state start the renapping process they did like a few years ago. >> Well, they did a facilities um I think you might be thinking about the facilities review that they did and that
020was more about the um >> the age of the roof and >> prior to that maybe >> because they do have a really friendship was still here >> they were talking about mapping the mapping there. I didn't know if they actually did >> I don't think they did. >> No. If I'm thinking what what you're thinking, they there was like a very very rough what would happen if we were to do this. Yeah. >> And it got leaked out and hadn't made it. >> It was just ideas off the wall and then it blew up saying, "Oh, they're going to do all these things and change this." And it just died as it just got buried in everybody saying, "You can't do that." But all we're doing is asking impossible questions. >> We haven't done
021anything yet. But that was the end. Anything for me? All right. I know facilities just met a couple hours ago. Is there something to talk about or do you want to wait? >> Uh yeah, we just met um went through a bunch of stuff. Uh Gary's out. Um Bob came in um to give us a verbal report on uh a long list of agenda items. Um things things are going pretty well. Um the the roofing is all done. There was a couple of other spots that they detected that they've um fixed. Uh and and so uh we've got even even more good roofs to go. So it's good. Uh we the lead testing there's a couple of issues that are um outstanding. Couple things that they have to fix, but um everything passed. um storm
022water um project is not started yet. Um and we're waiting for um uh the contractors to get back to us on that and and when they could start. They they are talking about um August 26th, I think. Um, so I and we don't really have a good report on how that's going to affect things or if that's actually when they're going to be able to start, but that is a date being thrown around right now. Um, yeah. Uh, there's a whole list of other things that are um lower priority um on the agenda and that'll all be in our meeting minutes coming up. Thanks. Can I add one thing because this is kind of you probably want to know about it but the minute I just sent them to Lord. So um just wanted to
023all let you all know that the cloud base is up and running too that they've been working on that and there are a few issues that I think Tim and working on. So, but yeah, that was just one thing I wanted to add. >> Questions for for facilities. Finance got cancelled for this month. We will pick up again next month. So, >> yeah, we haven't met since you know um the first meeting is on Thursday. Unfortunately, I have a work event and I'm gonna not be there, but yeah. I was there recently to review a check. So he's looking down there getting ready to grab the openings. >> How's their roof? >> Um they didn't have any roof damage. It was just the high school high school. Luckily >> that was the craziest storm. >>
024Yeah. We immediately got emails about that. Our roof is okay. Like okay good. Okay. Um motion to approve the consent agenda. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Just a note that B is both to and bills and director's orders. Any discussion? >> Oh, right. I just was throwing out there just says one. I just want to make sure that it's we're covering a lot of this question. Oh, there. >> Okay. Comment. >> We are ranking right through speaking. Please state your name, time of residence, regard. >> I'm Sean from camp. I don't details, but I'm >> um I have concerns over first of all what the state's doing, but I also have major concerns over what the federal is doing. Um the kind of scare that we had with now the day before a fiscal
025year starts having a big chunk of money that 10 months before this community created a budget for is moving past the budget. Have that kind of pulled out is is very concerning to me. And I I just wonder, and I know no one can answer this question, but what the appetite is of um finding other sources, potential income outside of some of those federal funds that can be um shut off executive. um because it seemed like um there was no choice but to be some level of scramble and you know yeah a month later they're they're reinstated which is not a super shock because this is the way business is done but the reality is it happened two months later it would have actually impacted kids because kids being built and um and so I
026just don't know where all of our sources of income come beyond our local taxes, what the state kind of throws back at us and how dependent we are on on some of that fed money that seems like it can get pulled indiscriminately. Like it seems like the money's been approved by Congress, but then it's not spent. And ultimately who pays the price are not just the people in this room but the kids that go in this building or go in the other two build. Um, and then I guess my other piece would be, um, does the board have an appetite to give push back towards our local representatives based on what their ideas are for the changing of the districts because right now we have, you know, four main reps and two of them clearly
027seem to be happy with what what what's going on. like this is a win and to me it feels very unsteady. Um so it's very uncomfortable um to start the year not knowing how anything's going to play out. Um so I just wanted to put it out but thank you. Okay. And and I have a motion to go into executive session. >> Move to go into executive session pursuant to 1BSA 313A3. >> Second. >> I will. So we got John and Chris and Martha online. We will get you on the phones and get you on speaker phones inside the room so you can be part of this favor. He will be for