001took everything off so didn't make a lot of noise the echo hey oh Bill does look better Bill back you back in the land of living bill I wonder barely barely I decided to stay home just because I don't need anything else sort of today was the first day I felt humid well I glad to hear that I know you were feeling pretty rotten okay once you turn that on okay [Music] all right well I will not take any more time here so do we have we have am we have Bill uh do we have Elizabeth is that the E there Elizabeth was yes Elizabeth is there okay yep and is Megan here yes she's online excellent okay well uh with that I will call to order this meeting of the mount scotney School District
002board uh today Monday February 3rd 2025 and that will be at 6:32 p.m um first off we will do changes or additions to the agenda anything I got nothing nope okay so no changes or additions to the [Music] agenda next up we are going to do approval of minutes and that is for January 9th so I will take a motion to to approve the minutes from January 9th 2025 so moved second all right any discussion all right hearing none um I will take a vote starting the folks in the room so Nancy I bill I Amy I Elizabeth hi Megan I and I am an i as well so the minutes are approved all right and we are on to four which is public comment for any items that are not on the agenda I'm
003just going to get my little statement up [Music] here all right public comment is not legally required but we believe it is crucial for us to hear from our community members about their concerns over issues through these meetings our board models for our students how to conduct public discourse and that the board and members of our community can approach controversial issues in a civil and constructive Manner and can demonstrate mutual respect having said that please note that the board is here to listen the public comment period is not designed for discussion please start by identifying yourself what town you reside in and limit your marks to 3 minutes so with that do we have any public comment no all right so I do actually have a comment I just want to pull it up here
004we just take me a moment all right so uh this is my public comment for today um as a member of this board uh the moral imperative that guides every decision that I make is that the schools in our district provide a safe and supportive high quality educational environment for our students first and foremost but for each and every member of our school Community including parents faculty staff Administration or anybody else who comes into contact with this institution I want to take this opportunity to plainly state that my dedication and commitment to this imperative is that to you all is unconditional regardless of the race ethnicity socioeconomic status national origin immigration status sexuality or gender expression of any member of our community to acques to the idea that anyone out there could simply dictate that
005any one of you is invalid illegal unworthy or less than simply because of who you are would fundamentally undercut my ability to deliver on my commitment to all of you so to the whole school community and especially in this moment to my immigrant trans and non-binary Friends neighbors and colleagues I just want to say that I see you and I'm so so glad that you're part of this community and there's nothing that can change that so that is my comment thank you all right oh did you see the fluttering heart I I did but I app all right so if there are uh if there are no other comments for Adam not on the agenda oh up here uh Billy Yates I would uh respectfully um request that that statement be published in all of
006the Mount Ascutney School Board Publications sure yeah I'm happy to send that to send it to me be great yep okay and actually yep thanks Bill um I do have one more statement because I noticed and I think he's still on here but I think I noticed Erin are you still up there yes okay yeah excellent um I did just want to because I know we we missed this chance at the last meeting but I wanted to introduce uh to the board into the school Community aarin Minard who is our our district clerk has uh graciously volunteered to serve as our district clerk um Aon is somebody I've known for a very very long time uh incredibly dedicated just awesome Community member uh I mean yeah I could I could say a bazillion good things
007about him but uh yeah thank you Aaron uh thanks for being here and if you want to introduce yourself a little bit there sure I'm Aaron Miner I was born in Windsor uh graduated high school went off to VTC moved away came came back and I'm happy to be here Davis is one of my oldest friends like he said and uh yeah I'm he put out a call for volunteers and here I am thank you all right yeah thanks so much Aon we're glad to have you here thank you all right so I think oh and Linda l y good evening lie lay whatever you'd like oh li My apologies um good to be here I just had a question about your statement I just wanted to know why you felt you needed to put
008that out um I mean I there have been executive orders coming down from the executive branch of the federal government that specifically Target individuals based on their gender expression and immigration status and I felt that you know as a member of this institution it was important to make that statement for myself may I respond um I just want to remind you that this is not designed for discussion no I just wanted to point out a fact sure certainly no one said you can't love who you'd like to love and no one said you would be attacked it was simply a declaration of a fact that there are two genders and I know I'm G to get slammed for this go for it but I just wanted to clarify that and i' I'd rather see Unity
009rather than uh fear placing fear in the minds of uh the community or the children or hatred or anything like that I'd love to see us be more unified and I feel statements like that do not do that and no offense you know um to you but that's my statement all right no debate okay thank you Linda thank you if there are other comments um I think we are ready to move on to the administrative report yes the budget report the data report dat dat data report is put us on the top or you on the top you guys are on top we're on top okay um I think y' we um so we have reports from Windsor um elementary middle and high school and then out Bridge um The Windsor report is broken out
010into let me just get to the beginning for you that's the end hold on one second great me a second probably the fastest just to do it this way yes all right good yeah okay so we have the elementary section first um looking at reading first and then math and so when you look at these graphs what you're looking at on the left is the um fall report and then the scores in the winter and those are really hard to read that way but again just pointing out that the um red when you see red in this presentation in this one it's significantly below uh yellow would be below blue and green are meeting and exceeding um meeting or above the grade levels so we took I took this graph and Christine if you can
011go to the next one and I tried to pair them up side by side so you could see what happens this is much easier to look at um the um and what we want to see what we really want to see our red decreasing yellow decreasing and then our blue and our greens growing and you can see that here so the first Red Bar is our FY that first yellow first blue first green and um what you can see is that in the in the in the fall um our students that we had 57% that were below the standard in the winter we have uh 43 so what it say yeah 43% so there's growth um which is great we always want to see more but we do have growth and we will we'll take
012that we've been thinking a lot about testing environments to help support students if they fly through a STAR test in you know 35 questions in 11 minutes we're going to go get you again and really try to get an accurate score um that's something that has been observed as a a barricade for accurate results and then also um the at or above uh was 46% in in the fall and increaseed to 54% in the winter so um this and important to know that star is set on a a state Benchmark where um some other like the early literacy one you'll see is on a national this our state benchmarks are are set higher it's harder to achieve the level in the state of Vermont than it is if we rank them nationally we could we
013could show you great scores if we wanted to rank them nationally but um we're rank Statewide um the next couple slides are early literacy so our kindergarten did not take and this is a a completely different graph to look at um early literacy is measured against the National Standard there isn't estate Benchmark so and it um and this one the first one shows our kindergarteners 44% of the kindergarteners are considered at or above grade level proficiency this is the first time they took this test um and it's computer generated so I think there's a lot learning that has to happen um we don't have a second data point for them but hopefully we can show you that growth again um is the additional Green Line significant of anything the additional Green Line green L yeah
014see these are based these are based on Prof on um it's not this this red yellow blue green is not the same as star and that's the tricky part for reading these um these are percentile so 0 to 9th percentile is the red and I did actually I did print you out some little copies of these if you wanted to look at those little more closely so these colors are not comparable to the star reports um uh bill you have a question oh I she she just pointed out what I was going out these are not there's no above the standard below the standard these are percentile yeah um um the first the next data points and I did not have time I'm sorry to put these together in the same way that I did
015the other ones so you have to kind of look across but we don't have any and again it's uh fall is the first set of graphs and winter is the second Is that real oh no he oh we put his hand down okay we're we're all keyed into that noise AR um we see um it's this I find this one interesting the uh yellow percentile you can see came down a lot and we don't see a lot of growth in the the darker blue but we do have more um in the 17 the 17% that are in the 75 to 89th percentile they're in first grade are um these are students that when when students take the early literacy it's that they haven't fallen in they haven't shown the skills needed to take the star
016we can't put them in front of the star assessment on the computer that assesses reading if they don't have the ability to read They're not going going to pass so early literacy scores tend to identify our students who aren't yet reading at the level where they're able to take the store which is usually our kindergarteners and sometimes um some of our our higher students as well uh bill so uh so so is this a particular grade range I I know the star goes from uh third grade regular star goes from third grade to e grade and sometimes in Hartford what we do is if a student this is the star protocol if the student is unable to complete the practice test within star then it then they take the early literature are are these third
017grade students or fourth grade students that we're looking at or are they just all students below uh it's grade it's first grade early literacy grade level one okay kindergarten was the first slide yeah um the is it is that another question Bill no I I I keep putting my hand down and then my hand's already down and so I'll keep talking you tell me if you want me to stop how about okay um again this this the next SEC we broke it down by grade level so here's second grade for you um we increased from 47% that were at or above the proficiency to 64% in second grade and then uh third grade from 24% to 44% excellent uh fourth grade um from 59 to 62 and then fifth grade from 43 to 44 so
018our fifth grade kind of um stayed the same and that's something we have to look at why what happened in the other grades that didn't have the same effect in six gr so um our interventionists or mtss coordinators um the coaches at new at U um Windsor they dig into this data so deep and look at every student um we just show you the the overall pictures of it so did the same with my colen do you want me to keep going yeah yeah okay same did I did the same with math okay so again that you have the fall and the winter and I broke it down I think this has become my favorite CR oh the next one there we go so same thing we want to see our our red scores fall
019our yellow scores fall and our blue and our green increase we didn't have a lot increase but there's a great growth in the um in the blue scores the the other thing to remember is the star test doesn't stay the same it increases its expectation from fall to winter so they're they're not only show showing growth on harder skills if that makes sense um we we started higher we have higher percentages in the red and the yellow and I think we know that about math um it is our goal to keep working on that but um we have a lot we have work to do so in the fall 67% were below the standard and this winter 58 and uh those above uh 33% increased to 42 and I think it it's always really important
020to make sure we keep an eye on the blue and the green right that we want to make sure our our students that are achieving the standard continue to grow and we show progress there as well um grade one math uh 26% at or above and now we're at 60 and grade two um changed from 27 to 25 however those significantly below the Benchmark decreased for grade two um so second grade is an area that we're digging deep into um and talking about our wind groups and intervention to see how we can um increase those third grade uh from 20% to 31 fourth grade math remained the same at 50 so um again why is our why are we plateauing would be the question um and we actually if you look at the fourth grade
021we actually lost our uh level four students they look like they became level three students so there work to do there and then um our fifth gr MTH scores also stay the same so we need to take a pretty deep dive into fifth grade and why they're just maintaining maintaining at a higher level but that isn't enough we need them to uh to do more okay ready yeah go ahead so on this next slide this is our whole Middle School um 6 S8 we did not have a big um change significant change from last spring um just slight but from fall to winter we went from 63 to 67% growth in at we above the meaning the proficiency meaning The Benchmark sorry okay this in sixth grade um we have 56% to 60% so all
022of these from last spring till now are just slightly um higher in as we came into um our fall but from fall to winter all of these Ela reading for Middle School the sixth grade is um just from the fall to winter so 56 to 60% and the students that are in our significantly below are all currently um me having IEP or um getting services in Reading in supports and interventions and different different things and for our seventh grade um we have just a slight increase of 58 to 59% and um just a handful that are below significant significantly below and then our e graders in ela um had a nice jump from 73% to 79% in our and as Tracy said with all of these with all of this growth even if they were
023maintaining they are looking at Harder skills and Concepts that they're working at so there there's growth even when we're maintaining um with our math we have schoolwide we are showing in this time I'm showing last spring here and last spring we had um 32% proficient when we had fifth sixth and seventh graders so I wanted to just show you that in comparison to our new growth so the next slide is oh sorry Christine I'm looking at my slide and your slide of the same time the next one is the the whole sixth seventh and eighth grade and from fall to winter we have 45% and 41% at um meeting or exceeding The Benchmark so that was definitely a jump up from our spring of 32% with by grade our sixth grade um we went from
02444 to 46% increase from fall to winter and again as a whole Middle School we were 32% last year last spring and our seventh grade we went from 53 to 46 so this is a place where we're putting um more of our interventions and working with our our math department 6th through 10th grade have also been working on the ways we double dose and we repeat our Concepts to our students so that they come back to them and we spy we call it spiral reviewing and that has um shown positive benefits and has been helpful so that's a place where we also need to help our students and work in our eighth grade we have um our almost every student in our um Algebra 1 class has met or exceeded the standard and um again
025we're supporting students who are um below low with double dosing intervention and Spiral Review and those are our star Maths for fall and winter all right thanks I um we'll just be presenting Ela because um the algebra subtest for does not Benchmark with our state standards so we're going to make an adjustment in the spring and um our sophomores will also be taking the PSA 10 in the spring which will bring that data to you for ELA um for grade n this is our comparison um half of our students in the yellow are just slightly below meeting the standard and those students are 52% or above nationally in performance and if we look at our grade 10 the majority of our students who are significantly below are already in intervention support so we anticipate change
026and again we'll have uh reading data through the PSAT 10s in the spring just taking on this one so in this slide 36 we have um 52% of those students who are below the Benchmark in early literacy assessment they are currently on an IEP and in our star reading um the students are below the Benchmark 36% in our K through five in the blue 47% in our 638 22% in our 910 are on ni and in our math in the Middle School NOP in the K through five in the blue 30% K 36% K to 5 and 21% in math of six 21% of the sixth through eth graders those are also students on an i AP so we're getting the support currently how many students are on IEPs do we know in Windsor yeah
027or in the Su Windor I'd have to look it up I think didn't say 300 kids with the the case load at the last Su meeting across the Su not yeah and then the next one free and reduced um there there is about 10% discrepancy between the free and reduced students that fall below the The Benchmark in all areas in comparison to students who are not free and reduced so there's about a 10% discrepancy at all grade levels all right so ABS um just to reminder small numbers and although W has small numbers we have smaller numbers um there's a lot of conern with how we present data as well as how we think about data with small numbers um so what we have here is a combination of our players presented in this data
028um so our first graph shows over time though if you go from the left am I right left yes left the right the left is our most recent scores so you'll see as um the Elementary in the other um school was presented you have the bottom 10% um in the red then you have the 10% to 25% um in the yellow followed by 26 to 40% in the orange the 40 to 74% blue 75 to 89% is in the green and then those who are scoring um at the 95th percentile and above um are in so our current SC show that 9% of our students in grades three through six are at the bottom 10 percentile um 5% excuse me yeah 5% currently um are in the 10 to 25% in the um 26 to
02940% we have 18% of our students this is 11% I'm just sorry 16% um of our students are in that kind of 26 to 40 percentile which all of those the red orange and yellow are what we would consider people who are sort of on watch for Need for specific interventions so anything below 40% we really want to pay attention to um once we get past that point we're looking at kids more likely to um be able to meet State expectations on tests so the blue for 14% is those kids who scor in the 40th percentile to the 74th percentile um 20% of our kids are in the 75 to 89% and then currently for um our students we've got 25% of our kids scoring at the top 9th percental and Ela assessments um you
030can see over time how that's kind of built and kind of tip as um Kate mentioned we've got kids who are sitting on the cusp so depending on how their state of mind is for that day or the questions they were asked um they can easily tip from like the blue to the orange or the green to the purple so that's kind of where our grade range is for the star assessment there going to the next slide we have the math assessment same thing broken down um currently according to the star assessment none of our students in Mass were on the bottom 10 percentile um we did have currently 14 % of our students are in the yellow 20% of our students are in the orange so all of those um 34% are below what
031we really want um then following that we've got 43% in our blue range and our green range we've got 11% and then our top um top 10% students we have 11% of our students there if you go to the next graphs that's more of what we'll look at when we talk about State assessments and this is at the um what again uh the state performance indicator so assuming they took the state test in the state of Vermont again state of Vermont tends to scor in the top uh four or five of the nation um on on National tests so um it's a higher standard for us and according to our current data for the reading of our third through sixth graders currently I flipped them I'm sorry I didn't realize I did that until too
032late um So currently 11% % of our students in those grades are scoring significantly below expectations 23% are below expectations we have 177% that would be in the level three of meeting expectation and 49% that are above expectations for reading and then the next slide talks about math same thing with the um State performance assessment so in this last assessment 177% of our students are scoring significantly below 307 7% are below 26% are meeting and 20% are above expectation um and again I think this talks to what we need to think about of how we're meeting our math across the board because it's Prett consistent that something is not happening for these kids that we really want to have happen um and that is I believe um a curricula instruction component at a universal level
033that we need to consider and figure out that's what I got all right questions for us all right thank you all right well thank you for sharing all that I know it's a lot of a lot of data to Che on but uh I appreciate you fun stuff it it is and I mean I think it gives that high level and you know I'll look forward to hearing and learning about what uh what sort of changes and approach we uh we look at especially when it comes to math because I know it has been a challenge um you're every year all right so we are ready to move on to item six which is items for discussion followed by motions if needed um and our first item is the budget information session run through okay
034all right so this is the run through tonight we're certainly looking for feedback this will be um we plan to present at our community budget um information Hearing in at the end of February so we Jen you're going to start us off the agenda yes um so we're going to try and run you through the Articles which we'll have to do the moderator we'll do that in the actual presentation we'll talk about the Strategic plan with Christine we'll um just talk about our Universal overall strategic plan that's been developed we're talking about our budget goals that we feel like we've been given um as a team student enrollment overtime tce that out first um then how the budget supports our schools then we'll talk about the actual proposed budget and some of the drivers and
035some of the reductions that we've been able to make and the impact that it's going to have for us as um taxpayers in our communities so then we go right into the Articles which will be read by the moderator would you like me to read those or do we do you want them red Davis um yeah sure why not okay do know if these are updated they are updated okay awesome so the article one I'll pretend like I'm the moderator article one to act on the reports of the M scotney School District officers for the past year from July 1st 2023 to June 30th 2024 by Australian ballot article two to elect the Mount Ascutney School District officers for the the ensuing term by Australian ballot article three to vote that the Mount Ascutney school
036district is authorized to borrow money in anticipation of taxes to meet the requirement of the school district for the ensuing year and to authorize the execution and delivery of notes or orders to the school district by Australian mellet article four shall the voters of the Mount Ascutney School District authorize the school board to apply 12 29,90 of the FY 24 Surplus to the capital reserve fund Again by Australian ballot Article Five shall the voters of the mount scotney School District approve the school board to expend 15 m695 482 did I read that right which is the amount the school board has determined to be necessary for the ensuing fiscal year the mounta scny school district estimates that this proposed budget if approved will result in per pupil education spending of $1,397 Which is 10.23% higher
037than per pupil education spending for the Cur current year by Australian ballot article six will be to transact any other business which may properly come before the meeting and then we go into our strategic strategic plan for the M school district and Windor Southeast supervisory Union and I'm handing it offend so I'm going to take this slide at the meeting um and just have some notes for tonight uh so as you can see our strategic plan on the on the presentation and at the supervisory Union level we remain focused on this plan and the goals um listed in it and on building effective and efficient systems that support all students while ensuring our schools run smoothly we're in year four of the implementation of our strategic plan with our three main goals being Student Success
038and engagement culture and student wellness and information and communication this year our top priority priority goal is culture and student wellness we believe in educating the whole child because we understand that students cannot Thrive unless their foundational needs their mental health their physical health which includes food security and social emot wellbeing are met we know that many of our students continue to face significant mental health challenges which often manifest as anxiety depression truancy behavioral issues disengagement academic struggles and we know that there are some students in our schools who do not feel a sense of belonging and connection at school so to to support this goal of culture and student wellness we've done um as an Su extensive work on becoming trauma transformed schools we use a collaborative problem solving approach we're doing work around
039um hazing harassment and bullying prevention and we're striving to ensure that all students feel included represented and empowered to bring their authentic selves to school addressing all of those needs that I just laid out um requires significant investment which includes uh social emotional interventionists behavioral interventionists uh school counselors clinicians um support staff teachers administrators coordinator our coordinator of diversity equity and inclusion and also the curriculums that we're purchasing and using in our classrooms um this year we also have staff who are acting as Equity coaches in each of our buildings and they are helping to build this culture of inclusion doing a lot of work with our coordinator and doing a lot of um training at staff meetings so that all staff have a good understanding of what inclusion looks like and means um we
040really are committed to creating a culture in our supervisory Union where everyone belongs um our uh another Focus for us from our strategic plan is Student Success and engagement through the leader and me framework we have Amplified opportunities for student voice choice and Leadership across the Su we are empowering students by expanding elective offerings that they are um helping us um create and we're encouraging goal setting and providing students greater involvement in shaping their educational experience um in addition we implemented a new English language arts program in FY 24 and adopted the latest version of our math program in fy2 24 as well we implemented star assessments which you just um saw the presentation on the data that comes from those star assessments that we administer three times a year all of these things are
041um designed to strengthen student achievement and engage engagement and we are confident they're going to lead to positive results um and positive outcomes our third goal of information and communication um we've been addressing throughout the um uh life of the Strategic plan we're currently working on an Su level Communications plan which should be done this spring which is very exciting we launched a new website this summer which uh is really clear effective engaging we've had very positive um feedback on our on website and um all of our administrators are actively communicating through newsletters um regularly with um with the community so we're really trying to share out information and communicate widely with the public um and we are really dedicated to as you just heard um sharing how we're progressing um in academics and culture
042through our through our reports um at least three times a year so that's where we're at with our strategic plan and the goals I am going to turn this over to Davis you're going to go over the I believe the budget goals budget goals all right so our budget goals for uh FY 26 as we look at it are to maintain our staffing plan and the program of studies which support the whole child that is intellectually social emotionally and physically and to bring forth a fiscally responsible budget that meets educational quality standards and considers the impact this budget has on the community so this is the enrollment slide I I think um it was assigned to Davis but it might make sense for one of the principles to go over the enrollment I'm assuming you're
043not giving all those graphs I was them us but not no not at the bucket meeting thank so does any or I'm happy to go over enrollment I'm happy to talk to it okay that's fine so um you can see over time that the averages against small mbers can look big when you talk about percentages but in general we're sort of holding steady over the past year since um we've come back from the the 2020 shutdown of covid um so across across the board we're basically functioning as pretty much half so while a lot of people in the state worry about deine I think right now we're kind of holding and that if you look at the data in the past 10 years it's we've stayed about the same in this Su which is encouraging
044all right this is me how the budget supports um the Strategic plan in our high school so we you can have money we um are holding steady we we haven't made any ass at the high school we're functioning with um an appropriate staff we still do have our school counselor position open it is national school counselor if you want to send Maddie an email um we are still functioning with our one counselor and we are actively um seeking a second one the the we are working with AOE um on our discourse in math collaboration Bridget is leading that and it it's been phenomenal the amount of progress we've been able to make in a year my kind of big ask for the budget last year um which on which on our budget was um kind
045of a smaller amount of money it was about $10,000 was to bring experiences to the kids and to be able to get kids out and experience and I wanted just to let you know some of the things that we have done this year because that is again something that we're asking for next year so just um this year alone we've taken groups of kids out to Preferred Building Systems to the New Hampshire uh take back the trads today was the this year in December was the first time since before covid hit that Dartmouth Hitchcock invited us for um experimental day in emergency medicine we went there this year we went the American Welding Institute we went to visit Sullivan County Health um to learn about uh dietary needs and um LNA positions we went to
046the clear expiration day in nursing we went to Cedar Hill um we've been able to support capstones and science fairs in ways that we haven't just tonight I got a text from Katherine we've been able to provide more varied electives and she's doing myth so tonight I got a text that said hey I ordered 60 helium balloons for Myers for tomorrow can you pick them up from Mr D's for me um we are able to run I'm sorry there's something like really scratchy I think it's you I'm not hearing it here it is well it's not we don't hear it so okay um we've been able to to support our March intensives again uh and we'll be able to give some kids opportunity um to go skiing for the week we'll be able to support
047what the teachers um are asking for whether they're having people to come here to teach kids how to oh thanks Bill to teach kids how to um fix Motors or work on fixing bicycles uh We've brought back our varied electives I just talked about um Miss Busters and we've been able to have um health teacher here in the building which has been remarkable we haven't had one in years and we are currently sharing an SAP with the middle school as well as a planning room attendant which keeps kids in school K will you share what an sap what sap stands for and maybe write it out in your slid for the public to be able to know thank you I sure can um that that also helps us to cut down on student um suspensions
048because we're able they're able to access the sap which um allows them to come to school and get the support that they need without staying home um yep what about uh the trips um that the Stu students in Lang in uh Spanish went to so they're not supported through the budget they're supported through fundraising but this is the first year um that people have come up to me and like now that they're seeing the opportunities and I had a student come up the day that said hey my mom's never going to let me go out of the country but she will let me go to DC can you put that on the agenda for March intensives next we're able to have speakers come in um today we hosted Windsor High School hosted and invited the
049middle school and we had a speaker is that bill did you have a question Bill yes um I love your spiel about um uh creating student experiences and I it may be important to point out the fact that through the budget Winter High School has been able to maintain all sports programs yeah because yeah goad because that I mean that is one of the pivotal student experiences for many high school students yeah that we can we're uh our banners for the girl sports are being presented on Saturday so we could definitely add them to the presentation awesome um let me lose my train of thought there for a second the other thing is just having a little bit of money for experiences has allowed us to get more than we can imagine so I got
050an email today about an Alaskan indigenous group that's coming in May and they're coming on um what is the word I'm looking for a grant but they reached out to us um look as the opportunity so in May we're gonna have an Alaskan indigenous music group come and do a two-day workshop that'll involve writing and music and a performance we've also been really supporting um our music department Lauren and Brian have been amazing I just went to the district Musical Festival this weekend um we've been able to support kind of sending our theat production on tour and uh we have a hand raised Linda she need unmute again Linda do you have a question comment just wanted to support Kate that uh I hear the aliens that she's hearing and I'm not surprised that she's
051losing your train of thought it's very disturbing Bill thinks it's the owl yeah we had this issue in the srum too and we haven't until the past couple weeks I wonder if there was a an firmware update or something that basically what happens Kate if you stop talking the AL audio kicks in so just don't stop talking yeah I think it's um I am we are announcing our science fair with I'm trying to sneak in another has uh well I have the opportunity we are announcing our science fair winners tomorrow and I will present them at the next board meeting but if you haven't been to our science fair it's one of the best in the state and it's because we do have the availability to support our student needs and their uh yeah and
052I just want to quickly comment Kate thanks for I appreciate you highlighting the science fair um I've probably said this before but it strikes me every time I'm able to go and check it out and actually this year usually that coincides with me being out of town but my schedule changed I was able to go around and speak with all the students um I was coming from a professional conference down in Florida where there were tons and tons of poster presentations people who are working in the healthcare simulation field where I work um and it it strikes me every time I see the students you know the work that they have put up like the the quality of their posters and the the just intelligence with which they speak of their projects and it's so
053comparable to the work that I see being done by people who are you know doctors nurses APS you know Professionals in in medical education and it it just blows my mind every time so I can't underscore enough how how impressive that uh that event is and our students are okay I'll go next um for the Middle School looking at um Student Success in engagement we our also not really any asks in the budget for us we are maintaining um our team our support staff um one of the things we focused on with our sixth through 10th grade math teachers is some beginning of the year um professional development on discourse and math collaboration and this is the the Spiral Review the intervention these are the things that we really want to keep working on for
054our Student Success um as you could see from our Star scores this is what we're we're putting our energy into um also with our Student Success we have our weekly mtss meetings multi-tiered system of supports with our Middle School team and that helps us to look at the star data put our kids in the right places making sure the students are getting the services and supports they need um we also have with our student wellness um we have student support services our par Educators we share um seis in the high school and middle school and a planning room as well and those allow us with having those um pieces in the budget since last year it allows us to have more supports for our students when um we can look at alter alternatives to collaborative
055problem solving um deescalation by people who have good practice um good skills and strategies to help our students with that so that we do not always have to look at um traditional suspensions and things that we would rather help our students work through um with the culture and Leadership um we are seeing a lot more um investment in our leader and me um transformation at our school in this year as Christine said we now have our Equity coaches we have action team leaders under academic culture and Leadership so we're seeing more student voice um more um student leadership meetings um regularly in the Middle School um voice and choice is important to us so keeping that going that this has kind have evolved over the last three years as passion periods um a period in
056the day where there's clubs activities where students have choice this is the place in the day where um albertbridge students and Windsor middle school students have joined together in some activities and we want to make sure that we're continuing to grow our programs that build our high school um Music Theater World languages because those have have had some drawbacks especially when we were going through covid so we want to make sure we're keeping those choices there and building those and we're also lucky to have the crossgrade collaboration from high school students being mentors to middle school students being helpers in the elementary school and working together across our building we're also very lucky to have as Kate said the health education teacher for the first time in quite a while so all of our Middle
057School students get to have health education as well um we also are very lucky to have our school nurse who sometimes does one toone Education Services with students um when parents request it and the sap in the past used to stand for Substance Abuse Prevention counselor but now um the This Acronym goes by Student Assistance providers because they do a lot more and we are lucky to have um a person we had two now we have one who was contracted out of our out of our budget and so that does that's not affecting our budget but we're very lucky to have them in the building and working with our students because that is another way that they can have options to have education when it comes to things like um substances rather than have suspensions
058and that's something we want to work through with our kids thank you all right so TR going to present about the elementary schools we're going to share the common themes amongst um the two schools and again we're anchoring into the Strategic plan and we're going to talk a little bit about the Student Success and engagement component as well as the culture and student wellness because we feel like the data and information is more of us as adults um and what people really care about is what's going on for the kids um so to start with uh we're we're still working to move through the new curricula that's been adopted um in terms of our Ela and our math programs we're trying to find find ways to integrate science and social studies components into those as
059well as enhance science and social studies with the um standards that are expected through the national um science as well as the three SE programs um that are out there we have um instructional strategies is the universal approach that classroom teachers use to engage all students and that comes in a huge variety of forms it used to be when most of us were kids there was the um Sage on the stage where somebody got up and talked to you and and some people really did a great job of learning through the language component that was thrown at them but probably more than half of us did not do so well um and so we know that instructional strategies have evolved and gotten more um sophisticated over time and so using our coaches which is a
060common them throughout our supervisory union now um allows us to have think Partners um with somebody who can just kind of be an extra set of eyes to help us think about how we are engaging all of our students because Universal instructions not about for the average it's for everybody and that really does require some exceptional skills from our classroom teachers um when great instructional strategies and solid curricula aren't working uh we have our tiered system so the universal level is everybody and then we have a double dosing which is also done within our classroom context um usually through classroom teachers um after that if kids are still struggling we um have additional supports that Christine laid out already in terms of variety of interventionists whether academic social emotional or school counselors um if we
061have medical support needs we have um teams to do those um different kinds of interventions and work and the whole goal of our instructional strategies in our curricula is to develop a sense of competence and we know with um you know when we talk about any way self-determined learning which we know is the way that we drive ourselves to become strong learners not when we're doing because somebody's telling us to that because we have it internally uh motivated and we know that our belief and our ability to learn not that I'm smart but that I can work hard and learn is Central to success for a human being um across whatever um starting point you come from um so all of our initial stuff that we do in terms of academic engagement is really about
062developing this sense of competence past that the next step is really to develop a sense of um Choice you've heard voice and choice already so we're really talking about this development of the sense of autonomy of I am capable of driving my own learning I'm capable of driving and controlling my own life and we know that when we have that first of all we find something that we care about something we're passionate about when we do that we develop a sense of discipline discipline doesn't happen because somebody's telling us to do it discipline happens authentically when we are driven to learn something and stick through the hard stuff so we know we're trying to do that so giving voice and choice and a diverse um opportunities giving diverse opportunities really allow our kids at the
063young age to start identifying who they are as individuals not who a society tells them they're supposed to be and all of that all of that is for not if they don't have a sense of belonging and so if we not creating a sense where every single child that walks in this building belongs knows that they belong feels like they belong and feels like they contribute to other people belonging then we're going to struggle with them being able to engage in any kind of um academic capacity so we do this through um our Universal responsive classroom approach which is um a castle recognized um approach that really teaches how to teach all children how we want to behave in a community that respects each other that um can take safe risks and how to repair
064damages when we create damage so this is where that all starts and then we have leader and M that has come into really support both the sense of belonging and the sense of choice and voice um through things like student leadership as well as through opportunities that they can sort of Select how they learn and what they learn what did I miss oh no no thing great all right all right all right now I'm gonna pass it over to D all right back to budget stuff so uh we have this year a really great online budget book that our CFO Larry Da put together um it's like an interactive tool that we haven't had in the past so and we're gonna have the link um how are we presenting that it is linked in this
065presentation but um there'll also be in the in the town report there will be um hard copies and a QR code in that report so you can go online could we could we in the slide actually add the QR um if folks are watching this they could they can pause it and then just directly yeah that's a great idea write myself a note all [Music] right next slide well I do that all right so in our part of our budget we should go over the funding sources for our school so our school funding is made up of a combination of our local taxes the state of Vermont education fund some private grants uh some funds from the PTO and CIP and uh just for the sake of saying those out to you that is the
066parent teacher organization in Windsor and I know School community and partnership school community and partnership uh at ABS uh generous donations from families teachers and community members volunteers and yes sometimes teachers own money so some of the budget drivers that we are looking at in FY 26 are the negotiated wages we have a new contract that covers fy2 through FY 27 which is driving some of our budget uh health insurance is up 11.9% and uh that is negotiated at the state level so something that is is above and beyond what we can really control down here uh and our Su assessments the Su budget is up 99.3% and the breakdown of that is that 3% is Administration and operations and then 6.3% the the larger portion that about 2third is the special education budget which
067on trend is increasing um across the state so on the other hand we have some budget reductions that we found um we did do some staffing adjustments in Windsor so two first grade classrooms for uh two first grade classrooms 25 to 26 so a reduction of one FTE that's what those numbers are reflecting is that we have one less FTE in those classrooms um that is a full-time equivalent to try to not do too much alphabet soup at you all uh yep I knew that I have a general note about that at the end but I'll save it um I'll so we yes um we also were able to eliminate a 04 uh PE position that's physical education uh that's a reduction of so 04 full-time equivalent and then there was a staffing adjustment adjustment
068at Albert Bridge school and that is the Nur and heal nurse and health teacher position uh reduced by3 three full-time equivalent oh this is me sorry I'm updating the acronyms as you're it's totally cool I'll I'll touch on that at the end but we'll just keep rolling okay so Larry's gonna take this part at the meeting he is not here tonight but um typically people ask what um get my notes what what percentage of the mount es scotney budget goes towards the mount es scotney um uh budget itself and what parts go to the other um parts of the budget um the Su budget so this is just a a visual which is pretty cool that tells you that the blue section is um out of every uh dollar I thought it was a dollar
069that's a $100 bill a dollar it's a bill 7 72. 66% um goes to the is is the local budget out of that um 1.96 the yellow is um the Su Food Service the purple is the Su Early Childhood Program which is 2.08% um the Orange is the admin and opxs which he's got here is 8.97 so I thought the previous slide said 9 point something so I'm going to 3 point something yeah I'm going to look at that with him um and then and special education is 14.33% so it's a it's a you remember Larry did this last year B coins in the budget book he was able to do it with this graphic so pretty clear yeah good um so the next slide which Larry will take at the meeting um just shows
070you the the general fund for FY 26 which is $5,695 482 the budget increase the percent increase is 6.06 over last year which equates to a 0.5 estimated tax increase for Windsor and remember um once the CLA is applied Windsor is going to have a different rate than West Windsor so West Windsor's estimated tax increase is 4.8% we know that things typically change between when the budget's passed and June so those rates may change I based on what I've heard the governor say they they may he's mentioned allocating some um money towards tax rates to keep them down so they may go down um I think they've gone down since the first actually like to see that yep um the next slide which Larry will also um present at the meeting in February is really
071the tax uh the property tax impact so for example if you are a windsor homeowner and your home is worth uh $250,000 your tax increase for next year will be um $14 in West Windsor the same um property value of $250,000 will equate to a a do $132 increase over the year with um with these estimated tax um percent percentages okay and the last slide it um lets you know when the voting day H is happening the hours that um you can go and vote and the locations which is important information so that'll be part of what we're presenting and that's the last slide so questions feedback Davis you want to say something about acronyms I'm sure I would like to say something about acronyms a couple one general question that will still fresh in
072my mind and if you don't know this that's fine I'm sure Larry does and I believe he said he would address this do we know were the budget book physical copies printed yet or is that if eron's on him I'd actually know that I haven't seen them yet I think he's working with um I think Terry does it at wi so getting getting those printed I only Wonder because I know that I had cited the earlier projections in the the letter that I wrote for that but I do think that Larry said that he would he would adjust the numbers so they were as close to accurate when that got printed so I was curious about that because they did they did go down which is nice yes hopefully they go down more yeah um
073yeah the other just general note on this I I think that it would just be good practice if anytime that we use a new acronym even if it's ones that are really really familiar um the first time that appears we just need to spell the whole thing out and do the parenthetical um that way there's not you know I mean like I I've seen a lot of these before and every once in a while one will just jump out of my brain and uh you know for folks who who aren't doing this every month they're working in educational setting I think even more of a a challenge um totally agreed yep so well you had one M we had the sap we'll fix that I did the FTE and the sap changed and I didn't
074know what it was before um I think mtss was mentioned too yeah you got it okay so we'll update those the PG yep awesome I appreciate it makes sense we got to remember that we live it but not everybody do right it's I know it's the it's the Water rall swimming all right I will stop presenting all right any other questions comments on the uh that run through of our budget info session I liked it that was very interesting it's always done yeah and my apologies for going off in that tangent the middle I just get I get I get so excited about the science for things so trouble containing myself a good balance of information you felt like yeah no it's I you know I I've seen this team or some version of this
075team doing this for several years now and it's just always it really like it lifts me up to hear spelled out all the good work that everyone is doing I think we all do it and in a really clear and digestible way for and many voices makes it ever so much more interesting absolutely good so yeah thank you for all the all the effort that you put into that all right clear slides very slides yes um all right so we will move on to Item B on our items for discussion which is the community dinner um so we are set um the board and anybody else who would like to join us and help out but there's no obligation at all beyond the the six of us and Christine I know you already said you
076were you were down so yep uh yeah so that is going to be um that's happening on Thursday the 20th uh birthday your birthday all right with me at the cre dinner yep so Thursday 20th of this month um I did just drop a line with Mary MCN who coordinates that and it does they happen in the basement of Trinity Evangelical Church in wior and which one is that that's the one so if you are on the like heading north on route five or Main Street out of town it's on the left right before historic homes of uh of Windsor the the this is living facilities up on the Hills yeah after across from the little little Park spot and the the um Car Wash um yeah so that's happening there I just wanted to
077kind of run through see if anyone had any questions I I will send you are we serving that's get that Mary I'll forward you what Mary sent me and she's gonna work with us more on Logistics as we get closer to it but um I think that if I remember correctly so we started talking about this about a year ago I think had we talked about doing like like chili and you mention that because I thought that would be simplest it's easy to make a lot of it cool and and make uh crockpots yeah yeah and what about I have I'm a red apron have you seen that for my church we serve and clean and do all that stuff um so we need do we need plates do we need napkins silverware what do
078we do for drinks there is a thousand things we sign up I've done them with the rotary so somebody brings drinks somebody brings cornbread somebody brings dessert they love dessert y sign up for main dishes I can't remember about the paper products there may be some there but yeah and this is the stuff I'll Mary's gonna send us the rundown she gave me like a really quick like yes thank you for poking me like it's a little earlier than I usually do it but she she's gonna she's going to hit us with that and that is February 20th and that's during the winter break the February break and some people need to sign up to set up and then some people will need to sign up to clean up so yeah high level is I
079will I will make sure that Mary's info gets all you and I will help her coord everybody around what is the group is basically the board yep the six of us and your okay because it's a huge amount of things you have to think of you also don't have to like have a theme of like one kind of food people like variety so people just bring crockpot lots of stuff or casser of lots of stuff to most of the community dinners yeah I'll throw it out there I already bought stuff to make a large amount of tailgate chili which is not vegetarian so I was thinking if we could do a vegetarian and nonvegetarian chili and then kind of I do a white white t chili which is a chicken but white I love white
080CH it's great um uh bill yeah my preference is always to do uh for the obvious reasons you know meat so because I have access to meate you know like a l l yeah sounds like Bill's bringing meat yeah that's that's just my forte um I mean if we're doing soups then I have to lean on my wife a little bit and she has school that week so um we don't have the same do we for about 40 people is that give I think that's I've been to I've been to one or two and that's about the average um it's kind of hard to tell sometimes they're totally packed and it's and then there sometimes where 20 people show up 15 people show up so I used to do the I was the coordinator of
081the pot Lux for my Coral Group which was B and um so I have a lot of because I had quit it so far away um paper plates and bowls and stuff so I've got a good supply of those excellent and I think I have a huge supply napkins but I'll I'll check and uh because I have a whole covered full with all that paper stuff awesome I appreciate that Mary put these in the m in our newsletters to the yes advertis Community yes it's seen well we the generic one's always in there whatever you send me if you just want to highlight that the you know the local school board's doing it um but yeah I mean we'll we'll be able to get these Logistics down the next couple weeks like I said I'll
082I'll make sure that we all kind of get that covered via email so I just ask you know I might drop you a text but kind of keep your eyes a little extra on your email so we can get this all in line but it sounds like we got uh folks were oh it's it's all good like I said I poked Mary like two days ago on it so she's love that she's gonna start oh no she was psych that I was reaching out to her before she had to reach out to me um but yeah and I think every we chose that day because everyone is available to make it on the board correct yeah cool cool all right um so yeah we don't need to go into excruciating detail now but just heads
083up um I think it's gonna be great they're really really cool events if you haven't gone to them and uh you know PR know she's not here but props to Mary MCN who does a lot of good work putting those together so really looking forward to it yeah they're really fun um okay so uh we are on on to setting the next agenda and I think this is February so our next meeting is going to be reorganization correct yeah and it's March 10th yes so y it's after the election so Monday March 10th is I it's just first second yeah so that we can reorganize and then we've got our admin report and um Kate you still here yeah I'm here there is um it's the high school's turn for presentation of learning yeah is
084that good for you that's good for me I'll check uh we do science fair we have some capstones presented is there anything anyone's looking for okay whatever you bring all right that makes it easy it's here at Windsor it is at Windor next time yes okay thank you yep so we've got um other than that just the admin report anything else cool wow re organ admin report um Kate no that was an accident oh sorry [Music] Bill are you and Bill all set with your signatures and stuff for the oh yeah yeah no that's that deadline was a week ago and you did it this time Bill he's on the yes I did it this time so we set I slept I I slept all the weekend and so on Monday I started going door
085Todo and oh my gosh to to finish up actually I have to throw out their kudos to my family because on uh on Sunday some of them went out and gathered signatures from their friends mostly my brother and so the post office is awfully good to just stand there for a bit you pick up lots of of people there well I had plenty in West Windsor not that it matters so I really hit up Windsor and so uh good I had about 10 left and went to Price Chopper and they let me sit out front and buck people is go to one Saturday morning basketball and Windsor there you go y bill and I were buddies at one of the uh one of the girls varsity games too and we we went around and got
086some some there but yeah no we are should have I I should have tried for a boy game because what I found at the girls game is like most of the parents were weatherfield parent there's so many of them that I asked oh no I'm sorry we're from weatherfield oh we're from weatherfield yeah well I think so also some parents just aren't they're Windsor parents but they don't necessarily live in Windsor and that's you know that's why you go Saturday morning at the rack there you go there you go Kate Pro tips from Kate um and actually yeah uh I will just throw out there um this and I should have said this at the head um the uh there's going to be a forum that winds arire does um they do it for select
087board they do it for school board um and that is going to be happening let me just double check the time but that is February 11th so week from tomorrow um and that you know is an opportunity for us to just you know speak to folks in the community in a not board meeting setting you know we're we're doing other stuff here but we you know it's important that we can do that so uh it looks like I have it on my calendar for 6 to8 if that sounds right bill um I think so just to make sure I'm not I'm not just making that up I'm gonna double check my email right now so that goes like on a record there's a budget meeting we're doing as well and so I mean School spending
088um Forum I don't want to get those mixed up yes that that is not this is not the same thing okay yeah so it's at 6:30 so on what day uh Tuesday February 11th February 11th so and that I just have what Paula sent me here so yeah be held the Windor town hall meeting room on the second floor it'll be moderated and uh yeah that's that's essentially for you and Bill to talk to the community you moderated it last time didn't you no I I wouldn't moderate it because I'm the school board Davis and I kind to debate some really sensitive points are you both of those questions yeah Windsor a sends them out um sends them out to us in advance and we have time to to review it's a standard they've been
089doing it for years now it's a pretty standard uh thing they do um so yeah but I'm looking forward to it and uh yeah so any other items for the next agenda are we we're clearing away on that all right uh number item eight executive session if needed I don't think we need one yep all right uh so uh I will take a motion to adjourn so moved second all right and time good time all right I'll take a Voice vote to end the the meeting all those in favor please say I I I hi all right so I am adjourning this meeting of the madisun School District board at 7:52 PM thanks everyone have a good night thank