001Sunday yes good evening everyone is October 24th and I will call the meeting of the Windsor Southeast supervisory Union board to order first item on the agenda is changes or additions to the agenda do we have and we active no very good um just a reminder of our did you just um just a reminder I do have time limits on each of our items on the agenda that is to make sure we do not have to spend the night here um also that you want I we plan on leaving even before 9 30 so we are keeping to this time schedule thank you I will take a motion to approve the minutes from September 26 2022. okay where's Davis okay and if I could please um whenever someone even here in the room you need
002to say your name because the person who takes our minutes is doing so through the recording and it really helps so thank you okay are there any changes additions clarifications that are necessary for the minutes I'm just I'm gonna do the superintendent report before the special ed report question order hearing none um I will do a roll call vote I'm going to start here in the room Rebecca hi David okay now bill I told Colleen I Elizabeth I abstain I wasn't present okay Jamie I mark I Nancy I and Nicole hi thank you the minutes have been approved public participation or announcements I'll make a quick one okay um we just got back myself and some board members from the vsba VSA conference last Thursday and Friday which was really a great opportunity to learn
003and work together and we actually got to watch a video called listen up which we'll figure out how to share with our community which was a powerful powerful video um done with a documentary um person that creates documentaries and students from around the state and I don't think there was a dry eye in the workshop it was that powerful so you'll be hearing more about it but just wanted to share that yeah thank you because that that was going to be like oh yeah right the um the filming the screening of that was extremely powerful and if if it's created by teens or teens and is The Voice of teens it is it's amazing that I I think we absolutely need to to springette park are there any other like I just want to Annette
004this is Rebecca I just want to announce uh again that this Wednesday at the Welcome Center at six o'clock um there's going to be a presentation on overdoses um drug overdoses in the community and um everyone's welcomed and yeah important important topic issue for the community thank you hey we are moving on to the administrative report and Christine did you say you're going to go first yeah okay thank you all right here it comes whoops I didn't mean to share it you need to go to a slideshow hold on there we go all right um I'm gonna be pretty brief tonight because we have a packed agenda but I did want to let you all know and I'll share this out with you that at the beginning of the year we did a survey of
005all the staff at our opening in service which was a direction alignment commitment survey and if you're trying to um move a system you've got to have Direction alignment and commitment so we did a survey to see where where we were at and I um I've linked the results so you'll see them but I just wanted you to know that direction was pretty clear people people know where we're headed which is good um the Strategic plan has really helped with that and our commitment is there our teachers are committed the care our administrative team we're all very committed um to the work alignment was the area that came up as needing more attention so it's just aligning all the groups doing the work and make sure making sure they're all moving towards that direction so
006some of the things that we've put in place currently to help with alignment are differentiated professional development there's a team that helps with that we've got our middle level team meetings they are led by middle level teachers we've got our leadership teams and you'll hear a little bit about what they're up to uh s-u-y mtss system in place now which is exciting we all had our own systems and they were a little bit different and now we've under um under Brittany and Angie and curriculum and really streamlined the mtss process and we're working on as part of that system really diving deep into the data which is appropriate for that those meetings we have a faculty advisory Council that I meet with Katie and Angie join me to hear the voice of the faculty each
007month talk about what's going on what's working what's not same with support staff we're working on our leader in me implementation through our Lighthouse and action teams our curriculum coordination which Angie's been working on um and we have um administrator instructional leadership so that is Angie and myself we have in our calendar we are in schools every week meeting with principals working on problems of practice and um aligning goals and helping and helping them essentially be instructional leaders so that's the those are the things we're doing around alignment which is pretty exciting yeah sure Christine what is the faculty advisory Council so that's a group of of Faculty members that um it was open to any faculty member to join a monthly meeting where we talk about issues what's going well what's not going well
008what can we do about it we brainstorm ideas so we've got about Lenny would you say yeah 20 20 teachers that have signed up to be part of that group that we're meeting yeah I mean it's it's a great idea yeah I'd love to hear more about it maybe at some point sure yeah yeah absolutely and we do the same with the support staff and the issues are a little bit different but um everybody gets a voice so yeah that's important um so just those leadership teams we have three of them they are voluntary uh staff can join them if they choose to if they're passionate about that work we have a wellness team it's uh the administrative lead on that team is Colleen and she put this slide together but I'm going to present
009it um they are meeting monthly they just met on they met in September they'll meet again in October they planned um during our October 7th early release for students we had in-service they did a survey for the staff to fill out on um beehive which is um Vermont um initiative thank you Amy and and what they would like to see for wellness we're allotting a little bit of time on our early release days for staff Wellness so it gave them a chance to weigh in on that the monthly themes to celebrate October's healthy living and mindfulness and substance prevention and November's gonna be thankfulness so those are just in building themes that we're working on and then they meet this week on the 27th and that team includes our nurses um teachers that are passionate
010about that work and our admin leader Colleen we have Jennifer Aldrich um her lead role is working with the sels and the Performing Arts she is um doing some collaborative problem solving work she's training new staff members she's got a parent session coming up in November um she helps lead the trauma Championship they were the trauma Champions they're the trauma leadership team now and SEL and Trauma practices go hand in hand they are meeting um twice uh I think she meant month twice a month working to embed reflective practices develop training for new staff and create trainers in restorative approaches that's their focus and then Jennifer also meets with a Performing Arts team and they are rebuilding as you know covid had an impact on our Performing Arts so it's they're in rebuilding years and
011then the last team is diversity Equity inclusion I'm going to let Katie take over on this one she and Sergio lead this team together um so we just actually met today as a team Sergio and I are meeting with Ethan uh twice a month in between our other meetings um and we're have sort of split to get some mileage on some of the tasks and get people embedded in the district um the leadership team that met today we're going to move forward on two action items one is to put systems in place for um the work that Ethan's going to be doing any sort of Data Tracking things on those lines as well as a resource site or thinking website and that's where we were today the other is moving forward on how we bring
012restorative practices universally to the ESU and what that looks like and how that is moving forward Ethan will be again meeting with us at least twice a month and they've met with the four of us earlier today as well including Christine and Angie he is the process of setting up monthly drop-ins virtual drop-ins kind of like open Office hours he's looking we've tapped him to start Gathering some of those resources that things will be useful but then we can have a place to have those that are easily accessible and that's a good partnership with the leadership team for staff of what what do they think they need what what is out there what are they with wearing many hats as a teacher as well as a professional as well as a community member as well
013as thinking about for students um he'll be attending Community dinner and other events as he's available to in the evenings and um also supporting the Dei leadership team progress on our action item so we're just getting to that point where everything's starting to dovetail today we had a pretty lengthy meeting was good a lot of good conversation right um and just lastly just quick updates um we had our first moving division forward session with Mike Nicholson our next session is on December 5th everyone is welcome um our Equity audit is moving we are sending out the surveys I want to say by the end of this week and there'll be a two-week window for people to fill them out they're going to students 912 with um parent uh parents can opt out of that of
014course that's our policy staff community members and administrative team those are the four groups that are going to be surveyed and then um then we'll move to the focus group phase of the audit and covet updates I think these changed since Friday when I wrote These in we've had since last month six at hes two at ABS one at um Weathersfield and Windsor had 15 students and staff um with covet so we are following the protocols we're doing what we need to do I think the biggest impact uh especially at Windsor is Staff out and finding coverage so Katie will be we've got all sorts of Administrators subbing all over the place and um we did have flu clinics the last one was today I believe Angie did you get your shot today yeah at
015Heartland Heartland yeah that was the last one so we had one in Windsor yesterday so um which is great the nurses put those together for the community and we had pretty good attendance at um haven't gotten the update from yesterday but the other one so it was a flu and it turned out you could get both Indiana all right so I am gonna now unless I'll take questions I'm gonna project Katie's um special ed report next I I just wanted to comment Katie um the work that the team is doing it's like well um I made it it's amazing it's great but it's like how many hours are you putting in a day 24 yes yes many of us including our teachers including their teachers yeah everybody's working hard and it's good stuff this good
016work and we bit off what we think we could shift and that but I think that that's part of what we think it's manageable to do this year or at least finish those two and then see what happens and we do enjoy working with each other so it doesn't feel she's coming to me yeah it's nice when you work with people that you know they were saying goodness yeah all right so let me share this time so I don't have as many pictures as Christine does because I just totally apparently I don't use my phone as much as I've run around I suppose so um I apologize for that and I didn't get Sabrina's picture up so um this is a full screenshot of all the students and staff from the Ace Program and other
017kids who came with us for the high school to the tundra chair which was a awesome day we did a scavenger hunt students were very invested in finding out all the different kinds of whatever I asked them to go find it was a high investment activity many had never been um and going with all of the other students around the Upper Valley I think was pretty pretty powerful and it was a good Community Building event for our students and staff as they were getting to know each other at the beginning of the year plus it didn't hurt that was an amazing beautiful day um so um this I started thinking about does everybody know who everyone is um so the behind the scenes in special education we have Betsy Howard who is our lead Logistics
018learner basically transportation and anything I need to do she finds me um she's amazing at all of the pieces of we all do our own purchase and requisitions from Soup To Nuts within the special education office and not with our other system just because of how we follow Carrie Phillips which I know those of you been on the board for at least a year know how we used to farm out Medicaid to an agency and we brought it in Kerry is at truly the master of Medicaid we now have enough funds where her position can be fully funded by Medicaid and we can still put in for we are hope that's how we use those medications that's great um our numbers have been absolutely through the roof um Kathy Mack is another coordinator she is
019an administrative role for all the students who are out of District including all of our school choice students who are on 504s or IEPs because we're still responsible for them plus anybody replaced and she's overseen doing supervision and evaluation this year for weather scales Sabrina whose picture did send me earlier today that never made it to the slide is our assistant director and we're joking about we're now the directors at the no the no box thinking um let's go here a new tagline um and she and I have been splitting the responsibilities for the four buildings as well as Sabrina and Kathy are have taken the lead on our mentoring program which we have branched out from the car adventuring program and tapped into the state's resources to support teaching special education new special education
020teachers a little bit differently um for the nuances that are special which is it's gotten rave reviews we're really pleased and we have two staff Karen Carl and Barb Martin who went and were trained by the state this summer on their own time um to the three-day training to help us support that which has been wonderful um what we lead um and you can go to the next one oh that's right I have to go to the next one um because I can't see it that way um Christine jokes about this list probably can go on and on um what we wanted to highlight is student Support Services all the specialized programs and staff which is kind of obvious we also oversee the 504 and Ada support for both students and staff I work with
021Tina on anything having to do with staff so that she has the HR lens and I have some real disability or the the access lens the pre-k program we'll just talk about a little bit later a diverse day upgrading inclusion is within our office as well McKinney vento homeless liaison that's one of my other hats um our Mental Health Services as you know we don't we currently do not have any HR staff right now in our buildings um not because we don't want them they were not able to fill the positions because they're dealing with the same shortages we are we're in lots of communication with them though on lots of other things and then um what ties into later's important interventions training for room 4500 which happens to be up on our doctor to
022make two policies next is Sabrina thought it'd be a really good idea to show people how many people are under student Support Services and I'm not sure every time I did the math last night it was pretty late again that 24 hours thing um if I added all everything up and I tried to do it by FTE and non-individuals but currently we have approximately 96 staff in student Support Services across the SEO and that does include some staff that actually work in other districts with our students which is something we're also responsible for and we currently have one unfilled special ed special educator position and 10 support staff unfilled throughout the Su we've had a lot of we've had War chart over this fall due to varying reasons um than we did experience last year
023and it's um the hardest it is Windsor and Heartland being the next one after that so we're actively advertising again website and school spring and any other place we can working with Larry on that so um the next slide so with all of those bits I love a lot of people for one person with all everybody spread out just to supervise so how we do it is together um the past two years probably solidly we've really we've worked on shared leadership I meet me include the principles for Sabrina does sometimes for daily depends on which what's going on um but he had weekly meetings we all staff now know our chain of support is to work with the building principles first we can be brought in at any time but it's not siled and that
024way including supervision and evaluation including making decisions about Staffing and power support and all of that and that has really helped and I think for many folks especially as we move to the mtss systems where things are streamlined and it has a structure that it's not okay over here and so um I could have written more on that but it really is shared we do it together and we're a speed dial um do do parents um know where they can go um if they have a child that is identified in any way I mean in terms of I can go to this one and it'll take me I mean just you know they know what the process is it's not like they're like they'd have to call the superintendent to find out you know who
025do I contact right do they is that process um available on the website through them or how is that how is that made available to them we within our handbooks as well as all the classroom teachers have been always our first line and they are well versed in our MTS process in us being part of it whenever someone says in the keywords of I would like my child to evaluated for special education that's that's the magic phrase that suddenly triggers some legal pieces we know what to do for that and we have a very clear process now that it's called Childtime every two weeks if there's a referral we automatically have a standing meeting so we can meet parents are invited and so it's quick so do we have a fast turnaround and we instituted
026that three years ago I think it was um in response to making sure that we had a clear process and transparent one for families and at that time you can make all these different decisions approach to evaluation or get more support or whatever it might be we are working on updating the website both Pre-K and special ed one needs an overhaul it's on our to-do list and a part of that would be actually working with Brittany on what she's done on the mtss site and Angie so that it all dovetails and looks like it fits together and we can sort of because right now it looks pretty wordy and I guess my other question thank you for that that was helpful is if a student wanted to identify you know I I just thought about
027that and I wondered do they know that they can and if they can what how would they do that we just had someone ask that question uh his book it actually happens pretty often oh and we our typical choice is great let's call your parents and let's do this together um because it is cute with the little kids if they see someone helping and they also want to go hang out with whoever it is and actually it's a norm that kids are all working with all the different adults but as they get older they start to notice like hey wait I've noticed I've had trouble reading or I want to and they say something and we didn't that that is not that uncommon to happen if we pull a parent in and we make sure
028that that students at the table meeting and that's the other piece we're really trying to implement is definitely our upper elementary middle school and high school students getting them to come to the table um and being we've talked a little bit about how they can help Mentor others so it is it's growing and then all part of a leader in me as well so the next slide um dinos so we started you've heard a lot about the ace classrooms which is the Middle School High School classrooms that we have here but we've probably not heard about the Dino's classroom which is discovering Independence through organized structures they came up with the name it is a classroom right now that is at Heartland or looked at space um really not really um we are finding an
029increases as part of our trends of young children who have been identified as being on the Spectrum coming in from some of our local clinics or other programs that have had a highly structured ABA program and what we figured and we just seem to have gotten a big bubble of kids across the Su it just happened um and talking with those families and talking with the um those teams because these are team decisions of does it make sense to have the student in the classroom with a support staff person who has only been working with someone one-on-one or two to one in a very controlled environment or do we start with you know the family stuff this classroom so what we came up with is an option and has been fantastic is a classroom that
030is geared towards running a small support Early Childhood classroom K1 that is getting students to learn the routines of school the Norms the how to get in line how to be in morning meeting what are the learning techniques that they need plus the communication many students have assistive technology devices iPads or other devices as their voice and some of them go about it that moving towards inclusion and working with the classroom teachers so that they are ready to enter the classroom successfully so that things like the sensory issues that are going on in the classroom mindful that we wanted to do things in a mindful way so that's how this this classroom came to be led by a special ed teacher who's also training to be a board-certified behavior analyst so that helps um it
031is um Tyler Graves it was based on Tyler's name and a bcba Elizabeth trezmowsky um she is embedded there with some wonderful support staff so it is amazing to see from the beginning of the year right now to where they are now and where they're going to be they're already talking about how some students can be more included so that's exciting someone to bring in Elizabeth your hand is raised thank you um I wondered if you could explain more about um naturalistic Aba so one of the things that with thinking about a applied behavioral analysis naturalistic being mirroring what an educational classroom would look like so not a contrived spot that looks more like a um a table and chairs and we have kids doing just table top activities their classroom looks like a kindergarten
032classroom it isn't it more of a educationally focused So within the field they talk about naturalist opportunities to play and to be in the same environment where they're going to need to generalize those skills including the playground and everywhere else as close to that as possible without the volume of individuals does that make sense it does make sense uh do they have any breaks from applied Behavior Analysis oh yeah it's not a it's not a full the full ABA program at any any stretch of the imagination um mostly part of that naturalistic piece is to learn through play and their natural environment in a way that is structured and organized so yes it is not a you um encourage folks if you're walking through um Heartland at any point to come visit and just see
033all of our classrooms that one included um but it is not um tabletop activities by any stretch of the imagination there was a lot of musical instruments being played earlier today when I went in the room um as they were exploring musical instruments just like you would in any other kindergarten class okay thank you you're welcome um the ace classroom we changed it from last year being one room to three parts of students so that it's approximately five or six students per quad and they rotate through um two full-time classroom teachers as well as two support staff who also work with our OTS and PT OT and speech language Pathologists on social skills instruction or community-based learning and that has been a very different model this year a little staff intensive in some ways but
034definitely better approach to have the smaller groups we are finally this year thank you that we can do this we have been trying for two years to have students more out in the community and including building in this year all my phone calls go right adaptive skiing and swimming program and that also is going to be open to some other students in the district who need some alternatives for skiing for example level or that we think need swimming and it's hard to find outside of school those skills I can say with a mom hat on as well as a special ed director had on the drowning being one of the leading that's the children with significant disabilities who do not navigate the water and how do we do that so that is one of the
035life skills that we would be addressing for on several students not just in the East program we also have an embedded mental health clinician Julia barakian our school to home coordinator who's done a fantastic job being available for us whenever needed numbers this year um of students who are on the Spectrum was really high and I know I've heard that before um and so I'm wondering what's going to happen as these numbers because they will increase and so if they increase again next year are we going to be able to accommodate them are we going to how are we going to do that this I mean we need to keep talking about that but also I mean I think that Dino program is great but I'm I'm saying so what if we end up with
036four additional students next year where do they go one of the nice things is we have a good pipeline for Early Childhood so we know they're around okay we also have a good very good relationship with our local clinics that work with students on the Spectrum so that it is we ship other than a a student moving and we shouldn't be hit with the bubble again without knowing we're hitting a bubble um so I think that um and we truly and it does happen hit a bubble um our numbers within the school age have seemed to stay fairly steady even with students moving in or out um of students identified later in this as I can mention now it's easier we three three of our staff are now trained and identifying students on the Spectrum
037with a very specific test called the um and we did that on purpose because many of our area Dartmouth Hitchcock it's a year wait other places um with psychiatrists were not able to do it so we've been able to in-house help identify and then build our capacity that way for older students so that's been um so we are trying to be prepared and if we do get four more we'll figure it out because we always do we just need and we have to yeah I think space um spaces would be the hardest part because there are for many students at certain points not always but as we move and shift and respond to their needs you need a location to do it and you need the staff so we got the willingness let's just figure
038out those Logistics thank you um I was wondering I have two questions about the Ace classrooms uh the first question is who who are in the Ace classrooms and what are how do they qualify for them and the second question is uh how does Universal Design for Learning come into play thank you okay so students right now are identified through their IEP teams as needing um I'll go through our criteria a small classroom significantly modified curriculum um the direct instruction through special education and sometimes it's also the the small group aspect of having less distraction and the ability to have access to different programming throughout the day so more flexibility within their schedule several of our students are also in other locations during the day they're not with the that's why the today's classroom it's
039not a program because we have students that are also included in the tech center others who are taking other classes at the middle school the high school level so it is it's very individual but at this time it is an IEP team decision and we as new students enter they are on a trial basis to see if it's a good fit for them and sometimes during that process we've come up with some better suggestions for learning styles and probably approaches that maybe if it isn't what else that general education or they're they're sending classrooms or schools could do for them and udl is embedded in the practices in terms of all of the I would try to give it a good example of what they're learning about in social studies and their surrounding communities they're
040also applying and practicing and further deepening that knowledge within the community-based learning within the community-based class and then again they may bring that further into how they're learning about the um agriculture in science so that there's multiple ways of learning in multiple subject areas so thematically they're connected but it's grade level appropriate that follows the standard and that's so udl as far as within the classrooms plus within within the direct classroom teaching as well as within each one of those odd classrooms thank you I have one more question um I I don't want to assume but I it makes me think that the dino class um is that something that the hope is to um get students to be able to adapt so that they don't need special ed help or they need less special
041ed help or they need they need to stick with mtss uh after they leave that classroom and yeah go ahead sorry I'll go get finished sorry I thought you would fall asleep was our second part of that Elizabeth there is I just want to know if that impression is accurate and then I also wanted to know if that the same thing is true with the ace classroom um with the dino classroom the goal is a general classroom environment by learning the skills that they need with less I don't want a different support than that it would look very different than what it is within that classroom as they're learning to tolerate their environment around them um how they generalize that to the classroom such as work I think our early integration has been going out
042during course Fridays for example with The Kindergartners and how that looks with lots of support versus what will look like for student a maybe four months from now with one adult support versus that whole group so um in terms of given the complexity of the students needs it's the goal is inclusion um and just we had to really meet those students where they were at coming in without trying to make us make um them meet what a larger classroom would be so we almost called it the bridge program to think about that was one of the ways we were thinking of it no I totally get it and I I it's it's going back to that whole idea of of uh bunching up services at the at the lower grades with the idea that the
043students you know grow better um it's kind of like the idea just to connect it to transition okay yeah right right that would be that early that the Early Childhood transition okay right keep going okay so this is I didn't see the time limits for it um and I was asked to do my comprehensive so I can cut down it's quite all right that's good case manager or service provider um some I don't know if we did this at the end of last year we split up the special ed position to hey I want to do paperwork because I love paperwork and I want to be a teacher because I like the teaching part and strangely enough we had three people volunteer to be case managers who really are good teachers but they were like
044feeling like they wanted to do paperwork so and this to your question Rebecca I'm going to anticipate it is that we've informed parents who inform teachers that now there are two special ed professionals on the team one who's the case manager who will do the paperwork they will organize the meetings they will make sure you get your stuff and your service provider who is the special educator or otpt SLP who's actually going to teach your child in the school and so we've we created a great document um it's so far knock on wood we have had parents had a good response from it special Educators have to do far less paperwork they still have to do Medicaid um and the case managers the organizational skills are amazing of those folks that are doing it they
045have caseloads about 80 kids each just to do paperwork not to actually teach them when I say that people freak out um so that this is a model that we ended up I think adding you know probably a half a case manager if I went back and did all the math of how we ended up there um but it is definitely improving our ability to see students as well as being part of that mtss system so um the next is briefly which does tie in a little bit later safety care um we were a Crisis Prevention and intervention in physical intervention School District which almost most of the state of Vermont is we decided this summer um it was a leap of faith and not quite a cliff but we almost it was it was
046time time sensitive to do this approach that is um considered um much more um consent based it is also a very ABA based and a lot more preventative strategies on looking at what's going on with students so that when we do need to use our de-escalation techniques we know what we're doing we seem to have the feedback and it's quoted there and you can certainly read it um was that folks felt they had many more options now before going Hands-On and as you can see here Julia barakians in the middle who is our new mental health clinician she and Jennifer Aldrich is holding her legs and Colleen is there and then Kelsey and I'm not sure who's standing behind that who that is I can't tell from the picture um it's Andrew McPhillips thank you
047Jennifer um who is the ABS school counselor am I remember right all right and demonstrating a chair pose so um the we had six staff members from across the Su trained to be trainers so that we now can have a much better reach for people to problem solve around kids and we have very few any physical and treasure but really it's about the the de-escalation techniques so um we about we'll have about 10 more staff to train this year and then that will be done and then we'll restart next year so that was a big change for us this year so no more CPI Pre-K slide did not get the pictures I wanted but we've talked about Pre-K a lot so we can skip that one I think if we're good by the numbers um
048so the Heartland members that are here my numbers the other night were slightly off Betsy and I went and double checked because something wasn't feeling incredibly right um we were just looking for our trends of where we are for students in terms of child count um in 2018 we had 214 students total right now our total students identified in special ed at 283. um so we have gone up the just about 70 students not at the 100 we thought we were before there was just a mix up with numbers so um I just have a very quick question and that is what is esce Early Childhood special education the way the state breaks them out is to K-12 and early childhood um so I thought as we looked at Staffing our paraprofessional staffing has stayed
049almost constant since I've been here in 2019 our teaching staff has incrementally gone up but what also has gone down which comes to the trends which is the next slide um thanks again I think I'm done um um we've seen an increase in pre-k students being identified prior we're probably going to end up with 30 at the end of the year we're already at 30 kids either in process or current um we've also we mentioned students who've been identified as autistic the other is you've heard a lot from me in the past few years of decrease in Su Place students 21 when I first started 12 last year and we're currently at 11. and we've had a couple students transition back including and this is part of that big picture are the ace classrooms allow
050students who would normally have had to go elsewhere stay including the ODP program which is occupational development program in Springfield which is a fantastic program as well as the regional Resource Center up at Hartford um that they stay here instead of going to either of those programs as well as students returning from some of the more mental health placements where they need the small classroom and can and have some significant learning challenges as well so that has sort of as we do budget when we get into them back later accounted for our increase in teaching staff um but it's definitely offset by having kids here right that's what um I do want to say that's phenomenal from 21 being placed out to um 11. that's those are big numbers we did I will it's not
051all what we've done I will put in we've had a lot of older students as they're getting out there aging out they're graduating we're just not putting anybody else we're putting very few students that we still are placing students as needed because that's appropriate as they identified and it's needed but I think our rate has slowed significantly down as evidenced by on the other end they're just they're graduating but you're also putting in programs to support those that you are so you're that's yeah we're getting in on both ends yeah there's a lot of factors and the last slide was just for your when you click on it at some point there's one of one page or one and a half page Google doc on um act 173 that I thought was very informative that
052if as an overview that I put in there but that's it how much should I go over anything fifteen ish I thought it was good it's okay okay it's okay thank you very much it was very important and that is next on our agenda is correspondence and in the last few days we did receive one letter from Mr Daniel works and it will become part of the record for this meeting did anyone else receive that was directed to the SU all right no we move on to items for discussion um the hiring and employment policy it's Elizabeth and let me see Elizabeth where I'm sorry I completely forgot about this for this month I think it's because I missed the last meeting I'm I apologize I got enough you can take 50 of the blame
053Elizabeth and I'll take the other 50. I'm excited as well sorry okay that's fine yeah we're just making up more time for you yeah exactly that'll be next agenda so so it's all funny thank you um no small matter update oh good I also here we can make up some time because I don't have an update I um I'm still waiting to hear from the two grants that I applied for to pay for it yeah well we look forward to hearing I'm cross fingers for the grants next we have recommendation on social media and communication plan that's me and Christine yep I don't think I need to present um but I have the information to share with you um so we did uh Larry did a staff survey and what we found out and we
054met with the administrative team um to talk about social media and um essentially blocking those four sites on student devices Chromebooks and 93 of the staff agreed with the decision to block social media on Chromebooks 93 of the staff surveyed felt there was no educational value to social media and those that did how to work around for teaching about it they could use their own devices to do that the administrative team met and we are in uh also an agreement our recommendation is that we do block social media for kids in K Pre-K sorry Pre-K 12 but um offer an opt-in for our 11th and 12th graders so they can so allow them to access things that we're posting on social media like fundraisers and sports and those types of things and if the board
055I know we talked about you know how that is our one of our communication tools um so we'll need to come up with a plan but we wanted to have the board weigh in before we put efforts in that Realm um most most of our communication through social media is to parents who are on it so it's not like we would be excluding no but making an effort to make sure we're posting things on the website as well right yeah thank you thanks um I actually uh the the survey uh really good about the direction about this um I was I was questioning um and I do um feel really strongly that if we are not allowing the kids on social media then we need to post events somewhere else um because I know I
056mean me personally there are a lot of parents that are trying to stay away from social media and it's really frustrating um that that's the only way that we can get a lot of information thank you for breathing Matt thank you I think uh yeah Nikki you kind of anticipated what my comment was too which is going off of that I think that making sure that whatever our Central Hub of communication is something that the only thing you need to access it is access to a browser um you know there's not when when you use social media as your primary mode of communication you you kind of firewall out in a lot of cases anybody who's not a participant in that particular social media right which I think in years past Facebook was much more
057widely sort of accepted as something of a public Commons I feel like in the last few years a lot of people have been peeling off of that uh so I think that we need to be responsive to that um and just think about access when we when we have a central line of information um that isn't to say we shouldn't use Facebook and shouldn't use these other platforms because for a lot of people they are still a primary building but we just need to make sure that that's not our first stop so everything should be on our website and then it can have a designated age if that was used to yeah that's why yeah right yeah yeah so anyone who is um branded this all has to be put in place and that's in
058just a moment but um it can look to the website for Advocate you know any announcements listen my only recommendation is that I have the option to be for 9 to 12 because as a 10th grader is easy like if I'm in a class meeting presenting and if I want to go to a link for my fundraiser that it I can go right to it because even on my non-school issue MacBook I have to go to my other Google account because it is still blocked it would still be blocked that is the case for some apps that I do use and um I think it also will give kids that sense of responsibility is that something Larry that could be done for instance not just openly give that um option but it puts them or
059someone else another student is if the board wants to do the often nine Falls gonna no no no no I'm saying if you can for for an iPhone 10. if they come to you they're working on a particular project or um fundraiser they can come to you and say can we access no no their parents would have together yeah yeah right now the recommendation is to often at 11 12. and if they wanted to extend it to 912 you could do that but it's up to you okay repetitions of 11 12. I I'd be amenable to 9 through 12. I mean I think I I agree with you that does give some extent some responsibility to students who are in that High School area and also again you know it is with parent permission so
060there is that conversation happening and the understanding that that's being extended so I think that's completely reasonable we discussed it at length and we could have probably gone either way as a administrative team so so that's an item for Action okay yep so wonderful thank you yeah absolutely and what I will do is I will put something in my newsletter or send out a special s'more Edition that lets parents know that this will happen um again it does not mean students are not going to access these sites on their phones as they likely will but um we're trying to be very consistent about our cell phones in school as well so all right thank you sure next up is superintendent search on last at our last meeting we voted to approve engaging from what School
061Board Association and they sent me a contract which it has a it had the date that the search would officially end that they had a typo in the date so I sent it back and [Music] um they will fix it and get it back to me but they are ready and um as soon as I get that I will share it with everyone okay so that was very quick um policy review and readings so we have about 20 still minutes um the first is the restraint and seclusion policy and that is the second reading and it has procedures with it those are in the portal the procedures that are in draft form and who built so upon reading the um I'm assuming that the wse Su was the edited version because I read that um
062a couple things I'm concerned about or believe there needs to be some a definition in here is um in the first sentence substantial Bill are you on the procedures or the policy this is the procedure okay so that's the difference yeah Katie and I worked on procedures to match the file to follow the policy and we um Katie vetted them with our Dei coordinator um about a week ago I think right right and we as we did as Christine and I did the procedures to mirror the policy until we'll get to the point where we needed to be more specific we tried to stay as closely aligned to the policy given the complexity of this particular policy and procedures and be aligned draft use okay I'll I'll take a look at that but I I
063still have a concern about uh defining what's substantial means I'm I'm assuming that refers to substantial risk of bodily harm first line imminent is pretty clear but what do you mean by substantial risk of bonding harm I think that should be laid out um and the procedure that's all I have for now yeah so those definitions of substantial risks are in the State Board rule 4 500.3 should we have that and make it we link it in I don't know if we linked it we were definitely using it to guide us we haven't um we didn't physically link it but substantial is in there under 2.13 .13 we could we could link yeah that would be helpful on okay what the the definitions so it's not a 30-page document but you can go to the
064ruling that would be really good because even like seclusion is defined orchestrate and they're modifying what types of what rooms are straight what needs and then restraint and other things there so okay I would have a similar comment about guiding escort I assume that that's better defined as well it is in the training they haven't updated the language yet um and that's the difference between an escort and a restraint has to do with the willingness of the individual and that's been updated in the training again with what we just did but I don't think the language is caught up to that yet and they were clear about that um and just so you know part of our safety care training everybody newly trained we did the up the most updated State training we got the
065slides and we reviewed it so everyone is completely up to date so um I think this will go on to a third reading because we can have the links to those Amy yes sorry that's okay can I just make a couple of questions uh comments this is a this is uh um concern Statewide and uh current law states that um and and so first uh I don't I can't find my legislator pin but um as as you're area legislator I'm positive that there's going to be some um changes made to the law this year but one of them which I think I think this is a really good policy um but the thing that uh is left out of the law and and out of the policy is that um the law states that there
066only needs to be one person trained in each building and uh uh I yes I see your consternation Katie at the law states that there only needs to be one person in each building trained and I think Statewide that's that's really a big problem because during covid that person may have been out a lot the state allows for uh seclusion and restraint by anybody um in the absence of the person who's trained and so my request would be that there would be more people trained um on that all of the training programs we have CPI safety care all of them it's two or more individuals so you might be that a team approach is that and we've done a three has been the norm for CPI so the law may say that we need the
067minimum of one in practice the training that we all receive that's why we have teams of approximately at least six people in each building at this point including Albert Bridge which has the smallest number of students but actually I think there's Jennifer and Kirkwood are still here on about six five to six people trained so um and I know my and the absence of that anybody can which is another whole issue but um so in practice I don't think I've ever been in any place where there's only been one person trained um but we have you're right with covet you could be the only person and you have to immediately intervene but best safe practices definitely we are not in that camp of just being minimal okay and I appreciate that I I I really
068appreciate that practice I'd just like to see it in the policy thank you that's it yeah there will be more than one is that what you mean uh I would think that there should be a percentage of the staff um I don't know I'm not an educator so I don't know or an administrator so I don't know what would be appropriate but uh well I am a teacher and I did run an alternative program in in any given building you need to have at least three a percentage would be better yeah you gotta have more than one I mean that's just crazy because a lot of the a lot of the transportation transport holes and restraint holes all require more than one so saying oh you could you only need one when actually you need
069multiple trained individuals well I I think you and I have talked about this bill but a positive that that's going to get changed this this upcoming session the last page I don't know if this is what we're talking about but it says under implementation the superintendent shall ensure that appropriate staff I don't know if that means number of staff are provided training by programs recommended by the AOE so our there's a there's an approved program list from the AOE that they just updated this summer and I think it only has got four programs on it to this point that improved safety safety care yes so is would it be and I about best practice is to have a certain percentage one of the things that I concerned about if we put a quantifiable number and
070we have a number of people sick that day plus could be some people who need it the students who did then we are not following the policy I just so I don't I don't disagree at all definitely the best that we need more than one but is there a way to word that so it doesn't so it's trade number of the train people that they're present every day yeah um and I would say that the um within our buildings and who we have trained you know a percentage sounds like it's a decent way of going for map-wise and figuring that out um because Windsor obviously has more than enough Rich change what do you think that percentage should be like realistically let me go look at my TPI list for a second to see kind
071of where we felt comfortable as an ad team for each building and then I have to do the math it's definitely not do you have a question or another comment I have both uh actually more of a comment um I I don't mind looking at an mou for support staff to encourage with some horizontal movement um to encourage support staff particularly paraprofessionals to actively be engaged in the training in the um understanding that uh What It Takes and that they will be required to participate one thing about support staff is that they are if they are pulled from a situation to participate in a restraint or seclusion it is much less likely that other classrooms will be disruptive a lot of times what would happen in my program is is different teachers were trained so
072they would have to come into a restraint situation in being the primary teacher of their classroom is disrupted as well as my classroom so you know looking at support staff and Pony up some money either um of course we would have to to look at that not for this year but future years includes because they would have to be trained as well but I think that's a possibility the other comment I have is in the procedure which I think is great um it says that the two the evaluation must include a routine physical Dash medical assessment I'm not sure what's the difference there conducted by someone not involved in the restraint or seclusion with documentation I'm concerned is it doesn't state that a a physical medical assessment by someone who is qualified to do a
073physical medical assessment um I mean you just can't foreign language of what's required right but required isn't as as Elizabeth pointed out required isn't always covering what's best practice in in our procedure um I believe it's important to look at Best Practices I think somebody who is going to do a medical assessment needs to be qualified to do with the medical assessment um I think the way that's written in case that that person's not available then we would not be able to follow that part of the procedure um so in a typical situation the student is sent to the nurse right okay medical assessment if the nurse is not there then typically the student is sent to um if there's a first responder in the building that would be the second choice if there's not
074they're sent to the office or the school counselor I guess they think that should be laid out so you just don't grab the nearest individual and say okay do a medical assessment I don't think we'd do that but I hear you though yeah I mean procedures need to be as because it's not a you know it's not a um it's a procedure they need to be fairly clear so I'll put a comment in there for Katie and I to look down and just to Circle back to your support stuff we have made funds available for any support staff that we've identified or has shown interest and we determine that it's appropriate for their role to participate in the training and making that available to them whether they're being paid extra for it or or not
075because depending on where it fell if it wasn't outside of the contracted hours or on one of the professional days that they wouldn't have been there so we we have made that extensively available to many support staff we are not making um because for many of our support staff this would not be something that they would participate in nor may have the student level skills yet to participate in using on physical intervention um because they haven't been doing the job long enough they you know we don't have a sense of what their skill level is working with students that there are many that are not being offered the opportunity it's very different than doing collaborative problem solving which is the verbal interventions and de-escalation um types of that discussion but other types of techniques than
076it is for someone to do um any physical Hands-On with that said we do have some staff that have shown interest in doing just the de-escalation pieces which wouldn't cause recertification but we're going to make that available on the next round for Steph we would like to participate in that excuse me as our numbers allow that that's a plus we're able to do I'm still trying to figure out the percentages okay Elizabeth thank you Amy um is there any room in here for uh uh um occasional analysis of the data that's collected in the policy or the procedures or or in the procedures for example uh if a particular teacher has a lot of uh you know has a higher incidence of uh seclusion um or if a uh if a student has a higher
077incidence over the course of time it could it could I mean obviously uh it's not it's not realistic to to uh think that that uh if a student has a lot of different uh if a student has problems that warrant seclusion or restraint that that the teacher and or staff um wouldn't be looking at what to do about it but um it might be useful to have for example um I had a uh an analysis a periodic analysis I guess the follow-up question to that would be what data system does the district use for Swiss for um Gathering Behavior incidences we we have and Katie can speak to um the rule 4500s come in and she keeps the data on that some of it we have to report no not restraints what software do you
078use what data system we use the MBA MBA through PowerSchool Bill we just switched to it yeah and in terms of to hit on your Elizabeth on your question is that I I'm the one who receives all the 4 500 reports and we there's a process for if any staff members been involved in three or more um it's reported um directly to whom it all goes to me and I keep track of that as well as anything too frequent on a student um and those students are typically students that we would already have on Behavior plans and plaid and we would revisit that we and I I'd like to put a plug-in we had I think one from the district or two this entire so far this entire year it is not a common occurrence
079so our to extrapolate much data out of it we're fortunate we don't have to extract like much data out of it because we just don't have the incidences um on but if we did and that has happened we I also receive all the ones from our out of District placements and those tend to be the ones where I have to be more involved versus anything in-house but that annually and I don't know when that would occur but then this must inform us yeah we did do it okay it might have been a couple of years ago um that I've been as a designee for the superintendent to take care of all of these things that go um we certainly can do that yeah it would make sense yeah the superintendent of a report annually to
080the board under implementation of the administrative procedures required by this policy and shall include any recommendations for changes if any related to school school districts supervisory Union policies is that an annual report and I would imagine that coping through the kind of as a step yep multiple resources okay so that will um sorry Amy Nikki has her hand up I just said one more comment um and I guess that this is something maybe I'd like just a sentence in the procedures if you all agree um a single restraint can cause trauma to a child and so now we have a child that's been traumatized in school and we have like reviews and debriefings in the procedures but we don't have like follow-up on this child that has now been traumatized and so a single restraint
081can lead to the need for additional restraints if we haven't addressed the trauma that's caused by the initial restraint and so I guess I'd like to I mean maybe just a sentence that acknowledges that having been restrained this child has likely experienced trauma and should be watched um for trauma related behaviors um I feel like that the teacher should be flagged like the child should have a flag with them that they may now have experienced trauma in school and may now need um additional processes as their behaviors um in the classroom so that you well that was mentioned in our last meeting and that was part of why we met with Ethan to go over these procedures and and after talking about that at length Nikki um using sort of talking about trauma and how
082that sort of fit in to this that's where we came up with the statement that there's an opportunity for the parent this is on number three the debriefing opportunity for the parent the student to engage in a restorative process with staff and so it kept the input kept the intent so that the parent and student and staff were involved in a restorative process about the restraint without using the the term trauma in part because that felt as though it implied that almost harm and that is not necessarily a universal um belief around the use of restraint by even the student or parent and be dependent because it's all situational um so leaving that and if that's comfortable that's where we landed on trying to meet that need as well as really emphasizing what our process
083should be extending it beyond what the states that we should be doing yeah no and I I liked that part I just um and I guess I'll talk from experience um as a parent who's experienced this it's traumatic to get those letters um and it can cause shutdowns of the parents and the parents are not the best advocates for the child at that point um and that that's what concerns me because in this procedure if it were to happen all over again to us I probably still would not be capable of engaging with adults at that point um so I just I feel like it needs to be there needs to be additional follow-up beyond that because the parents are just as traumatized as the child yeah I think also like that that ties into
084the um uh that just having a review based upon a a physical review because most of what happens in um most the damage when it does occur I've I've restrained students hundreds of times um and uh most of the time it's to the benefit because it's that physical release that they do but sometimes it does cause drama and so it shouldn't just be a physical check-in it should be an emotional check-in foreign maybe it's just that we will follow up following week or something that takes it out of the moment because Ford I mean yes I think within four days it's appropriate to provide the parents the ability to speak um but having been a parent in that position I was not able to speak after four days um and probably like two to three
085weeks later is when my anger and need to speak really happened and at that point there's no opportunity one of the other things we added in number one um the debriefing which more goes to what you just mentioned Bill debriefing with the student and staff within school today two days two days reviewing the behavior precipitating the restraint the student's emotional needs showing sensitivity to the child's developmental age and another trusted adult identified by the student can be invited requested those are pieces we we attempt as we were because for some students they're like yeah whatever I'm good and other students not and sort of trying to make sure that we also have the ability to connect with the adults maybe that's a spot you know do we Circle back what you just said Nikki and
086to that at a later time and um I'm sort of thinking about how to how to word that in our procedures but there were certain nuances that we added in to be more responsive or than we have had in the past to the processing piece and holding folks to them and I really like what you guys wrote this is just like this is extra I guess maybe knowledge having been someone in this position um I just can you add Circle back provide parents with an opportunity to meet with a team within four days I mean does it have to be maybe it could just be half an administrator talk to them the following month or like within the weekend so I mean they have the opportunity to meet they've been told within four days that
087they have an opportunity yeah it doesn't mean they need to meet within those four days and then it's been offered and what their response is and we certainly meet at their convenience but we have to have that documentation that we have asked um so that's the minimum and maybe we say this is the minimum requirements that can certainly extend we should follow up and extend beyond this something yeah that would be nice that this is the minimum an additional follow-up with that I think that word okay thank you Nikki for that because um I I agree with you um for anyone to put their hands on a child um other than a parent is is not a um a good thing is I can just use some real simple words and that can really send
088some kids to a place of a lot of discomfort so I do appreciate you raising that point it can it really can be disturbing to the parents as well um yeah so like I just know from my state of mind that I this wouldn't help me at all four days it was burned in the fireplace and we were moving on but a couple weeks later there was processing to be had yeah but that's that's what I meant was you're notified within four days but you don't have to meet within those four days you can say I can't meet with you right now but I can be you know let me get back to you when I feel like I can and that that is part of the language that is communicated to parents yeah we
089can clean it up a little bit bring it back yeah I okay but if you hadn't heard of that opportunity within four days like if you hadn't received anything within four days I think you might have been even more angry oh definitely you need something within four days but you need yeah you need to follow up with them people need to meet within those four days now you just you need to follow up with the parents when they're in an emotional spot where they can process too and four days is not enough right so that will be the third that'll be the third reading right next month yes and we have two policies that they are the first reading and that is the non-discriminatory mascots and school branding policy which is a new required policy
090and the other is selection of Library materials and if there aren't any questions we can move those to a second reading and we can move on to budget with Larry okay so here we are again to present the uh next fiscal Year's budget um to get right into it uh the budget committee uh consists of members from each school district and RSU Rebecca representing Mata Stephanie Colleen representing Heartland Jamie representing Wethersfield and of course Christine as our interim superintendent this is a timeline of what we've been uh working on it started with budget prep in August getting a lot of the way to benefit stuff done and then in September meeting with all the department heads and uh drafting a budget uh the first Su budget committee meeting was September 16th and September 26th about
091a month from today uh the budget committee had the full draft in their possession and then about a week later a week and a half later it was sent out to all the Su board members and on the website and our uh last committee work session was last Friday where there were presentations from curriculum and special ed which brings us to today NCT October 24th and then uh for the other uh school districts they can usually start their uh District budget work once we get those assessments built in and that um usually takes place in the winter late fall and as we prep for a town meeting and we get the town report sent to the printers in February uh this is a slide I showed last year this year I did it all on
092one slide because I think it'll be you know you will remember this but uh this question comes up a lot is um how much of our local school district is ESU so looking at these charts you can see the ratios are very similar among all three school districts basically roughly 70 to 75 percent of your um 72 to 75 depending on the school district is your local school budget that's the purple special ed is the red Administration and operations is the blue so that would include the superintendent's office technology the business office transportation um Etc is the blue Early Childhood is the light green and the sliver and the aqua is Food Services this shows you the total expenditures uh within the general fund there are three funds to the Su budget the general fund
093the ECP which is Early Childhood fund which includes ECP and ecsc which Elizabeth asked about earlier with Katie's presentation and um Food Services but the general fund is made up specifically of special ed Administration operations and you can see that's some context there for those two parts of the budget um the recommendation from the SC budget committee is 12 million 55 148 for your next fiscal year that represents a 7.84 special ed increase and administration operations increase a little less than three percent uh one of the things the budget committee wanted to make sure that the Su board was aware is that you just signed a new agreement and uh there was we were trying to figure out a way to represent how much that new support staff agreement that the Su Port signed with
094uh support staff uh and as teachers for this uh current fiscal year accounts for uh the budget increase and how much was due to other things um and uh including additional ftes so if we go back to the previous slide 7.84 out of that 7.84 percent how much is due to the new agreements and you could see a little over 55 percent a little more than half is due to the new agreements so to put another way if there were no additional fdes it would be basically 90 uh due to that new agreement uh a little less than a third account for the additional FPS that Katie referred to earlier that one teaching position and some support staff and um the other 11 is uh benefits I'm not including the benefits and the wages and
095uh Lea tuition Etc that makes up the remainder of that 7.84 percent special ed increase so again doing some rough math if you took out the new agreement it would be basically the same as Administration operations a little less than three percent and uh which makes sense because Administration operations is mostly at will uh the rate of increase uh to give you some context uh over the years last year was 5.9 percent which was I think about three percent uh special added two percent Administration operations this year is 10.8 percent which is as we saw earlier a little less than three percent for administration operations and seven and a half a little over seven and a half per special ed what does this mean for your assessments again uh we break out uh assessments into
096four categories for the three funds special educations in the red blue Administration operations food service and Early Childhood Program so this is what you would see in your local budgets and so the numbers make it easier to identify these are projections but we've gotten most of the revenue that we expect to get in so we don't expect this to change much on a percentage basis if the budget's adopted uh as you can see early childhood and ecsc is up 24 and then in operations assessment is up 40 Grand or one point six four percent special ed is up 20 and food service is essentially flat all the budget materials are on the Etsy website and have been as of October 7th and now any questions Amy um on the website does that show the individual
097districts yeah what the assessment will be okay you got it on the website yeah it's a good question on the website I have uh not just this presentation but all the uh funds and in fact something I did different this year is I included the ECP budget and the food service budget within that as separate tabs on the bottom the general fund is obviously the biggest one but then you see ECP and Food Services separate tabs and every uh chart I have here is included in that spreadsheet right are there any other questions [Music] imagine that there would not be um Elizabeth I just want to really publicly thank you for uh for sending out such detailed information and the graphs and pie charts uh it was really amazing to get it so well in
098advance and be able to um think about it and ask you questions in advance of this meeting so I don't have any questions I just want to really thank you for for that effort that was really great thank you I I do have a question but it's okay um and I know um it's just looking back to last year I know we had some concerns about the mental health status of our staff and our students and um just kind of asking you do you feel because there were many positions that you brought in to address that particular those areas and I just wanted to get your feedback on that so we have um still a open one mental health clinician that we could fill we've been working on stabilizing the the three because we've gone
099from having eight CRS as a system to now all of our internal staff our last one just started today uh Nicole is going to be split between Heartland and Weathersfield which is wonderful um so we could definitely use another one of our physicians is Grant funded so it's not reflective here in our budget and that's Julia's barakian's position with school to home coordinator from Stephanie Su but primarily the Mount of company building so I think we are within our systems building better systems and that part of the increase we're also putting emphasis on social emotional interventionists as well to the people right working closest with the students are able to get the skills and help directly so it doesn't get to the point look later plus with we are hope which we have what's our
100FDA and we are both we have um a half ton Heartland a full-time between Windsor and West Windsor and we have um more than half time at Wethersfield they could stay locally pay the additional hours so I think our capacity we're we're looking at an additional Grant and starting that next week for the to do in a couple of weeks it's a wicked fast turnaround from the AOE November 15th they just opened it um that we are looking at what other supports we may want and need and have capacity to take on I think that that's or a little measured because of our resources I know I reached out to each of us the other day to see where they were and they're still short for clinicians for local schools and we're you know still
101on there still on their list but um it's kind of one of those realities but I think we're doing really well with what we have and the systems that we're building thank you other questions or comments incredibly helpful uh to pull together so thanks again thank you that was done a great job yeah yeah I think being transparent and posting it on the website and and it was on uh the budget section of the website also uh I also put in the board for me as a shortcut so it's in both places awesome thank you Mary I want to thank you because I think you did an awesome job of really condensing the areas that we've been focusing on last couple of years you continue to bring that back and um keep us um connected
102to our strategic planning so thank you thank you appreciate it it's like to give him a standing ovation and to be able to connect the budget to the Strategic plan which is all part of poetry thank you um I am sure well I know for certain that at our next meeting we'll talk more on the budget and I am probably 99.9 positive that we'll be talking about this at our individual district meeting so there's always more budgets coming up so thank you Larry and thank you to everyone who was on the budget committee that's I that's really exciting we've had a budget committee for quite a few years and now they're actually Heart part of the process we had great questions it really was wonderful really a great group to work with and and because
103they've done it before they're more familiar um so have really good questions that that was Larry's suggestion a couple of years ago that um those that are on the funding committee should at least serve more than once yeah could you just figure it out right yeah so and I would like it it I don't think that was on the requirements list [Laughter] thank you everyone okay we are moving on to our items for action and first we have the sub pay increase yeah Christine thank you I can give you some information it definitely can so this is this is in response to the um substitute who came to our meeting last month and advocated so um did a little digging actually Larry um did the leg work on this found out that uh Woodstock pays
104120. a day we currently pay a hundred dollars a day for ourselves Woodstock pays 120 uh Springfield Lebanon and Hartford there's a range between 105 and 110. um we are incredibly shorts short in the sub Department and have people out for various reasons on a regular basis so we would like to I would recommend that we increase our sub pay to the 120 dollar Mark to attract substitutes to our SU so that is our recommendation that you you get to decide on that [Music] is your emotion I move to increase it to 125. thank you Bill I moved to increase it to 135. we're not getting Colleen we're not bidding we know did you do any math on how much this will be for a year or something like the impact of that increase we
105we did not I mean it is just um yeah it's really a hard uh Target to hit calling just depending on some years we we have extra money in the sub line and in some years we overspend it depending on the number of absences um it's also especially hard because there are so fewer cells yeah it's hard to budget like a typical thing yeah yeah I would I would prefer not to have to go the route that Hartford had to which is they passed an mou that pays teachers um based upon 15-minute coverage wow um periods to cover uncovered classes and it's a data Nightmare and it's out there per diem rate too I'm assuming like they're for being hourly probably no I think it's 25 an hour or 35 an hour I can't remember
106I believe it is 25. so it's not at a per diem rate it is a flat rate um it does impact in other ways too like if the teachers don't get their lunch or their prep they're even more stressed right we're talking Pennies on the dollar here yeah over a main over a huge school budget in in comparison and it creates being able to substitute creates so much functionality um to just the normal school day so um I was being conservative with 125 but I think I think this is something that I would prefer to pass it to 125 and then re-look it at re-look at it at the beginning of next year to see if we should go to 135 or even 150. but that's my motion second I'm sorry I'm seconding I'm 25.
107thank you Colleen um okay we have a motion that's been seconded for 125 for a day of substitute teaching is there any more discussion hearing none I am going to start in the room with our will call a voting Rebecca hi Davis hi and Beth I Bill aye Colleen I Elizabeth I and Mark I Nancy I am being a substitute teacher for a long time before I started full time I I am interested in Bill's suggestion to look at it again next year hi and Nikki I well it has passed great 125 products so we'll get it in the newsletter that's where we get yes yes yes yes great thank you okay thank you very much okay and now social media we had our discussion so I will take a motion to approve that social
108social media be blocked or k eight with an opt-in for 9 to 12 from parents Davis does it need to say um Larry does it need to say blocked on school devices yeah on school devices right yeah School devices Chromebooks which will be what the Chromebooks are on network and that's for student services if there's a specific time because we wanted to for Christine to let people know that this is happening effective Monday you know people want to pick a date or do you want to just do it effective tomorrow because there's going to be some tech setup that's going to require this uh right there has to be the opportunity for us again let's say November 1st maybe November 1st are you I was just going to ask Larry how much time you anticipated
109needing to do the tech setup and well for the tech setup probably two or three days maybe less but uh but for the opt-in yeah it might require maybe a week would be good sure yeah I mean it's been open for so long what's wrong with several days and then a parent could opt in at any point yes right yes and Bill your hand is oh thank you um I I'm assuming we're not passing this in the policy because we haven't written a policy but basically what we're doing I'm just clarifying we are uh supporting the administrative decisions to X Y and Z and I think it'd be really important um to write that up in a very clear statement to go into the minutes um that exactly what it is that we're supporting the
110staff doing in that the outcome of the vote because we don't have to adjust the policy to do this no no I don't I don't think this requirements but I think it's important to have it within the the the the uh minutes clearly written what the board is voting on supporting the administration's decision to do this and then of course the outcome of the vote Okay so what we are voting for is board support of the administration recommendations recommendation restricting social media to all student devices for K-12 with an opt-out opportunity for students I'm sorry opt-in opportunity for students 9 through 12. yes perfect so you would like the second Davis you you made the original motion right yeah no no this was just a clarification of what oh okay and then Nancy your second
111yes thank you welcome um is there are there any other questions or further discussion we will begin um I'm going to start online and then go to in the room beginning with Beth I still aye Colleen I Elizabeth I Jamie hi mark hi Nancy I Nikki Davis hi it is unanimous so thank you thank you for this discussion and yeah thank you for the support and this is effective November 1st yep foreign and we do have on our list uh that we made in the summer or the late summer um the substitute teachers policy is on our on our November meeting agenda for the first read okay and then we'll do the restraint seclusion third reading mascots and Library material second reading okay great and some hiring and employment Elizabeth hi uh I I promise
112that I will have a hiring and Beth and I will have a hiring and employment whole thing ready to go at the next one but can we please add at our last Mountain School District meeting we talked about uh adding some parenting stuff um for at the middle school level um and we agreed that we would bring it up to the supervisory Union level and that had to do with um you know uh having just very informal conversations among parents of middle schoolers um and also telling parents what um skills middle schoolers have developed over the course of their time at our supervisory Union to to deal with um being adolescents but also um having some mediated or facilitated rather discussions with the woman whose name I can't remember Christine uh I've been I've been
113emailing her I've also reached out to Mana scottney Courtney and um yeah so it sounds like Middle School parenting support meetings I mean it's it's a dispatching format so yeah I can I can certainly put it in my my report if that or if you want to discuss it more with the under items for discussion and we could but we could do is have a short discussion to have a little a subcommittee to do the planning yes yep and have that so I'll bring what I find out and then we can discuss this on committee yeah okay that sounds good thank you Elizabeth and then more budget and I think I think we need to keep it there can we also get a report on on at our next meeting on um what we're gonna
114how we're gonna get our board and community members and other other people to uh have a joining a discussion about listen up have a screening and discussion put that on here um I was thinking it might make I mean our audit report should be done at the first of the year it might dovetail with that um showing pieces of that when we roll out the results of the audit report that's a good idea okay um the other thing just so you know uh Britney's on for the data report and it'll be part of the administrative report okay and Misty Putin you have your hand raised yes I just wanted to thank you guys for really um taking seriously about social media I know that's really important to a lot of parents especially because I don't
115allow for my children so it just makes me feel better and knowing that that's removed and I really do appreciate the opt-in form because I feel like that's miss last so opt-out forms can be missed sometimes so I all of that what Tara and I brought to you and I feel like you guys really took that into consideration and I want to thank you for that Tara couldn't be here tonight she has a family emergency but I know she would be equally happy about your decision I also want to say I really appreciate what you're doing about the substitute teachers um I know a lot of qualified individuals who I think you'll just get more qualified individuals you'll get more people willing to apply in my second grade or her teacher is going to be
116out so um I know for a couple of months and I really want to make you know as a mom I want to know that her substitute that she'll have for months at a time is you know someone highly qualified to handle that length of time in a classroom so um anyway Bravo to you guys for doing that as well you guys made some good decisions tonight [Music] thank you do we need an executive session I don't think so um is there a motion to adjourn Rebecca David okay and we are in favor by saying goodbye goodbye thank you guys I know all right